Workshops

The Movement Studies Institute offers workshops and seminars focusing on a variety of dynamic topics.

These classes are generally open to anyone interested in learning the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais and are designed to inspire as much they educate.

These workshops serve as a way to introduce you to the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. If you are interested in these workshops, and would like to pursue a profession in this work, checkout our Intelligent BodyMind training programs.

Learn through movement and touch to:

  • Free yourself from unconscious movement habits that are painful and effortful.
  • Develop the skills to move with dexterity, power and grace.
  • Reduce or eliminate pain.
  • Restructuring unconscious postural habits that contribute to discomfort and restricted mobility.
  • Expand your knowledge of the human body with evolutionary anatomy.

Who Should Attend

These workshops are beneficial to people from all walks of life, all ages, and all levels of activity. Additionally, physicians, chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, dancers, musicians, singers, actors, athletes and trainers have discovered remarkable effectiveness through these workshops.

People suffering from chronic pain, postural stress or repetitive strain have also learned to find relief. Plus, thousands of health practitioners have enhanced their knowledge with this unique approach to learning through movement.

These workshops are scheduled by demand by different organizers throughout the world. Many practitioners schedule these workshops as a supplement or addition to conferences and seminars.

Contact us for more information about sponsoring a workshop for your group or professional organization.

For information about our Advanced Trainings for practitioners, click here.

 

Change Your Age: Do you want to reverse the signs of aging of your mind and body?

Our movement habits at age 40 & 50 will impact how we feel at age 60, 70 & beyond. When we create new movement habits, we make our bodies and minds younger, stronger, and more flexible. In essence, we create a more intelligent body.

What makes a person old? Some people think it’s wrinkles; others think it’s stodgy attitudes. But really, the culprit is our habits. When we unlearn these habits and create new ones, we make our bodies and minds younger, stronger, and more flexible. In essence, we create a more youthful and intelligent body at any age.

The good news is that we can learn new habits that make our bodies and minds more agile and fit. We may then begin to enjoy the qualities of exploration, ease, variety and joy in our movements, as we did when we were children and, before that, infants. The easy-to-learn movement sequences in this workshop will help you break away from physically limiting habits and steer you toward feelings that you ordinarily would experience at your best — and perhaps your youngest — moments.

Experience a weekend of learning to move more easily and effortlessly - and release your pain. In Dr. Wildman’s groundbreaking Change Your Age program, you will learn a series of simple, but powerful, exercises that will actually train the brain to send the correct signals to the body so it begins to move in healthier, stronger, more coordinated, and even graceful ways. The program is not stressful, and does not involve repetitive routines. It does not place demands on your muscular strength and flexibility. It does not require specialized equipment.

Your Brain as the Core of Strength and Stability

In recent years, the notions of core strength and core stability have become increasingly fashionable in a number of movement systems ranging from Yoga to Pilates to Qi Gong.

The work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, on the other hand, is generally thought of in the public mind as providing only easier movement and greater flexibility. However, in order to use our deep intrinsic muscles, and organize the power of the pelvis we must use the organs of the mind. The most far-reaching motor organ in our body is our Nervous System.  It reaches into our deep interior organizing our pelvis, our intrinsic muscles - our core.

In this workshop, we will use movement lessons that develop core stability and learn interesting ways to use the gentleness of hands-on lesson to provide the core organization required for stability and strength. In this way, the vigor of the martial arts origins of our work can be brought forth to the public.

Clinical Applications of the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais: Balance, Stabilization and Gait

In this workshop, you will deepen your understanding of bio-mechanics, balance and stability while exploring pleasurable movement lessons that directly apply to problems presented by clients with difficulties in these areas. Balance will be approached as an activity in all basic positions and cardinal directions. A dynamic sense of stabilization emphasizing proximal to distal control of balance as well as the importance of diagonal movements and counter-rotation involved in gait will be demonstrated, experienced and practiced.

Human Potential: The Power Of The Body

The notion of human potential provides a key understanding to the radical educational and social nature of the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. In The Potent Self, Moshe states, "The power of a body is determined by the power of the abdomen and more generally by the pelvic region." We will explore this idea through practical elaborations for hands-on work taken directly from The Potent Self. Although the book was published posthumously, the many ideas described have been explicated in some rarely presented Alexander Yanai lessons. Utilizing these rich source materials, we will work deeply with the potential power available through a well-organized abdomen, pelvis and head.

Intelligent Posture: Ground Zero in Working with Overuse and Pain

What does “good posture” mean to you?

Most of us think of it as sitting and standing straight, having “proper” alignment—a static concept. Within the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, posture is viewed as dynamic. With reduced muscular effort, internal resistance and altered breathing, this posture allows free, light and comfortable movement from one body state to another—it is efficient. Unnecessary effort often leads to reduced mobility, chronic pain, or overuse/repetitive stress symptoms.

Using movement lessons, discussion and demonstration, you will experience and evaluate your unique posture, and explore movements and concepts rooted in the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais to improve the quality, ease and comfort of your posture and subsequent actions.

The Intelligent Spine: Sitting, Standing and Lying

Learn how to relieve stress in the face, jaw, neck and shoulders and create greater ease, strength and grace in everything you do. Explore how the use of the head affects your spine from neck to pelvis and how very subtle movements can affect your ability to use your spine more efficiently. Dr. Wildman will demonstrate hands-on approaches of lessons you will experience in sitting, standing and lying.

 

From Prevention to Performance: Work Smarter Not Harder

Contemporary exercise culture often follows the following pattern: Work hard to get in shape, get an injury, work in pain or don’t work, recover and then start over.

It doesn’t need to be that way. This workshop will introduce you to a method of neuromuscular re-education that will help you work smarter rather than harder. Developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, distinguished physicist, engineer and Judo expert, it has helped thousands of people reduce injuries while improving performance. You will not only rediscover the joy and comfort of easy, well-coordinated movement, but also learn to use your body’s intelligence to walk, swim, dance and even think better.

Reconstructing Dance Technique: From the Floor to the Barre

(Open to dancers of all levels and their rehabilitators)

Dr. Frank Wildman has had a lifelong interest in reconstructing dance technique. He believes that dance technique should contour to the individual rather than the individual trying to conform to an ideal. In his view, human body becomes the model— not the technique. This course will provide dancers with tools to designed to enable anyone to prevent injury and to achieve their goals in dance. This workshop is for any dancer or student of dance wanting to learn technique in a safe, non-competitive manner. You will learn to sense yourself more from the inside. You will unlearn old injurious and stressful habits and re-learn the movement ideals of dance from Ballet to Modern in a way that will be both challenging and liberating.

Dr. Wildman will use the unique and sophisticated movement repertoire of the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais to affect the spatial awareness, self-image, and postural control required to move more vividly and easily. In reconstructing dance technique, Dr. Wildman assists his students to develop a deeper understanding of their bodies rather than simply imitating. This course has been taught regularly to dancers at the Trisha Brown Dance Studio in New York City, The Dancers Workshop of San Francisco, and in Sydney, Australia. Reconstructing Dance Technique has served as an introduction to this work to dancers throughout the world.

The Timeless Body-Improving With Age: Using Movement Lessons

The older we get the smarter we must become. As we age, it becomes increasingly important to use our bodies more efficiently, because we can no longer afford to slam our bones, strain our muscles and do things with will willpower and brute strength. We must learn to improve our quality and ease of motion, our coordination, our sense of balance, control and ease.

This workshop, originally developed for the University of California’s gerontology program, will show you how to reduce stress while increasing muscular efficiency in a pleasurable and comfortable manner using movement lessons.

A Day on the Pelvis: Understanding The Pelvis

Taught for many years to physicians at the American Back Society, physical therapists working in gerontology, and Yoga practitioners, this workshop focuses on the practical benefits of understanding the evolutionary structure and functions of the pelvis. This is particularly useful in assisting people, who suffer from the back and hip problems frequently associated with pelvic instability, hypermobility, as well as loss of perineal control.

The distortion of weight transference with pelvic instability contributes to both lower back, sacroiliac and hip pain. Students will learn to identify when there is too much relative movement, which can be aggravated by certain movement or hands-on lessons. Bone, muscle, perineum, and other pelvic soft tissues and their innervation will be addressed with short movement or hands-on lessons practice interspersed throughout the day.

Working with Repetitive Stress Injuries: Improve Your Posture

In the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, improving posture is the considered the most reliable and effective approach to address local misuse and repetitive stress injuries. In this workshop you will learn how to approach stress and pain from repetitive motions through a whole body approach to movement. You will discover connections between hands and feet, the spine and arms that will prove immensely helpful to those suffering from Repetitive Stress Injuries. This workshop is suitable for those who suffer from RSI as well as for health professionals who encounter it in their practices.

Emotional Learning: From Biomechanics to Emotions

Our experience is shaped by complex combinations of beliefs, perceptions, hormones, social values, and desires. Every thought, action, and feeling finds its expression in movement. Even our posture can be understood as a thought phrase, a preparation for new possible movements and new possible feelings. In order to understand how to create change, we must become aware of how our whole self is embodied in our movements. To work with a person's emotions becomes a technical question, falling within the realm of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais' notion of function, which Dr. Wildman integrates with the work of Dr. Stanley Keleman, author of Emotional Anatomy, and the work of Anna Halprin and the social and expressive body.

In this workshop, we will technically explore the inseparability of body mechanics from our embodied emotions and investigate function, learning, and emotions by integrating information from psychology and anthropology to better inform us.