Michelle Drerup

As a Guild Certified Feldenkrais PractitionerCM , I have been helping people do what they want to do with greater ease and coordination and with less pain and injury since 2009. I have helped my clients do things as varied as get into and out of their cars more easily, rehabilitate after surgeries more quickly, or stick the landing of a back flip without causing back pain. I've helped people with neurological injuries and disorders function better. I've helped athletes and performance artists overcome injuries and performance challenges.

As an athlete who has struggled with debilitating injuries, chronic pain, and performance limitations, I understand the frustration and despair that can accompany them. When I first discovered the Feldenkrais Method®, I was seeking relief from chronic pain following my injury-plagued college volleyball career. At the time, I had no desire to ever again play the game I once loved; I only hoped to live with a more tolerable level of discomfort.

With my first Feldenkrais lesson, I experienced incredible pain-relief. As I continued with the method, the familiar pain was replaced with nearly forgotten feelings of agility, spontaneity, speed, and power. Memories of the fun I used to have playing volleyball (before the game had become a job that was about hard work and pushing through pain) also returned to me. And I returned to playing the game. I came to the method for the pain-relief, but I stayed for the excitement of learning to move better than I ever had before! I now have a reliably effective way to help me relieve pain, heal and prevent injuries, and pick up and improve skills in sports, dance, and everyday activities.

Whether you want to improve specific skills or just find greater comfort in your body, I can help you get amazing results with this method too. My talent is in detecting how your compulsive movement habits are getting in the way of what you want to do, and then helping you get them out of your way. I would love to spare you unnecessary pain, injury, and performance limitations and help you (re)discover or enhance the pleasure of easy, graceful movement.

I enjoy working with people of any age and ability, who have a high level of curiosity. I have both the curiosity and the ability to help you improve how you feel and move.

My approach to helping you improve how you feel and move is to guide you through unusual movement experiments and guide your attention to the results of those experiments. All sessions, whether group movement lessons or hands-on lessons, are done using small, very slow movements with as little effort as possible. We are helping your nervous system feel for more comfortable, more efficient movements, postures, and balance. Work smarter, not harder is my main principle.

If you see me for a hands-on lesson (rather than a class) the lesson will be tailored to your specific challenges, needs, or goals. You will probably spend most of your time lying on a low padded table wearing comfortable clothing. I manually guide you through your habitual movement patterns and gently suggest alternative patterns. These lessons are like a conversation between 2 nervous systems that are listening very attentively, using the language of gentle touch and movement.

I consider myself a facilitator of learning and of healing. It is the learner who heals their own self. The decision and power to change, and therefore heal, ultimately resides with my client. I came to this method from my own past with chronic pain, injury, and frustrating setbacks as an athlete. As a former school teacher, I found the method of Moshe Feldenkrais, who called his method "learning how to learn" a brilliant and effective pedagogy.