Makiko completed the Feldenkrais® Guild of North America-accredited Practitioner program and became a Feldenkrais Method practitioner in 2006. However, once she acquired expertise in nutritional healing to restore neurological and postural health, her approach diverged from the Feldenkrais Method.
She deeply appreciates her 17 years of practicing the Feldenkrais Method, which aligns with her Japanese upbringing in a samurai bloodline and resonates with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’s understanding of human maturity through developing awareness through movement. He learned Judo and obtained a black belt from Jigoro Kano, the founder of the Judo martial arts method. Kano created Judo to restore the integrity and maturity of the Japanese people after World War II.
The Feldenkrais Method is a somatic educational system developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli engineer and physicist. It is a dynamic and fluid method that works on rewiring the brain’s network. This method helps people develop a functional awareness of the Self by bringing awareness to habitual patterns and enhancing their changes. Human beings have transformational potential and the ability to learn regardless of their age or condition.
In his book “Brain’s Way of Healing”, Norman Doidge, M.D. mentions Feldenkrais Method’s use of neurodifferentiation, one of the four stages that use the neuroplastic capacities of the brain to alter the connections between the neurons and to change their “wiring”. Below are key neurodifferentiation principles:
- Making the smallest possible sensory distinctions between movements – builds brain maps.
- Differentiation is easiest to make when the stimulus is smallest.
- Slowness of the movement is the key to awareness. Awareness is the key to learning