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ABMNM®

BACKGROUND

The Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement®  has evolved out of Anat Baniel’s three decades of breakthrough work with adults and with children who have special needs, her background in clinical psychology and dance, and her unique perspective as Moshé Feldenkrais’ closest student and long-time professional colleague.

Following in the footsteps of her great mentor, Dr. Feldenkrais, Anat has continued to develop her exceptional system of movement and learning, based in the science of brain plasticity, that has transformed thousands of lives.

 

Moshe Feldenkrais (1904 - 1984) was a doctor in physics from the Sorbonne in Paris. He developed his method in England during the 1940s to relearn how to walk after a knee injury. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais was a scientist, engineer and a renowned judo expert. When injuring his knee and facing an operation that could potentially leave him with a life in pain and disability, he opted out of the medical system and thought of another route for recovery. He studied his own movement and applied his knowledge of human anatomy to physics and came up with what today probably is the most elaborate theory of how we move and learn to move, as human beings.

 

Feldenkrais is known to have said that without movement life is unthinkable. That life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself. In his work, Feldenkrais creates a personal learning context where students have the opportunity to discover in themselves ways of moving. Awareness and sensitivity is applied to kinesthetic experiments of moving and exploring into new ways of moving.

ON ANAT'S

BOOK

Micheal Merzenich (Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco)

“. . . I have spent much of my own scientific career trying to understand how we can harness our capacity for brain remodeling for the benefit of children and adults in need of neurological help. From several decades of research, summarized in many thousands of published reports, we scientists have defined the ‘rules’ governing brain plasticity in neurological terms. We now know how to drive brains to change for the better.It has been a great wonder to me, then, that my friend Anat Baniel, working in parallel along a completely different path, has defined almost exactly the same rules. Moreover, Anat interprets them here in practical and understandable human terms, in ways that should contribute richly to your own more enlightened parenting, grand-parenting, or clinical intervention.”Trusting in the evolutionary quality of the process, Anat constantly develops new techniques and encourages her trainees to do the same, helping clients overcome limitations and discover delightful, life-giving possibilities. Her method continues to promote not only the development of better movement and awareness, but also incorporates evolution and improvement in the areas of thinking, feeling, emotion and human interaction . . .”

 

Norman Doidge ( Author of the Best Seller The Brain That Changes Itself and The Brain’s Way of Healing

“. . . This accessible, insightful, practical book for parents of special children with special needs will profoundly deepen their ability to help their children improve. Following the footsteps of revolutionary scientist Msohe Feldenkrais, the greatest thinker on how to improve movement of the twentieth century, Baniel shows why our mainstream approach to these children is often wrong, and at time damaging, because they train children to “ape” developmental milestones they are developmentally ready to meet. The approach here, far wiser, far more subtle, truly holistic, far more engenious, far more in accord with how brain development occurs, shows ways to access the child`s own brain plasticity and yields far greater results, so that the children can grow from within. I know because I have observed Baniel`s little patients in multiple visits, and time after time, I have seen children whose parents were told their brain-damaged children would never walk, or talk, or be able to think well or regulate themselves, begin to do just that with this gentle technique. I have seen the peace on the face of these children as their minds and their plastic brains suddenly begin to integrate what they have learned from the first time, the explosion of joy at their first steps and watched them grow and become more independent. Baniel is a master clinician for children with special needs, especially creative with brain-damaged children.”

SOME USEFUL LINKS

To learn more about the method please visit:
http://www.anatbanielmethod.com

In Conversation With Jill Bolte Taylor
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anat-baniel/conversation_b_5235073.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anat-baniel/in-conversation_b_5432261.html


Dr Michael Merzenich and Anat Baniel discusses brain plasticity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_08J2Ete4


A mother shares her story of her son Cypress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-M-FFxhb0Q


Also search on Youtube for Anat Baniel Method. Watch the ABM for children.

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