When Sharon Starika de Moyano talks to people about the benefits of the Feldenkrais Method®, the most convincing story she tells is her own. Sharon had been competing in triathlons for four years when, in 1984, she was hit by a large truck while riding her bicycle. The collision broke her left shoulder, pelvis, femur and ankle, and destroyed muscle groups in her left leg and shoulder. She underwent nine surgeries over the course of the next year, including skin grafts, to repair the enormous damage caused by the accident.

Sharon’s doctors told her she would never be able to compete again, and that she probably would not be able to run. But all that changed about a year after her accident when she learned about the Feldenkrais Method and began having daily Functional Integration® and Awareness Through Movement® lessons. The results were remarkable. In only three months, Sharon was not just running, she was back in training. Most impressive of all, she was pain-free.

After her recovery, Sharon competed in European triathlons, and knocked an astounding 20 minutes off her pre-accident time in the marathon run of more than 26 miles.

“I learned how to use myself really efficiently,” she explains. Today, Sharon still runs five to 10 miles a day in the hills of La Jolla.

Having seen firsthand what the Method can do for people in pain, Sharon decided to take the four-year Feldenkrais® professional training program from which she graduated in 1991.

“One of the things I love about the Method,” she says, “is that it allows people to continue to do the things in life that they love to do.”

These days Sharon schedules her running around a busy schedule as a popular Feldenkrais practitioner at the Reese Movement Institute in San Diego, California. She gives local workshops for runners, triathletes and other athletes.

“I like to show them how to improve their performance and how not to injure themselves.”

An easy-to-read self-improvement book, Running with the Whole Body includes eleven Feldenkrais lessons in a 30-day program that Jack Heggie offered at Brookhaven College in Dallas, Texas.