A couple of days ago, I saw a headline from an online newspaper that so perfectly fit my bias as a somatics practitioner that I decided it must not be true! ?
It was about a research study on interventions for knee pain and it said:
"A new study has found that adjusting walking style can effectively alleviate knee pain and slow cartilage degradation....and demonstrated that gait retraining, involving small adjustments to foot angle, provided pain relief comparable to medication."
In plain terms: they claimed that adjusting how people walked eased knee pain more than medication did.
Curious, I dug a bit deeper—and found that it was quoting high-quality research from The Lancet. The article explained it this way:
“By making a small adjustment to the angle of their foot while walking, participants in a year-long randomized control trial experienced pain relief equivalent to medication.”
And that’s what struck me most. Here’s top-tier research confirming what many of us have seen for years in Feldenkrais: small, personalized adjustments can change everything.
But I believe Feldenkrais works even better than the research intervention, because instead of prescribing a single ‘correct’ pattern, Feldenkrais helps your nervous system to discover variations that fit your body best—so the improvements feel natural, lasting, and effortless.
It reminded me of my Walking With Ease, Power & Grace series that I have not spoken about since 2023. Each short standing lesson helps you explore small variations—how your feet touch the ground, how your knees and hips support you, how your spine and breath join in—until you find the version that feels best for you.
The result? You stand better and walk better. Less strain, more stability, and a lighter, easier walk that doesn’t mask pain but reorganizes how you move so the pain can lessen or go away.
If you are interested, you can check out the series below. Walking sessions are great because you can do them with virtually no preparation. You just take off your shoes and begin...
