About the Feldenkrais Method®

The Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education is a dynamic approach to learning developed by Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), a brilliant Israeli physicist, engineer, and judo master. Novel movements done with an attitude of curiosity and playful exploration enable students to engage in an emergent process of discovery that recalls the experiential, exploratory, and organic nature of learning in the early years of life, awakening and potentiating connections throughout the brain.

There are two complementary aspects to the Method. Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lessons are often group or semi-private classes in which a practitioner gives verbal instructions to students, guiding them through a series of functional movement explorations. The movements are done easily and slowly, to enable students to recognize any unnecessary effort. Many are done lying on the floor, but there are also lessons in sitting and standing.

Functional Integration® (FI) lessons are given one-on-one, where the practitioner uses light touch to guide a student’s attention to various aspects of movement, rather than primarily using verbal guidance. Functional Integration lessons can also be given in sitting or standing, though most often the student is lying down on a lightly padded table.

Sometimes a practitioner will blend touch with verbal instruction. Activities to practice at home, in between lessons, may also be offered as appropriate. In both types of lessons, students participate fully clothed and are encouraged to wear soft, comfortable clothing so that their movements can be easy and free of restriction.

The role of the Feldenkrais practitioner, whether in ATM or FI, is to guide a student’s attention and to scaffold the process of inquiry, but not to provide answers - the “answers” emerge from within the student through the process, and are unique to the student’s particular circumstances. In this way, the Method helps individuals to take charge of their own learning, to reconnect with the qualities of body and mind that enable them to feel more fully themselves, and to find (or rediscover) greater ease and enjoyment in their lives.

“What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains. What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity.”

~ Moshe Feldenkrais

About me

Kim Hsieh (she/her)

Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson wrote about “zigzag people” in her wonderful book Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way - people whose life trajectory isn’t linear but whose path, when taken from another angle, can be seen to be an ascending spiral. I see myself in her words.

Long fascinated by the interrelationships among people, ideas, and inner and outer worlds, I earned an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, travelled to Việt Nam with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and his fourfold sangha when he first returned to his home country after 40+ years of exile, and later completed the 2-year Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. For more than twenty years I worked with nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, educational institutions, and communities to try to realize a vision of a more compassionate, just, and sustainable world. After my children were born, I left that work to focus on my boys’ developmental needs - shifting my focus to nurturing positive growth and change on an individual (rather than systemic) level.

In 2019, I completed a 4-year professional training in the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education, earning designation as a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner (GCFP). My interest in the work was inspired by the experience of seeing how dramatically Feldenkrais lessons shifted the developmental trajectories of both of my children, and I continue to be drawn in by a curiosity about what else becomes possible if we come to know ourselves more deeply as complex, self-organizing systems and place our trust in the wisdom of the whole, integrated self. I love that Feldenkrais principles are process-oriented, with an emphasis on learning how to learn. The principles have come to influence everything I do with my boys - from parenting to homeschooling - and how I understand and move through my life in general.

I’m on a journey to understand how to best enhance the well-being of asynchronously developing children and the parents and caregivers who love them. My shelves are full of books examining the relationships of brain, body, mind, and movement to development and cognitive, social, and emotional functioning. I continue to educate myself about the nervous system, neuroplasticity, brain and child development, interpersonal neurobiology, the development of resilience, and other somatic and contemplative practices, looking for the through-lines.

My current perspective is primarily informed by the work of Moshe Feldenkrais, the deeply relational Zen practices of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Theravadan insight meditation tradition, attachment theory, the polyvagal theory articulated by Stephen Porges, and the work of Dr. Gabor Maté.

Micro and macro are interconnected. When we bring an integrating awareness to our selves - body, mind, and spirit - our understanding deepens, and positive and sustainable change become possible. As we move steadily towards wholeness, we are able to see with greater clarity how to nurture wholeness in the world around us. The potential is there, in each of us.

“Neural integration – the linkage among differentiated aspects of the brain – allows for flexibility and adaptability, and expresses itself outwardly as harmony, kindness and compassion.”

~ Daniel Siegel, M.D.