The Stress Incontinence Workshop - Strengthening the Pelvic Floor

About Jane Burdick

I have been a Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner® since 1992. Most of my clients come to me because they have pain of some kind. I help them bring out of the shadow forgotten healthy movement patterns while at the same time helping them diminish learned patterns that are getting in their way and causing them pain. I also work with those who have had injuries, or who are neurologically challenged from birth, or from trauma such as stroke. I also work with dancers, musicians, and athletes to help them improve what they already do well.

I began to teach “Strengthening the Pelvic Floor” classes and workshops in 1994. I noticed that by far the largest percentage of women who were coming to the workshops were suffering, mostly silently, from urinary control problems. This caught my interest because it’s a problem that’s so fixable. They all went away from the workshop grateful for some solid knowledge about themselves and a definite way to improve their condition.

There’s so little out there for help that I decided to concentrate on the education of women with the problem of incontinence. Since there are between 25 and 40 million women with this difficulty in the United States, I had to come up with a way to reach more than those who could come to my workshops. Hence these CD’s.

The Feldenkrais® training is a four-year, extensive retraining of our own movement patterns. It trains us to teach classes and also to use our hands-on skills to guide the client toward better understanding of what’s working in their movements and what isn’t, what’s helping and what’s getting in the way and maybe causing pain.

I’ve also studied for two years with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen in Body-Mind Centering® gaining insight from her work into the role of all the body systems on movement and health. From a lot of work in Continuum® with Emily Conrad I learned the importance of the subtlest wave motions constantly pulsing throughout the body. That coupled with her clear priority on strength training made for a powerful influence on my work. I took a year-long living anatomy training called The Broad Reach of Bodywork® with master anatomist Tom Myers, and studied Somatic Integration®, a living inquiry into therapeutic movement, with Craig Williamson, MSOT. I also use Matrix Energetics with my clients—the work of Richard Bartlett.

All those influences plus just living more and more as embodied awareness makes for a rich and deeply interesting journey in an aging body. I have increasing appreciation for the qualities of quiet, rest, and relaxation out of which real learning and comfort in the body come.