I am here to help you sense yourself and discover alternatives to habitual patterns of organization. It is only from sensing yourself that change can happen.

FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION® lessons are individualized sessions based on a person's request, desire, need or intention for doing something better. Like for an Awareness Through Movement lesson, clothing that allows unrestricted movement should be worn. Unlike an Awareness Through Movement lesson, Functional Integration is primarily hands-on using tactile and kinesthetic communication. The Feldenkrais practitioner uses non-invasive gentle touch to help the person explore habitual patterns of organization and movement in relation to the request or intention. The gentle touch help one learn easier and more functional ways of moving. Functional Integration lessons often take place lying on a Feldenkrais table, but other options are sitting in a chair, standing, and lying on the floor.

The key ideas of Awareness Through Movement are also at the core of Functional Integration. They are:

1. Less movement rewards you with more benefit
2. Slower is better for sensing
3. Many gains from no pain
4. An attitude of playful curiousity leads you into discovering and learning
5. Rest when you need to, regardless of what others are doing [self-care]
6. Remember to breathe
7. Imagine when you can’t physically do
8. One side learns from the other
9. The journey not the destination matters most
10. “When you know what you are doing, you can do what you want’ (Moshe Feldenkrais)

The key difference is that in Functional Integration, the primary mode of communication is tactile and kinesthetic.

In a Functional Integration lesson I will use gentle touch to help you sense and notice your movement habits – your routine and automatic ways of action. Using the same quality of respectful touch, we also embark on a journey of exploring alternatives, choices that offer more functional ways of moving in relation to what you express as your desire or intention for the lesson.

1. Do you desire to move better in a specific daily action or particular leisure activity?
2. Do you wish to expand your potential in a sport or past-time you enjoy doing or in which you compete?
3. Might you like to reclaim or improve general flexibility, coordination, or balance?
4. Might you yearn to be more adaptable and flexible in how you respond in daily situations?

If the answer is yes to any one of these questions, then private, individualized, Functional Integration lessons could help you fulfill your desire, wish, or yearning.

Some reasons that individuals have come to work with me have included:

1. wanting to have better balance, especially when going from sitting to standing or the reverse
2. neck, shoulder and lower back pain that restricts being able to turn, look around oneself, and work in a studio
3. wanting to not reinjure a knee when dancing in movements that require strong rotation
4. feeling a shoulder is frozen and not being able to reach overhead, which makes it difficult to work in the kitchen retrieving and returning items from cupboards and shelves
5. a desire to avoid arm and neck pain that shows up when working at the computer

Our work together begins with noticing physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Paying attention to four aspects of human existence – moving, sensing, feeling, and thinking – in a respectful way creates a safe setting for learning to take place. Together we take a journey into transformation by first illuminating which parts of you move well and where movement stops. In this way you develop awareness of your routine and automatic patterns. As our work together continues, with the awareness and insights gained, we shift into exploring movement alternatives. These alternatives give you choices for future movement. Whilst we work together I will encourage you to invite curiousity, playfulness, and enjoyment as your traveling companions in your learning journey, because they can help you to be open to making different choices in movement.

STUDENTS’ COMMENTS & TESTIMONIALS

It is truly a blessing that we met and now your patient, simple, elegant, rooted, approach makes sense at the cellular level. If I had infinite time to just play and explore I'd improve faster, easier. Danie [who observed the session] really, really appreciated your approach. She has been around Feldenkrais and found the simplicity so refreshing. Marcy (transportation innovator)

I was enthusiastically recommending you to a friend who's thinking about coming to your class, telling her how knowledgeable you are, how much I valued your work, and our work together, how our private sessions set me on a whole new path of healing. Your showing me that my body could learn -- and re-learn -- encouraged me continue.  I'm still growing, changing and learning -- and ever so grateful to you for helping me along the way. Diana (writer and dancer)

Your straightforward, wholehearted enthusiasm for what you know - and for teaching it - comes through and is appreciated. Molly (writer)

I gotta say, your techniques are doing wonders for me.  Simply wonders. Randy (artist)

I am experiencing wonder and joy, and new abilities... This morning I walked up the back steps to my back door and realized it seemed effortless almost like floating upwards! Sudie (retired Montessori teacher)

WANT TO LEARN MORE? - VIDEOS

1. The Feldenkrais Method, (F.I) from the Feldenkrais Guild UK® (6:49 minute video published in 2012, in which a Feldenkrais practitioner works with a woman who came with a request to work with tension in her shoulders and across her back when bicycling)
2. Moshe Feldenkrais-Two Parts of the Feldenkrais Method (3:51 minute video in which Moshe Feldenkrais explains both Awareness Through Mo vement and Functional Integration. The audio is from the first volume, lesson 1 of the recorded San Francisco evening classes for the general public, which took place during his first teacher training in the summer of 1975.)

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