Real healing redistributes the “work-load” through communication with your brain and nervous system and brings your body back into balance.  This allows overworked muscles, ligaments, tendons and tissue to heal while offering new choices which encompass the life lessons involved.  When these limitations are released, your body is a more comfortable home.

 

When we recognize our body in a way that makes a movement easier, we have changed our mind about something.  We have made a shift in our mental-emotional body as well.

 

C.F.R.® is a combination of the work developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, Integrated Awareness® by Lansing Gresham and almost 30 years of teaching and blending since the 1980’s by Harriet Goslins, C.F.R.®, I.A.®

 

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“Your life cannot be easier than your movements. Reduce the unnecessary effort in your movements and you reduce the effort in your life. Reduce the conflict in your intentions and your life starts feeling more like what you intended.”

- H. Goslins, Founder, Cortical Field Reeducation ®

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C.F.R. is a twofold motor-sensory learning system.  One part (motor) uses slow, gentle, fun and non-habitual movements that are self-activated through instruction (floor work).  The corresponding part (sensory) is passive movement given with the student lying on a table (table work).  This completes the motor-sensory loop to and from the cortex (brain) via the nervous system.  The effects of this work endure because there is a change in the habitual “hard wiring” which redistributes the work load, not because something has to be strengthened or stretched.

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WHAT IS LEARNED CAN BE UNLEARNED

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Cortical Field Re-Education (CFR) works through the motor-cortex to eliminate physical dysfunction and the emotional issues tied to it, freeing as well the habitual, self-limiting, protective behavior patterns associated with trauma. By releasing deep, long-standing muscular contraction – NOT LOCALLY – BUT AT A PLACE IN THE BRAIN WHERE IT IS ENCODED, we dramatically increase our ability to sense and feel. This work is about upgrading the clarity of the sensory information fed into our organic computer, which is our agent of change.

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CFR AND PHYSICAL HEALING

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Our bodies respond to the pressures, demands and stresses of daily life by developing patterns of contraction in the muscles. We gradually lose awareness of those muscles that we habitually hold in contraction.

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In addition, any old injuries – even long since healed – have left us with limited and inefficient ways of moving that were necessary at the time of the injury, but now remain, no longer needed, and interfere with returning to efficient and pleasurable usage of ourselves. In fact, when we use extra muscles that don’t belong in a movement such as walking, twisting, lifting – those muscles work against that very movement and make it more difficult and tiring to perform.

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These muscular contractions are so deep and unconscious that they continue even in our sleep. Thus, these areas never get to truly rest. They are always working. This results in constant low-level fatigue that comes to be accepted as normal.

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When these chronic problem areas are released, your body will become a more comfortable home. You will experience a much more restful sleep at night, a much higher level of energy during the day, and a dramatic improvement in the ease, fluidity, power, and coordination of your everyday movements.

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CFR AND EMOTIONAL / SPIRITUAL HEALING

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Emotional trauma, on-going stress, as well as physical injury all evoke a protective response from the body. By changing these muscular holding patterns, the entire protective posture is altered, deeply affecting the body’s habitual defense system. Thus, new movement possibilities mean new self-image possibilities.

Toxic behavior is supported by habitual patterns of muscular contraction. Unacknowledged, unexpressed feelings are locked into these same muscular contractions.

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Fear, anxieties, and other detrimental emotions all have a corresponding muscular habit. Any form of bodywork, physical therapy, psycho-therapeutic treatment, verbal information (no matter how brilliant), or any spiritual practice that fails to extinguish these muscular habits will fail to totally eliminate the emotional dysfunction.

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Any therapy must include completely extinguishing these muscular habits in order to truly free up nourishing choices of behavior that will promote personal power, growth and joy.

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CFR AND UPGRADING THE ABILITY TO LEARN

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One of the most precious substances on earth is nervous tissue – cells that through evolution have developed an ability to register information from a first experience and to “remember” it. Animals use this pattern-recognition for survival – to identify food, mates and danger. They are born “hard-wired” into a set of specific instinctual responses. Human nervous systems have developed a further capacity – to recognize their own patterns of behavior, to "feel” their effects, and to consciously choose to change those patterns that do not serve them.

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How a baby learns to reach out, to speak, to crawl and walk, is an incredibly complex, sequential process, reflecting the way our brain developed to register and utilize information. Imagine trying to “show” an infant what muscles to contract to focus the eyes or reach out a hand. This can be learned only by the baby itself with exploration and the right external stimuli. Developing that much ability in such a short time is truly a miracle. THIS INFINITE CAPACITY FOR LEARNING IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT, AND ALONG WITH OUR ABILITY TO FEEL LOVE, OUR MOST PRECIOUS POSSESSION.

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Unfortunately, in the childhood of “civilized” man, this natural spontaneous process often gets subverted. Most formal education ignores the ways in which we are wired to learn best. In addition, our private experience of learning was often colored by an adult with an emotional charge. “Do it well.” “Make me proud.” “I’m afraid you’ll be a failure.” “Hurry up”, replaced un-interfered-with exploration at our own pace. Negative emotional situations also distort the child’s natural learning process. All emotions are a muscular occurrence. Tension, fear at home, ridicule or rejection at school will freeze the development of a skill, be it catching a ball or solving a math problem.

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As civilized adults, we have more “facts” than ever before about our universe, yet we live lives that routinely override the messages from our body. This vital source of information is the basis of our brain’s ability to self-adjust and self-heal as well as pick up the more subtle vibrations of intuition. Yet, in our pressured society, because we cannot afford the time to rest after an injury (emotional we well as physical), we anesthetize ourselves against feeling the pain. Brain-secreted chemical, purchased medicines, drugs, alcohol, overeating, overworking, or any compulsive activity, constriction of the muscles of the chest, which armor the heart and depress the breathing, all help dull the feeling that “something-isn’t-right.” But in doing so, we drastically reduce out ability to feel across the board. Joy is dulled as well as grief or pain. And so are the incoming sensory impulses to the brain from all the outlying joints and muscles which would otherwise alert the motor-cortex to any dysfunctions that need adjustment or to injured areas that have healed and are ready to come back into function. Instead, old compensatory patterns put in temporarily, keep needlessly protecting against old injuries, leaving long since healed muscles to gradually atrophy from disuse.

Exercise, self-improvement techniques, and treatments from specialists will never truly bring these areas back in the ball game. A PATTERN PUT IN ON AN UNCONSCIOUS LEVEL CAN NEVER BE CHANGED AT A CONSCIOUS LEVEL. Only by clearing away the anesthesia so that the brain can start experiencing again the clear and constantly up-dated information that it received as a child can it order the kind of changes that an outside agent could not begin to do.

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THIS WORK IS FOR:

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• Those who are dealing with old injuries never totally healed or a lifetime of stiffness from sedentary pursuits.

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• Those who want to optimize their athletic and sports performance and reduce risk of future injury.

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• Those who have focused on the spiritual without realizing that a healthy body, comfortable with itself, is a clearer channel for meditation and intuition.

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• Those who want to regain the ease and joy of learning and moving they had as a child.

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• Those who have looked to the intellect as the answer, gradually relegating the body to the   status of a vehicle to house the mind.