Reconnecting body, brain, mind and self through movement: Treating Body Image, Eating Disorders and Self-Harm Disturbances through the Work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais

The innovative work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, in conjunction with recent brain research, provides evidence of the unity of the mind, body and brain in healing. This is hardly a new concept, as for 2500 years, this unity has been a benchmark of the Buddhist practice and meditation. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais applied this concept of mind/body unity to learning and to the therapeutic healing of the body and brain in his work during the early 1970's, before technology had developed the capacity to measure it. Today, the field of neurobiology as it relates to psychology measures consciousness and the state of the mind in addition to behavior, allowing a greater understanding about of the integrity and reintegration of a fragmented sense of self. It's implications for the treatment and healing of eating disorders and body image disturbances are immense.

The onset of an eating disorder signifies the loss of the integrity of the core self and of the capacity to accurately perceive and sense the body and self. The development of the self, and self-sensing, is grounded in kinesthetic experience; the Feldenkrais Method© and the Anat Baniel Method© provide gentle and pleasurable body movement techniques, which, when used in conjunction with more traditional therapies, are particularly effective for patients suffering from eating disorders, post trauma, and self-mutilation. By facilitating awareness, access, sensing and integration of the "embodied self" through embodied mindfulness, they provide an ideal vehicle to stimulate a remediated sensation and reintegration of the core self within real time. These techniques create new options for "moving forward in life" by affecting a more versatile use of self in discerning options for choice-making and problem-solving; by teaching patients to learn how to learn. By creating growth in neuronal pathways and upgrading the structure and function of the brain and nervous system, these methods increase a sense of wholeness, well-being and empowerment, returning individuals in "emotional exile" back to themselves. This workshop offers participants the opportunity to experience a Feldenkrais "lesson" and to understand personally its effects on the sensing of the self.