Exploring the Feldenkrais Method: FROM REST TO ACTION
An 8 lesson Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement Series with Sarah Baumert
September 7th - November 5th, 2025
Wednesdays 6:30pm CST/ Sundays 4pm CST
Live classes will be taught on zoom*
As we head towards fall, I’ll be highlighting Feldenkrais classes that will help regulate the nervous system. Regulating the nervous system means being able to shift between different states like stress and relaxation with more ease. It’s the ability to come back to a calm, grounded place after being activated by a challenge, emotion, or sensory input. A regulated nervous system doesn’t mean always being relaxed; it includes being adaptable, responsive, and resilient.
In these classes, at times we’ll go a little slower, and steep in the sensations of restful mini hibernations. At other times we’ll explore how to move from a rested and regulated state into powerful action.
Registration is available today to plan for your movement as the season changes.
The Feldenkrais Method can help shift how we perceive stress—and, in turn, how we relate to it. In certain situations, stress can actually serve us by energizing the body to face a challenge or sharpening our focus during demanding tasks. However, when we remain in a heightened stress response even after the trigger has passed, this can lead to a habitual state of tension in both body and mind.
Feldenkrais invites a deeper understanding of how stress manifests in our movement and posture. For instance, the fear of falling—rooted in our vestibular system—activates protective reflexes like muscle contraction in the neck, chest, or hips. When these patterns are chronically engaged, we may experience shallow breathing, tension, and persistent discomfort. Feldenkrais lessons help gently interrupt these patterns and guide the nervous system toward more adaptive, fluid responses. Importantly, this isn’t just about removing stress habits—it’s about replacing them with healthier alternatives.
Partaking in a Feldenkrais lesson encourages the exploration of new patterns of movement, perception, and thought. —helping to shift away from ingrained habits that may no longer serve us. These unconscious patterns, often shaped by past experiences, can result in automatic, emotional, and physical reactions that feel limiting or even painful.
Modern research in neuroscience shows that emotional and physical pain both activate the same area in the brain—the anterior cingulate cortex—part of the limbic system that processes emotion, motivation, and motor control. Because of this link, movement and emotion are deeply connected. Emotions themselves are expressions of excitation in the nervous system, with a natural rhythm of peaks and valleys. By bringing awareness to how we move and feel, we can begin to influence our emotional state and the meaning we assign to our experiences.
As Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais observed, emotions are felt in the body as impulses from organs and muscles. When these signals reach the brain, we interpret them as emotions based on our past. Through movement and awareness, we gain the ability to pause, notice, and choose new ways of responding—inviting the door to be opened to greater emotional freedom and resilience. By examining and reorganizing how we move, we simultaneously reshape our patterns of thought and emotion. This opens new ways of relating to ourselves and the world—guided not by force, but by curiosity and mindful awareness.
$180 for the 8 lesson course
For scholarship options, please inquire directly with Sarah at sarah@body-matter.com
Pay-as-able and payment plan options available at check out.
What Exactly Is Included In This Series?
Movement: This series will include eight lessons. Two variations of each lesson are taught, once on Wednesday and once on Sunday.
Educational Talks:
• Pre lesson Anatomy Lessons
• The philosophical framework for ATM
Ways to keep practicing:
• Option to download recordings and stream recordings indefinitely
Supportive Community and Connection: Connect with like-minded individuals and share your experiences.
• Q & A sessions after the class to ask your questions, connect with the other students, and discuss the method and tools we are learning about.
• Online forum to connect and ask questions if you are doing the recordings
• Optional 10 minute consultation with Sarah
• Email supportOnce you have purchased the course, you will have immediate access to the class recordings.
How to use the Marvelous software for livestream and recorded classes.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
-
Starting in the 1930’s, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais began to develop a somatic form of neuromuscular re-education. Feldenkrais developed two practical approaches for exploring early developmental movements, as well as more advanced complex actions.
1) Functional Integration - manually directed, hands on, private lessons. Learn more about the 1:1 Feldenkrais approach here.
2) Awareness Through Movement - verbally guided mindful movement classes done in a group setting.
Both approaches are described as “lessons”, as they involve beneficial learning processes for the brain and body. In guided Awareness Through Movement classes you study your potential to act, and how you refine your self organization to make any movement. Feldenkrais is not stretching or straining, it is learning. The method uses gentle mindful movement and directed attention to help people learn new and more effective ways to move and be in the world.
-
Through subtle changes in how we relate to the present moment, memories, and future possibilities, the Feldenkrais Method can support anxiety management. Often, anxiety is tied to uncertainty about what lies ahead. Consequently, it can create a cycle of tension that affects both body and mind. Past experiences and imagined outcomes can trigger stress responses, often showing up physically as a clenched jaw, tight neck and shoulders, lower back pain, or shallow breathing.
Through Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons, Feldenkrais encourages small, gentle, and comfortable movements. These are designed not to force change but to invite ease and awareness. This approach works from the body upward—a sensory-based, bottom-up process—rather than relying solely on mental strategies to change our state. As we tune in to subtle physical sensations, we strengthen our ability to understand and respond to what’s happening internally—this is known as interoception. The more accurately we sense our internal state, the more effectively we can choose how to respond.
Feldenkrais also supports self-regulation. With consistent practice, the lessons help build a sense of internal stability, confidence, and adaptability. By fostering a state of calm and vigilant awareness, they prepare the nervous system to respond effectively to stress and challenges.
Dr. Feldenkrais described this shift as creating a tabula rasa, or blank slate—a return to a neutral, open state from which new patterns of movement and thought can emerge. Although life events are often beyond our control, Feldenkrais equips us to face them with increased resilience, adaptability, and insight.
-
Yes! It’s not uncommon for students to feel taller and to stand more upright (with less effort) after a Feldenkrais session. Most all humans “hold” the body with a specific tone in the muscles. Over time this muscular tone habituates and becomes our “posture”, for better or worse. Using guided awareness and small movements in Feldenkrais lessons, the body can shed its unnecessary muscular tone, so that the skeleton can then find its more optimal place to be.
“Although we each have a fantastic skeleton and musculature designed to give us flexible support and hold us upright against the pull of gravity, we frequently develop postural habits that challenge our skeletal structure's effectiveness and cause muscular tension inflammation, and a gradual deterioration of our joints.” - Feldenkrais Trainer David Zemach- Bersin
With awareness, specificity, and practice, Feldenkrais lessons can give you the ability to free the muscles of the neck, shoulders, spine, and pelvis. As one moves towards more freedom of the muscles, one also moves towards a more easy, elegant, and upright posture supported by the strength of the skeleton.
Our aim in Feldenkrais is not a perfect posture, but a place of less tension and conflict in the body where our posture is fluid, not rigid. Everyone’s posture, or how they “use” themselves, isn’t always optimal. With the help of the Feldenkrais method, your postural habits can improve to make everyday movements more enjoyable and easy.
-
Both practices emphasize listening to your body, respecting its limits, and unlocking its potential. However, their approaches differ, offering unique pathways to self-discovery. A seasoned yogi might find Feldenkrais deepens their internal awareness, while a Feldenkrais practitioner might discover greater strength and power through yoga.
While most yoga practices tend to focus on alignment and the shape of a pose, the Feldenkrais method differs, in that the emphasis is on the coordination and quality of movement, not in holding a pose for a set amount of time or reaching the limits of a stretch. Feldenkrais emphasizes ease and efficiency in movement and to never reach a point of strain or even stretch. The movements are always done within a range of comfort, creating an environment where the nervous system feels safe enough to learn and change. There are no shapes or poses in the Feldenkrais method, but instead we work with developmental movement patterns and mindful movement explorations.
About Sarah: Sarah Baumert is known for her thorough and diverse instruction and her dedication to holding space for individual personal discovery. She facilitates whole body alignment in her students as a way for them to access balance, strength, mobility and physical clarity. Through sensory rich movement experiments, she guides students in cultivating mindfulness and deepening their learning process. She works with a variety of populations including athletes, seniors, artists, dancers, musicians, and those experiencing injury or surgery recovery. Sarah is a certified Yoga Therapist, an Authorized Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® Teacher and Feldenkrais Functional Integration® Practitioner. Her objective is to acquire the most effective skills for helping her students live with less pain and more pleasure in their bodies.
What people are saying about Sarah's teaching:
“I have never, ever felt my hands and lower arms as I did at the end of class tonight. They were glowing in a fuzzy, pleasant way. I can’t describe it otherwise. - Linda
I am so grateful that you continue to provide these life giving, body strengthening and soul nurturing classes. They are like an inner meditation for every cell in my body! - Rosie
After I switched to the ‘regular’ yoga class, I realized I missed how I felt during and after Feldenkrais. I experience an ease of being, a soft wholesomeness, in Feldenkrais. I meditate most mornings, and I sometimes find that same stillness after Feldenkrais. Also, ease of movement: I am always struck at how gracefully I can move a limb compared to how the limb starts out. -Elizabeth
What I love so much about your classes: when the unexpected happens, like a jigsaw puzzle falling into place. Keep surprising me! - Jane
I find your classes to be exceptionally supportive and illuminating, and I’ve so benefitted from the learning and the unlearning I’ve experienced. Drop by drop, this practice and what I’ve received from your teaching have radically changed how I am in my body and in my life. These online Feldenkrais courses have become some of my favorite practices ever, and I’m excited every time you propose a new series. - Betsy
After these lessons, I often feel like I am “floating”. I continue to realize, in real time and activities like walking, the connection between all parts of my body….the supple power that moves up and down my spine, from my head to my pelvis. - Helen”