Jack Heggie on the Feldenkrais Method, NLP, and the Whole Person

by Jack Heggie

Editor’s Note

The opening account describes a client speaking about childhood abuse during the course of Feldenkrais and NLP work. It is presented here as Jack Heggie originally understood and described the experience. The article reflects the language and therapeutic assumptions of its time and should not be read as suggesting that movement work can independently verify, recover, or establish the factual accuracy of traumatic memories.

Article Summary

Jack Heggie explores the Feldenkrais Method and Neuro-Linguistic Programming as complementary approaches to human learning and change. He describes the Feldenkrais Method as working with the self through movement and touch, while NLP works with the self through language and thought. Although the two approaches differ in form, both seek to expand a person’s available patterns, improve flexibility, and support more effective organization of movement, perception, emotion, and behavior.

When a Feldenkrais Session Takes an Unexpected Turn

My client, May, lay on her side on the table. Sitting just above her head, I had placed one hand on her neck and was gently pulling her head upward in the direction of her spine. It was her seventh session of Feldenkrais Functional Integration®, and the session appeared to be going well.

Suddenly, May stopped breathing and began to squirm uncomfortably. I quickly removed my hands.

“Is that painful?” I asked.

“No, but it makes me very uncomfortable,” she replied.

I was immediately struck by her tone of voice. May was a mature, 38-year-old woman with a responsible professional position in a medium-sized company, but her voice sounded as if it were coming from a six-year-old—and a very scared six-year-old at that.

I sat back, took a deep breath, and mentally shifted gears. I had been earning my living as a Feldenkrais practitioner for more than four years, and I was just a few days shy of completing my NLP Master Programmer training. I recognized that I had a situation with May that called for the use of NLP.

I moved my stool around to the side so that I could look at May’s face. She looked frightened.

“What’s going on in your head?” I asked while watching her eyes for accessing cues.

She looked up—a visual access—but said that she wasn’t sure.

“You see something,” I told her. “Can you tell me what it is?”

I waited for almost a minute for the answer, which came in that same frightened, little-girl voice. I listened as May told a long, involved story of child abuse.

Over the next few weeks, I continued to work with her using the Feldenkrais Method and NLP. The Feldenkrais work I had done earlier seemed to have uncovered, or somehow made it acceptable for her to talk about, the childhood abuse. Once the incidents were uncovered, the NLP techniques I had been learning seemed to be able to defuse the trauma of the childhood experiences quickly.

Afterward, May told me that she felt like a different person—better and more effective.

What Is the Feldenkrais Method?

The Feldenkrais Method is a form of psychophysical education or, as it is known informally, “bodywork,” even though many practitioners consider that word a misnomer.

The Method was developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, D.Sc., during the middle part of the twentieth century. As a result of a serious knee injury sustained while playing soccer in his twenties, Feldenkrais was compelled to investigate how he could use himself more efficiently and continue functioning without surgery.

During the course of his investigations into how human beings learn to move, he was led to consider how the whole body—and, in fact, the whole person—is involved in every action we perform.

He was successful enough in his endeavor to earn a black belt in judo, becoming one of the first Europeans to do so. He established the Judo Club of France, which for many years was the largest judo organization outside Japan, and he taught judo for many years.

In 1949, Feldenkrais published Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning. In the book, he used the known facts of anatomy, physiology, and psychology to demonstrate analytically the relationship between mind and body.

He showed that the emotional state known as anxiety is the mental correlate of a particular physical condition, which he called “the body pattern of anxiety.” Through Functional Integration and Awareness Through Movement®, he demonstrated this idea experientially by relieving people of their anxieties.

In fact, Feldenkrais said, it is only in words that we make a distinction between “mind” and “body.” In reality, mind and body are two aspects of the indivisible, whole human being.

His book was years ahead of its time, and even today, it is little known and even less appreciated.

“It is only in words that we make a distinction between mind and body.”

For myself, I have come to think of the Feldenkrais Method as working with the self through movement and touch, and NLP as working with the self through talking.

This kind of description avoids falling into the trap of speaking of the body and mind as if they were two separate entities.

Feldenkrais, Learning, and Human Organization

Toward the end of his life, Feldenkrais spent considerable time teaching and working in the United States. He became well known for his cures of people with disabilities arising from strokes and severe accidents, as well as for his work with such notable people as the guitarist Narciso Yepes, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, basketball player Julius Erving—Dr. J—and others.

The Feldenkrais Method consists of two branches: the group work known as Awareness Through Movement and the individual work known as Functional Integration.

Awareness Through Movement

In Awareness Through Movement lessons, students sit or lie on the floor while the teacher verbally directs them through a sequence of movements. These movements allow students to explore some aspect of their physical functioning gently and attentively.

At the end of a lesson, which usually lasts about an hour, students often report that they feel taller, lighter, and more balanced. Their breathing and posture may have improved, and many aches and pains may have diminished or disappeared entirely.

Dr. Feldenkrais created several thousand Awareness Through Movement lessons, making it possible to study for years without repeating the same lesson.

Functional Integration

In Functional Integration, the client lies fully clothed on a padded table while the practitioner uses touch and movement to guide the client toward improved posture, breathing, movement, and balance.

No force is used in Functional Integration, and as a result there is rarely pain during a session.

When a new client arrives for a lesson, the practitioner conducts an interview, asking what the client wants.

Many clients come for relief from pain resulting from accidents or sports overtraining. Others complain of depression, tiredness, or shallow breathing. Still others seek to improve their ability to play a musical instrument or perform in an athletic endeavor.

After the interview, the practitioner observes the client carefully, noticing, for example, whether one hip is higher than the other, whether the breathing seems unusually restricted, or whether the hips are rotated in relation to the shoulders.

This visual examination is supplemented by touch to determine whether particular muscle groups are too tight or too loose.

The client then lies on the table, and the practitioner uses Functional Integration to bring the client’s body back to a better level of organization by improving posture, breathing, balance, and the perception of movement.

The Method actually reprograms the brain to direct the muscles to move in the most natural and efficient way.

Discovering NLP

I first became interested in NLP after hearing some of my Feldenkrais colleagues talk about it. A short introductory seminar sharpened my interest, and I enrolled in a Programmer Training and later in a Master Programmer Training.

As I progressed through the training, I began to notice some very interesting similarities between the Feldenkrais Method and NLP.

On the surface, the two approaches are very different.

In a Functional Integration lesson, the important work is done through touch and movement, and verbal communication between teacher and student is kept to a minimum. In NLP, of course, almost the opposite is true.

Beneath these surface differences, however, lie some striking similarities.

“Both methods work with patterns—one with patterns of movement, the other with patterns of thinking.”

Both methods work with patterns: one with patterns of movement, the other with patterns of thinking.

The objective in each is to increase the number of patterns available to the client and to improve the flexibility with which those patterns can be used.

Congruence, Intention, and the Whole Person

Another similar idea pervades both methods.

In NLP, one of the goals is to become congruent in one’s actions. Feldenkrais arrived at virtually the same idea, which he described as being unintentional.

The fact that the same idea arises from the study of both physical and mental processing suggests that it is a fundamental aspect of effective human organization.

The Feldenkrais Method and NLP also complement each other in practical ways.

Once, while doing an NLP session with a client, she became stuck in such a distressing emotional state that I thought she might pass out. Sitting down, she had slumped forward until her head was almost on her knees. In that position, she was barely able to breathe.

Using my hands on the front and back of her chest, I brought her upright and supported her until she had taken several deep breaths. She returned to a more resourceful state, and we were able to continue the session.

It was one of the clearest and most dramatic examples of mind-body unity I have ever seen.

When One Approach Is Not Enough

If a client becomes stuck during Functional Integration, I usually advise some NLP work.

Conversely, if a client becomes stuck during NLP, I recommend Functional Integration or Awareness Through Movement.

Or I tell the client what Lynne Conwell told me years ago during my Programmer Training:

“If you are serious about personal change, I advise you to do some bodywork along with your NLP.”

I could not agree more.

For me, the most important thing about the Feldenkrais Method and NLP is that they provide access to a level of human functioning that has not been available before.

They allow a person to change and become better and more effective in fundamental ways—to realize one’s unavowed dreams.

How NLP Informed My Feldenkrais Practice

I have found NLP useful in my Feldenkrais practice in several ways.

The first is simply in communicating with clients. Establishing good rapport helps lessons proceed smoothly.

The second is in working with emotional issues and repressed trauma that sometimes arise during the course of a lesson.

In my breathing work, I have also used NLP ideas to teach students how their emotions and breathing affect one another and how they may influence negative emotional states by working with their breathing.

One thing I have learned from the study of NLP goes beyond technique. It is a kind of tolerance.

After becoming aware of my own patterns of mental processing, and seeing—not feeling or hearing—how others process information, I have begun to accept their patterns as neither better nor worse than my own.

Two Sides of the Human Coin

I have come to see the Feldenkrais Method and NLP as two sides of the human coin.

The Feldenkrais Method deals directly with physical events—with posture, breathing, movement, the alignment of the skeleton for efficient support in the field of gravity, and related aspects of organization.

It deals indirectly with mental events—with thoughts, feelings, visualizations, and meaning.

NLP, on the other hand, deals directly with mental events and indirectly with physical events.

The two methods are complementary. Between them, it should be possible to address the whole range of human experience.

“The Feldenkrais Method works with the self through movement and touch; NLP works with the self through talking.”

Both approaches begin from different places, yet each recognizes the same indivisible person: sensing, moving, thinking, feeling, perceiving, learning, and changing as a whole.

Experience the Feldenkrais Method for Yourself

Jack Heggie describes the Feldenkrais Method as working with the whole person through movement, touch, attention, and learning. The clearest way to understand that process is to experience it directly.

Explore a guided Feldenkrais lesson and discover how small, attentive movements can reveal new possibilities for comfort, coordination, and self-organization.