Starting
date: Fall 2007
Groups will meet Thursday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Facilitator: Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP
Eating disorder specialist and Feldenkrais Practitioner
Location: 271 Hazel Ave. Highland Park, Illinois
Fee: $100 per session
For further information contact: 847-432-1795
or email
Groups will offer a unique opportunity to heal through combining traditional psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral group therapy techniques with a novel, experiential approach to self-awareness, learning, and change (The Feldenkrais Method, Awareness Through Movement); each hour-long talk-therapy group experience will be accompanied by approximately one half hour of Feldenkrais body movement. Participants are required to come comfortably attired and to bring a floor mat for personal use.
“We act according to our self image.”
- Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
“I feel so empowered! If I can make these (bodily) changes happen, why would I not be able to make changes happen in so many other areas of my life?”
-A group participant who has struggled with an eating disorder and addiction to substances for more than a decade
About the Feldenkrais Method
By upgrading the function of brain and nervous system, the Feldenkrais technique brings individuals in “emotional exile” back to themselves, and to their loved ones.
The development of the self is grounded in kinesthetic experience; our movement, interwoven into the fabric of our self image from the beginning of our lives, plays an extensive role in how the nervous system coordinates a coherent sense of self through the life span.
By teaching students to experience the interrelationships between moving, thinking, feeling and sensing, the Feldenkrais Method offers entrance to the “ground floor” of our sense of self. For individuals whose eating disorder recoveries typically average from seven to ten years in length, or who have suffered for decades with the intractable symptoms of disease, the Method offers a tangible, palpable, in some instances immediate sense of a developing, empowered self through the teaching, and learning, of well-honed attunement and attention to the self within the confines of a single 45 minute “lesson.” Embedded in the movement lessons are general strategies for what Moshe Feldenkrais calls “learning how to learn.”
The Feldenkrais work expands the discovery of unrecognized feelings, of different options for taking action, and of alternative thinking that leads to more creative and effective problem-solving. Through this technique, “black-and-white” thinkers begin to recognize shades of gray. Anxiety held in contracted muscles melts away, as do harmful compulsive and habitual behaviors and attitudes, to be replaced by “can do” feelings of empowerment. Hard-to-treat patients who have suffered from eating disorders, body image disturbances and mood disturbances for decades report relief from compulsivity in behaviors and thought, diminished depression, and a new-found capacity for self-determination and self-control. Through gentle movements that reorganize the skeleton while accessing brain connections and the nervous system, patients who had no previous self-awareness or self-control prior to or during a binge/purge episode report a new-found sense of awareness, leading to self control, and self-determination; along with that, comes access to new solutions to old problems.
For further information, you can read:
The Therapeutic Effects of the Feldenkrais Method "Awareness Through Movement" in Patients with Eating Disorders by Laumer U, Bauer M, Fichter M, Milz H University at Regensburg.
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http://www.empoweredparents.com/1treatment/treatment_02.htm
About Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP
An internationally renowned expert in the treatment of eating disorders, Abigail H. Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP is a psychotherapist who has treated children, adults, couples, families and groups for the past 35 years. The author of When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers (Jossey Bass Publishers, 1999), and the e-book Doing What Works: The Professionals’ Guide to the Treatment of Eating Disorders, Abigail is the founder and director of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois: a Clinic without Walls. She hosts three informative web sites, www.empoweredparents.com, www.empoweredkidZ.com, and www.treatingeatingdisorders.com, a new site specifically designed to benefit health professionals and educators.
Abbie has appeared on national television as an eating disorder expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The John Walsh Show, Starting Over (NBC), and MSNBC among others, as well as on numerous radio spots including National Public Radio. She will appear in a Fox Television documentary about eating disorders on October 24, 2004.
She has been a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner based on the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais since 2003, and holds a Masters degree in the Anat Baniel Method for the treatment of infants and children. She has become a leader in using this neurophysiologic approach to augment more traditional approaches to treating patients with eating disorders and body image disturbances.
