Nuance

During the pandemic, my long-standing advocacy for teaching Feldenkrais Method courses online suddenly gained new relevance. At a time when so many in the moving arts and sciences were grappling with whether we could offer “high touch” methods in such a high-tech and disembodied medium, what I’d been experimenting with and learning about was valuable to others.

To continue teaching after the lockdown, colleagues around the world had no choice but to move their previous in-person group Awareness Through Movement (ATM) classes online. Beforehand, when most colleagues neither took distance learning seriously nor considered it useful, an advisory committee for one national Guild concluded that no one should ever teach the method online.

Even as teaching ATM classes online started to seem reasonable and constructive, at least to some of us — perhaps most, including me initially — believed it impossible to give Functional Movement lessons online. For so long, we defined FI as a hands-on approach. By distinguishing the one-on-one aspect from the requirement that it be a manually guided approach, we could simply define FI as a situation in which one teacher works with only one student.

Even then, nearly everyone considered it impossible to teach someone to be a Functional Integrator, especially the hands-on skills and self-use, online. This bias began to change only after the duration of the shutdown required Feldenkrais teacher training programs to find ways to FI via online meeting platforms.

When faced with the choice to cancel an in-person postgrad course or move it online, we chose to present it virtually. Thanks to my eye-opening experiences as a faculty member in several training programs forced to relocate online, I discovered that Functional Integration is possible to learn even when the class isn’t in one room.

However, just because it is possible to teach hands-on skills, or at least some of them, online doesn’t mean we should do so exclusively. Aspects of Moshe’s manually guided lessons and the nuance they require that are not conveyable remotely, especially when trainees lack an in-person, experiential foundation. You can, for instance, understand the concept of “skeletal contact” intellectually, but that isn’t the same as developing a feel for it.

That’s why I am delighted and grateful to be teaching in person again, where I can touch and be touched. Having a better sense of the importance of in-person interaction, I appreciate both the limits of online learning and the possibilities for expanding how students learn on their own and with each other.

The postgraduate programs I started offering last year are the opposite of online learning. Working with a small group of eight teachers over five days creates an intensive, apprenticeship-like setting. This intimate atmosphere is also an antidote to large-group programs, which provide the same kind of short-term changes as any form of entertainment. Large courses usually fall far short of the long-term, lasting learning that occurs in a student-centered educational context. That's because, with a smaller group, I follow each participant over time, come to appreciate their perspective, understand their questions, and suggest what they need to learn next to continue learning. The personal feedback and individualized coaching that only a small class affords are truly priceless.

To meet the demand for this month’s sold-out small group, I am offering the course once again in May.

Reclaiming Rollers
Santa Cruz, CA
1 to 5 May 2026
1:00 to 6:45 each
$850 until 10 February,
$935 thereafter
Maximum enrollment = 8

For more information on the course and to find out how to apply, click here. Please note that early registration ends tomorrow, 10 February, at midnight Pacific time. Also, there is only one room left in the house where we hold the program.

I will be teaching the same Reclaiming Rollers module in a more traditional, larger-group setting in Paris in April. Even there, the maximum enrollment is 24. Find out more about the course here. I’ll teach it in English, and someone else will translate it into French.

Finally, to demonstrate that I still believe in and appreciate what online learning has to offer, this month I am also leading a four-day, two-weekend program on Preparing for the Return of the Habit. Enrollment is still open; learn more about this course here.