Science of Babies: Feldenkrais Method & Infant Development

We talk with Feldenkrais practitioner Leigh Scott, author of Secrets Babies Hold, a multi-media book about how babies develop through movement, touch, and sensory experiences during their first year of life. Leigh explains the science behind the Feldenkrais Method, shares practical ways parents can support healthy infant development, and discusses common concerns about milestones, muscle tension, and learning to crawl and walk. Whether you're a new parent, grandparent, caregiver, or healthcare professional, you'll come away with a better understanding of how babies learn and what they truly need to thrive.

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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation

About the host: Mirav Ozeri has always been drawn to storytelling and journalism, especially the stories of everyday people.

In the 90’s She founded her own video production company, producing, directing, and editing documentaries and videos for political organizations which led to a 17-year career at CBS News, where she served as a producer/editor, helped launch CBS MarketWatch, and later worked as a senior editor and segment producer until the program was acquired by Dow Jones.

During her years at CBS, Mirav developed and produced a television pilot built around a simple idea: giving people an honest look at what different careers are really like. Although the pilot was never picked up, the concept stayed with her. Years later, she brought it back as How Much Can I Make?, a podcast that explores real jobs, real stories, and the many paths people take to build a career.

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Babies Are Built For Language

Speaker 1 0:02

Babies are wired to learn 700 different languages right from the start. They can learn any language on the planet. They they want to practice what it what they're hearing. So you sing to them, talk to them face to face, and they'll start babbling.

A Pain Fix That Sparked Curiosity

Mirav Ozeri - Host 0:17

Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make, the podcast about jobs and careers. I'm your host, Miravozeri. A year ago, when I was dealing with a really stubborn case of tennis elbow, I tried everything. Acupuncture, compression sleeve, physical therapy, you name it. Nothing really worked. It came back again and again. Then my friend Liz Scott, who is my guest today, and the Feldenkrais practitioner asked me to turn around and she pressed on a tiny spot in my upper back very lightly, and just like that, poof, the pain was gone. I was thrilled. It wasn't the first time a Feldenkrais method held a persistent pain. It won my neck, my back. So today Lee is going to explain what Feldenkrais method is all about and why it can be so powerful, especially for babies. Her book, The Secrets Babies Hold, is out. It's a multimedia book. So if you're a new parent or a new grandparent, I really urge you to take a look at it and check it out. So let's turn to my conversation with Lee.

What The Feldenkrais Method Is

Mirav Ozeri - Host 1:24

So first of all, Lee, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited about this. Let's start by telling us for people who don't know about the Feldenkrais method, what is it?

Speaker 1 1:37

Okay, first of all, it's not Christ like C-H-R-I-S-T. It's Christ as in K-R-A-I-S. Moshe Feldenkrais was in Ukraine and he had injuries later in his life that was pretty debilitating for him. And he figured out how to walk again by watching how babies learn to move. Whoa! That's how he figured it out because his wife was a pediatrician and he had access to being able to observe babies. And this was 30 years before the scientific community started observing and scanning babies' brains and learning about how they're moving. He just learned from his own observations and put together this method by going back down to the floor where babies are learning how to roll over, sit up, stand up, and walk. And he developed this method that adults can use to rewire, learn a new way of putting their whole neuromuscular system together. So how did you come into it? How did you start your practice? I started as a body worker. Then I got into parenting work after having two children. But I was always oriented towards the somatic, the body, and how it's connected to the mind. And so through my journeys as I became a parent and started studying parenting programs, it just became clear how those two things are one, the body and the brain. And that makes sense. Yeah. So I was drawn to practices that led me more to that. Actually had my own physical injuries and limitations. Pretty bad. I couldn't use my hands. I had neck chronic neck pain. I had chronic hip pain. I found a Feldenkrais teacher and started doing lessons and felt very different right away. So I decided to take the Feldenkrais training. And how long is the training? It's long. It's four years. Wow. Expensive. Four years going in and out wherever the training is for long weekends and a couple of weeks during the year. So it just that's some trainings you can do all at once in some places. But it's pretty extensive and I was able to do it after my children l left for college, so I had the time. After six months in, my all my pain was gone. What made you, after four years of training, concentrate on

Why Focus On Babies And Attachment

Speaker 1 4:09

babies? It started because I was also studying the parenting, all kinds of parenting programs, and I found a man's work named Dan Siegel. He's pretty well known. He's written a million books, but his research on babies and attachment, what happens in the first year with the relationship between a baby and their caregiver. He had done extensive research and he was a social neuroscientist and a psychotherapist. And I started reading his books and taking some of his workshops and I had met him a couple times. I was blown away by his work because at the same time I had done the Feldenkrais training and he was explaining the science behind what the Feldenkrais method is, which had just not happened yet. It was just starting to happen, and that was 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And so it's very new that we started studying babies and how they move because we could scan their brains finally. We just didn't know these things before we we had brain scans to see what's actually happening in their brains and learning by observing them in every stage of development, but really observing them. And the Feldenkrais was about movement and how a baby learns through movement.

How Sessions Work With Parents

Mirav Ozeri - Host 5:23

So tell me the work that you do with the babies. You also wrote a great book that has an amazing gimmick and sends people to videos that you already have. Yes. Demonstrate what you're talking about. And guess whose idea that was?

Speaker 1 5:38

You, Moram. My nephews, it wasn't me, but it's brilliant. I came to you to ask advice and you said you need to write a book. And because you showed me that there's such a thing as QR codes, that it's called a multimedia book. But it made sense when you said that, and so I wrote it. It's a con a compilation of my whole life's work in this one little book packed with great secrets that babies hold. So tell me about the work you do with the babies. So I started with being a postpartum duela, so I had the opportunity. So after I studied all this parenting work and the attachment research and did the Feldenkrais training and experienced in my own body how you can relearn by going to your sensory nervous system and paying attention to movement, you can shift neural patterns. Then holding babies for four hours at a time, whether they were awake or asleep, I was able to observe them from that perspective. And I was just blown away by who they are and what they're doing. And that made me want to go study further the child space method, which is an offshoot of the Feldenkrais method focused just on babies and parents and how to help parents observe their babies from this perspective. So what kind of things do you teach the babies?

Mirav Ozeri - Host 6:54

So now do you teach the parents or you teach the babies?

Speaker 1 6:57

Teach both. That I work a little bit with the baby and evaluate them and with the parent there. Then I show the parents how to work with them because a baby changes and learns so much in every minute of every day that a parent who is with them all the time can have quite an effect on them with the right kinds of information and types of touch and ways of interacting. So I evaluate, say a baby has discomfort in their neck from birth. One in four babies has torticolis, which is a kink in the neck where their head is tilted to one way and turned to the other. I just show parents, I'll evaluate by touching, because it that can manifest in many different ways in the rest of their body. So we'll start with their pelvis or their chest and their whole rib cage and maybe one shoulder, and just showing the different types of touch that help to release that baby's habitual pattern there and help him find an easier way to move a different way. And so by working with the pelvis and the rib cage, can release a lot of neck tension, and it happens almost immediately, and the and the moms and dads can see it right in front of their eyes. They see the baby responding in a way that they look happy. So these are just small touches, light touches, it's nothing really very gentle and not in the mainstream methods of PT and OT. They're trained on how to work with a baby from the outside in. And the Feldenkrais and the Child Space Method is the brain-body approach, is more about how a baby learns from

Sensory Systems That Drive Movement

Speaker 1 8:34

the inside out. And the fascinating thing is it's all about our sensory nervous system. That is also just newly being studied. But there's millions of neurons in our body that detect sensations and go straight to our brain with a message, and then a brain comes back with a response, a movement, or whatever it is that neuron told them to do. It's just fascinating. So there's the vestibular nervous system, which is about balance, so how a baby's feels themselves in space, whether they're up, whether they're down, that sense of balance. Then there's introsception where they have bodily, we all do have bodily sensations about what's happening inside our bodies. And that does relate to emotions as well. Emotions manifest in a physiological way, and that's what we're feeling in the inside, from the inside out. And then there's proprioceptive, which are millions of neurons inside that are detecting where your limbs are in space. And a baby has to learn all that through touch and contact with the floor. So we do a lot of tapping like you do when you're burping a baby, but tapping a limb like an arm, and especially if they're not using it, and this is something that parents can notice when they're on babies on the change table. They can notice if they're looking in one direction more than the other, or they're using one arm more than another. And so the tapping and the squeezing, like a hug with your palms, squeezing and holding the limb all the way down, that helps a baby really map that arm. Wow. This is where my arm is in space

Common Delays And Fast Progress

Speaker 1 10:13

out there.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 10:13

What is the most common issue that parents would call you about with the babies?

Speaker 1 10:18

Pretty much any kind of delay. Some I've had a couple with babies who are only scooting, never learn to crawl. They're scooting along on their butt and instead of crawling. Babies who never rolled. I had one baby that had a pretty traumatic birth and his mom had trauma afterwards. So he was quite delayed and he had not had much time on the floor at all. But he was eight months old and he could only sit up rigidly with his legs straight out in front of him. He had no idea how to roll, and babies learn that within the first few months, usually. They begin to learn at least. He didn't know how to come up to sitting or get down to sitting, he didn't know how to crawl. And his pediatrician said, Oh, let it go till nine months and then we'll see what he needs for intervention. And then that would take another month or so to set that up. So that's two months is a lifetime in a baby in that first year of how much a baby needs to move and learn through movement. So I worked with him for two times a week for one month. By the time he was nine months, he was rolling, crawling, coming up to sitting, getting down to sitting. And that's how fast it happens. And he was so delighted with himself because movement is not just physical, it's cognitive and emotional. It's all the systems are completely tied in together, but movement is so essential. He was so proud of himself that every session we had he would just screech. He would be screeching at the top of his lungs, and I'd be singing to him, and he'd stop sometimes to sing a little bit, but he'd just be screeching because he was so excited that he could move and go where he wanted to go. So things like birth trauma, torticolis, any neurological delays, special needs.

When Parents Push Too Hard

Mirav Ozeri - Host 12:04

Is it possible to push it too much? Because parents didn't really do it over the years and babies came out eventually in most to most cases, okay.

Speaker 1 12:13

Yes. Yes, it is definitely. And nowadays there's so much out there. If you're on the algorithm for a new parent and babies, you're bombarded with information and you gotta do this with your baby, and they gotta do that, and this is how you do it. And you see them pushing their baby through things, and that is absolutely will turn a baby right off and make it much harder for them to learn organically.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 12:37

But with the Feldencraft method, is it possible to push a baby too much?

Speaker 1 12:42

No, the whole point of it is to meet the baby where they are and notice what they can do, not what they can't do. And parents are so anxious about something gonna be wrong with their baby, and so they're terrified.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 12:56

What's the biggest mistake that parents do with their babies?

Speaker 1 13:00

I think again, it's just like you say, rushing things, like having them sit too early, feeding them too early, having them stand. Babies when they're just a few months old, they will stand if you hold them upright. They will make their legs very rigid and they will stand up and everybody thinks it's so fun. Look at my baby standing. But it's actually not what they're supposed to be doing at all. There they it'll set up a rigid pattern in their legs, and when they need their legs to be very flexible and move to be able to roll and crawl and come to sitting and then come to standing, but that's way later. So parents start that very early, and I always say, no, give it a little more time. You can't start way up here and then expect a baby to put it all together. They need all that organization happens by lots of rolling, lots of crawling, lots of coming up and down, lots of falling.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 13:55

So babies have to crawl and roll before they walk. They have to, right?

Speaker 1 13:59

Absolutely. The brain is amazing. It will find a way to walk. So babies who have never crawled will will find a way to walk. It just might not be a smooth organization. That's where the opportunity for new learning for adults comes back in, where you can go back to the floor and relearn many different ways of moving because it's pretty complex.

What Babies Teach Adults About Pain

Speaker 1 14:22

Is your job physical? No, it's pretty gentle. I am on the floor a lot, but some people work on a a low table as well. And as a parent, if you can't get on the floor, I always recommend getting uh some sort of a platform, a raised platform that's more firm than a bed for a baby to practice and or for you to be able to join them at that level. So you work with adults also, all right? I do, yes. And my work with babies has really informed my work with adults. This is what I want to know. How? Yeah, it's it brings it into the context of development, which is very helpful. To be able to take an adult and have them lie on a mat on the floor and pretend that they're an infant and that they have no idea how to move. They're on their back. And getting an adult back to that environment is so fascinating to them because they realize how complex things are. First of all, gravity. When you're in the womb and you come out, you felt some gravity in the womb, but not a whole lot. When you come out, there's this massive force pressing you down. Right. And you have to learn what that is and how to work with it. You have to learn how to resist gravity and how to yield to gravity, and then you have to learn about weight shifting. So when you bring an adult to that environment, they're pretty blown away about how complex it is. And they feel right away how relaxing it is to their nervous system to come back to the floor and yield to gravity and then starting.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 15:52

So adults usually come because of back pain? Because I did the Felden Christ treatment for back pain, it actually was very helpful.

Speaker 1 15:59

Any kind of pain or yeah, usually it's pain that motivates an adult to come back. Because it's hard to do. It's hard to slow down enough to lie down on the floor and pay attention to these subtle things.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 16:11

Right.

Speaker 1 16:11

It's very hard. I think that's the hardest part of my work is that sharing this work, people love it and feel really good right away. They've notice a change in almost instantly, and then they just don't do it anymore because it's so hard to stop and you know, come out of your life and it's like meditation. It's like a mindfulness-based practice through movement. So it takes practice, it takes doing it more than just once to

Colic Relief Plus Voice And Singing

Speaker 1 16:38

feel.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 16:38

Give me an example of a case that you had with a baby that stays with you that was the most amazing experience for you.

Speaker 1 16:47

That one where the baby had trauma and transformed in one month was pretty amazing. The other one was my own grandchild who was born with torticolis because he was a nine and a half pound baby and crunched up in the womb and he came out with his neck all kinked up. He also had severe colic, so he's screaming pain for months and months. Severe colics? What is colic is digestive pain. Okay. Every baby had that's a huge thing for babies. They th many babies have just mild digestive pain while as their whole gut is trying to figure out what's happening with the microbiomes and how to digest food or or even just breast milk or formula. So he he had a lot of pain. So he had a lot of crunched up shoulders and neck pain and he had a hard time nursing. So that's a big thing people come for me if there's problems with latching and nursing. And that can have to do with tension in their neck or pain they're feeling somewhere in their body. So he had all those things. And I was with him three days a week for the first six months of his life. And so I would work with when he was in the good mood, never when he was screaming or never in pain, when he was in a good mood, get him on the floor and just do some gentle movements and engaging him with face-to-face communication and sounds and singing. That's a huge way to connect with babies. And people do that, but not so much with how the power of the voice is just phenomenal for an infant. What do you mean? They really respond to your voice. They know your voice from being in the womb, they know the whoever was around when they were in the womb. But it's incredibly soothing, the sound of your voice, and especially if you're singing. And it's also good for the parent because it relaxes them when they sing. I encourage that a lot because a bit you'll see a baby light up right away. If they're fussy and you start singing, they'll calm right down. Wow. It's very powerful. Not always, but most of the time. And just or just talking to them. And face-to-face communication where you're only about a foot away from their face because they really can see your face there and they are wired to observe your mouth as you talk or sing. And they learn language through rhythm and cadence, even more than hearing the words spoken. The rhythm and the cadence is goes right into their brain a lot quicker. So singing as they watch your mouth is very fast learning for language, very helpful for language. Whoa, I really love that. Interesting. Yeah. And you'll see them, they'll start babbling. They'll start talking back. Those babies are wired to learn 700 different languages right from the start. Wow. They can learn any language on the planet. They they want to practice what it the what they're hearing. So you sing to them and talk to them face to face and they'll start babbling and you have a conversation. You let them talk, say whatever sound, you can repeat that. You might miss what they're gonna come back with if you talk back at them too quickly. So you wait and you'll see a whole back and forth conversation.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 19:57

Oh my god, there's so much to know about the development of babies. So much, yeah.

Pricing The Work And Using Packages

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:03

How much can you a practitioner of Feldenkrais can make? You come to a session, how much do you can you charge per session?

Speaker 1 20:10

It's pretty much typically bodywork type of fees, so from 100 to a month, 200, 250 if you're doing a house call, could be more. And but you can also offer packages, especially if there's special needs or delay that you know needs regular work, aside from what you're teaching the parents to do every day. So maybe twice a week, and you might have a package for a few months that they pay up front. Some parents are way more engaged than others, again, their busy lives, but most people I hear this all the time when I talk about this work and I show them things with their baby. They always say that makes so much sense. It does.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 20:59

Yeah, ever I hear that a million times. So it's about the senses, so it does make sense. It's about the sensory nervous system, and so my book is about how a parent can benefit from that.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 21:12

Just so the book actually teaches m parents how to help the baby roll, how to fix the thing with the neck. Uh, does it really teach them how to do that?

Speaker 1 21:23

Not in a way that a professional would be trained. No, it's much more extensive. Years and years of study. But I invite parents to really join their baby's sensory world. It I like to compare it to walking down a road versus driving a car down a road. If you're in a car driving down a road at 60 miles an hour with the windows closed, what you're gonna notice on the side of the road is maybe a sign here, a tree here, this or that there. But if you walk down that same road, you're gonna hear birds singing, you're gonna smell the air. So many more sensations are gonna happen. And then if you crawl down that same road, You're gonna see a whole bug colony, you're gonna feel that your knees are on a hard surface. The slowing down opens up your world and you notice more. That's where I try to bring you with the book so that you can join your baby and learn through your own sensory nervous system how to regulate your own body because that's what your baby needs most, so you don't have to worry as much about doing things right or wrong. What your baby needs most from you is for you to take care of

Less Internet Anxiety More Self Care

Speaker 1 22:31

yourself.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 22:31

There's a lot of information about babies on the internet. What do you wish parents will stop doing?

Speaker 1 22:37

Worrying. If your baby happens to have some sort of delay, parents are so afraid their babies are not gonna be, quote, normal. They're all so different. And yet out there are just so much bombardment from milestones that you've got to reach. The baby's gotta be doing this at this three months, they gotta be doing this, six months, they gotta be doing this. And it's different for every baby. And the all the judgment out there, the judgment about sleep, whether you're sleep training or not sleep training or sleeping with your baby or not sleeping or judgment about everything. And I get a lot of comments, not a lot, most my comments are pretty positive, exciting, and interested, but then there's a few that are like, What are you doing touching these babies? Leave them alone. My kids never needed any of this, and they learned how to roll over, sit up, and crawl. So I just feel like there's just so much judgment out there.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 23:33

Do you feel like there was a change in the last 10-15 years in the attitude?

Speaker 1 23:38

Yes, I feel more anxiety than anything that pe parents have always been anxious about being a good enough parent, but way more now. Because parents of the millennial generation and now Generation Z don't have the elders around, the tribe around that gives them just can feedback, give them feedback about little things, and so they rely on the internet. And that brings more anxiety because you'll see one thing on one page and then the opposite on the next page, and so it they don't know what to do, they don't have that person in their life or that community. So I highly recommend making your own tribe, really building that community that you so from the book which is coming up today, I think.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 24:21

Yes, what would you hope parents would come out believing or learning, or the one thing that really is important for you for parents to get the idea?

Speaker 1 24:32

I think asking yourself pretty much every day, what do I need? What do I need as a parent? As a parent, which is counterintuitive. It's a whole oxygen mask thing. You're supposed to put the oxygen mask on yourself first, but it's counterintuitive. You want to put it on your baby so you can get so lost in the caretaking of your baby that you forget about your own needs if the oxygen mask is on them and not you. Your baby might breathe for a minute, but then if you're not breathing, how are you gonna care for that infant? And that's what they need from you is for you to put self-care and self-reflection first.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 25:07

So before we go, do you think the bay the science of babies or the Feldenkrais is growing? How do you see the future?

Speaker 1 25:15

Absolutely. I I getting I'm getting a lot of professionals approaching me to do trainings to how to work with babies, and that could be chiropractors, could be craniosacral people, it could be oh uh occupational therapists, physical therapists, in parents, even a parent or somebody who wants to work with babies. And I'm gonna develop a training program for that. Oh, excellent.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 25:40

I'm starting it already, so oh, so we have something to look forward to.

Speaker 1 25:43

Because yes, it is, I think, a growing field. I think it has been hard because it's such an unknown, not mainstream type of work, but it is going there. It is absolutely gonna be the future. So I think it's a good time to get into it if you are interested in working with babies.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 26:02

Okay, before we go, I want to give a little plug to your book. It's called The Secret Babies Hold. Like we said, it has a lot of QR codes, so everything Lee talks about you can actually see in a video and follow it if you need. And I wish you a lot of luck. Thank you so much. I'm very excited about it. And thanks for coming on the show. That's it for today. Thanks for listening. If you're interested in more shows about the healthcare industry, head over to how much can I make that info and explore our healthcare jobs category. And we'll meet again next week.