Unlocking Movement Potential: Feldenkrais Method for Better Motor Learning
By: Maggie Bergeron, MScPT

Rethinking Movement: From Correction to Exploration

Physiotherapists are movement experts—but helping clients truly change how they move can be complex. Despite clear exercise instructions and careful corrections, patients often fall back into old patterns or struggle to integrate changes into daily life.

The Feldenkrais Method offers a different lens for clinicians. Rather than focusing on correcting movement, it emphasizes exploring it—helping patients build awareness, adaptability, and confidence through experience.

In Todd Hargrove’s Embodia course, Beyond Corrective Exercise: A Feldenkrais Approach to Motor Learning, you’ll learn how principles from the Feldenkrais Method can enhance your physiotherapy practice by integrating neuroscience, motor control, and movement variability into patient care.

Understanding the Feldenkrais Method

Developed by physicist and martial artist Moshe Feldenkrais, this method is a form of somatic education that teaches the body and nervous system to move with greater efficiency and awareness.

Rather than prescribing exact movements, Feldenkrais lessons invite gentle exploration. This allows the brain to

discover new options—enhancing motor control, reducing pain, and improving coordination.

As Todd Hargrove, author of A Guide to Better Movement, explains in his course, this shift from fixing to feeling and exploring fundamentally changes how we learn and move.

Core Principles of Feldenkrais for Motor Learning

1. Less Correction, More Exploration

Traditional movement instruction often focuses on “right” and “wrong.” Feldenkrais instead invites learners to experiment—to find what feels efficient, balanced, and natural.

Exploration builds a rich movement vocabulary and greater adaptability. When clients are free to explore, they often discover options that work better for their unique anatomy and experience.

💡 In the course, Todd Hargrove demonstrates how simple movement variations—done with curiosity and attention—can transform how the nervous system organizes movement.

2. Repetition with Variation

Feldenkrais lessons often repeat movements, but never exactly the same way—varying speed, direction, or intention.

Research in motor learning shows that variability enhances adaptability. By exploring multiple versions of a movement, the nervous system learns to adjust fluidly to changing conditions, improving both performance and injury resilience.

Example:
Instead of a single “correct” spine mobilization, learners might practice Cat-Cow in different positions, noticing how changing pace, breath, or focus affects ease and range.

You can find a video example of a TMJ exercise using these principles by visiting this blog: Body Mapping - Decreasing the Sensitivity of the Nervous System

3. Directing Attention to Promote Awareness

Awareness is the foundation of all Feldenkrais learning. Lessons often use cues to direct attention—sometimes inward to body sensations, sometimes outward to the environment or intended outcome.

This alternation between internal and external focus helps refine perception, coordination, and ease of movement.

Feldenkrais practitioners encourage a non-judgmental awareness, observing how movement feels rather than labeling it as good or bad.

Exploring Movement: Practical Feldenkrais Example

Sitting and Weight Shifting Exploration:

• Slowly shift weight from one sit bone to the other.
• Notice how your spine, ribs, and head subtly adjust.
• Explore without trying to “sit correctly”—just feel the range of comfortable positions.

🧠 In Todd Hargrove’s course, you’ll practice similar explorations that bridge neuroscience, biomechanics, and somatic awareness—helping clients move with less pain and more confidence.

Why the Feldenkrais Method Works

Variability Builds Skill and Resilience

Studies show that movement variability supports more robust motor learning and reduces injury risk. Instead of relying on a single “ideal” pattern, adaptable movers can respond to changing demands gracefully.

Learning Through Mistakes

Feldenkrais often encourages amplifying errors—deliberately exaggerating or exploring less-efficient patterns. This heightens awareness and helps the nervous system recalibrate toward more efficient options.

Empowering the Learner

Perhaps the greatest gift of the Feldenkrais Method is autonomy. 

Learners discover what works best for their own bodies rather than depending on external correction.

This empowerment is deeply therapeutic for those managing pain, fear, or movement anxiety.

Integrating Feldenkrais into Rehabilitation and Fitness

For Clinicians and Movement Professionals:

• Encourage exploration over prescription.
• Use variability to develop robust, adaptable movement skills.
• Employ attentional cues to promote ease and curiosity.

For Individuals with Chronic Pain or Hypermobility:

• Feldenkrais promotes safety, self-trust, and gentle movement boundaries.
• Instead of pushing through discomfort, clients learn to move within comfort—building awareness that supports long-term change.

🎓 Todd’s course provides practical frameworks and guided lessons for applying these principles in clinical and fitness settings—ideal for physical therapists, trainers, and anyone interested in movement education.

Common Challenges (and Rewards) of the Feldenkrais Approach

Shifting from Fixing to Exploring:
It can feel strange to move without clear “right” answers. But over time, this freedom nurtures deeper self-trust and movement intelligence.

Patience and Practice:
Exploratory learning takes time. Progress may feel subtle at first, but awareness builds steadily.

Individual Variability:
Each body learns differently. The beauty of Feldenkrais is its adaptability—it meets each learner where they are.

Getting Started with Feldenkrais

Recommended Resources:

• Beyond Corrective Exercise: A Feldenkrais Approach to Motor Learning — Todd Hargrove’s course on Embodia
• Todd’s books A Guide to Better Movement and Playing with Movement
• Free Feldenkrais lessons by respected teachers like Behringer, Wildman, and Holler

Practice Tips:

• Begin with small, familiar movements.
• Move slowly, without strain.
• Notice ease, not effort.
• Stay curious—there’s no right or wrong.

Conclusion: Movement as Exploration

The Feldenkrais Method invites us to move beyond correction—to approach movement as a process of curiosity, awareness, and discovery.

As Todd Hargrove teaches, when we explore instead of fix, we open the door to greater comfort, adaptability, and confidence in every movement we make.

👉 Ready to experience this for yourself?
Join Todd Hargrove’s course, Beyond Corrective Exercise: A Feldenkrais Approach to Motor Learning, on Embodia to discover how mindful exploration can transform your movement practice and the way you teach others to move.