The Feldenkrais Method

Learning Through Movement

Staffan Elgelid, Chrish Kresge

• Publisher: Handspring Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781912085699
• eBook ISBN: 9781912085705
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Physiotherapy, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation

Key features of this book:

• Comparisons about similarities as well as differences between the different methods. It also shows very clearly how the Feldenkrais Method can be applied in a variety of specific settings.
• By using sound research as the foundation of this book, it will be applicable not only to somatic practitioners but also to health care workers who are looking for more evidence-informed practices for their patients.
• In the experiential parts MP3 files of the lessons are included.
• Edited and written by 24 leaders in the field.

1

Who Was Moshe Feldenkrais?

Chrish Kresge and Elinor Silverstein

Feldenkrais® as a System of Learning

Jeff Haller

The Importance of the Brain, Nervous System, and Body in Learning

Susan Hillier

Training Feldenkrais® Teachers

Larry Goldfarb

Function, Differentiation, and Integration

Lisa Burrell

The Feldenkrais Method®, Science, and Spirituality: A Historical Perspective

Matthew Zepelin

1

Chrish Kresge and Elinor Silverstein

Who Was Moshe Feldenkrais?

Moshe Pinchas Feldenkrais, educator and explorer of humankind, was born on May 6, 1904, in Slavuta, in the present-day Ukraine. He moved with his family to Baranovich (now in Belarus) in 1912, where he attended school, learned Hebrew, and received his Bar Mitzvah under the difficult battle conditions of World War I. At the end of the war, following the Balfour Declaration on the establishment of a Jewish state, Moshe, aged 14, left his family and embarked on a six-month journey to Palestine, arriving in December 1919. He knew already then that his education would be better served there.

Initially Feldenkrais worked as a laborer in the construction of Tel Aviv. At the age of 16, under the British Mandate in Palestine, Feldenkrais joined the Haganah, the Jewish self-defense organization, and after learning jiu-jitsu, devised his own self-defense method, which he taught to his fellow freedom fighters.

He soon enrolled at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium (high school) in Tel Aviv, supporting himself by tutoring mathematics. After graduating from there in 1925, he worked as a cartographer for the British Mandatory Survey Office, making maps of Palestine, Egypt, and Syria.

Based on his experience and learning as a fighter and survivor, he later wrote and self-published a manual on self-defense, Jiu-Jitsu and Self Defense (1931). It was in 1929 that he badly injured his knee in a soccer match in Palestine, which also influenced his life’s direction. He also read and translated into Hebrew The Practice of Autosuggestion by C.H. Brooks. This important work, to which he added two chapters, is about the power of conscious self-suggestion and self-hypnosis to improve any condition, mental or physical.¹ He cared about his hard-working and fighting friends and understood that although their physical fitness was hugely important, their mental state was critical to their ability to survive.

Feldenkrais left Palestine and traveled to France in 1930, where he enrolled in the École Spéciale des Travaux Publics, a famous engineering school in Paris, graduating in 1933. Later he began working as a research assistant in the laboratories of Joliot-Curie at the Radium Institute in Paris while studying for his doctorate in engineering at the Sorbonne. The advent of World War II meant he did not receive his doctoral degree until the end of 1945.

His earlier interest in jiu-jitsu brought Feldenkrais into contact with the founder of judo, Jigoro Kano, whom he met in Paris in 1933. This seminal meeting led him to start judo training (Figure 1.1) and he went on to receive his black belt. Kano was impressed by Feldenkrais’ skill and knowledge, and wanted him to be the conduit for introducing judo to France. Meeting Kano and judo embarked Feldenkrais on his life-long development of what became the Feldenkrais Method.

While in Paris in 1938, Feldenkrais married Yona Rubenstein, a renowned pediatrician, whom he got to know during his childhood and later in Tel Aviv when they both attended Herzliya Gymnasium. Yona had what was known as a congenital hip displacement (developmental dysplasia), and Feldenkrais used his skills and knowledge to help her regain better function (Reese 2015). Though they were married for only ten years, they remained lifelong friends.

Figure 1.1

Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1930s.

© International Feldenkrais® Federation, Paris, France. All rights reserved

Escaping the Nazi advance on Paris in 1940, the couple fled to Britain, although not empty-handed. Feldenkrais carried with him heavy suitcases of secret documents connected to radiation research in Paris, which he took to the British Admiralty. Later on it was discovered that the documents contained, among other things, instructions on how to make phosphorus bombs. He was taken on as a scientific officer in the Admiralty, for whom he subsequently conducted anti-submarine research in Scotland from 1940 until the end of the war. He re-injured his knee both during the hurried escape from France and, later, while walking on submarine decks.

During this period, Feldenkrais taught judo and self-defense classes, which led him to publish Judo: The Art of Defence and Attack, and Practical Unarmed Combat.

Plagued again by his knee injury, however, and with no viable prospects for surgery, he became bedridden and began working in earnest to heal himself. By carefully observing the functioning of his knee and its relationship to the rest of his body through gentle movement and self-awareness, he began to develop a non-invasive system of movement and re-education that helped him overcome his injury. He wrote and gave lectures about his new ideas, began to teach experimental classes, and worked privately with colleagues. These lectures became the source of his next book, Body and Mature Behavior.

Feldenkrais remained in the UK after the war, moving to London in 1946, where he worked as a teacher and inventor, relying also on loans from friends. He took judo classes with Gunji Koizumi at the London Budokwai, sat on the international judo committee, and analyzed judo principles scientifically. He spent much time writing during these years (1947–48) and published his first full book on his method, Body and Mature Behavior, in 1949, and his final book on judo, Higher Judo, in 1952. During this period, he also studied and was influenced by the works of George Gurdjieff, F.M. Alexander, William Bates, and Heinrich Jacoby.

In February 1949 Moshe became a British citizen, but, nevertheless, he returned to Israel in September of the following year to direct the Israeli Army Department of Electronics. Around 1954 he moved permanently to Tel Aviv and, for the first time, made his living solely by teaching his method. He worked on the manuscript for The Potent Self, which he had begun in London in 1947, but which was not published until 1985, after his death. In this seminal work, Feldenkrais delves into the relationship between faulty posture, pain, and the underlying emotional mechanisms that lead to compulsive and dependent human behavior, and propounded his vision of how to achieve physical and mental wellness through the development of “authentic maturity.”

Lest the reader think that Moshe was only interested in studying, learning, and developing his method, it seems important to add that he was also a very affable and fun-loving man. The life and soul of any gathering or party, he was curious about everything and everyone, loved the theater, and enjoyed good food.

Feldenkrais permanently located what he was now calling his Awareness Through Movement classes to a studio on Alexander Yanai Street in Tel Aviv. In 1956, he began giving lessons to Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, one result of which was that Ben-Gurion learned how to do a headstand, aged 71 (Figure 1.2).

Feldenkrais presented his work in Europe and the United States in the mid-1960s, publishing Improving Ability: Theory and practice (written originally in Hebrew and subsequently titled Awareness through Movement: Health exercises for personal growth in its 1972 English language edition). In 1968, a studio at 51 Nachmani Street in Tel Aviv became the permanent site for his private Functional Integration practice, and the location for his first teacher-training, which was given to a dozen students between 1969 and 1971.

Figure 1.2

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of Israel performing a headstand on September 15th, 1957, aged 71, on Tel Aviv beach. He had many private lessons with Moshe Feldenkrais, and this was the first day he succeeded in standing on his head.

Courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

After giving month-long training courses in his method internationally, Feldenkrais was invited to teach a large teacher-training program in San Francisco over four summers, starting in 1975. He also published Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The case of Nora (1977), a fascinating study of his work with Nora, a woman who suffered a severe stroke, losing her ability to read and write.

It was a sign of how popular his method was becoming that in 1980 he began the 235-student Amherst teacher-training course in Amherst, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, however, Feldenkrais only taught the first two summers of the four-year program. After the second summer, while staying in Zurich with his close friends Lea and Michael Wolgensinger, he suffered a subdural hematoma. Dr Gazi Yasergil, a famous Turkish neurosurgeon and head of neurosurgery at the University of Zurich hospital, operated on him, suctioning out the old blood clot, probably acquired from his fighting days. At Feldenkrais’ request, Anat Baniel flew to Switzerland to be with him and remained with him until he was well enough to return by plane to Tel Aviv. He recovered and continued to work and teach from his home, but suffered several small strokes during this time. His book, The Elusive Obvious, was published in 1981, the year he stopped teaching publicly. Moshe Feldenkrais died in Tel Aviv on July 1, 1984.

Interview with Elinor

The following is an interview with Elinor Silverstein, a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and Moshe Feldenkrais’ cousin (Figure 1.3). Her mother, Hana Elter, spent some of her formative years living with Moshe’s parents.

CHRISH: Tell us about some of the memories that your mother, Hana Elter, shared with you about growing up with Moshe and his family.

ELINOR: With the impending invasion of Russia and Poland by Nazi Germany, around 1932, my mother Hana, then five years old, was sent to live with her cousins, the Feldenkrais family, in Baranovich. Moshe’s and Hana’s mothers were cousins from his mother’s side of the family (the Pshaters).

Figure 1.3

Moshe Feldenkrais and Elinor Silverstein, 1982.

Courtesy of Simon Elter

Hana lovingly referred to Aryeh Feldenkrais, Moshe’s father, as Ari. He would invite her to sit with him and the local community of rabbis at the kitchen table on Shabbat to listen to stories from the Talmud about how we treat each other as human beings. He would say to her, “You are the future of the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’… You will be the generation that makes the next generation.” At that time, it was unusual for females to be invited to a table of men, particularly rabbis. However, Ari knew my mother was a precocious eight-year-old and that by bringing her to learn from her elders she would take this wisdom tradition to help others in need. She learned from Ari and the rabbis the importance of working together with the community for the greater good.

One day, Moshe’s mother, Sheindel, was bathing little Hana. Hana saw tears flowing down her cheeks and asked why she was weeping. Sheindel responded, “Little Hanyetchka, my life isn’t so easy. Here I am, a well-educated woman, and yet I must live at home and make my life for my husband. I am here to teach you, so that when you grow up you will have more choices than me, and your daughter will have more choices than you, and so forth. We will continue to raise our children to learn how to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Foreword by Jerry Karzen
• Preface by Staffan Elgelid
• Preface by Chrish Kresge
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Further Resources
• Permissions
• Index