“It’s hard to describe,” Vo-Dinh, one of the day’s organizers and a Feldenkrais teacher, said. “It’s something you have to experience.”

Feldenkrais is awareness through movement, she said. The instructor gives verbal instructions but does not actually demonstrate. This is meant to recreate how an infant learns to move since it’s rare that someone would show an infant how to do something like roll over, Vo-Dinh said.

There are about 1,000 different Feldenkrais lessons and movements, including methods like reaching, coordinating the pelvis with other parts of the body, rolling, lifting and pulling.

Re-learning techniques like these are often meant to get people out of habits that might be causing them constant body aches and pains, Vo-Dinh said.

The activity starts with a “scan” of participants lying on their backs and noticing which body parts are lying flat and which ones are slightly lifted. This could indicate which body parts might be carrying tension.

A goal for Feldenkrais is for all body parts to be lying flat by the end of a session.

“In the course of an hour you may be releasing tension you’ve been carrying around for decades. It’s that dramatic,” Vo-Dinh, who owns the Frederick studio Mind Body Sense, said.

Though Feldenkrais is used for both athletic and artistic performance, Vo-Dinh said it’s different than the standard fitness activity in that it’s more about changing a mindset rather than controlling a person’s body. Vo-Dinh said it could help anyone from a person recovering from a stroke, to a tennis player who needs to swing without putting tension in their shoulder, or even a teenager who spends too much time in front of a computer.

Vo-Dinh herself started Feldenkrais to help with a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis.

While Feldenkrais is often done in group classes, it’s also done in a one-on-one situation with the participant sitting in a chair or lying on a table, and being moved by the teacher. This is done very gently with the participant being passive, Vo-Dinh said.

“We go with what you’re already doing and we support you in that,” she said. “And then we begin the provide you with new options.”

Vo-Dinh was one of four teachers giving hour-long lessons at the free Feldenkrais event. All the teachers also had backgrounds in techniques like yoga, pilates and martial arts, though Vo-Dinh stressed that Feldenkrais is a lot less intense.

“We’re more gentle than even the gentlest yoga,” she said.

Middletown resident Anita Link went to the Feldenkrais lessons with the intent of learning more about it and possibly bringing it to her church. She was also hoping it would help with her pain from a compressed disk in her back, for which she has tried to avoid daily medication.

“I’m more into doing things naturally than chemically,” Link said.

She was expecting Feldenkrais to be more similar to yoga, and she said it was in that they both focus on body alignment. The difference, to Link, was that Feldenkrais is more about brain connection.

She was particularily struck by a movement where she had to lie on her back with her knees up, and slowly rotate her arms, legs, head and eyes.

“It takes some real concentration to keep it going smoothly,” Link said.

Jayme Marshall of Burkittsville also noticed that Feldenkrais was more slow and intentional than yoga.

“I thought it would be more like stretching or something,” Marshall said. “You really have to focus your mind on it.”

Like Link, Marshall said she would try Feldenkrais again, particularily to gain more insight into her own bad habits.

“It’s not how you would normally move through the world,” she said.

Laura Dukes is a free-lance writer and a forme r FNP staff reporter.