3rd Feldenkrais Festival

On Saturday, March 21st, the 3rd DC Feldenkrais Festival will take place at Chevy Chase Community Center at 5601 Connecticut Ave across from the Avalon Theatre. The festival is hosted by DC Metro Feldenkrais Practitioners and features Sensei Terence as one of the teachers. If you’ve heard of the Feldenkrais Method and its connection to Judo, this event is your chance to find out more. Come and join us! You can register for free here.

Participants can take part in both free group ATM lessons and free private Functional Integration lessons! Group lessons run in two tracks on the following schedule. Chair lesson are perfect for those who have difficultly laying on the floor.

Functional Integration lessons will be scheduled throughout the day with sign up on a first come-first served basis.

In a Functional Integration lesson, if Feldenkrais felt the person had a muscle that was “holding” and too tight, he would often do for the person what the disturbed nervous systems was overdoing. I experienced this “support” when I received a Functional Integration lesson. I had got into the habit of automatically raising my right shoulder while shoulder while typing, putting strain on my neck, leading to pain and restriction. In the lesson, the teacher gently lifted my shoulder towards my neck, “supporting” it in a higher position, using his nervous to take over the task my nervous had assigned itself. In a minute or so, I felt massive relief of the restriction and pain. The idea, of dealing with the force of contracting muscle not by opposing it but going with it, derives from Judo principles. In Judo, one doesn’t overpower the opponent’s force but rather uses it to steer, topple, or throw the opponent.

Norman Doidge – The Brain’s Way of Healing