Does licking an imaginary ice cream appeal to you? With a tongue that reaches your chest? How about pecking like a chicken? Or perhaps you'd enjoy turning your face to the right while looking toward the left?

The commands of a hypnotist? No, but you might hear them as suggestions in a Feldenkrais class.

The Feldenkrais Method is a holistic technique leading to the re-education of body use and function. Its creator, Russian scientist Moshe Feldenkrais, believed in the total unity of body and mind (rather than the body as machine and mind as its operator) and refined techniques for better using our bodies to develop our human potential.

To this end, Feldenkrais drew on his background in physics, mechanics, judo and jujitsu and studied the sensory-motor processes of the brain. He came up with a program to help people experience their bodies differently -- using awareness, perception, imagination and cognition. The theory is that this gives new options for using the body.

Central to his method is awareness. Students are guided to observe the condition of the body when making movements to become aware of habitual physical patterns and the existence of options. Presented with choices, it is believed, the brain will reprogram the nervous system for comfort and efficiency.

Seven years before his death in 1984, Feldenkrais set up the first U.S.-based Feldenkrais Guild to train others in his method. Now there are guilds in 14 countries, 60 training courses in 26 countries and thousands of practitioners worldwide. A second four-year training course is under way in Japan, with about 50 students seeking certification to teach. The first training ended last year, producing 70 practitioners working in medicine and physical therapy, dance, theater, music and sport. But the Feldenkrais Method can be used to address problems in daily life. For back aches, for example, most of us would seek out a health practitioner to alleviate our pain. Instead, the method teaches, we should work on finding the source of the problem and solve it ourselves.

"We all have areas we would like to improve, but we don't really know what it is that we do that creates the problems we experience," says Roz Brown, a graduate of the first Japanese training program. "Awareness is the key. Without it, we will re-create our problems over and over."

Typically, lessons start out simple and trancelike in rhythm, but often become surprisingly dynamic in the final stages. "We sometimes work in the imagination only," says Brown. "And we also use unfamiliar movements . . . to give the brain a gentle nudge to pay attention."

Hence the imaginary ice-cream cone.

According to Brown, a language teacher for young children who also offers group and individual Feldenkrais sessions in the Tokyo area, we can free ourselves of inefficient or inappropriate habits with minimal effort simply through awareness and exploration of the body.

"Change never takes place by effort and aiming for perfection," Brown insists. "That old motto 'practice makes perfect' should be changed to 'patience makes progress,' but the patience is . . . more like enlightened and detached observation.'

"In language teaching," she says, "children memorize songs effortlessly if you focus on fun actions. They learn the words as a byproduct. Likewise, in movement lessons, areas not being directly worked will change, too.

"The Feldenkrais Method talks to the brain, not the muscles, and shows how, by exploration and by not trying to do something well, we can create a space for ourselves where we are free."