Movement For Your Mood: How the Feldenkrais Method™ Can Help Manage Anxiety

Your heart starts to race and your palms begin to sweat. You notice yourself feeling anxious. If you experience anxiety, you may be familiar with the range of symptoms it can cause. Treatments for anxiety often focus on working with thoughts and emotions, but anxiety can cause physical symptoms too. What if the key to managing your anxiety lay within changing your movement and postural habits? 

The Feldenkrais Method™ of Somatic Education uses gentle movement and mindfulness techniques to help us change our habitual movement patterns. As we go about our lives, we develop movement habits in response to our environment. Many of these habits benefit us. They allow us to perform everyday tasks with ease. Others can cause discomfort and negatively impact our mood. 

Emotions can cause physiological changes. They can affect our posture and the ways in which we move. When we feel anxious, we may round our shoulders, take shallower breaths, and unnecessarily tense up our muscles. This is the body’s way of protecting itself from a perceived threat. 

When these responses become habitual, they can cause physical discomfort and keep us stuck in emotional states we want to move out of. As Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais explained, “To every emotional state corresponds a personal conditioned pattern of muscular contraction without which the emotional state has no existence.”

Since our emotions can affect our movement patterns, it’s no surprise that the opposite is also true; working with our movement patterns can influence our emotional state. Our mind and body are designed to function as one system. Our thoughts, feelings, and body are all connected, even though we often think of them as being separate. 

Emotions can feel abstract and hard to grasp, but physical sensations are more tangible. This makes them easier to work with. While Feldenkrais® lessons are not a substitution for talk therapy sessions, the two modalities complement each other. For example, you may find it easier to sense your leg resting on the floor than to describe your emotions. Working with our movement patterns and physical sensations can help us move past areas where we might otherwise get stuck. 

How does it work?

Feldenkrais® lessons are designed to engage the parasympathetic nervous system. This part of the nervous system is responsible for the “rest and digest” state. When the parasympathetic nervous system is engaged, it is easier for the brain to learn to move in new ways. It also helps reduce stress and anxiety. The slow and gentle movements in Feldenkrais lessons help to regulate our nervous systems, allowing us to shift into this calmer state. 

During Feldenkrais® lessons, students work to develop their self-awareness. In order to change our movement patterns, we must first identify the ways in which we habitually move. This requires us to pay close attention to our sensations. 

Developing our self-awareness helps us notice unnecessary muscular tension we are holding, the way we are breathing, and our habitual postures. Once we become aware of what we are doing, we can take steps to change our habits. We can learn to decrease muscular tension and to breathe in healthy ways. This can help alleviate physical symptoms of anxiety. 

The mindful approach of Feldenkrais® lessons helps to promote relaxation and gives us a greater sense of control over our physical and emotional states. Taking time to connect with ourselves and tune into our sensations can help us feel more grounded. 

The Feldenkrais Method™ encourages us to observe our sensations in a non-judgemental way. When we take this approach, we can learn to stop feeling afraid of our physical symptoms of anxiety and instead approach our sensations with curiosity. By shifting our mindset, we gain a feeling of a greater sense of control over our bodies. A renewed sense of control can help us feel better equipped to manage our anxiety.

The Feldenkrais Method™ is not a Band-Aid solution. During Feldenkrais® lessons, we engage in a learning process to rewire our brains and change our habitual movement patterns. Our brains form new neural pathways as a result. These new neural pathways lead to lasting changes in our mood and movement patterns. 

Curious about how the Feldenkrais Method™ might help you manage your anxiety? Book a free alignment appointment on this page to see if we are a good match for individual sessions. You can also check out our upcoming group classes on this page or try our free somatic practices for anxiety on this page.