JANUARY 30 • 2020 | 37

continued on page 38

BOTH PHOTOS: Brenda 
Rosenberg and MELT Method 
instructor Leanne Bourassa do 
exercises with special balls 
to stimulate fluid in Brenda’
s 
cells for improved healing and 
reduced pain.

ated the method after trying 
to solve his own chronic knee 
injury.
“Feldenkrais is based in 
awareness of how you move 
and in using this 
awareness to 
bring the desired 
change, just like 
psychology does 
with personal 
experiences and 
behaviors,” said 
Hava Schaver, Ph.D., a clinical 
psychologist with an office in 
Franklin. 
Schaver has been a clinical 
psychologist for more than 35 
years and a Feldenkrais prac-
titioner for approximately 17 
years. Schaver said she uses no 
touch when it comes to prac-
ticing the method with clients. 
“By talking, I guide the 
person to activate their own 
intentional system,” she said.
Rosenberg said she had 
never thought about the con-
nections between the muscle 
tissues of her body and bone 
and how those interact to cre-
ate movement.
“It’
s so tender and unintru-
sive,” Rosenberg said of the 
method, in contrast to some 
of the other therapies she did 
while in the hospital.
Schaver, who was born in 
Israel and came to America 
in 1974, said it took her four 
years of formal education to 
become a Feldenkrais prac-
titioner, which she integrates 
with her general psychology 
practice.
“Neuroscience is teaching 
us that even in psychology we 
need to look at the totality of 
the being, the mind and the 
body,” she said. “I work a lot 
with mindfulness, and I guide 
the individual to form an 
intention.”

AFTER FELDENKRAIS, 
ANAT BANIEL
Building upon the principles 
of the Feldenkrais Method, 
the Anat Baniel Method 
expanded upon the practice by 
incorporating the concept of 
neuromovement — exercises 
that rewire the brain. Through 
intention but also physical 
movements and “distinctions,” 
neuromovement influences 
the brain through the devel-
opment of new neural connec-
tions.
Heather Sjogren, an Anat 
Baniel practitioner with 
her own studio in Berkley, 
worked with Rosenberg to 
help her gain mobility on 
her compromised right side. 
Sjogren gained formal train-
ing in Anat Baniel Method 
NeuroMovement in 2015.
“Neuromovement uses 
gentle movements to create 
new movement in the body,” 
Sjogren said. “Our body 
affects our brain, but our brain 
affects our body as well. We 
are using movement to change 
the body.”
Israeli Anat Baniel, 
who worked with Moshe 
Feldenkrais for approximately 
10 years, is a clinical psychol-
ogist and dancer. She created 
nine “essentials” with her own 
practice. Sjogren, an occupa-
tional therapist by training, 
said the No. 1 essential is 
intention. Other essentials 
include doing movements 
slowly, having flexible goals 
and helping the client under-
stand that it’
s OK to have lim-
itations.
“Our brain is not a mechan-
ical system,” Sjogren said. “It’
s 
an informational system. If you 
provide it with variation, it has 
more information to use.”
Sjogren said the Anat Baniel 

Method NeuroMovement is 
unique in that it can be used 
on children, whereas the 
Feldenkrais Method was cre-
ated exclusively for adults. She 
mentioned she has used the 
method on a child with cere-
bral palsy and that slowly the 
child has been able to straight-
en his limb and that it has 
become more functional.
Rosenberg began working 
with Sjogren a few weeks after 
her stroke and worked with 
her two times a day, three 

Hava Schaver