Born in Israel, Anat Baniel has established an international reputation as one of the world's leading authorities in finding ways to access the brain to overcome pain and limitation, increase vitality, and help children with special needs make the impossible possible.
"Anat Baniel has evolved to a point that few can match, let alone surpass. She is indeed a unique asset to those who come into contact with her." Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
"After five years of college, two years of graduate school, and twelve years of continuing professional education, I have yet to encounter a teacher whose understanding of human learning is as thorough and clear as Anat's" Linn Harding, Physical Therapist
"Anat is always an outstanding teacher" Jack Obedzinski Child Psychiatrist
Early in her life, dance and movement provided an outlet for Anat's intense inner life, and through her participation in Feldenkrais movement classes, movement became a reliable way for her to find her own sense of well- being. In college she was drawn to psychology as another way to understand the patterns of behavior that created human suffering, and then pursued a third interest in statistics, which kept her connected to the sciences, mathematics, and rigorous intellectual activity that she had always loved. She graduated
cum laude from Jerusalem University with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology and Statistics.
While continuing her studies toward a Masters in Clinical Psychology at Tel Aviv University, she worked as a psychologist for an Israeli Army program that addressed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Looking for answers in psychology, she found limitations in its verbal approach and began developing ways to integrate it with what she had learned about movement. She found her way back to the work of
Moshe Feldenkrais, who had frequently taught classes in Anat's parents' living home when she was very young. Through her apprenticeship with Dr. Feldenkrais, she found what she'd been seeking—an approach that had rigorous scientific underpinnings, profound and integrated knowledge, authentic contact, and communication, with high levels of awareness, accountability, and connection with one's feelings. At the center of it all was movement as a self-referencing, highly effective means of communicating with the brain to promote change. Above all, the work got immediate results, with the impossible made possible over and over again.
For 15 years, she continued her close association with Dr. Feldenkrais, teaching, studying, and traveling with him all over the world. During the same years, she opened her own practice where she taught and treated adults and created her own method for working with children who had developmental problems. It was through her work and miraculous successes with children that she discovered the secrets to what the human brain requires in order to transform pain and limitation into well-being and vitality in adults.
"I have observed Anat's work with severely challenged individuals over a period of more than two decades, and have witnessed transformations that are simply stunning. Over the years, Anat explained to me the premises of her work, and I have become a life-long enthusiast." Dr Daniel Graupe, Professor of Bioengineering and Adjunct Professor of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Anat moved to the United States in 1982, where she was able to bring her work to greater number of people while creating larger circles of professional acceptance in the medical and therapeutic communities. More and more people came to her private practice and seminars for help. Through word of mouth scores of parents began bringing their children to her for help. She was able to continue her work with performing artists in the U.S., helping individuals such as conductor Seiji Osawa and pianist Leon Fleisher as well as young musicians at the Tanglewood Music Festival and in the San Francisco Symphony. She has also taught dancers from the Joffrey Ballet and worked with numerous professional athletes. In the past 25 years Anat has trained over 1000 practitioners that bring the knowledge and practice to people all over the world.
The firm foundation of her methods is the product of extensive, well-documented case histories of adults, and with special needs children, backed up by the most advanced brain research.
The power, integrity, and credibility of Anat's work come out of three decades of repeated, successful results with clients in private practice and in hundreds of workshops. Her methods have been proven over and over again, in the treatment of a large range of ages and conditions, from healthy young adults pursuing peak performance in sports endeavors, to people in their advanced years seeking greater vitality, to extreme cases of tiny babies diagnosed with serious developmental disorders. In her popular seminars, even people in their eighth and ninth decades of life have experienced immediate results and seeming miracles, allowing them to enjoy productive and exciting lives previously thought to be impossible for their age groups and conditions.
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TECHNOLOGIES