Moshe Feldenkrais understood this and as a result he developed his process of teaching Awareness Through Movement^® (ATM). Awareness Through Movement is a brilliantly conceived process that gives you the opportunity to develop and refine your movement potential and develop your self concept. Learning is the capacity to acquire new behavior. Moshe correctly deduced that in order for a person to learn new behaviors, one would have to be able to discover what their habits and limits are. They would have to be able to feel differences and discriminate between qualities of action. It would be necessary for people to learn how to feel how the parts of themselves relate to each other. One would have to learn how to develop new more efficient patterns of behavior and action. For all this to take place, it would be necessary to become quiet enough to listen to what we do when we act and move. To this end Moshe developed his lessons sitting or lying down. This quiets the antigravity activities of the brain making listening to yourself easier. It is hard to listen to yourself if you are next to a loud noise. It is much easier to hear yourself think if it is quiet.

In one way of thinking, we have two major aspects of our nervous system. One aspect is our motor system, the other is our sensory system. Most of us in our previous training and life have learned to utilize our motor systems through hard work, will and repetitive training. Very little thought has been given to our sensory system. In order to move we must sense and feel. In order to sense and feel we must move. These two aspects of our nervous system are in an eternal dance with each other. In order for refinement of action to take place we must learn to feel with great specificity and distinction what exactly we do in our habits and then through exploration discover new possibilities of action in which our whole self participates. This is learning and this is the process of Awareness Through Movement.

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