Maureen McHugh, Feldenkrais Practitioner Short Essays 703-751-2111
From the Winter 2008 Schedule
Learning,
learning, learning
On November 9, 2007 my colleague Elaine Dove made a presentation in Austin, Texas about the Feldenkrais Method at the Johns Hopkins/Healthways 7th Annual Outcomes Summit. She had the attention of more than 150 health care professionals. Elaine kept the focus on learning, and to everyone’s satisfaction, her presentation was very well received.
The theme of the conference was Integrative Medicine: how medical doctors can combine traditional and CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) techniques so they serve the whole spectrum of patient needs. I spoke in December to a Healthways publicist who summarized the event as being about “arrows in the quiver”: how many and which ones should a doctor have?
On the morning of the presentation, though, the relevant quivering was going on inside Elaine! Besides teaching Feldenkrais group classes and individual sessions, Elaine is an experienced painter, dancer and meditator. She is more naturally at home in a private studio than behind a podium. But on this November Friday morning, she rose to the occasion -- because she is passionate about the benefits of the Feldenkrais Method.
150 health care professionals gathered in Austin, TX to discuss Integrative Medicine. The Feldenkrais presentation focused on benefits gained through learning.
Elaine had five slides and through them she explained that the key distinguishing element of the Feldenkrais Method is that it is about learning. She spoke about
 | how learning changes a person’s life for the better |
| how a person who learns takes ownership of what they learn |
| how learning gives a person a sense of empowerment |
Part of the format was that the presenters had been asked to respond to a case study – how would they work with a woman who had back and neck pain? In a summary that she wrote of the day, Elaine commented that the presentations in general were so “information rich” that she and the audience were glad for something that moved! Elaine gave a 10-minute demonstration with a volunteer about turning. She contrasted a) turning the head and shoulders without activating the lower body and b) with the lower body. She explained, “Instead of getting into dealing with pain, I went the route of asking ‘What can this person learn that will help her move more easily and efficiently?’ ”
At the end of the day, Elaine was happy to report “Five or six of the docs said that it was the best presentation they had seen all day. As one of them put it, ‘Nothing else I saw today really made any sense to me, but this made perfect sense.’ ” Congratulations, Elaine!