Senior Classes
The Feldenkrais Method can be an excellent tool for elders, as it focuses on improving movement, increasing body awareness, and fostering greater ease and comfort in everyday activities. Developed by Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais, the method is based on the principle that the brain is capable of reorganizing itself and learning new movement patterns throughout life. This makes it particularly valuable for older adults, as it helps maintain or even restore function, mobility, and quality of life.
Sometimes, our sense of self becomes narrower and narrower as we age. Fundamentally, this approach helps people to reclaim a broad and pleasurable repertoire of movement, thoughts and possibilities.
How Do Body Wisdom Classes Benefit Seniors?
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As people age, changes in muscle strength, coordination, and joint mobility can affect balance. Feldenkrais helps elders become more aware of where they are in space and how they organize their movements, promoting better balance and stability. Movements are not only safer, but easier and more pleasurable.
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The Feldenkrais Method involves gentle, exploratory movements that help to increase flexibility and promote better awareness of the body. This can be particularly helpful in easing stiffness and discomfort and in increasing self-confidence.
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By improving movement patterns and reducing unnecessary tension in the body, Feldenkrais can help alleviate chronic pain, especially in the back, hips, knees, neck and shoulders. It can also help prevent strain or injury from overuse of a small range of habits.
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The method encourages mindful awareness and attention to the body and the entire self, which can help improve mental clarity and focus. It enhances interoception, the sensations that come from within, many of which relate to our understanding of where we are in space. For elders, this can support cognitive health and offer a sense of mental engagement and stimulation—and it is great for balance!
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Movements are slow, gentle, and often done lying on a mat or sitting in a chair. This makes it accessible for elders with varying levels of fitness or mobility.
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This approach helps with movements such as getting in and out of a chair, walking, or climbing stairs. This method helps people find the safest, most efficient, and practical ways to get up and down, reach, walk on uneven ground and stablilize ourselves without ‘locking up.’ And it also helps for golf, dancing, paddle sports, swimming…
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Feldenkrais can help reduce stress and anxiety through its calming, mindful approach to movement. It fosters a sense of empowerment as individuals rediscover their capacity for movement and physical possibility. The method is designed to help people find their own easiest way rather than to impose external rules about what is right and wrong.
“An 80-year-old voice is not a 38-year-old voice, but it has 42 more years of life experience and craft and depth.“
Lucy Shelton will be premiering an opera at the Met at the age of 82. This quotation from her voice coach captures what I wish for in myself and with my clients: that overall, we improve rather than decline with age. That we have the idea that we can improve rather than decline!
Lucy Shelton, Opera Singer