Effortless Movement, for an Effortless Swing
By María Uceda — Body Work Movement Practitioner, specializing in Feldenkrais-based work for golfers.
I live near Sotogrande, surrounded by golf courses and golfers, and most of my clients today have been — or still are — golf players. What I teach is Feldenkrais-based movement work: not a lesson on the practice range, but a session on a mat, in a more intimate space, where you learn to feel how your nervous system, your breathing, and your state of relaxation organize the way your body moves — and, in feeling it, begin to change it.
A swing that requires the body less isn’t a softer swing. It’s a more efficient one. Feldenkrais works by refining how the nervous system organizes movement: reducing unnecessary tension, restoring ease of rotation through the spine and hips, finding where a player is working harder than the movement actually requires.
The result my clients report is more consistency with less wear and tear — in the lower back, the shoulders, the neck, the knees — and often more distance, because the strength isn’t being spent fighting your own tension. It’s power that reaches the ball instead.
This is biomechanics from the inside. It’s not analyzing the swing from the outside, the way a golf instructor does, but changing how it feels to organize the movement from within — so that any corrections made are retained, because the nervous system learned it, not just the muscle.
Where Golf Meets Body Work
If you’re enjoying your golf and want to keep playing for many years to come, and you’re looking for kind ways to keep your body supple, this is where our conversation starts.
In-person sessions in the Sotogrande area and along the Costa del Sol, and online sessions from wherever you are.
Get in touch!
My Story: From Golf to Body Work
There was Golf before Body Work.
At Valderrama, the game began, you could say, in the administration department — members, members’ guests, visitors, statistics. It was there that I learned the first notions of this complex and tenacious game, on one of the courses that has shaped golf in Europe. During my 5 years there, I experienced several Volvo Masters tournaments and had the great privilege of being part of the 1997 Ryder Cup.
Anyone who was at Valderrama that year will tell you the same thing: it changes the way you see this sport. You stop just looking at golf and start to understand what it demands of a body and mind under pressure.
I continued to head the golf segment at the Kempinski Resort Bahía Estepona for 8 years, passing through Bad Saarow (Faldo Berlin) in the year 2000, where I experienced the Eisenhower Trophy from the inside. The World Amateur Team Championships, held at the Nick Faldo and Arnold Palmer fields of the Sporting Club Berlin, Bad Saarow, featured 59 competing countries. The hotel was managed at that time by the Kempinski chain.
After that unforgettable experience at Bad Saarow came Elba Palace Golf, Fuerteventura.
The adapted golf school for young people opened in 2007 at La Cañada Golf Club in Guadiaro. I had the pleasure of collaborating in its implementation as Director at that time. La Cañada, in its origin, was also born from an inclusion project — a design by Robert Trent Jones Sr, created to develop the local golfing community.
In 2009, for two years, I was a tutor for the Golf Management training group at the CIOMijas Hospitality School, Junta de Andalucía.
And so I completed nearly two decades in the golf and hospitality industry.
The Turn
A primary lymphoedema condition in my left arm changed the course of my working life. It forced me to start a new journey with my own body — a new relationship with effort, with demands, and with my working life.
That was the beginning of my interest in somatic work. For more than 15 years now I have studied, researched, and practiced — and continue to, as it’s a work in progress:
Scaravelli Yoga, Shiatsu, Qi Gong, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Feldenkrais Method, Body Mind Centering®.
Golf never lagged behind. It just changed its perspective.
“Feldenkrais”, for anyone new to the term
It’s a Body Work method that works from the inside of the body, not from the outside. Instead of correcting a posture or a movement by looking at it, you learn to feel it — how you actually organize tension, breath, and weight in real time. The nervous system learns it, not just the muscle. That’s what makes the change last.