WHAT IS ABM NEUROMOVEMENT?

 

The Anat Baniel Method of NeuroMovement recognizes that the brain controls our entire being, including movement, thinking, feelings, emotions as well as making sense of all the sensations we experience.  The method utilizes brain plasticity to make dramatic improvements in body function as well as cognitive and emotional health.  Anat Baniel identified Nine Essentials that create the conditions under which the brain can learn and change optimally.  As ABM NeuroMovement practitioners we teach lessons that consist of thousands of movement sequences developed by Anat Baniel's teacher, Moshe Feldenkrais.  The lessons can be taught in group classes or be given in hands on individual sessions.  The lessons are brilliantly designed to take advantage of body mechanics and functional developmental sequences to map the brain in new ways.

 

Instead of stretching one area of the body we do wholistic movement series.  The brain takes the information and reorganizes the musculature from the skeleton out to make the whole system more efficient.  In this way we release habitual patterns of musculature holding and move with more ease and comfort.

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WHAT IS AN ABM LESSON?

 

An ABM lesson is not comparable to any other modality.  These  lessons cause the brain to map connections that form new patterns of action, thought and feeling so that we can create new skills and improve existing ones.

 

Each lesson is unique, based on functional movements (movements that are not just random but have a use in real life), and neurologically linked to early developmental sequences which facilitate  rapid brain rewiring .

 

WHAT ARE THE NINE ESSENTIALS?

 

1) Movement with Attention – paying attention to what we are doing as we move has a powerful effect on waking up and remapping the brain.

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2) Slow – it is impossible to learn new patterns while going fast.  The brain works by going into predicted grooves or patterns when we go fast so going slow works best for learning something new.

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3) Variation – the brain loves variety and learns the most by making comparisons so doing a movement with variations works much better than repeating the same movement  over and over.

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4) Subtlety – going gently (as opposed to pushing hard) is fantastic for introducing new brain patterns.

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5) Enthusiasm – noticing our own gains and being excited about them greatly enhances our performance.

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6) Flexible Goals – Having a playful ‘I wonder what will happen’ attitude is great for learning versus having a fixed goal.

 

7) The Learning Switch – The learning switch is turned on when we experience comfort, pleasure and safety. The brain doesn’t learn well when the body is in pain or straining.

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8) Imagination and Dreams – Create the life you want.  Our dreams are what help our brain to actualize movement. 

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9) Awareness – Being aware of what we are doing and how we are moving allows us to do what we want more effectively.

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WHO ARE MOSHE FELDENKRAIS AND ANAT BANIEL?​

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Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) has been hailed as the 20th century's greatest thinker on improving human movement and function.  He was an engineer, physicist, inventor, martial artist and student of human development.  In the 1940’s while working on anti submarine research in Britain he started to develop his method of movement.  His own knee injury and unsure prospects of surgery prompted him to ask the question:.   ‘Can I retrain my brain to do all that I could do prior to my injury?’  He  started experimenting on himself with great success and this began his lifelong exploration of how to improve human function through movement.

 

Anat Baniel’s parents were close family friends of Moshe Feldenkrais.  Anat knew Moshe from an early age, studied with him, and  became one of his closest trainers in the last years of his life.  She made it her mission to ‘see what he saw’.  She taught several Feldenkrais practitioner trainings and then developed her own method with an option for students to train further in mastery with special needs children.  Anat herself has worked with people of all ages however has become most famous worldwide for her work with special needs children.  She has written two books, Move Into Life and Kids Beyond Limits.