Understanding Emotions

December 2024

“My purpose is to allow people to move closer to actually being creatures of free choice, to genuinely reflect individual creativity and emotion, freeing the body of habitual tensions and wired patterns of behaviour so that it may respond without inhibition to do what the person wants.” - Moshe Feldenkrais

Each month we pick a different subject that covers different aspects of the Feldenkrais Method™ and the various ways in which practitioners work with people. This month the topic is close to the heart of all of us, how to work with our own emotions.

For those of you reading this that are confused by how a method that focuses on movement can help you understand and work with your emotions, well this is the edition for you!

We will explore how you can access and work with your emotional state during a Feldenkrais® lesson. It will be especially relevant to anyone that finds it difficult to maintain focus or who finds it overwhelming to keep sustained self attention. 

We start with a lovely presentation/podcast interview with Violet Van Hees, she has a wealth of experience working in this field and provides a very clear and accessible route for working with your own emotional state so that you can get the most from your learning experience. 

We also have a practical and informative article written by Fritha Pengelly, whose work as a Feldenkrais® practitioner is informed by her study of EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique.

In the article Fritha discusses how the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education can help you work with your emotional state. She starts with the idea that body and the mind are implicitly interconnected and that often it is easier to work with your emotional state through sensations of the physical body, rather than through the thoughts and emotions, which are somehow more elusive. She also discusses the need for personal understanding and the development of care and respect for the aspects of ourselves that need support as we are seeking to find growth and change in our lives. 

We would like to thank everyone who has read this newsletter in 2024, it has been a great pleasure to interview and work with all the contributors this year! 

If you are a Feldenkrais® practitioner and you would like to contribute to the newsletter in 2025 please get in contact with us here: fgnacommunications1@gmail.com

Feldenkrais® Communication Team

Jane, Michelle, Seth and Joe

A presentation/podcast interview with Violet Van Hees

In this interview Violet provides a wonderful presentation about working with your own emotional state, whether that is during a Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education lesson, Awareness Through Movement™ class or in your day to day life. She recounts the story of how she was able to reengage with her own sense of adventure, learning how to open water paddle board, after a bad knee injury. She also shares some of the wisdom of the Tellington Touch™ method which she trained in alongside her work with the Feldenkrais Method®. 

An article by Fritha Pengelly

Entering into the process of learning and discovery that is invited by engaging in Feldenkrais® lessons offers an array of possibilities from improving function and healing injury to a profound immersion in reconnecting with oneself. In fact, all of these elements are present in the process regardless of how or why we enter the process. Is it possible to really find and fully embody length in my spine if I don’t also sense the possibility that it’s OK to take up space in the world? If I don’t feel safe taking up space or being seen, I may not be able to sustain a new sense of length when I transition from the lesson back into my everyday life.

In any Feldenkrais® lesson, whether it be Awareness Through Movement® lessons or Functional Integration® lessons, we are touching the relationships between body patterns and habits of mind. “Our self-image consists of four components that are involved in every action: movement, sensation, feeling, and thought.” Dr. Feldenkrais describes in the above quote from his article “Mind and Body” that the somatic element is integral to the process and perhaps “simpler… and easier to locate,” and emerging evidence in various psychotherapy practices would agree, as Dr. Feldenkrais points out, that “real change” requires this somatic component and also attention to the emotional aspects that are tied to our movement patterns...

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