Nice to meet you

Nice to Meet You, I'm Orna Pizanty

As one specialized in physiotherapy, I have, regularly, come across individuals afflicted by pain, who go from one doctor to another, who consume expensive pills, injections and other such costly treatments in seemingly futile efforts to rid themselves of pain.

By chance, I was introduced to the Feldenkrais method (which, along with physiotherapy, is the basis of the Softness Method I have developed). I thus learned that the Feldenkrais method succeeds where physiotherapy has failed and given up. Hence my professional retraining was inevitable.

I am the founder of the Softness Method, that trains instructors how to help tens of thousands of individuals suffering from various kinds of chronic pain. We teach them how to effectively treat such pain. I convey the relevant information in conferences, workshops, online tutorials and video courses that can practically reach any home on the globe.

We have been culturally programmed to follow a certain, very passive code: When a person says ‘it hurts me’, the answer, according to the rather mechanical program, would be one of these: ‘Take a pill’, ‘go to the doctor’, ‘do physiotherapy’. It relates to the body as if it were a vehicle being brought to a service station for repair. Too bad.

However, we can take care of ourselves so easily. Even the most radical solution, which is surgery, often ends up taking us back to square one, and a recurrence of the pain we try so desperately to rid ourselves of.

However, not until we shall have learned to alter our deeply seeded movement habits, will we be able to produce real change regarding such pain.

The Softness Method

I’ve developed the Softness Method, which combines depth of knowledge from various disciplines and includes soft and gentle body exercises that reduce and even eliminate pain. It also improves posture, ease and agility of movement, sleep quality, equilibrium and more.

Most of the pains and aches affecting the body as a whole originate in the upper back. The upper back is a ‘parasite’ and tends to be stiff. It moves too little. Then the lower back and neck become chumps and end up working too hard, instead. This creates deep-seeded movement habits that produce strain and wear and tear, resulting in pain. When the upper back is untangled, the pain decreases and even disappears from one’s body completely.

The Softness Method includes an assembly of creative and delicate exercises, I have formulated, using my knowledge of the physiotherapy and Feldenkrais worlds.

This is such a gentle and pleasant method for the body and for those who experience it, that it can readily be declared that gentleness wins.

When one is first exposed to the Softness Method, she is surprising by how beneficial and helpful it is. It then easily becomes a way of life which is highly beneficial.

Everyone Can

My mission is to teach anyone, who wants to get rid of pain by herself, how to do it. To have the world discover that there is a natural way to reduce and eliminate pain – which anyone can learn. Unlike many other methods, here there are no of side effects, there is no dependence either on a doctor, a therapist or on external means (such as pills or injections).

When I took my first steps in the field of physiotherapy, I saw Zvika, a patient who had changed my life. He suffered from a frozen shoulder – adhesive capsulitis (causing excruciating shoulder pains that are felt with every movement of the hand). I have tried to help him using conventional ways but nothing helped. I asked for help from colleagues who had then worked with me at a physiotherapy clinic and like me they had also failed. Then one physiotherapist, who was learning the Feldenkrais method at that time, took charge of the case. Two weeks later, Zvika was already sitting on the treatment bed, wearing a broad smile he was waving both his hands in an upward motion – the pain and limitations had vanished!

In studying physiotherapy, I was taught that a frozen shoulder is a medical problem that hardly responds to treatment and fades away on its own accord within about two years. In Zvika’s case the limitation and terrible pain was gone within two weeks! I immediately said ‘This is a method I want to know!’

Shortly thereafter, in what was an inevitable step for me, I began studying in a comprehensive training program for Feldenkrais teachers (at the Wingate Institute, the National Institute for Sport Excellence). The program lasted three whole years. It was a vocational retraining program that I was drawn to, even though I already had a profession. It required time, money and dedication. But I could not give up on the acquisition of such a professional tool. I simply could not.

Today, with more than 20 years of professional experience, I can say with certainty: The Softness Method, which I have developed from my knowledge as a physiotherapist and a Feldenkrais instructor, succeeds where many other methods have failed.

“Practicing the Softness method is not painful. It requires neither effort nor straining. It is easy and pleasant and with precise execution the exercises are almost immediately rewarding. For most people it is difficult to grasp how such gentle movements can produce such a quick and profound difference. The experience however leaves no room for doubt.  It works.”

Good exercising produces beneficial relaxation, after which the body just wants to rest and, in many cases, also sleep. Therefore, there is nothing like practicing at home, in bed, preferably before bedtime, when falling asleep afterwards is fitting and the sleep that follows, is beneficial and soothing

When practicing gently, without straining, exertion, or pain (or if the pain is already present, then without increasing it) the risk of damage disappears. Watching the screen clarifies what is required and provides answers to all the remaining questions.

‘Living on pills’ (which have side effects) that do not address the actual cause of the pain, while spending more and more time and money on endless diagnoses and treatments or, God forbid, undergoing surgery and in many cases suffering a relapse? Or, going for a natural, simple, inexpensive and accessible solution, where we take care of ourselves?