Training programs are open to both professionals and non-professionals. Our professional training program teaches all students how thoughts, feelings and actions are fundamental to neuromuscular control and coordination. You’ll learn how to relieve pressure and strain on joints and muscles while improving quality of motion. Students will learn through interesting movement explorations and hands-on tactile experiences while achieving greater control and performance in their own lives. These movements will be integrated with lectures and discussions.

A successful practitioner must be able to nurture a deep rapport with clients. This elusive quality is a key part of our program. It promises you intrigue, stimulation and lasting reward. Participants will learn the latest in working with chronic pain issues as well as learning how to work with high level movers, be they professional or semi-professional athletes, dancers, or martial artists. The advantage of such a program includes the personal satisfaction of helping others while learning patterns of “breakthroughs” for even the most persistent of client problems.

Study Topics Include:

• The Study of Holistic Movement
• Evolutionary anatomy and movement functions
• The Evolution of Motion- How did thought and awareness arise from our body?
• How we learned to acquire movement and language skills
• Non-verbal communication
• The Study of Creativity
• Martial Arts, Sports, and Dance

Each training program is developed by Frank Wildman, PhD, and taught by some of the most inspiring instructors in the somatic field today. The professional training program offered by the Movement Studies Institute provides a theoretical and technical background for study that relates to virtually every discipline taught in major universities and teaching institutions. Due to the great versatility and significance in people's lives, including rehabilitation, performance development, and improving self-awareness, graduates are able to select from a variety of career opportunities.

After graduation, many students have applied their education to such fields as physical therapy, occupational therapy, neuromuscular rehabilitation, gerontology, childhood special education, massage therapy, psychotherapy, speech pathology, sports training, dance, music, performing arts and more.

"Frank Wildman’s Professional Trainings create the optimum environment for learning: a friendly, mutually supportive group of students, a comfortable physical environment, a dedicated and skilled support staff and instructors who are not only skillful in the method but skillful in the application of learning theory tailored to the needs of the group while mindful of the individual students needs."

-John B. Chester, MD, Orthopedic Surgeon and former director of Pain Services, Salem Hospital Regional Rehabilitation Center

"Dr. Wildman’s Training Program has helped me become more aware of my teaching style while teaching me about effective movement. He has provided greater skills that help me communicate movement more accurately to my students. Frank is brilliant. He has the ability to weave different sciences in a way that expands one’s perspective."

-Rosa Pasarin, Polestar Pilates International Educator and Feldenkrais practitioner

The program is structured in two week sections spread over the course of several years, depending on the location.

The coursework offers a profound and pleasurable learning experience. You'll balance your time between intense study and periods to assimilate the depth of information. Classes are woven together in an experiential and exploratory manner. Hands-on lessons, lectures, discussion groups, reading and DVDs will help guide you to learn at your own pace in a non-competitive environment.

 

Curriculum and Learning Strategy

Hundreds of movement lessons explore every joint and muscle group in the body, recapturing the organic learning processes of childhood. They are done in a group setting with other students. Many of these lessons were devised by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, as well as Frank Wildman. These explorations illustrate particular movement concepts and are balanced with lectures, demonstrations, and discussions.

A systematic approach of working "hands-on" with another individual to address specific neurologic or muscular problems will be emphasized. Students receive personalized private instruction and supervision from staff as they develop their own skills to work with others. In the final year, a clinic allows students to perform hands-on lessons under supervision while receiving detailed feedback.

Dr. Wildman integrates the teachings of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, the greatest movement scientist of the last century, and Dr. Stanley Keleman, a pioneer in somatic psychology. Frank Wildman was Dr. Feldenkrais' first North American student and taught his work for over 40 years. He simultaneously studied with Dr. Keleman for over 30 years. Movement lessons are closely examined and discussed in order to focus upon key principles and theories of these luminaries.

All discussions, lessons, and demonstrations are recorded and made available to students. These daily recordings provide an indispensable means of study and facilitate make-up sessions in the case of absence. They also serve as a record of the student's progress and enable review of one's physical transformation.

In addition to interaction with instructors, students work in small groups to maximize teaching and understand handling of different individuals. Study groups occur in a highly personalized manner for greater understanding of interactions. The groups promote invaluable relationships among participants and a sense of mutual support or a home away from home. It is from these study groups that many lifelong colleagues and friends can be established.

 

 

Tuition, Fees and Enrollment

Tuition

The exact cost varies according to the particular location of the training program.

Housing

Housing information is provided to applicants upon enrollment. There are many housing options that range in cost, location and type of accommodation. Housing listings are mailed to enrollees with ample time to make necessary arrangements. Maps of each area and public transportation information are also provided.

Enrollment Information

We are currently accepting students for all NEW trainings. Contact the office for application information and forms.

Primary emphasis is placed on an applicant's motivation for personal development and career goals.  There is no educational prerequisite or existing professional background required.

Program Faculty and Instructors

Frank Wildman, Ph.D is Educational Director of the Movement Studies Institute. All other faculty members studied directly with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais and have been carefully selected for their mastery and strong teaching skills. Other practitioners with an advanced level of study and ability to inspire and support students may assist with instruction. During all phases of coursework, a low student-teacher ratio is maintained to ensure close supervision.

Student Evaluation and Graduation

Throughout training, students have a regular opportunity to meet with the program director and teaching faculty for guidance in their studies. You'll receive personal support in your learning experience, encouragement of your progress, plus attention to many professional aspects of setting up your own practice.

Graduation is based on completion of the following:

• Intelligent BodyMind Movement lessons and Hands-on coursework.
• Full attendance in all sessions of the training program and
• Successful evaluations from faculty

Missed days must be completed through make up sessions provided by the staff prior and/or video work prior to graduation.

 

• The Movement Studies Institute is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of Somatic Education worldwide, having trained more practitioners around the world than any other since 1985.
• Payments can be made with Visa, MasterCard, or by personal check.
• All applications are reviewed prior to acceptance by the Administrative Director and Dr. Frank Wildman, Educational Director. Primary emphasis is placed on an applicant's motivation for personal development and career goals. There is no education prerequisite or existing professional background required.  Therefore, your overall profile will be taken into consideration. A telephone interview may be requested.
• The Professional training program is not intended to provide medical rehabilitation or psychiatric treatment for enrollees, nor is it intended to replace training in those fields.
• Training programs may be subject to cancellation in cases of insufficient enrollment, faculty availability or facilities. In the case of faculty or location changes, enrollees will be notified at least 30 days in advance and given the option for refund.
• Laws of a given country or state may vary in regard to the use and applications of movement lessons and/or hands-on procedures taught in the program. There may be additional requirements to practice in your state or country and some form of licensing may be required to teach movement lessons and perform hands-on lessons. The program may provide you with many or all of the state requirements. Any additional requirements beyond the scope of the course are the responsibility of the applicant or student.

Open to Practitioners, Advanced Trainings are usually 2-5 days long.

Advanced Trainings and Presentations:

• Neuroplasticity and Learning
• Presenting the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
• How to Prepare Yourself
• Finding the Core of a Lesson
• Follow that Bone
• The Evolution of Learning
• The Motor Concept
• Ligaments and Tendencies
• Orientation/Anxiety/Pleasure

Contact us for more information on sponsor or schedule one of these seminars/presentations.

Frank Wildman hands down and hands on to us the richness and complexity of the Method directly from its founder, Moshe Feldenkrais.

-Michael McClure, Obie Award–winning playwright, poet and author of The Beard and Scratching the Beat Surface

I am moving in ways I have never moved before. Not only have my movements of balance, turning, and focus improved, but the quality of my movement is different. Dr. Wildman is an incredibly perceptive and intuitive support for your own self-discovery. He knows what you need before you know what you need.

-Erin Harper, Dancer/Choreographer, Filmmaker

His knowledge of the body in motion, of people's issues and resistances and how they manifest in the body, and of Moshe Feldenkrais' system are so informed and thorough that his work is beyond compare.

-Shellen Lubin, Director, Voice and Acting Teacher, and Coach

 

Neuroplasticity and Learning: Further Adventures in the Jungle of the Brain

“Mind, the unconscious, and will are functions; they have no existence before action has taken place.” -Moshe Feldenkrais, The Potent Self

Sigmund Freud travelled “the royal road to the unconscious” through dreams and direct questioning. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais observed how movement and sensation can access a similar place. Working with this new “royal road”, Dr. Feldenkrais anticipated discoveries in neuroscience that were generations ahead of his time. Now, in a unique training, Frank Wildman combines these varied understandings of the brain and its capacity for change.

In neuroscience and cognitive science, there are two views of the brain: the ‘dry view’, as though the brain was a supercomputer quantifiable through electrical impulses, and the ‘wet view’, a more fluid vision of a biological entity, a vast collection of neurotransmitters intimately integrated with the body. In this training, Frank Wildman will expand on the wet view, which is more congruent with Moshe’s integrated understanding of the bodymind.

Frank Wildman has developed movement lessons, as well as hands-on lessons, to help you find ways to sense, learn and teach in the context of emerging brain research. By understanding the history of Freud’s road to the subconscious and subsequent shifts in the science and philosophy of the mind, you can deepen and empower your interactions with clients.

Presenting the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais

Whether it's an initial interview with a client, your first visit to your prospective in-laws or a presentation for medical professionals, artists, athletes, or the general public, your style of answering this question can determine whether you gain rapport or not. This in turn can make the difference between gaining your livelihood with this work or not.

It can be a challenge to introduce this work to professional and other audiences. We need skills in design and presentation to effectively communicate to communities outside our own.

The ability to present yourself and Dr. Feldenkrais' work in an effective and interesting manner, are as important as your movement, hands-on, and teaching skills. This may very well be the most crucial workshop you can take to sustain your career and further the recognition of the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.

We will use theater exercises and video feedback to make your personal style of communication more effective in addressing audiences that are important to you.

How to Prepare Yourself

Our postural preparation is a crucial factor in organizing our perceptions and actions. How we prepare ourselves for a presentation, a movement lesson or a hands-on lesson, can influence the outcome more than our technical proficiency on that particular day.

How do you reach inside yourself to create a profound and unique experience for your students and clients? How do you use yourself to create a specific feeling in a teaching situation? How can you share your passion with an audience in a way that engages them more fully? How can you utilize your doubts and insecurities as assets to create a unique teaching style?

This workshop will show you how to become a more effective guide by preparing for surprises and challenges from the inside. You will learn how to engage your students by creating situations that are outside of their usual habits and experiences.

Finding the Core of a Lesson

Good musicians do not simply memorize and play the sequences in a musical score, they must understand the meaning of the piece they are playing in order to emphasize, interpret and improvise. The same is true for a practitioner.

In this course, you will learn to discover the core of a lesson. Once you understand the central function of a lesson, you can adjust it to fit a wide range of groups in movement lessons or a variety of clients in hands-on lessons. Your confidence and creativity increase, as you no longer need to depend on notes or worry about getting lost in the sequence.

Movement lessons translates more easily into hands-on lessons if we understand the core ideas of a lesson. We will use a range of familiar and new movement lessons to identify what is central in a series of lessons as well as what is central to each lesson in a series. We will be working both hands-on and in movement lessons to physicalize the ground of our understanding. Application of these lessons to the world outside of training programs will be discussed.

Follow that Bone

In this workshop, we will explore how lessons can be better designed by understanding in detail the relationship between anatomy and history of the human body. We will pick a bone or two and follow the evolution of perceptions and actions that gave birth to form. We will clarify how structures and functions of the body interact with the environment.

Using these insights you will learn how to develop more potent movement lessons and hands-on lessons that connect bone through muscle and brain to the environment.

This course will provide you with the tools to see and sense movement in a more precise and expansive manner and create more meaningful lessons for your clients.

The Evolution of Learning: Sequences, Transitions, and Consequences in Lessons

"Without light there would be no eyes." -Moshe Feldenkrais

"What can I do when a lesson doesn't seem to be working? Should I change to another lesson and if that doesn't help maybe even try concepts and movements from still another lesson?"

Every practitioner is familiar with these questions and with the confusion they generate in ourselves and in our clients. What options are available to us in the design of a lesson, to make transitions smooth and easy?

There are fundamental principles shared between the development of awareness in this work and the biological evolution of life on earth. We will approach the mysteries and the mechanisms of organic development and human learning in terms of similar underlying processes.

We will work with the similarities in the design and generation of movement lessons and hands-on lessons to the similarities in the emergence and development of new life forms. Understanding how consciousness, awareness, and learning evolved in the natural world can better inform us in designing more effective and generative lessons.

This will be an evolutionary learning experience.

The Motor Concept: Using Motor Learning and Motor Control Theories in the Design of Lesson Plans and Themes

How do we learn front and back, up and down, left and right? How do we learn to time and coordinate our movements? The understanding of these temporal and spatial learning processes can prove very helpful in choosing lesson plans or predicting and influencing the outcome of a lesson.

These spatial and temporal learnings are well mapped in research and occasionally chanced upon by practitioners who find themselves surprised by the success of a particular lesson. "The Motor Concept" was developed by Dr. Frank Wildman in order to provide a useful model to better control and predict the outcome of lessons and select lesson plans suited to the individual needs of clients.

Students will experience the Motor Concept through movement lessons and hands-on lessons.

Ligaments and Tendencies

©1996, Frank Wildman, Ph.D.

"Sensing the skeleton" and "experiencing skeletal consciousness" are notions Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais often discussed, but what exactly are the mechanisms whereby we sense the location of our bones in SpaceTime?

The relationship of our skeleton to muscular activities pours into the nervous system as much through receptors in the ligaments and tendons as within the joints or muscles themselves. Ligaments and tendons are not just passive connectors of our bones and muscles, they provide massive amounts of information due to their rich innervation, yet training programs rarely address how to use them.

By working precisely with ligaments and tendons in hands-on lessons we will heighten skeletal sensations, improve joint stability, and affect motor control.

Orientation/Anxiety/Pleasure

©1996 by Frank Wildman, Ph.D

All animals must be able to orient themselves to sudden changes in the environment in order to identify potential threats. When the orienting response is effective, no anxiety arises; the fluid and uninterrupted interaction with the environment is experienced as pleasurable. When there is an interference with the orienting response anxiety is generated.

In human society, the nature of our orienting responses becomes extremely complex, involving our personal history, cultural tendencies, imagination, humor, and art. Identifying what is exciting to us, what is pleasurable and what evokes anxiety often becomes confusing, since the terms "anxiety" and "pleasure" mask a wealth of underlying bodily feelings.

In this workshop, we will deepen our work by learning to identify and utilize differing orienting responses that form the basis of postural control and social identity.

 

 

 

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.

• Change Your Age
• Your Brain as the Core of Strength and Stability
• Clinical Applications of the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
• Human Potential
• Intelligent Posture
• The Intelligent Spine
• From Prevention to Performance
• Reconstructing Dance Technique
• The Timeless Body- Improving with Age
• A Day on the Pelvis
• Working with Repetitive Stress Injuries
• Emotional Learning

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.