What happens during a Feldenkrais-inspired movement class: Each week, a new lesson is presented which frequently builds on a theme from the previous week. Students spend 50 to 60 minutes exploring patterns of movement such as rolling, reaching, twisting, folding, or arching in a variety of configurations.

Wearing comfortable clothing, usually lying down, you are guided through a series of slow, precise movements. As you relax into a gentle attitude of exploration, joints and muscles begin to open so that habitual patterns of tension can melt away.

Colette uses words rather than her own movement to teach a lesson. Without being able to copy or look into a mirror, students find their own most comfortable ways to respond to instructions. Rather than judge how far they can move, students discover how they move. As they say at Prescott College, these movement classes are a journey, not a destination!

These lessons do not exist in a vacuum, they follow you back into your everyday world. Because they clarify habits of moving and then introduce new alternatives, classes are a powerful opportunity to increase your coordination during everyday activities. After lessons, people often move more freely, feel taller, lighter, breathe more fully, and find that their minds are quiet, cleared of clutter. In the hours and days following a lesson, students frequently continue moving more easily during everyday activities.

What should you bring: Please bring a mat or blanket to lie on. Students are also encouraged to bring an extra layer of clothing to put on if their body temperature drops as relaxation occurs. As for what to wear, the less hampered you are by restrictive clothing, the more aware you can be of natural movement. Tight waistbands, jeans, and clothing that don't give do not enhance your experience of a lesson. Think sweats, or t-shirt and shorts. Comfort rules! Everyone will have their eyes closed, so there is no need to feel self-conscious.

How fit must one be to take these classes: This is not exercise; it is an exploration. For the most part, anyone who can get up and down from the floor, and roll from side to side in relative ease, can do these lessons. When you move as nature meant-as your structure is designed-it doesn't take great effort or strength.

Most lessons are done while lying on the back. Some lessons require that you lie on your belly or sides, some will have you seated on the floor or in a chair. At times, even a standing lesson will be taught.

If you have questions about whether you would physically be able to participate in a class, please contact Colette for clarification.

Why "use it or lose it" isn't quite true: You have probably noticed how freely children move. Their creativity is constantly on the run. They jump, they fall, they roll and kick, their thoughts reverse themselves; change comes quickly.

We all started with these skills. Over time, however, we make do with a continually narrowing set of thought and movement habits. This happens so gradually that we don't realize what we've given up till it seems gone. But that freedom, that vibrance, usually isn't really gone, just forgotten.

Moshe Feldenkrais is famous for having said that "When you know what you're doing, you can do what you want." He developed hundreds of movement puzzles to ingeniously re-introduce efficient patterns of action. This new awareness can radically reinvigorate your movement life, improving coordination, easing pain, freeing restrictions, and increasing your range of motion.

Classes often feel like a celebration, a joyful discovery, as students realize that what seemed lost is actually just forgotten. This reawakening can open the floodgates of possibility for any aspect of ones life.

If you already have an exercise program: These classes, inspired by the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, provide a rich opportunity for athletes to retrain movement patterns so that they can do what they're doing even better. Run faster, improve a golf swing, clarify how to move from the core, activate the smaller muscles to expose greater balance and grace.

This method of exploration has long been popular in acting and dance communities as an efficient way to hone movement and awareness. Students of Yoga, Pilates, and many other modalities use this method of enquiry to clarify specific details of an ongoing practice. With a concentration on less effort with greater awareness, a lesson will challenge anyone's assumptions of how to organize a pose or action pattern.

Movement Classes as Body Meditation: These lessons offer a simple yet powerful way to work through the body to get to the mind. Ultimately, this method of learning is concerned with the process of embodiment, or coming home to oneself. By slowing thought and deed, and increasing comfort with oneself, the mind drops list-making, relaxes its hold on "should", and compares itself less with others.

Gently and over time, immersing oneself in these lessons will encourage true change. Increasingly, the joy and ease of simply being in harmony with oneself comes to the fore. It is possible to use this work as a meditation on responding from the core rather than reacting to outside stimulus.

Think about it: when you are fully at home with yourself, it is virtually impossible to feel alone. And when you take yourself everywhere you go, you can't leave yourself behind.

Where did this work originate? Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) was a warrior at heart, whose primary interest was in the survival of the species. He developed a method which prepares people to respond naturally, efficiently, and joyfully to life on its own terms. Indeed, this ability--to respond rather than react-he called health in its truest sense.

His whole life reads larger than life, and it is impossible to do justice to his brilliance or his curiosity in a few short paragraphs. Born in what is now called the Ukraine, at age fourteen he spent six months traveling alone to Palestine. There, he worked as a laborer while studying to complete high school. He also taught Jujitsu, and self defense techniques which he developed on his own.

He moved to France in 1930, where he eventually received a Doctorate in Engineering, and worked as a research assistant of Frederick Juliot-Curie. During this time, he was the first westerner to receive a black belt in Judo. In 1940, he escaped to England at the hair-raising last minute as Germans arrived in France.

In England, Feldenkrais taught himself to walk efficiently again-despite "permanent damage"--after re-injuring his knee.  As a result of this personal breakthrough, he spent the rest of his life teaching students on several continents his unique system of movement education.

He immigrated to Israel in the early 50's and by 1955 was teaching Awareness Through Movement classes to large groups at a gymnasium on Alexander Yanai Street. His first teacher training of 12 original students started in 1969.

Beginning in 1974, over the course of four summers, he held the first American teacher-training of 65 students in the San Francisco area. A second training of 235 students began in 1980 in Amherst. Since then, these students have taught thousands more students around the world.

Although the Feldenkrais Method is still a mouthful to pronounce, as time passes an increasing number of people from all walks of life have come to respect and appreciate the sheer brilliance of this man who reached into himself to find a practical yet elegant way to anchor thought, sensation, and emotion to a more vital way of becoming an active participant in life.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
~Leonardo DaVinci