About

I believe that all of us can create change within ourselves when empowered by the tools of awareness, sensation, feeling and thought.

Through the system for self-improvement called the Feldenkrais Method, we can improve our relationship to movement, treat chronic pain, and experience a more easeful and efficient life.

The Feldenkrais Method®

 

The Feldenkrais Method is founded on curiosity and attention and devoted to the optimization of human functioning. It’s a holistic practice that reveals untapped potential and enhances our natural ability to embody movement.

This practice is also an open, safe space. A space where spontaneity is the highest virtue, and the non-habitual becomes an act of comfort. A space that holds no hierarchy, judgement or praise. A space of less-is-more. Inside this space, we move past our old patterns, pains and traumas, and discover the limitless opportunity to learn something new.

I know our movements and sensations can be refined. I know our self-image can be transformed. I know we can decouple ourselves from constraint, liberate our full potential, and bring our true desires to life. I know because it’s happened to me, and I’ve helped others to do the same.

 

 Services

About me

 
about-allison-linamen-feldenkrais-teacher
 

For the past 25 years I have devoted myself to helping others through movement. Employing dance, yoga, Feldenkrais and a diverse range of somatic therapy practices, I have worked with people of all ages and from all walks of life to improve function, address chronic pain, and regain a sense of ease. 

What this immense person-to-person experience has taught me is that the best outcomes stem from therapies that treat the whole self. For me and my practice, this has come to mean an integrated, hybrid approach of science-based and emotionally-attuned strategies within a system of movement-based solutions.

From an early age I leaned on movement as a kind of salve, and I discovered in dance a means of expression and outlet for my childhood depression. Movement empowered me to shape and reshape my own identity, to explore my emotional range, and to touch and be touched by the world around me. 

After studying Modern Dance at The Ohio State University, I made the pilgrimage to New York City to perform with professional companies. I continued to study, began to teach, and got my first glimpse at how helping others could lead to powerful, deeply personal transformations. 

In 2000, I suffered a serious performance-related injury, and my life immediately took on new shape. Unable to move, I became deeply invested in the study of Dance Therapy and Yoga Philosophy, both of which offered unique holistic systems with which to treat physical discomfort and emotional pain. As my body restored and physical movement returned, I introduced my own brand of somatic-infused Yoga to studios in New York and Los Angeles. At the same time, I reached out to underserved communities in settings such as schools, hospitals and rehabilitative care units––because I believe the wisdom of this teaching and the health benefits it promises should be available to everyone.

 
 

As my practice developed and clientele grew, I began to observe how chronic pain almost always results from the most basic problems of daily life.

 
 

These habitual patterns related to how we walk, sit, stand and breathe were engrained in my students, and they felt them, intuitively, like immovable obstacles to change. I wanted to help my students and others like them build awareness of these personal habits, and this led me, as if by destiny, to the miraculous teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais. 

For four years I worked with myself, studying human function, the nervous system, neuroplasticity and habitual movement patterns at the Feldenkrais Institute of San Diego. I became a guild certified practitioner in 2016.

I currently reside in Northeast Ohio where I see clients in person and teach online Feldenkrais and Yoga classes. I will be graduating in May of 2025 with a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (LPC). My aim is to integrate top down (cognitive) and bottom up (somatic) informed interventions within my professional practice.

My mission

To help others out of pain and into the actuality of their highest self. I specialize in treating students with chronic ailments, as well as creatives who want to improve efficiency and healthy adults who simply want to optimize their quality of life.