Feldenkrais ®

create A revolution in your moving and thinking

The Feldenkrais Method® uses movement as way to explore

• your adaptability in action,
• how your nervous system understands your uprightness and your place in the world
• ways in which you can free yourself from limiting ideas of movement
• building a new image of your self.

How it is done.

You can choose to come along to a live or an online Feldenkrais® group class, called Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®).

Or you could choose to book a One-to-one lesson, called Functional Integration® and Functional Awareness (the online version of the former) explore specific issues you might be experiencing.

Invigorate your week with new ideas in your moving and thinking!

Online Classes IN EDINBURGH

• Tuesday evenings 6 – 7pm from 9 SEPT
• Thursday mornings Seated Class (suitable also for wheelchair users) 11am – 12noon
• £48 per group of four – price includes recording mailed to you weekly.
• email freedomtomove@outlook.com to book

In-person classes IN EDINBURGH

10 SEPTEMBER ongoing

• Wednesday MORNINGS 10.30 – 12.00
• St Margaret’s House, London Road, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE
• Drop-in price £15 payable on the day or in advance
• 4-class block £48 payable in advance
• https://bookwhen.com/studio602edinburghschedule/e/ev-shdj-20250430101500

MONTHLY one-to-one consultations IN MANNINGTREE (NORTH ESSEX/SUFFOLK)

NEXT visit 21/22/23 November (Thurs to Sun)

• one-to-one Functional Integration® lessons at the studio at Lawford House Pool,Grange Road, Lawford, CO11 2JD

CONTACT ME TO CHAT ABOUT CLASSES AND ALL BOOKING freedomtomove@outlook.com

WORKSHOP IN TORUN, POLAND

• DETAILS TO BE CONFIRMED

Feldenkrais® is not simply about movement

Feldenkrais® is often slotted into a category of movement therapy , or movement training. This however is to over-simplify it. It uses movement as the vehicle to bring about potential and long-lasting transformations in the way you experience yourself in the world as you live in it.

From the bottom to the top of you and in all directions, the Feldenkrais Method® encourages you to dive into your moving self in order to bring a better understanding of what it is to be you yourself.

Feldenkrais® is also a process of connecting your inner world of ideas, impulses and intentions to the outer world of people, things and events. It’s about how creative you sense and feel yourself to be when out in your world – whoever you are and wherever you find yourself. It’s all about how you can be continuously able to change and adapt to your world – encountering and solving obstacles along the way.

We are natural dreamers, problem-solvers and observers. Human beings have an onion like brain – the ability to do things, to observe themselves doing those things and to evaluate themselves doing them. Try it out – what are you doing right now?, are you doing it fast or slow? and how do feel about the way your are doing it?

We dip and weave around in these layers of cognitive activity day-in and day-out, 24/7. It’s as constant as breathing, and heartbeat.

Awareness Through Movement® classes are guided movement sequences – laughter, exploring and puzzling-out. Insights that are entirely personal come thick and fast from the beginning. These insights have the power to change your life. The more classes you attend, the more empowerment comes your way.

At the end of each class, you arrive at the sensation that your breathing is deeper, your vision is clearer, your skeleton is much more confident, and your self is more confidently in the world.

It is not just about what happens, but the feeling of what happens. It is this very special human quality of sensing, feeling and self-exploration that allows us to develop confidence in what we can do to support our own lives.

In my classes, you will be exploring the idea of flow, from the freedom of your feet to understand the ground you make contact with, all the way to the relationship between your skull and your spine, visiting all points in between.

Being able to fold, reach, curl, bend and roll with confidence and enjoyment gifts you a greater sense of what your body is capable of. You learn to be in flow with your world, sensing new ease at being able to adapt to your world as it is. As a wise person once said “There are two things in the world – you and the world – and only one of those things can you reliably change!”

You can start the Feldenkrais way of new thinking and new moving at any time, and from any start-point. You don’t have to be especially fit, or movement-experienced. Everyone who comes to class does what they can. Skill will always develop. If you already possess a level of physical skill in your living and working, you will find that skill deepening, softening and extending.

Drop-in to try out a class with no pressure to continue. You will experience changes straightaway, and the more you come to class, the more deeply those changes will penetrate into your sense of yourself.

You will sense change and improvement in whatever use you put your moving self to!

SO WHO AM I?

WHAT IS FELDENKRAIS?

HOW MIGHT IT BENEFIT YOU?

My name is Alan Caig Wilson. I am a senior practitioner of The Feldenkrais Method® (incorporating Awareness Through Movement® & Functional Integration®). I hold the Certificate of the International Feldenkrais Federation; I qualified under the late Dr Mark Reese (Moshe Feldenkrais’s biographer) in Berlin 2001. I am member of the UK Feldenkrais Guild, the professional association of Feldenkrais practitioners.

Since 1999, I have been leading classes, workshops and have taught on a range of movement training programmes in the UK, Poland, Austria, Finland, and India. For 11 years I was a visiting Tutor at London Contemporary Dance School, and for 9 years a visiting Tutor at the Polish Institute for Choreotherapy in Poznan.

I currently lead open classes live and online from my base at Feldenkrais Studio Edinburgh. My Functional Integration® practice is based in Edinburgh and Lawford, Essex.

• Classes at Studio 602, and Studio 6.27, St Margaret’s House, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE
• Lawford House Pool, Grange Road, Lawford CO11 2JD

I cannot recommend Alan’s classes highly enough. Learning how to move in a more natural childlike manner and letting go of the established ways we walk, sit and move is just part of what Alan guides you through. The results for me meant the tension I had been experiencing for a long time disappeared and I can now move more freely with increased levels of focus in other parts of my life. (CS, Edinburgh)

(More about me here.)

My invitation to you

I invite you to spend some time in the company of your inventive, creative, potentially limitless self!

Join me for one or more of my classes, or visit me for a one-to-one lesson. You will, in no uncertain terms, begin a re-think of your ways of being. My 25+ years of practice, working with, and ringing the changes for people of all kinds and in all walks of life, give me confidence in saying this.

During a class, or a one-to-one session, the calm of simple curiosity surrounds you. In this quiet place, in your own space or in my studio, accompanied by my voice or my touch, you will discover new elements and capabilities of your personal real-estate.

Curling, folding, opening, twisting, turning and reaching, you will encounter ways of doing and being that you might not have experienced since you were ever-so-young and in the process of building knowledge about your world for the first time.

This is the perfect place to explore how you might re-imagine and re-configure your experience of your world.

Just to say again how much I am loving the sessions and finding them really beneficial. As we build up the movement towards the end I just find it so ‘voluptuous’ (Strange word maybe but that’s how it feels!). All the work recently on the upper ribs and neck have really sensitised me to this area and how ‘dead’ it was before.

JG, Isle of Arran

By the end of a class, it is very often the case that some deep changes have occurred. Our explorations together will have changed your breathing, your balance, your speaking, your looking, your touching. You will be in the here-and-now of re-imagining, perhaps re-organising, your relationship to the world around you of things, people and happenings.

Your image of yourself – as Feldenkrais himself would say, the way you describe yourself to yourself – will have begun to alter.

Dr Feldenkrais’s idea of ‘health’ is not the absence of illness, but the ability to smoothly recover our abilities after something has knocked us off balance.

The more you experience the unique and highly personal environment that a Feldenkrais lesson creates around and within you, the more your own voice, your own signature, becomes available for you to experience once again.

Each class is different:

starting with a focus in one area of your body. By the end your whole self is in movement. And your limits are expanding. Forget comfort zones, you begin to take up the space in your whole world in a different, more confident way.

Change:

If change has occurred, even for a fleeting but visible second, then your nervous system has noticed that change is possible. This process of deep and active noticing of change is quite simply revolutionary – many people have said liberating. You have with your own – your very own – abilities altered your way of responding to the world you live in.

A window is opened on a world of limitless adaptation – a world that many of us haven’t experienced since we were seven or eight years old.

Alan transfers his knowledge of the human body into yours, helping you find more delight and possibility, especially in times of pain and discomfort.

SS, Edinburgh

Your body where it is:

The movement processes of Feldenkrais® respect your body where it is, and bring improved and deepened awareness to what you are already doing. Then you can begin to expand and enhance your capabilities.

You do not have to prior movement skills to explore and benefit from Feldenkrais®. Whatever movement discipline you engage with, or whatever use you put your body to will be enhanced by slow, patient time spent understanding how to create, ease, flow, extension and calm confidence in your moving. Feldenkrais® can help you find solutions to nagging issues in your everyday movement. Moshe Feldenkrais suggests that by spending time doing less in this way we achieve more.

The secret to improve the performance of your moving body is to refine your ability to observe yourself in action. This allows you, over time, to throw off the restrictions that life, living and past decisions place upon you. Your own self has the possibility to astonish you with its hidden potential – whatever your life has been up to this point, and wherever you start from. No previous experience is necessary only your natural ability to ask questions and to be astonished at the answers!

About me:

I first encountered Feldenkrais® in the early 1980s during my training as a physical theatre performer at the Ecole Lecoq in Paris.

I believe that a human being – at whatever point they find themselves – is functionally limitless. As a species we possess the skills of adaptation, granted to us by a brain that continues to grow as we encounter the world, finding its way around numerous obstacles, discovering solutions that are creative, everyday and momentous.

We humans are, first and foremost, creative creatures. Curiosity is hard-wired into our cells, making it practically impossible for us not to explore, try things out or look around the next corner! Indeed, if we try to stop this force, all sorts of negative things (big and small) will happen to us. Think about it!

Moshe Feldenkrais founded his method, in part, on research into himself following a sports injury and his rejection of the rudimentary medical intervention offered him. He used his expertise as a mechanical engineer, and later as a judo practitioner, to devise the principles and concepts that now inform the work of all Feldenkrais practitioners. To this he added research into the development of movement ability in infancy and childhood.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with an invisible disability – primary process multiple sclerosis. Following the example, and standing on Moshe Feldenkrais’s giant’s shoulders, my own physical challenges are generating and developing new directions and material in my Feldenkrais practice.

I invite everyone to engage with and enjoy themselves as they research into themselves, and celebrate the solutions that they find.

How can you begin to tell yourself a different story about yourself, to yourself?

By the end of a course of lessons, you will have a very much richer sense of how you move. You will be noticing some profound changes in how you adapt to your world, how you overcome obstacle and even in how you think.

IN-PERSON CLASS VENUE in Edinburgh- Studio 602, St Margarets House, EH7 6AE

https://goo.gl/maps/EoC5SJzWbS3KfiKJ

If you haven’t experienced the special atmosphere of an in-person Feldenkrais® class come along and try it out. You won’t be disappointed!

Studio 602 is a rather special place – quiet, nurturing, comfortable and dedicated to the kind of exploring that Feldenkrais® represents. Here you can retreat a little from the city and explore new ideas in a friendly space.

https://bustimes.org/localities/meadowbank-edinburgh) to the Meadowbank House stop, then a short walk. St Margaret’s House is the Big ol’ building with ART emblazoned on it. Once in the building come to the beautiful Studio 602, on the sixth floor. Edinburgh’s newest centre for somatic exploration and creation.

Come to class, then float, bounce, flow onwards into your day, stopping at Babarista (just opposite) for a coffee (etc!).

I hope to see you there. Check out:

https://www.facebook.com/studio602edinburgh/

https://www.facebook.com/FeldenkraisEdinburgh

I AM COMMITTED TO OFFERING CONCESSIONS:

Low Income/visible or invisible disability/ in receipt of State Benefit.

Please contact me to talk about this.

FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION®

one-to-one, in-person

• Studio 6.27, St Margaret’s House, 151 London Road, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE
• Lawford House Pool, Grange Road, Lawford, Essex CO11 2JD

Cost: £60 per 1-hour session, bookable in advance. Payment in advance following the instructions below.

Alan’s work and touch is special – deeply listening, inquiring, gently guiding and supporting…(SS, dancer, Edinburgh)

Functional Integration® is the one-to-one technique of Feldenkrais®. It is used to identify and work with specific questions and challenges you might be experiencing in your moving self.

During an FI® session you lie on a low, wide and long table, fully dressed in comfortable clothing. In some cases, you lie on the floor, or sit in a chair.

An initial conversation with you concerning the pattern of needs and concerns that brought you to me in the first place, will allow us to establish a beginning plan.

Then, using calm and non-invasive touch, I will gently guide your body through sequences of movement. Occasionally I will ask you to participate in movements.

You will be fully clothed, fully conscious and fully aware of what is to happen.

• Functional Integration® is not a medical procedure. It is an intensive process of co-learning between you and the practitioner, through which new possibilities and solutions emerge for you in your moving and thinking. My work with you is based on supporting you to develop more detailed knowledge about how your moving and thinking deal with the physical challenges you identify. Expect changes!

The benefits of Functional Integration® build up. You will always feel calm and easy, but I recommend that you consider signing up for a minimum of five sessions. By the end of this sequence your nervous system will have built up a store of memories that allow the insights from our sessions to begin to establish themselves in your daily life. The aim is to build confidence in your resilience to the many destabilising things that the world can throw at you.

In many cases, people complete a ‘course’ of FI® and go on to attend Awareness Through Movement® classes to continue exploring by themselves.

Feldenkrais® can bring about deep changes in the way that you relate both to yourself and to the world around you. You progressively give yourself permission to carry on exploring, in often quite unexpected ways.

• Session 1a: detailed conversation around your particular needs and wishes concerning your moving being. We note any important events in your past that have affected your moving and your ambitions for your moving. This will lead to an agreement between us about how to proceed.
• Session 1b: Based on our conversation, we embark on a journey. The Method has a philosophy of progressive approximation as you and I move towards a greater sense of integration of your movement with what you wish to achieve. The process of removing restrictions and obstacle to free movement takes time, discussion, play and patience.
• Sessions 2 to 5: as your nervous system becomes familiar with the approach and the environment of FI®, the sessions become increasingly focused on the needs and concerns that brought you to me.

IN-PERSON CONSULTATION TIMETABLE

Edinburgh – Feldenkrais Studio Edinburgh

Studio 6.27, St Margaret’s House, EH7 6AE – by appointment

FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION® ONLINE

ONE-TO-ONE, ONLINE

Cost: £60 per session, bookable in advance. Payment in advance following the instructions below.

Functional Awareness is a more intensive, more targeted version of Awareness through Movement®. It has proved very usual for some of my clients who require a more personalised approach in their own home atmosphere, focused on what might be happening with them and in their moving.

I aim to support you to find a more free, satisfying and playful relationship with the world you move around in your everyday.

These sessions are preceded by a detailed conversation between us to give me an idea of the challenges you are facing and to allow us to devise a strategy.

Functional Awareness sessions are based on the process of guidance by my voice and the development of calm curiosity and somatic exploration.

I bring to you the full and expert intuitive background of a Feldenkrais practitioner to observe and offer solutions.

TALK TO ME!

I love introducing people to Feldenkrais®.

In my experience, people come to Feldenkrais when they need it. Many of my students have been on quite the journey before they find me.

Tell me why you are drawn to it now. Let’s discuss how it can help and support you. There is no obligation attached to our conversation – no pressure ever!

Whatsapp me on 07782 190615. Introduce yourself. I will call you back and we will talk!

Paying for classes and sessions

I’m looking forward to meeting you and beginning our explorations together.