Back Pain: How Can the Feldenkrais Method® Help?

Break Free from Back Pain with the Feldenkrais Method

Unfortunately many people accept back pain as unavoidable part of everyday life. Stretching or building muscles at the gym or in physical therapy, provides temporary relief at best and can actually make back pain worse, which is unfortunate, but not surprising. In most cases back pain is not caused by weak muscles, but by inefficient movement habits, which cause pain, build up tension, increase wear and tear on the joints and tendons.

The Feldenkrais Method offers a gentle and effective way to relieve back pain by addressing its root cause – inefficient movement habits. Thanks to neuroplasticity your brain and nervous system can naturally discover more efficient ways of moving that don’t cause pain.

How it works

Feldenkrais sessions are designed to provide feedback to the nervous system to help it create better, more efficient movement habits naturally. In a private session practitioner provides feedback through gentle touch and subtle movement, In a group class participants are guided through gentle functional movement sequences.

In both private session and group class, change happens at an unconscious level, which means you don’t have to think about how you move in order to avoid pain – your movements naturally become more and more pain free, as your brain and nervous system continue learning and improving. Over time, these changes lead to improvements in posture, mobility, and comfort—bringing back ease to everyday. Instead of “working through” the pain, you’re learning how to move without it, creating a lasting impact on how you feel and move in daily life.

Unique Features and Benefits

Gentle Format

Working through gentle touch and focus on subtle movement makes this work accessible to people who avoid strenuous exercise due to high risk of injury. In addition to improving physical functioning, Feldenkrais sessions help calm the nervous system.

Greater Body Awareness

A powerful aspect of the Feldenkrais Method is its focus on body awareness. Becoming more aware of how you move will help you choose positions and movements that are most comfortable and recognize and avoid those that might strain your muscles or trigger pain.

Unlocking Flexibility and Ease

Back pain often restricts motion, creating tension and a limited range of movement. Working in alliance with your nervous system helps release tension, move fluidly, expanding flexibility in a way that feels natural and safe.

Long-Term Pain Relief

The Feldenkrais Method goes beyond temporary pain relief by addressing the root cause of pain – inefficient movement habits.

A New Approach to Posture

Having good posture isn’t about rigidly holding yourself in some ideal shape. Good posture allows a person to be restful in stillness and move with ease at any moment. Achieving such posture through building muscle or stretching alone is somewhere between hard and impossible, but fortunately it can be easily achieved by working with your nervous system to develop better movement habits

This approach doesn’t just provide pain relief—it helps prevent discomfort from creeping in during everyday activities, whether you’re standing, sitting, or bending.

A Real-Life Story of Relief

A client in their 60s reportedly came to Feldenkrais to deal with back pain. After several sessions they reported that their back was more relaxed, back pain significantly reduced, and their sleep became deeper and more restful. Improved sleep came as a surprise for the client, but as a practitioner I come to expect improvement in overall functioning in addition to just physical improvement. As movement improves, self-regulation improves, or as Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the method, said “By improving the quality of movement, we improve the quality of life itself”.

Ready to Start Your Path to a Pain-Free Life?

Imagine starting each day with a body that feels relaxed, energized, and free from pain and tension. With the Feldenkrais Method, that vision is more achievable than you might think. Through simple, gentle movements, Feldenkrais helps unlock patterns that have kept you in discomfort, creating space for genuine, lasting freedom of movement.