FELDENKRAIS TODAY

At last count, there were around 3000 practitioners worldwide. Moshe set up the Feldenkrais Institute in Tel Aviv and also lectured in psychology at Tel Aviv University. He then took his method to the States, opening the Feldenkrais Guild in San Francisco. Here he trained students to become practitioners in their own right. One of his students, Frank Wildman, is currently running a training program in Sydney, and Peter Binns of the Australian Feldenkrais Centre in Melbourne is one of Frank’s students.

There is a legacy if not a kind of dynasty involved in the passing on of the Feldenkrais method but not a rigid one. New practitioners of Feldenkrais are encouraged to bring their own individuality to it. Feldenkrais always claimed that his students would eventually be better teachers than he. He insisted that to try to teach exactly as he did would be as uncomfortable and unsuccessful for his students as it is for a child to do exactly what parents or teachers say is right, instead of finding out for themselves.

Moshe also used to say that he wanted his method to ‘make the impossible possible, the difficult easy and the easy beautiful or pleasurable’. When placed beside some of our favourite cultural maxims like ‘no pain, no gain’ and ‘no guts, no glory’, his ideas start to look almost radical. It may also explain their current appeal. With yoga and ‘stress management’ now being considered even at top executive level perhaps the ‘no pain no gain’ way of behaving is up for reappraisal. Using the engineering analogy of the man’s own work, Feldenkrais believed that a well functioning system should not have to strain, be in pain or even break down to get the job done.

Of course, this is a simple metaphor for a complicated body of work. Moshe Feldenkrais was the author of nine or so books and so this article can only scratch the surface of his ideas. As a teacher and practitioner in the area of human development he offers a method quite apart from Eastern spirituality or Western psychology and medicine. Though he considered these, his interest was mainly in neurology and behaviours, in areas explored by Pavlov and made popular by Oliver Sacks. As an engineer he wanted to look at our ‘wiring’ and how we are programmed.

The Feldenkrais method is a different approach. It may turn out to be the legacy of a genius, who can say. Either way, Moshe Feldenkrais is that rare Jewish thinker who says it’s OK to take it easy. His life and work are both rich offerings that, at the very least, have surely earned him a place in the Jewish Who’s Who.

©Australian Feldenkrais center