Where: One-on-one sessions can be arranged at The Healing Touch, 1/F, 59 Wyndham Street, Central (tel: 2809-2737). Lee Bonella also runs regular classes at the YWCA, Mid-Levels (tel: 2524-8424).
Why: While massage can alleviate pain from poor posture or incorrect ways of moving, the Feldenkrais Method aims to correct the imbalances that create the pain in the first place. It's a system of organising the way the body moves - coaxing it out of old ways which may have developed in response to age or injury - with maximum efficiency and minimum effort. Once everything moves as it should, a sense of balance and lightness is achieved.
Who: Lee Bonella trained as a physiotherapist before completing a four-year Feldenkrais training course in Australia in 1990. She's been practicing in Hong Kong since 1997. The method was developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, a Russian-born physicist, judo master and acupuncture student who dedicated much of his life to studying human movement after being told he had a limited chance of recovering from a knee injury. His knee healed, and by the time he died in 1984, his method had been taught internationally for 30 years.
What: A visit to Bonella makes you extremely self-conscious about every move you make. But she's not a shoulders-back-and-chin-up advocate, preferring to give people options about how to move themselves. The focus of my session were my shoulders and pelvis which Bonella said I was holding too rigidly. She moved my limbs about, demonstrating how other muscles should be working in tandem with them. Once I became aware that I was holding these areas too tightly I let them go, feeling a pleasant fluidity creep into my shoulders and lower spine.
The result: I expected to be like a baby learning to walk again, but the things I learned during the session were relatively easy to retain - for the first day anyway. I'm more conscious of proper ways to sit, stand and walk, which has so far prevented my regular neck problem from recurring.
The bottom line: One-and-a-half-hour classes are taught in batches of six for $600. An hour session with Bonella costs $500.
