Feldenkrais and Yoga - Two Paths to the Same Body

The body doesn’t care much about the names of methods.
It simply knows whether, in a certain movement, it felt itself — or got lost again.

Yoga teaches us how to pause, stay, breathe.
The Feldenkrais Method teaches us how to move differently — and notice how our sense of presence shifts, how our relationship to the body quietly begins to change.

Over time, I began to notice something in my classes:
Asanas are precise, but they don’t speak to everyone.
Some people tried to “perform” the posture but didn’t know where they were in their body.
They couldn’t hear the nuance of movement.
They couldn’t sense the difference between effort and presence.

So I began introducing sequences inspired by Feldenkrais.
Not to replace yoga — but to create space between the movements.
To let people feel how the body thinks when no one is correcting it.
To observe how it behaves when it’s not trying to achieve.

Feldenkrais offers movements that aren’t choreography.
There’s no “correct” way to lift your arm.
But there is a way to notice whether you're using more effort than needed.
And that’s where change begins: in the subtle, not in the goal.

Yoga invites us into stillness.
Feldenkrais invites us into listening.

Together, these two practices don’t compete. They complement.
They teach us that the body is not a tool — but a partner.
And every movement, whether gentle or still, becomes a conversation.
Not about how we look. But about how we feel — from the inside out.

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Why Yoga and Feldenkrais Like to Meet

People often say that yoga helps them calm down.
But Feldenkrais… somehow unfolds them from within.

It’s not because one is better than the other.
It’s because the focus is different.

In yoga, we often work with form — we consciously take a shape, stay in it, deepen it with breath.
In Feldenkrais, we don’t move toward form.
We move toward the felt sense of form from within.

We don’t ask the body to perform a movement — we ask:
“How could this feel easier?”
“Could you do this with less effort?”
“How do you know you’re here?”

And those are the kinds of questions that quietly shift the yoga experience.

When someone explores a Feldenkrais sequence and then moves into a forward fold,
they’re no longer trying to “go further.”
They’re noticing they don’t have to pull.
The spine doesn’t push — it responds.

That’s the fine thread:
Yoga invites us to remain.
Feldenkrais invites us to discover how we remain.

Together, they build a practice where we’re not just “doing something for the body,”
but listening to the body as it does something with us.

And from that space, movement softens.
Stillness deepens.
And we become more present — not through force, but through felt awareness.

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What the Body Says When We Stop Trying to Fix It

After a few blended classes, students rarely talk about progress the way we’re used to.
They don’t say their posture is “deeper.”
They say things like:
“I didn’t know I could breathe like this in that position.”
“For the first time, my shoulder didn’t tense up.”
“It feels like something inside me shifted, and now it’s easier to be me.”

These are quiet realizations.
They don’t come from pushing — but from permission.

When we work through Feldenkrais principles, the body doesn’t ask to be improved.
It simply asks not to be forced to be something else.

And when we give it that, transformation happens.

Shoulders drop — not because we “stretched” them, but because the body no longer feels the need to hold.
The breath deepens — not from training, but because the inner resistance fades.
Movement becomes more precise — not from effort, but from inner sensing.

That’s what Feldenkrais brings into yoga:
less heaviness, more presence.
less trying, more knowing.

A body that no longer needs to prove anything
suddenly has room just to be.

And in that space, every asana stops being a posture —
and becomes a dialogue.
Not with rules.
But with yourself.