Dr Moshé Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais® Method was created by Moshé Feldenkrais,
a pioneer in the science of movement and a reformer in the therapeutic approach
Birth
Moshé Pinhas Feldenkrais was born on May 6, 1904, in the town of Slavuta in present-day Ukraine. When he was still young, his family moved to the neighbouring town of Korets and then, in 1912, to Baranovichi, Belarus. In 1918, along with other compatriots, he traveled to Palestine. On this trip Feldenkrais, no longer close to his family environment which was steeped in strict adherence to religious rules, was open to question the traditional mandates of his ancestors, and to reflect on the possibility of free choice. Placing freedom and choice high on the scale of values - concepts "that make man, man" - is fundamental to understanding the Feldenkrais Method. To be able to question one's motivations and the old-fashioned pattern of conditioned learning by making a free choice is one of the highest values of the method (and this is linked to posture, breathing and other functions).
1929-1930
As a young man in Palestine, Feldenkrais was both physically active, working on the reconstruction of Tel Aviv, and academically gifted, especially in mathematics and other sciences. At the time, because he was part of a group of men defending Jewish settlers, he was trained in the martial art of Jiu Jitsu by an Englishman. He was also passionate about football. These interests proved to be very important, because through martial arts he learned a lot about physical movement, and because of a knee injury during a football match in 1929, he was later motivated to learn how to heal himself.
Two other influences proved decisive for Feldenkrais. His relationship with his future wife Yona Rubenstein - a pediatrician - was extremely important, on both a personal level and also because of his increased interest in child development and how behaviors are learned. He was also fascinated by methods involving mental control and self-monitoring, particularly the work of Frenchman Émile Coué (1857-1926), which involved deep relaxation, self-hypnosis and positive thinking.
In 1930, Feldenkrais went to study in Paris and in 1933 he worked as a research assistant under Frédéric Joliot-Curie at the Radium Institute. He studied mathematics, physics and engineering and received his doctorate from Sorbonne University. Equally important during this time, was his introduction to Jigoro Kano, the founder of modern Judo, through a martial arts textbook he wrote in Palestine. Japanese people, who at the time were struggling to introduce this martial art in Europe, were so impressed by Feldenkrais' book that they decided to train him - over a period of several years - provided he agreed to help them in their pursuit. The Judo club he founded in Paris, is still in operation.
1940-1950
During World War II, Feldenkrais escaped from Paris and went to Great Britain to work for the Allies, conducting anti-submarine surveys in Scotland between 1940 and 1945. Meanwhile, a re-injured knee and the serious possibility that surgery would leave him disabled for life, led him to study anatomy, physiology and the evolution of movement, with the aim of learning alternative modes of movement, and to train himself to walk with the least possible strain. In order to achieve this, he had to gain a kinesthetic awareness of how he uses and moves his knee.
Feldenkrais knew that when a person is standing up straight, a group of muscles, the antigravity muscles, hold them upright. The way each person chooses to stand is related to their learned habits, which they recalls each time they perform this action. Concluding that his standing habits were aggravating his knee problem, Feldenkrais decided to lie down in order to counteract the action of gravity and the resultant use of his antigravity muscles. He spent countless hours moving his knee imperceptibly, many hundreds of times, pinpointing the starting point of the pain and restrictions. He later told one of his students, Mark Reese, that by observing himself he was able to discern all the subtle unconscious connections between all of his parts. Feldenkrais wrote that "no part of the body can move without all the others being affected". This holistic insight would later differentiate his method from physiotherapy (and other types of physical therapy) - that in most cases involve the use of equipment that focus locally on the affected area - because the Feldenkrais method follows non-individualized treatment protocols. The physical therapy approach is essentially 'mechanistic', because it treats the body as a system made up of separate parts. By contrast, with the Feldenkrais method, healing occurs as a result of the connection of the affected limb to the other parts of the body, as this process allows for growth and consequently healing. Private Treatment sessions (Functional Intergration Treatment®) are based on this concept. Feldenkrais claimed: "I have no stereotypical technique that I apply invariably to everyone. This is against the principles of my theory. I seek and, if possible, find in each session the greatest challenge, which, if worked on, can be softened and gradually eliminated. I proceed slowly and progressively through all of the body's functions".
During his time in Scotland, Feldenkrais began to formulate his ideas about human learning and prepared the manuscript of his first book, then titled "Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex and Gravity". It was a text that began as a reflection on the work of Freud, for whom he had a deep appreciation. Unlike other physicians of his time, Freud emphasized the fact that the mind and body are constantly influencing one another. Feldenkrais, however, notes in his book that Freud's therapy focused little on how anxiety and other emotions expressed themselves in the body, and that Freud himself did not recommend that psychoanalysts work physically with a patient.
Feldenkrais believed that we don't distinguish clearly between physical and mental/emotional experiences: The usefulness of the idea of two lives, one somatic and one mental/emotional, has been surpassed. All poor posture and our defensive experience is both a physical expression and its opposite. During this period, he was influenced by the teachings of F.M. Alexander, G.I. Gurdjieff, Heinrich Jacoby, Elsa Gindler and Dr. William Bates. These influences helped Feldenkrais shape the therapeutic approach in relation to posture.
After the end of the war, he settled in London and began writing his book The Potent Self, in which he begins to develop his therapeutic method, which he also applies to help his fellow scientists and friends. As a physicist, he had met the best of the best: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg. Now he was faced with a great dilemma: should he continue his career in nuclear physics or, in light of the astonishing results he was obtaining, should he pursue a career in therapy? Feldenkrais chose the latter. His mother once said, jokingly: "He could have won a Nobel Prize in physics, but instead he became a masseur".
1951-1957
In 1951, he returned to the newly-founded Israel and settled, in 1954, in Tel Aviv, where he began to systematically apply his method. His first assistant and student was Mia Segal, with whom he worked out many of the details of his work. At the time, great interest in his work was shown by Aharon Katzir, a scientist with major contributions to the field of neuroplasticity, who recommended Feldenkrais' work to the then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. In 1957, Feldenkrais started treating the 71-year-old Ben-Gurion, who was suffering from severe stiffness and back pains that almost prevented him from standing. The effectiveness of their lessons was eloquently captured in a photograph that made the rounds at the time, in which the elderly prime minister is shown standing on his head on a Tel Aviv beach. Very soon Feldenkrais' reputation spread and he began to travel to deliver classes, which were attended by, among others, violinist Yehudi Menuhin and British film director Peter Brook.
1960-1984
In the 60s, 70s and 80s, he introduced the Feldenkrais Method to Europe and North America, training practitioners who would in turn pass on their knowledge to the next generation. The first group, consisting of 13 students, was trained in Tel Aviv between 1969 and 1971. Between 1975-1978, a further 65 students followed, this time in San Francisco, namely at Lone Mountain College, under the auspices of the Humanistic Psychology Institute. In 1980, 235 more were trained in Hampshire College, Massachusetts. In the fall of 1981, Feldenkrais became ill, at which time he stopped teaching publicly. He died on July 1, 1984. Today, the Feldenkrais® Method is taught all over the world, by official Guilds.
Titles taken from his published work include: Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning, The Potent Self (Ikarios), The case of Nora, Awareness Through Movement (Ikarios )and The Elusive Obvious.