The elegance of a good mover relies on the delicate balance act that is finding the not too much and not too little. In my own desire to bring that to my movement as well as to my teaching, I have been a passionate (albeit a little inconsistent) Feldenkrais student over the last few years.

If you’ve never heard of Feldenkrais, originally called ATM, or Awareness through Movement, it is, as straight from Niki’s website, “an educational system that uses movement to teach self awareness and improve function.” The lessons consist, for the most part, of very fine movements designed to refine your self-awareness to learn to self-correct, optimize and shed superfluous or contradictory effort. It’s a fascinating and niche practice taught by fabulously intelligent teachers. Here’s Niki, my favorite one.

Maëlle : Hi Niki, how are you?

Niki : Hi Maëlle! I’m good, you?

M : Good, good, thanks! How’s your teaching? You started teaching at a school recently, right? How is it?

N: Yes, I've been teaching at San Diego State's dance department for the last year now. It's been really great, actually. I feel like it's a new demographic for me in terms of the age group, though I also taught one summer intensive with Benjamin Millepied's company in LA, and that was a much younger age demographic. I do think that young people are way less in their habits and their ideas of form, so it's always really interesting how much they pick up from the lessons.

M: I love to teach kids too, since they're not coming in with any preconceived notions of how to “perform” pilates. It really shows me what is actually clear about my teaching and what isn't because they have very little idea of what is “right” and “wrong”. A blank slate is exciting.

N: And it’s so much fun. It's fun being with young people.

M: For anyone who has no idea what Feldenkrais is, could you describe it in three words? Not easy, I know, but if anyone can do it it’s you.

N: Hard task, but I would say sensory, experiential and learning.

M: Sensory, experiential, and learning. How mysterious. I’ve taken lessons with you, I’ve taken lessons online, I’ve taken lessons in person and I still find Feldenkrais hard to explain it better than moving + thinking + feeling, all at the same time.

N: It's more oriented to a process.

M: Right. So maybe process is a fourth one, if I wanna cheat my own question. I wanted to ask, how has Feldenkrais changed you, but that felt overly broad, so I guess, to be more precise : what tangible things have you noticed, over the years, about how you go about life, as your practice has evolved?

N: If, ultimately, Feldenkrais is a study of us in the gravitational field, I feel that my understanding of how to counteract gravity has evolved. We’re always relating to gravity and what good posture is has become more clear to me. I think for many people, the idea of good posture is to maintain some kind of rigid form, but in essence, it's learning to be dynamic. I think this has really come through in terms of my sense of self awareness, my habits of use and also how I can also access a greater kind of quality of strength. That’s how I'm able to use myself in a way that feels more meaningful. Parasitic effort is a bit more clear to me now, but of course, it's an ongoing study.

M: Speaking of study, if you could recommend one book, and one only, what would it be? It doesn't have to be necessarily related to Feldenkrais. Just a Niki book, I guess.

N: I mean, almost all my books would probably be body related books, but I would say Body and Mature Behavior, which was one of Feldenkrais' earliest texts. It's a letter to Sigmund Freud, saying, in a way, that his thoughts were a bit short. He only looked at the mind of a person, but he didn't consider the body. In order to change a person, you have to consider both.

M: I don't think I've seen that one. I recently bought, hm, what is it again… Something about spontaneity. The Spontaneous Self?

N: Oh, The Potent Self. I like that one a lot. That one is edited, so it's clearer to read than those earlier books.

M: One idea that you were talking about in your story recently that piqued my interest was the concept of tone. It is particularly interesting because in pilates, if you don't want your teaching to be focused on aesthetics, it tends to be a word we learn to avoid, since tone is associated with visible muscle and skinniness. But the meaning in Feldenkrais is so different. It seems to refer more to finding minimal effort, which I find so refreshing. Tell me about that.

N: So in regards to tone, the way Feldenkrais would see it is that the tone of the body means the muscular efforts of the body. One of the principles that we're always looking for is that no place is working harder than any other. The distribution of tone, like, oh, I can see that this person is well distributed.
We often hear practice makes perfect, but I've been playing with the idea that perfect practice makes perfect. That's the idea of refining sensing ability. That's what practice looks like.

M: Right. So in a way, getting more invested in refining the process than you are at refining the result?

N: Yes.

M: Got it. So, last question : what are you up to when you’re not teaching? What’s your ideal day off?

N: My ideal day off, I would say, would probably start with a hike and then going to jiu jitsu, maybe going to the beach... Doing some gardening... Maybe time for a book.

M: Dreamy. Well, we definitely live in different climates, that’s for sure.

Niki’s membership-based platform for live group classes as well as her library of recorded lessons is called Postural Apprenticeship, which you can find www.nikidesaintamour.com/feldenkrais. She also runs a small private practice in Downtown San Diego called Framework Somatics, where she offers Functional Integration sessions (IRL private Feldenkrais lessons) and a manual face technique called ZOGA Face Integration. Her Instagram handle is @nikidesaintamour.