October 20, 2021

Episode 250 | Feldenkrais And Awareness Through Movement As A Tool For Pain Management With Dr. Teresa Miller

49 minutes

This was a fun episode for me for lots of different reasons. The first reason, I spent a lot of time over past episodes talking about cognitive-behavioral therapies, in essence, if you will, the more top-down approaches for the treatment of chronic pain as well as other health conditions. Being a physical therapist, I work with both the mind as well as the body. I want to turn some attention toward more of the embodied therapies, more of the bottom-up approaches, and how they can have a very positive influence and impact on someone's pain and their overall health.

In this episode, we are going to discuss awareness through movement and how the Feldenkrais Method can be used as a tool for pain management. My guest for this episode is Professor Teresa Miller. She is the Founding DPT Program Director at St. John's University, a graduate of the American Physical Therapy Association Educational Leadership Fellowship, and a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner.

She is an Associate Professor Emeritus from State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, where she taught physical therapy for years. Dr. Miller received her PhD in Physical Therapy from Temple University, her MS in School Psychology, a BS in Physical Therapy, and AIS in Physical Therapy Assisting.

In this episode, we discuss what is the Feldenkrais Method, how it is developed, what are the guiding concepts of a Feldenkrais lesson, how Feldenkrais can help those managing chronic pain and how to find a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner. A little FYI before we begin this episode, Dr. Miller was one of my professors of Physical Therapy at the State University of New York Health Science Center, Brooklyn way back from 1995 to 1997.

I consider her a colleague, a mentor, as well as a friend. It was lots of fun for me to do this episode with her. It takes you back in time a little bit too when I was a student and reviewing some of the work that she did, which is groundbreaking. Feldenkrais was not so popular in 1995 when I went to PT school. She was one of the first people to introduce me to more of the mind-body as well as embodied approaches to treating pain.

I want to thank her for her time and for joining us for this episode. I know you are getting a lot out of it. I especially want to thank her for her leadership and bring some of these mind-body approaches into my personal practice as a PT but also into the profession and providing evidence for it. Without further ado, let's begin and meet my good friend, Teresa Miller.

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