Customer Reviews

Feldenkrais:The Busy Person's Guide to Easier Movement

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this book after years of chronic pain and headaches. I had tried chiropractic, massage, and prescription medication, but these only took the edge off my pain. I got this book after a friend recomended the feldenkrais method, and have had wonderful improvement after a month. I saw improvement after the first two lessons. It is easy enough to understand without any help if you will take the time to do the lessons, and if you have the ability to visualize what is happening in your body as you move. I would recomend buying the DVD "The Alexander Technique" first as an introduction to the concepts in the book.

The Feldenkrais Method is possibly the most innovative educational/therapeutic method in existence. It can help both body and mind to function more efficiently.

However, having been developed by a physicist with a profound knowledge of kinetics and neurophysiology, neither the practice nor theory is particularly accessible. This book remedies the situation, simplifying the entry point without losing the essential flavour. The author, Frank Wildman, is a genius practitioner. I have personally witnessed him achieve the seemingly miraculous with a number of people suffering severe difficulties.

If, like them, you've been there and done that, yet still feel there must be something more, this could be it. The trick with this method is learning to do less, not more. It took me years to learn and I'm a practitioner!

Do give this book a try. It will at least make you question some commonly held assumptions about health and well-being. It may even change your life!

Finally, a book that is simple enough to follow, yet with generous room for variability. Unlike most books involving movement--such as books on say pain relief, running or athletics--the lessons contained in The Busy Person's Guide to Easier Movement continue to unfold in front of you so that you, the reader, have the option of going back time after time and actually getting more each time you try the same lesson. This is because no lesson is actually the same if you heed the instructions in the beginning, which include using your imagination, being comfortable and going slowly. Done this way, the lessons guide you not only toward more flexibility, strength and comfort, but greater creativity and independence! The book may claim to be about "easier movement," but be forewarned, it is much deeper than that. You could discover possibilities in living that you had never imagined.

That's 33 cents per excersise, quite a value. Actually each lesson has more than one movement, 5 to 15 movements per lesson so it's like 10 times 50 which is 500 divided by the price, pennies per exercise. This is a no nonsense guide that promises and delivers, the title says it all. The lessons take 5 to 15 minutes. The directions are easy to follow, the drawings are good. It helps to vocally record some of lessons on tape of course. The only thing I personally can compare this book to is relaxercise and I like this better. I bought it I'm happy! I got all the excersises. I don't need no weights, I don't need to stretch, I don't need to sit cross legged with some freak telling me to breathe. I don't need no big beach balls, and rubber bands. I can get there faster. My ligaments feel great, my muscles are smarter. My mind is stronger. My bones are alive. I can walk forever. I can rest in peace. My connective tissue is new. It's ok I cheated, I did try some of Anat's tapes before.

For my many interests (karate, Zen practice, weights, aerobics, clinical psychology) I have been searching for a method of bodywork that supports awareness in all I do. Most that I find seem to be very pseudoscience based junk, or deal with esoteric and ancient energy practices.
This book is about body re-education and awareness exercises to lessen the way we hold ourselves and choke off our spontaneity.
You can easily do an exercise in your spare time. You don't have to follow the book front to back. The premise is using yourself in ways that are ego-alien to discover better functioning and self-realization, and lessen unnecessary pain and fatigue.

I am a very big fan of the Feldenkrais technique and am in the process of reading as much as I can about it.

The exercises in this book are simple but effective, and very clearly explained.

A nice add to my library.

To people interested to know more about the methode I would definitely recommend to purchase Moshe Feldenkrais books as well.

I love this book. This is a better guide to Feldenkrais movements than Moshe's classic Awareness Through Movement. You don't have to read through 100 pages of wonderful background which flavors Moshe's book. The Busy Person's Guide is immediately valuable. The car and driver lessons were cool and worth the price of the book. I sit, stand and drive differently. The book is very easy to follow and illustrations are excellent. The short 5-15 minute format really worked.

I'm not saying you don't need to read Moshe. If fact, just the opposite, If you get the Feldenkrais bug get the Master's early books. Read them all. They complete the picture of a man wildly ahead of his time.

If you want to explore Feldenkrais Movements by actually doing the exercises help yourself to Frank Wildman's Busy Person's Guide. If you feel GREAT you will keep doing it. You can explore the transformational underpinnings... later.

I am showing these movements to my nearly 88 year old mother and she is loving the increased movement at a time in her life when movement defines her boundaries. I got her a copy.

If you are looking for an answer to pain relief, here it is. It helps a lot and I am so glad I purchased this book. All the exercises are easy and require nothing more than things you already have a chair, the floor, and a mat in many cases.

I bought this book many years ago, and now buy it to give as presents to friends.
The Feldenkrais method is explained well.
Doing just a few minutes of these exercise movements relieves aches and pains and produces immediate positive results.

I like the Feldenkrais method of movement, but his book is harder to understand. I like this one for its simplicity and its adherence to the original book(s).