Body Wisdom
Movement Learning Center
office (608) 241-7635 301 S.Bedford St., Suite 219, Madison, WI 53703
Sandra Rae River
Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner™, Certified Bones for Life™ Teacher
- Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner - 20 years
- Director of own ballet school - 25 years
- BS in Education plus 63 hours of math and science
- Dedicated to helping people of all ages and abilities to learn:
- new ways of thinking, feeling, and moving
- to know and trust and learn to listen to the intelligence of their bodies
- to reconnect their mind/body and to recognize when they are disconnected and in conflict
I discovered the Feldenkrais Method® in the early 1980’s while looking for ways to help my daughter, Laura, to be able to walk again, post head trauma. Three years after barely surviving severe brain damage, Laura was wheelchair-bound and wore high top surgical shoes with metal upright braces (to keep her feet from twisting inward). She was able at that time to take a few clump and drag steps supported by metal forearm crutches and close supervision. Following her first few Feldenkrais lessons, I watched in amazement while Laura walked with slow even steps with only fingertip to fingertip balance support from her teacher, in only stocking feet – no braces! I was convinced. The process was so simple, so basic, made so much sense, and was so profoundly effective; yet it was so radically different from therapeutic and training techniques that were so commonly accepted. Although, at the time, I didn’t understand how or why the method worked, I knew it was right – in keeping with the natural order of how the human system works. Here was a powerfully effective new paradigm, a new educational and medical model, which I wanted to learn and to share.
Two years later (1984) when the next available four-year Feldenkrais Professional Training Program began in Toronto, I was in it along with 65 PTs, OTs, musicians, teachers, actors, dancers, artists, psychologists, and even a lawyer – many of us having had already earned advanced degrees. I quickly realized this training would not only help me help my daughter and many other to be better able to do and fell more the way they want, but would also profoundly changed me and my relationship with myself – mind, body, feelings, and spirit. Perhaps suffering with arthritis was not inevitable for me, as it was for my parents. And I knew, with this work I’d be learning for the rest of my life. I had found my path, my life’s work.
The Feldenkrais Method® has been a perfect match for me. Working with it utilizes and enhances my strengths and improves me in those areas where I have difficulty or limitations. I love my work. I feel blessed with each opportunity I’m given to engage with another person in the positive and always fascinating organic learning process.
I have been practicing the Feldenkrais Method® for over 20 years, working with people of all ages who have a variety of neurological, muscular, and skeletal difficulties. I have worked with everyone from musicians to athletes to children with cerebral palsy, adults who have suffered strokes, and people with everyday nagging back problems. I teach Awareness Thought Movement lessons and workshops regularly, and I give Functional Integration sessions (private lessons) in my office at 301 S.Bedford St., Suite 219 in Madison.
