August 3
By Al Wadleigh, GCFP
Article Summary
In this episode of The Connected Community, host Nicky speaks with Feldenkrais practitioner Al Wadleigh about the Feldenkrais Method® of movement education and its emphasis on learning, sensing, and whole-person organization. They compare verbally guided Awareness Through Movement® lessons with hands-on Functional Integration® lessons, using Nicky’s experience with neck discomfort to examine how changes in the feet, pelvis, spine, and head can influence one another. The practical idea running through the conversation is that slower, more attentive movement can reveal habitual organization and make other choices available.
A Conversation About Learning Through Movement
People often arrive at the Feldenkrais Method because one part of them hurts. A knee has become troublesome. The neck feels compressed. The head no longer seems to sit comfortably over the spine. It is natural to focus attention on the place where the difficulty appears, because that is where the discomfort is most obvious.
The conversation in this interview takes a different direction. Nicky asks Al how a practitioner can address the whole person when someone arrives with a local complaint. Al describes looking beyond the painful area to the relationships that support it: how a person stands over each leg, how the pelvis and spine transmit support, and how the head organizes over the rest of the skeleton. A local difficulty remains important, but it is considered within a larger pattern of action.
That distinction leads to the interview’s central subject: learning. The Feldenkrais Method is presented here as a way of engaging the capacity to notice habitual organization and explore alternatives. Improvement does not depend only upon stretching farther, strengthening a particular muscle, or correcting a body part from the outside. It can also arise as a person becomes able to sense more of what they are doing and discovers another way to organize the action.
“We look at it as a way of engaging your natural ability to learn.” — Al Wadleigh
The recording’s original title is Unveiling the Power of Feldenkrais: A Journey of Transformation and Healing. The more specific focus of the discussion is how learning, whole-person organization, and reduced effort can affect movement and a person’s experience of themselves.
Recording Information
Program: The Connected Community
Recording title: Unveiling the Power of Feldenkrais: A Journey of Transformation and Healing
Host: Nicky
Guest: Al Wadleigh
Original publication date: July 31, 2023
Runtime: 45 minutes, 48 seconds
Format: Video interview / podcast episode
Video platform: YouTube
Original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQsA8zE1E1k
Program website: https://nickyYyoga.com
Guest website: https://achievingexcellence.com
Watch or Listen
Watch the interview on YouTube
The YouTube video includes closed captions and an available transcript for readers who want to follow the complete conversation in text.
Listen to The Connected Community on Apple Podcasts
What the Feldenkrais Method Means by Learning
Al describes the Feldenkrais Method as a system of movement education. He connects it with developmental learning: the exploratory process through which infants and children gradually discover how to orient, reach, roll, sit, stand, and walk. Development does not proceed by first receiving a complete intellectual explanation and then executing it perfectly. It proceeds through variation, sensation, repetition, curiosity, and the gradual recognition of what works.
Adults retain the capacity to learn, although established habits can make our actions feel fixed. Those habits include useful accomplishments as well as patterns associated with injury, effort, mood, expectation, and personal history. A habit is not automatically a defect. It is an organization that has become familiar and readily available. Difficulty arises when it is the only organization available, even when circumstances have changed.
In a Feldenkrais lesson, movement provides a concrete way to investigate those habits. The person can notice where an action begins, what joins it, what remains excluded, and how much effort is being used. Small variations make comparisons possible. Through those comparisons, another organization may become perceptible.
This is why the word lesson matters. The purpose is not simply to perform a prescribed number of repetitions. It is to learn something about how the action is organized. The movement may look modest from the outside while requiring considerable attention from the person doing it.
Looking at the Whole Person
Nicky asks what it means to consider the whole person when the presenting concern is a knee. Al uses standing as an example. Most people have a leg they use more readily for support and another they use more readily for gesture—for kicking a ball, stepping, or catching a door while carrying groceries. He describes observing how a person organizes over each leg and how that organization continues through the pelvis, spine, and head.
The point is not to assign a permanent label to either leg. It is to notice a relationship. If the pelvis does not transmit support clearly from one side, or if the head and spine organize differently over one leg, the knee participates in that larger arrangement. Work directed toward the knee can therefore be placed within an inquiry into the person’s overall function.
This perspective also changes the meaning of improvement. The desired outcome is not merely a temporarily different sensation in one joint. It is an organization in which support passes through the skeleton more clearly and movement is distributed through more of the person.
Nicky’s Experience of Neck Discomfort
Nicky came to Al after exploring short online lessons and listening to the Feldenkrais for Life podcast. She had experienced neck discomfort and described a sense that her head was not sitting comfortably over her spine. After trying a number of other approaches over the years, she felt that she needed to learn another way of organizing her neck and spine.
She reports that her experience after individual sessions included feeling calmer, more grounded, taller, and more comfortable. These are Nicky’s personal observations, not promises about what another person will experience. They are valuable in the interview because she describes the process in concrete sensory terms: her head initially felt “sticky” when moved from side to side, and the movement gradually became more fluid as she used less effort and allowed more support.
“My body felt completely grounded. I felt calm. I felt centered. I felt relaxed.” — Nicky
Her description also raises an important question. If the movements are small and the practitioner does not force a correction, what accounts for the change? Al’s answer returns to sensing and learning. The practitioner follows what is already familiar, notices where movement is easy or difficult, and introduces small variations that the person can receive without resistance or strain.
Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration
The Feldenkrais Method has two principal forms. Awareness Through Movement lessons are verbally guided. A teacher proposes movements and directs attention toward differences, relationships, and sensations. The student performs the movements and learns from within the experience.
Functional Integration lessons are usually individual, hands-on sessions. The practitioner uses touch and movement to communicate with the student and explore how different parts of the person participate in an action. The student is not a passive object being mechanically rearranged. The lesson remains an interaction organized around learning.
Al uses the image of a box to distinguish the experiences. In an Awareness Through Movement lesson, a person explores from within the “box” of their existing self-organization and gradually changes its dimensions. In Functional Integration, the practitioner encounters that organization through touch and helps the student discover changes through the interaction. The principles are related, although the experiences are distinct.
Nicky noticed that she used more of her own effort in online lessons. During hands-on work she could allow Al to support the weight of her head and could notice habits that were difficult to perceive while actively moving herself. Neither form replaces the other. Each offers a different route into observation and learning.
Why the Feet Can Matter to the Neck
One of the most memorable parts of the interview concerns Al’s decision to spend time working with Nicky’s feet even though she had come with concerns involving her neck. From a local point of view, this can appear unrelated. From a whole-person point of view, the feet are part of the support that travels upward through the legs, pelvis, spine, and head.
Al explains that the feet influence how the legs are organized and how the legs meet the pelvis. A change in the way a foot contacts support can alter the transmission of force through the rest of the skeleton. The neck does not float independently above that organization. It continually responds to how the person supports themselves below.
This does not mean that every neck problem originates in the feet or that working with the feet is a universal remedy. It means that the relationship is worth investigating. A practitioner can explore whether changing support below allows the head and neck to organize with less unnecessary effort.
Fluidity, Compensation, and the Ripple Effect
Nicky describes a movement of her head that initially felt uneven and sticky. As the lesson continued, the movement felt more fluid. Al connects fluidity with having more available pathways rather than being held to one habitual route.
Compensation is part of this discussion. The body continually organizes around injuries, repeated activities, and circumstances. A compensation may be an intelligent solution that allowed a person to continue functioning. Over time, however, it can become so established that it persists after the original need has changed.
The interview uses the idea of a ripple effect to describe how a small change can spread through the larger organization. If the pelvis relates differently to a leg, the ribs and spine may participate differently, and the head may no longer need the same muscular effort to remain upright. The change is not a straight mechanical chain with one guaranteed result. It is a systemic adjustment in which many relationships can change together.
How Many Lessons Are Needed?
Nicky asks how many sessions a person should expect. Al does not offer a universal number. People arrive with different histories, concerns, learning styles, and aims. Some notice a meaningful difference after one lesson. Others want a series of lessons so that new possibilities can become more familiar and usable.
Nicky chose a series of approximately ten individual sessions. She describes considerable change while also recognizing that there was more she could explore. Her account illustrates why a fixed promise would be misleading: the process is not a standardized treatment delivered identically to every person.
Some lessons may feel elementary. Their movements may be simple and their immediate effects subtle. Al emphasizes that a basic lesson can still address a fundamental relationship. Learning to sense support, distribute effort, or distinguish the movement of the pelvis from the movement of the ribs can become relevant to many later actions.
Can Online Lessons Be Effective?
The interview distinguishes the convenience and independence of online Awareness Through Movement lessons from the responsiveness of in-person Functional Integration lessons. An online recording cannot observe a student and alter itself in response. It can, however, give a person a carefully structured sequence in which to move, compare, rest, and notice.
The usefulness of an online lesson therefore depends partly on how it is approached. Trying to achieve the largest possible movement or keep pace at all costs defeats the exploratory purpose. Moving within comfort, pausing when needed, and paying attention to differences allows the recorded guidance to function as a lesson rather than a routine to complete.
Al also notes that he practices Awareness Through Movement regularly himself. Repeating a lesson does not necessarily reproduce the same experience because the person who returns to it is not precisely the same. Attention may reveal a relationship that was unavailable or irrelevant on an earlier occasion.
Who Can Benefit?
The recording presents the work as adaptable to a wide range of people, but it does not support a promise that everyone will obtain the same result. A person may explore a lesson because of discomfort, performance, curiosity, balance, coordination, or a wish to understand their movement more clearly.
The important practical boundary is that a Feldenkrais lesson is educational. It is not a substitute for diagnosis, emergency care, or individualized medical or mental-health treatment. When pain, injury, trauma, or another consequential health concern is involved, appropriate licensed care may also be needed.
Al’s Own Experience of Change
Nicky asks what Al’s body and movement were like before he found the Feldenkrais Method. He describes experiences during his professional training that gradually changed his ability to sense himself. One memory stands out: while washing dishes, he suddenly experienced his body as a whole, from his heels through his head, rather than as a collection of separate regions.
That recollection clarifies what “whole person” means in this conversation. It is not merely a practitioner’s theory about anatomical connections. It can also be a lived experience of being able to sense more of oneself at one time. Such moments cannot be demanded on schedule, but lessons can cultivate the conditions in which broader self-perception becomes possible.
Why Lessons Often Move Slowly
Near the end of the interview, Nicky asks why the hands-on movements are so slow and seem to involve so little. Al explains that reduced speed and effort make finer differences easier to perceive. He illustrates the principle by comparing a heavy sack of potatoes with a feather. If a fly lands on a heavy sack being carried, the additional weight may be imperceptible. If it lands on a feather held lightly between finger and thumb, the difference may be sensed.
“When we go slowly, we can really sense more of ourselves.” — Al Wadleigh
The analogy points toward a practical relationship between effort and sensitivity. When an action is dominated by force, smaller information is harder to detect. Reducing effort can make distinctions available: where the movement begins, whether the breath changes, how support travels, and when another part of the body joins.
Nicky compares the quiet attention of an individual lesson with a moving meditation. Al accepts the comparison while continuing to describe the experience in sensory terms. The lesson directs attention inward through movement, contact, and changing muscular organization rather than requiring the student to analyze memories or explain emotions.
The interview closes where it began: with learning. Slowness is useful because it gives the person time to sense. Whole-person organization matters because no movement occurs in isolation. The aim is to make more of the person available for action, so that a familiar difficulty is no longer met by only one familiar response.
Related Resources
- Explore Awareness Through Movement® lessons
- Learn about working with Al Wadleigh
- Read more Feldenkrais articles
- Listen to the Feldenkrais for Life podcast
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Feldenkrais Method of movement education?
The Feldenkrais Method uses movement and directed attention to help a person notice habitual organization and explore alternatives. Lessons emphasize learning through sensation, comparison, variation, and reduced effort.
How is a Feldenkrais lesson different from conventional exercise?
Conventional exercise commonly emphasizes repetition, strength, endurance, flexibility, or performance. A Feldenkrais lesson emphasizes how an action is organized and uses comfortable variations to make differences perceptible.
What does it mean to work with the whole person?
A local concern is considered in relation to the support and movement of the larger person. For example, the organization of the feet, legs, pelvis, spine, and head may all be relevant when exploring how a knee or neck participates in movement.
Why might a practitioner work with the feet when someone reports neck discomfort?
The feet participate in how support travels through the legs, pelvis, spine, and head. Exploring the feet may reveal whether a change in support below allows the neck to organize with less unnecessary effort, although it is not a universal remedy for neck problems.
What is the difference between Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration lessons?
Awareness Through Movement lessons are verbally guided explorations that students perform themselves, individually or in groups. Functional Integration lessons are generally individual sessions in which a practitioner uses touch and movement to support the student’s learning.
Tags
awareness through movement, Feldenkrais Method, Functional Integration, learning through movement, movement education, movement habits, nervous system, sensory awareness, whole-person movement
