Mind in Motion - The Future of Feldenkrais

A revolutionary approach to optimizing human ability when faced with pain, neurological disability, or the challenges of every day life.

Back Into Action

Your strong & supple spine

When Rudyard Kipling was still right that East and West were inviolably separate and distinct, long before yoga became known throughout the West and fusion cuisine had become famous, Moshe Feldenkrais stood at the crossroads. Feldenkrais’ academic and professional training as an engineer instilled in him the quintessentially occidental perspective of the clockwork universe of classical mechanics and cause-and-effect reasoning. Years of practicing and teaching judo steeped him in the systemic and often arcane ways of the Judo master.

Genuine progress

After nearly 50 years of Feldenkrais teacher training, a different kind of program appeared a few years ago. Instead of preparing participants to teach both aspects of the method—the individual table lessons, known as Functional Integration, and collective floor classes, called Awareness Through Movement (ATM)—these programs prepare people to teach the group modality exclusively.

Mind in Motion - Practicing Moshes methodology

On becoming a Feldenkrais Teacher

Over nearly three decades of training people to teach the method he pioneered, Moshe Feldenkrais tried different lengths, varying formats, and educational plans. Each one was a unique experiment.

Studying Feldenkrais’ approaches, my colleagues and I sought to integrate the best aspects of each into our teacher training programs. Over the years, we gradually created a curriculum that we honed and refined, incorporating the most effective features and reworking those that needed improvement. We were guided by feedback from the participants and our commitment to prepare trainees to successfully practice Moshe’s methodology upon graduation.

The language of connecting

One evening a couple of weeks ago, I went to Bookshop Santa Cruz to hear Charles Duhigg talk about his latest publication, Supercommunicators. I was a bit thrown off by this Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and best-selling author’s informal, interactive style until I realized he wasn’t just presenting the information in the book. Duhigg embodied ideas and brought to life the language of connection he describes and advocates for in the book.

Aikido with a car

I met Jess Curtis in the early days of the West Coast contact dance scene. Jess, a founding member of Contraband, a groundbreaking SF Bay Area dance and performance art troupe for the 1980s and ‘90s, and pioneering artist and activist, passed away last week.

Feldenkraisian breathwork

In 1973, Moshe Feldenkrais started a month-long training on teaching Awareness Through Movement in Berkeley, California, by teaching a version of “See-saw breathing.” Asking the participants to explore the many means by which they can get air into and out of their lungs, Feldenkrais challenges the notion that there is only one correct way to breathe.

As far as I know, this 1973 program was the only time Dr. Feldenkrais commenced any course by focusing on respiration. By making breathing the starting point, he laid the groundwork for exploring breathing throughout the rest of the program.

Why Robots Fall Down

In 1993, I delivered the keynote address at Cybernetics in the Art of Learning, the American Society for Cybernetics annual conference in Philadelphia. The talk, titled Why Robots Fall Down, explored the link between cybernetics and human movement coordination, which was initially highlighted in Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics in 1948.

#floortime

Most Feldenkrais classes start with the teacher asking students to lie on the floor and tune into their physical sensations.

This ritual invites you to shift your attention from whatever you were busy doing to noticing your physical experience in the present moment. You begin to sense the rhythm of your breath, notice the position of your trunk and limbs, and feel your contact with the floor.

Neuroplasticity gets real

The Let’s Get Real Movement Festival focuses on the practical tools the Feldenkrais Method provides for improving your life by harnessing your brain’s ability to change. Organized by Australian powerhouse, Angela MacMillian, who graduated from the teacher training program Alan Questel and I directed in Adelaide

Seeing what’s missing

Have you ever watched an animation of a horse in motion?

At the beginning of this video, you see an equine skeleton’s limbs moving sequentially. Sections of the spine — between the head and neck at the top and in the tail at the other end — ripple in a wavelike fashion. As you watch, muscle and soft tissue layers appear, followed by the skin, and eventually, the tail and mane materialize.