Copyright © 2023 Sunyata Movement Studio - All rights reserved.  Terms and Conditions. 

Awareness Through Movement® is a registered service mark of the Feldenkrais® Guild of Norrth America

With over 30 years of clinical experience (first as a physiotherapist and now as Feldenkrais® practitioner), I’ve helped hundreds of clients revolutionize how they move so they could overcome their pain and injuries and regain their once active lifestyles.

So what’s the ONE very important difference between what I teach compared to the stuff every other exercise or mobility program will show you?

It’s...

How to get at the root source of movement related pain problems. 

To heal your injury for good, you have to reconfigure your motor plans in your brain.

If your brain is firing off bad movement patterns, strength and/or flexibility programs can actually amplify your problem and make you feel worse.

The thing is, whether you know it or not, you have huge BLIND SPOTS that are standing in the way of safe, comfortable, quality, functional movements.

And the most common cause of blind spots for people struggling to overcome a nagging back injury is... 

Strengthening programs.

I know it sounds strange because we’re so used to hearing about strengthening, and stability and mobility exercises. And while that can be important, I’m going to share a proven method with you today that is going to do wonders for your comfort in moving.

Strength is all well and good, but not if used poorly.

When you’re focused on core muscle strengthening, this is what that looks like: 

• Contracting muscles effortfully…
• Purposefully reducing mobility (in other words -- stiffening yourself)...

Which results in... 

• Compression, stressing your joints and discs, increased stiffness, which requires more mobility work…

Which set up... 

• Internally conflicting signals 
  • because instead of simply releasing the muscle contractions that make a person stiff, they fight against those contracting muscles with their opposing muscles or…
  • stretching muscles that are contracting too much or even unnecessarily.

It sets up a viscous cycle…

This just keeps  exaggerating the problems with the unhealthy movement patterns that are causing them trouble in the first place.

Because there's another, more sneaky reason that focusing on strengthening exercises or mobility work causes blind spots.

And that is...

When you're doing exercises that stimulate your nerve receptors very strongly, your ability to be aware of what you are a.c.t.u.a.l.l.y doing is lost. 

And when you do not know what you're actually doing, you cannot fix it.  

It's simply the way our brain's are wired. 

Fundamental Groundwork so you can get at the root source of your movement related injury and move better than ever.

Q. Should I wait until my pain is gone before starting this program?

A.You should never embark on any program against medical advice. As long as you're cleared for activity, you can participate in these lessons. The point of these lessons is to help you overcome your pain -- so no, you do not have to wait. As long as you can get up and down from the floor safely, you can do these lessons. And, if some position or move is a problem for you, you can adapt it, make an approximation, do it in your imagination, or skip that variation.

£19.99  + FREE SHIPPING
List Price:  £29.99 (33% off)

£19.99  + FREE SHIPPING
List Price:  £29.99 (33% off)

So What Exactly Is Included With The Fundamental Groundwork Program?

Are you ready to do wonders for you comfort, ease and health?

“What an incredibly beautiful, luxurious feeling to be moving a part that has been stuck for lord knows how long. It's empowering....

Noticing that I'm becoming more stable and less stressed...I feel stronger, and more capable to handle whatever life brings".

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. I'm a visual learner - are these lessons in video format with demonstrations?

A. Although I do have a video demo in the program, what makes these lessons so effective is that you are guided to sense, feel and have your unique needs met while discovering that you have the skills to sort much out for yourself! And so, the movement lessons are in audio format. You don't want to imitate anyone else. You want to sense yourself, not watch someone else. You have your own unique needs and you have the tools to be your own best teacher. I'll show you how.

Q. I want a "quick fix recipe" where you fix my problem - is this like that?

A. No. This is a program is for people who want to take control of their lives and their own health; who want to know, understand and be more aware of themselves. This program is for people who want lasting benefit and the tools and skills they can draw on for months and years to come. You'll have to engage with the lessons with curiosity, actually doing the work of moving and sensing yourself with awareness. 

The third key is to... Refine Your Relationship with the Ground.

What’s important to understand here is so obvious it’s pretty much entirely overlooked by most…

The quality of your relationship to the ground is fundamental to quality, comfortable, easy, powerful movement.

You see, in order to move, you have to shift your weight. 

This is what's called the elusive obvious ;-)

Let's take a few examples: 

• Moving from sitting to standing
• Rolling over in bed
• Walking

These all require that you shift your weight.

• From your butt to your feet
• From your back to your side
• From one foot to the other

When you improve your relationship to the ground so it  becomes fluid and dynamic, so you don’t pin yourself to the ground, push overly forcefully or haul yourself away from the ground... 

It’s incredible how much better your overall movement patterns become. 

The efficiency, ease, comfort and power people feel as this improves delights and surprises them beyond words.

The first key is to... Reintegrate your your skeleton into your overall movement patterns.

The big idea here is not only to normalize the tone of all the muscles around your skeleton, but to differentiate all your joints and crucially, to bring these movements of all the joints of skeleton, especially those that have been stressed or injured back online and include them as co-ordinated parts of every action.

This is important because if your injured area doesn’t become an integrated part of everything you do, you can bet you’re going to continue to tweak it and worry about it…

And when you’re worried about it, it can’t move freely or powerfully.

The second key is to... Use Skeletal Organization.

The main thing to understand here is that most people use way more muscular effort than necessary because they don’t know how to organize themselves to take advantage of their skeleton.

When you organize yourself skeletally, you take advantage of the incredible strength and leverage of your bones and your movements become incredibly efficient. 

Think of Archimedes Lever --- Archimedes said: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I can move the earth.” That’s the leverage aspect...

But more importantly, being skeletal means you transmit forces through your joints instead of across your joints. 

What does that mean? It means you stop putting damaging stresses on your joints, ligaments and discs.

Recover From and Prevent Injuries With Attention To The Most Overlooked Principle Of Strong, Pain-free Movement

Before doing Gisele's lessons my hip, knee and back limited my walking and hiking and I couldn't backpack anymore...

These lessons helped me reconnect the healthy pathways from my brain to my muscles. I know how to get truly centred with ease. They helped me to carry heavier and heavier loads and I've since had the best backpacking trip to Corsica. 

Carol R. Winnipeg, MB.

Now, you might be asking,  "But doesn’t all that require muscle strength?" 

Well, the tricky thing is that of course movement requires your muscles to activate, but what most people don’t realize is that it takes a lot less effort than most people think.

~Indira Rampersad

Q. Are the lessons in this program hard to do?

A. The movements in these lessons are simple. And I'll often be encouraging you to "do even less". You get more from the lessons if you do the moves slowly and with ease. Your brain then has the ability to make the beneficial changes quicker and easier. But don't let me fool you. Just because the moves are simple, doesn't mean they are always easy ;-). Not to worry. If you follow the guidance I give to "do even less", "look for ease" and "never do anything to increase your pain", you'll find the lessons very enjoyable to do. 

Carol Runions, Winnipeg, MB

Indira Rampersad

Or, think of playing music or singing, if you can't hear differences in pitch, if you can't tell what you're actually doing -- playing sharp or flat -- you can't play in tune.

It's the same with receptors in your joints and muscles and movement...

If you can't sense differences and know what you are actually doing, you can't make the changes you need to make in your movement patterns to move "in tune" with the way  you were meant to move.

All the excessive sensation that comes from intense muscular work or stretching of other forms of mobility work makes it’s nearly impossible for you to reconnect the healthy pathways from your brain to your muscles.

It's like trying to learn to be a good wine taster and chugging the wine. It just doesn't work. 

So, I'm going to share with you...

The three keys to accessing the intelligence of your nervous system to change those unhealthy motor plans  to healthy ones and heal your injury for good.

It has to do with differences in muscle fibers, and sensory receptors in the muscles and how your brain activates the muscles. 

When you... 

• integrate every bit of yourself into all your movements 
• organize yourself more skeletally 
• work with the ground and gravity instead of against them

...you can find that same quality of effortlessness that you know is possible to keep your jaw up,  for your back and every other part of you. 

So, you might be thinking… "This sounds too complicated -- too technical".

Now what if I told you that anyone can learn to do this for themselves without needing to get into the weeds of how or why it works.

Because there’s a method with ingenious movement lessons that take advantage of the natural, inborn intelligence of your nervous system. 

All you have to do is know how and what to pay attention to as you do the movement lessons and your brain will automatically start to re-organize your movement patterns.

And this is what I’ve spent over 20 years studying how to teach and guide so that you can reconfigure your motor plans and heal your back for good, comfortably and effectively. 

• You’ll save countless hours and money on endless appointments with professionals.
• You’ll enjoy hobbies and activities more than ever because you won’t have to worry about flaring your back and feeling helpless to do anything about it.

Combining my 30 year background as an athlete, a physiotherapist and Feldenkrais® practitioner I've put together a program of 10 movement lessons called Fundamental Groundwork. 

I guide you through each and every step of every lesson. 

All you have to do is bring your curiosity and engage in the movement lessons with awareness (which I’ll help you with too). 

Here are a couple examples:

When you're standing in the noon day sun, if I come up behind you with a flashlight, you'll never notice the difference in the intensity of light because the sun stimulates the nerve receptors in your eye so strongly your ability to sense differences is lost.

Here’s an example…

When you’re sitting or standing, your lower jaw bone is hanging under your skull….

And yet, you can feel completely relaxed in your jaw muscles and your mouth doesn’t fall and gape open. 

You can keep your mouth closed and it can feel absolutely effortless. 

Reconfigure your motor plans in your brain. 

Get at the root source of movement related pain problems.

(That's not just another exercise or psychological 'resolve-your-emotional-history-and-all-will-be-well' method).