Page 204 - Total War on PTSD

The Feldenkrais Method is a type of somatic education – a way of learning through movement and awareness. The word somatic means “of or relating to the living body.” A somatic movement is “one which is performed consciously with the intention of focusing on the internal experience of the movement rather than the external appearance or result of the movement.”
Humans are prone to having fixed ways of moving and of dealing with life. While most of these habitual ways of moving are useful and efficient, we also develop patterns of movement that can be the underlying causes of discomfort, stress, and pain. Many patterns of movement are below our level of consciousness. We are simply not aware of them. But they can be changed.
Conventional treatments assume that the ways we move are dependent on the underlying body structure and its limitations, whether they are inherent in the structure or caused by injury. The Feldenkrais Method comes from a functional point of view — the ways we move are determined by what we have learned and the habits we have developed. Our habits are based on are the ways we have explored movement as babies, on social conventions (in the military, soldiers always start marching with their left foot), on how we accommodate our physical structures and on our histories of injury or illness. Habits are learned preferences that can restrict our options and contribute to dysfunction and pain. The question is how to unlearn our habits in ways that help resolve movement problems, reduce pain and create more options in life, regardless of physical structure and history of injury.
The path to unlearning these habits lies in the ability of the brain to change and reorganize itself. This characteristic of the brain is called neuroplasticity. Neuro refers to neurons, the nerve cells that are the building blocks of the brain and nervous system
204 of 1085