How Feldenkrais First Got Moving with Mighty Networks

“ Mighty gave us what I imagine is $40,000 worth of marketing consulting with Mighty Pro.”

Andrew Gibbons

Co-founder

When classically trained pianist Andrew Gibbons injured his hand at 17, he didn’t know if he would ever play to his best ability again. Today, he performs better than he did before his injury, thanks to a Ukrainian-Israeli engineer and physicist born in 1904 named Moshe Feldenkrais. In between working with the French nuclear research program and teaching Judo classes, he developed a new way to rehabilitate an old injury aggravated by walking on slippery submarine decks during WWII.

“I was very lucky because I discovered this method while I was away at a music camp, and a teacher was offering a workshop. I didn't know anything about it,” Andrew says. “Rather than giving you a formula for how to move properly — do this movement, do these stretches, do these exercises — the method provides this master practice of how to observe your coordination and how to refine it.”

Although a foal knows how to walk from the moment it’s born, humans need much longer to learn how to move, and throughout that process, we acquire our own unique style of everyday actions, from running to sitting at a desk typing. The Feldenkrais Method helps people use the neuroplasticity of their brain to adjust their own posture for less pain and a greater range of motion.

“You can actually teach yourself how to stand more easily, how to walk smoothly, and how to have a much better sense of balance,” he says. “Unlike moving fast during exercise, when you're learning coordination and unlearning a lot of the junk you've acquired, you stay below the threshold of exertion.”

After Andrew saw the life-changing power of the Feldenkrais Method firsthand and didn’t have to undergo surgery for his injury, he decided to devote his career to helping others discover this lesser-known solution. After years of teaching workshops at music festivals, consulting for The New York Times, and building his own practice, he and his colleagues decided they wanted to expand their reach, and they chose Mighty Networks to do it.

Andrew and his co-creators were tech-savvy, but when they started searching for a platform to host Feldenkrais First, he knew they didn’t want to spend their time coding a website from scratch or going back and forth with a developer. With Mighty Networks, they had a white-labeled landing page and app right off the shelf.

“We created our minimum viable product so we could just get something off the ground first,” he says. “We were profitable right away.”

Andrew also had an overflowing vault of material — a decade’s worth of lessons he had recorded earlier on Patreon and hundreds of other resources from his colleagues. Mighty gave him a way to clearly organize it all, along with features that let them do live teaching and introduce members ahead of in-person events. Because they can focus on their members instead of technical issues, they can enjoy the people magic more.

“People really appreciate those little moments where there's less friction in how they're able to interact with you,” he says. “And it actually helps us be competitive with other people that are trying to do what we're doing.”

Andrew and his co-creators were serious about building Feldenkrais First into the go-to destination for people interested in the method, so they decided to invest in Mighty Pro from the start. The features and capabilities have helped Feldenkrais First bring in more than 1,000 members since April 2024, and an additional 600 who pay for their premium-level tiers. But Andrew says the support of the Mighty team has provided their biggest ROI.

“What Mighty offered as far as help from real people was worth the price of admission alone,” he says. “They gave us what I imagine is $40,000 worth of marketing consulting with Mighty Pro.”

Building their community with Mighty has even changed Andrew’s posture towards their purpose. Before, he and his colleagues wanted to start an online platform to spread their love of the Feldenkrais Method to as many people as possible, but now he sees his role as a host is something different. They’re here to serve their members, and with Mighty’s tools, he can respond to their needs efficiently and effectively

“We have a member who is a small woman, 95 pounds soaking wet, who has a huge dog. He drags her all over the neighborhood, and she has a shoulder injury because of it,” he says. “I have built lessons just for her, and because she knows how to sit herself in her hip joints, it sees her as the alpha. There's power in a better quality of information. And that's what people see when they join our community.”