ABM® NeuroMovement®
An Alternative Approach to Learning & Rehabilitation
The Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement® (ABMNM) takes a different approach from most traditional interventions. It is used worldwide with children and adults facing various movement, cognitive, or social challenges, as well as with high-performing individuals.
Rather than using exercises or repetitive training, ABM NeuroMovement uses gentle movement as a way to communicate with the brain. Practitioners connect with each person where they are—physically, emotionally, and mentally—and follow their responses moment by moment. This creates an interactive, playful process of discovery, similar to how young children naturally learn and develop.
Through this respectful and responsive interaction, the person’s own sense of agency and ability to learn are strengthened, allowing new skills and possibilities to emerge from within.
While many people look for “alternative therapies” for themselves or to support their child with conditions such as chronic pain, cerebral palsy, autism, or after a stroke, it’s important to understand that NeuroMovement is about learning and not a medical therapy. The process the method provides not only results in improvements in movement, thinking and emotional wellbeing, but it upgrades the learning process itself — you learn to learn.
Key Aspects
This list of key aspects of the shared approach of the Anat Baniel and Feldenkrais Methods is based on a recent article by Anat Baniel, Eilat Almagor, and colleagues in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience titled “From fixing to connecting—developing mutual empathy guided through movement as a novel path for better outcomes in autism.”
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Both Feldenkrais Method® (FM) and Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement® (ABMNM) are positioned as learning-based modalities rather than exercises, drills, or therapies designed to “fix” deficits.
The practitioner’s role is to create conditions for the person to discover new ways of organizing movement and sensing, rather than instructing them to perform a specific, “correct” way.
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The process always begins by joining the person’s current state—physically, emotionally, and neurologically.
This means noticing how they move, sense, and respond right now, and working with that, instead of trying to impose an external standard or push them toward a specific skill.
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Movements are slow, gentle, and varied, often involving small differences in direction, timing, or coordination.
The variation stimulates the nervous system’s capacity for neuroplastic change—the person feels differences and begins to self-organize in new ways.
There’s no repetition-for-drilling; instead, each variation is fresh and exploratory.
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Attention is a key ingredient: when a person pays attention to how they are moving or sensing, the brain creates richer maps of the body and movement possibilities.
Movements are done slowly enough for the nervous system to detect differences—allowing for refinement of movement and perception.
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Learning is not done to the person; it’s a two-way, in-the-moment exchange between practitioner and learner.
Practitioners listen with their hands, eyes, and whole presence, adjusting based on the learner’s responses.
This creates a sense of mutual trust and safety, essential for curiosity and learning.
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The aim is for the learner to initiate and own new patterns—to discover rather than be taught.
Instead of enforcing a “correct” way to move, the practitioner offers opportunities for the person to find options that feel easier, more efficient, or more pleasurable.
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The process is not limited to motor improvement—changes in movement organization affect:
Thinking (clarity, flexibility)
Feeling (emotional regulation, sense of safety)
Interaction (social connection, communication)
By working with the whole person, FM and ABMNM® help develop broader self-image—how the person perceives themselves in space, in action, and in relation to others.
In short:
The learning process in FM and ABMNM® is about creating safe, varied, and attention-rich movement experiences in real-time connection, so the learner’s own brain can reorganize movement and perception. It’s an open-ended, curiosity-driven process where transformation comes from within the learner, not from external correction.
My Personal Benefits from this Method