Beyond Corrective Exercise: A Feldenkrais Approach to Motor Learning

Overview

This course explores the Feldenkrais Method as a model for motor learning that emphasizes exploration over correction, helping individuals and professionals—including physical therapists, yoga instructors, and trainers—improve movement efficiency, coordination, and comfort.

Through Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons, participants learn to embrace variability, curiosity, and self-discovery, rather than striving for a single “perfect” movement. Todd illustrates how these principles enhance adaptability, reduce strain, and foster confidence in both clients and practitioners.

Feldenkrais instructors use a teaching style that is distinctively different from conventional physical therapy or personal training. While traditional methods often seek to “correct” faulty movement patterns, Feldenkrais is based on the premise that it is “incorrect to correct.” Instead, it teaches better movement through experimentation, exploration, and skillful use of attention, tailoring solutions to the unique individual while building motivation and self-efficacy.

This course includes discussion of key teaching concepts from the Feldenkrais Method, along with short movement explorations. Familiar exercises like cat-cows, bird dogs, and bridges will be demonstrated using Feldenkrais-style approaches to make them more exploratory, individualized, variable, and effective.

This isn’t just another pain science course—join Todd Hargrove for a deep dive into how movement, attention, and play reshape the nervous system through the lens of the Feldenkrais Method.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand the pros and cons of teaching styles that are more exploratory versus corrective. 

2. Create movement lessons that are more flexible to individual needs and interests. 

3. Teach movement through trial and error experiments.

4. Use cueing language that builds confidence and self-efficacy while avoiding nocebos. 

5. Add variability to routine exercises.

Learn how to move your patients away from fear, tension, and rigidity—toward curiosity, comfort, and resilience.

Target Audience

This course is for anyone working to help others improve their movement, such as physical therapists, chiropractors, personal trainers, or yoga teachers. 

If you’re tired of chasing symptoms, this course will change how you think about pain, movement, and healing.

What You’ll Learn

• How to shift from correction to exploration, creating conditions for self-directed learning.

• Why movement variability is key to expertise and adaptable motor patterns.

• The surprising benefits of practicing “wrong” movements for deeper motor learning.

• How attentional focus—internal, external, and holistic—guides motor learning and coordination.

• Techniques to promote effortless, low-strain movement, reducing injury risk.

• Using ground contact awareness to refine posture, balance, and movement efficiency.

• Tailoring Feldenkrais lessons for complex conditions, including hypermobility and chronic pain.

Highlights & Practical Demos

• 🧠 Exploration over correction: cultivate self-directed learning

• ⚖️ Respecting individual variability to expand movement options

• 🔄 Repetition with variation: “repetition without repetition” for motor mastery ([44:56]

• ⚾ Learning from mistakes: the value of amplifying errors 

• 🎯 Mindful attention to enhance awareness and control

• 💤 Effortless, comfortable movement patterns to minimize strain

• 👣 Ground contact cues to refine proprioception and posture 

Practical demonstrations include seated weight shifts, cat-cow spinal mobilizations, and shoulder blade “clock” movements, giving participants hands-on experience with subtle movement variations and awareness strategies.