the Blending OF Yoga & THE Feldenkrais Method
An 8 lesson course guided by Sarah Baumert blending the mindful movement of gentle yoga with the awareness of the Feldenkrais method. These classes were originally taught Summer 2025
I’ve heard from many of my students that this morning time shift has been an important way to start their week. This class has a little bit of everything to help one get unstuck from the daily habits that lead our bodies to feeling not as good as we know they can feel. These full body classes will awaken, stretch, strengthen, and calm the body. As one student recently described Monday class like this: "That felt like I just gave myself a massage!"
I am structuring this series as a reprieve or recovery to all the activity you might be finding yourself participating in during this more heightened time of activity that the summer months can bring. You can expect a lot of chest opening, shoulder opening, and hip stretching, along with other self care and restorative moments.
Each class is an original, innovative creation of Sarah’s teaching. She blends a more traditional gentle yoga practice with the novel Feldenkrais® awareness practices. But that’s not all, she incorporates joint specific training, functional range exercises, self-massage, breathing exercises, and a compassionate non-competitive mindset. It’s a true experience of movement therapy! You will train your sensitivity in such a way that you find yourself feeling more alive, vibrant and spacious.
Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or new to yoga, these classes are designed to be accessible to all bodies and experiences. The pace is slow and thoughtful, with plenty of room for personal exploration. For new comers, come with no expectations. Allow your body to be your guide. All levels are welcome. This will be a nonjudgemental, un-intimidating space to create friends with your body (yourself!).
If you cannot attend all the live classes, each class will be recorded and the videos will be available for those who purchase the series. You will have access to stream the recordings at your own time.
$140 for the 8 lesson course
*This series is included in the Body Matter Library Membership
For full scholarship options, please inquire directly with Sarah at sarah@body-matter.com
But how is this class different than a regular yoga class?
What You’ll Discover In This Online Series:
Movement: 8 Yoga + Feldenkrais classes: Each session seamlessly blends traditional yoga postures with the gentle introspection of Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement. Sarah's dynamic teaching adapts to the changing seasons and the needs of each student, creating a truly unique experience.
Lessons included in this series:
Encourage Whole Body Ease
Connecting the Limbs to the Center
Unfurl the Chest
Connections From Arms to Spine
A Mobile Center
Gentle Joint Reset
Integrating the Eyes
Sensitize and Free the ChestGetting to Know the Pelvis + Twists
Educational Talks:
• Pre lesson Anatomy lessons
Connection:
• Optional 10 minute consultation with Sarah
• Online forum to connect and ask questions if you are doing the recordings
• Email support
Ways to keep practicing:
• Stream recordings indefinitely
Live classes and recordings will be accessed via the BODY MATTER studio platform using Marvelous software. Once you have purchased the series, you will have access to the livestream classes and recordings.
How to use the Marvelous software for livestream and recorded classes.
Different than exercise, these classes are an interdisciplinary adventure. Imagine weaving together yoga, Feldenkrais, joint-specific training, self-massage, mindful breathing, playful movement puzzles, and a deeply compassionate approach to self-care. This unique exploration empowers you to discover a profound sense of ease and comfort within yourself.
Kindness towards ourselves is not always soft and easy. It can demand courage to move into the quiet corners of our hearts and bodies, facing the resistance we feel within. This practice welcomes you, inviting patience, awareness, and a spirit of slow, mindful exploration.
Scholarships are available for this series. Please contact Sarah directly at sarah@body-matter.com for scholarship inquires. No questions asked.
If you cannot attend all of the live classes, each class will be recorded and the videos will be available for those attending the series. Space will be limited so that I can manage watching everyone, sign up early to hold your spot! There will be time for questions and community discussion after the livestream class, as well as an option to engage with Sarah and the other students in the class through the online comments following each lesson.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
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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 1:1 the 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.
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Both practices emphasize listening to your body, respecting its limits, and unlocking its potential. These two methods use movement as a means of learning through the nervous system. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the phrase Chitta Vritti Nirodha often translated as “stilling the waves of the mind” is described as the ultimate goal of yoga. Similarly, Moshe Feldenkrais frequently remarked that his aim was not simply to create flexible bodies, but rather flexible minds.
While the two methods share many similarities, they differ in their approaches, each offering a unique pathway to self-discovery. A seasoned yogi may find that Feldenkrais deepens their internal awareness, while a Feldenkrais practitioner might uncover greater strength and vitality through the practice of yoga.
While most yoga practices place significant emphasis on alignment and the external shape of a pose, the Feldenkrais Method takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than aiming to hold positions or push the body toward the edge of flexibility, Feldenkrais focuses on the internal experience of movement specifically, the coordination, quality, and efficiency of how one moves.
In a typical Feldenkrais lesson, there are no prescribed shapes or postures to achieve. Instead, practitioners engage in gentle, mindful movement sequences based on developmental patterns, the kinds of movements we naturally explored as infants when learning to roll, reach, crawl, or walk. These movements are performed slowly, within a comfortable range, and always without strain.
This deliberate gentleness is essential to Feldenkrais. By staying within a pain-free, non-threatening range of motion, the nervous system remains in a state where it can safely observe, adapt, and reorganize. This is key to the method’s focus on neuroplasticity: learning new, more efficient ways of moving through direct sensory experience.
While yoga often encourages the body to fit into specific postures, the Feldenkrais more specifically invites you to investigate how movement occurs and how it might be done with less effort. Instead of striving toward an external goal or ideal form, Feldenkrais emphasizes the process of learning and self-discovery. This shift from outcome to experience fosters deeper internal awareness and sustainable improvement in how we move and feel.
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Feldenkrais and Yoga help improve balance and prevent falls by retraining your body's response to potential imbalances.
Fear can be a major culprit behind falls. Fear can make us tense up and hold our breath, limiting movement and increasing fall risk. The lessons are gentle movement explorations that promote a healthy breathing and a calm nervous system.
Balance also relies on feeling your body's position in space. Feldenkrais explorations refine your body awareness and proprioception, helping you detect, respond, and adapt to potential imbalances more wisely. Focusing on coordinated movement patterns, the lessons train your body and mind to respond more effectively to unsteady situations.
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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.
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 love how the Monday night classes interweave and focus us on an evolving practice! The instruction is very clear and Sarah’s teaching style is calm, consistent, and precise. I feel the poses in a whole new way. I look forward to this class each week and when I can’t make it I do the recorded session as soon as I can.” - Mary
”Your wisdom encapsulates much of what I’ve studied and am still learning to apply, even at my age. May I be able to do so until I die. Now I have a fresh connection between Feldenkrais, Zen Buddhism, non-violent communication and psycho-therapy. I have experienced many unique and special moments of joy in your classes, Sarah, and they are precious to me.” - Elizabeth
”These online Yoga + Feldenkrais courses have become some of my favorite practices ever. 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. - Bonnie”