About the Editors
About the Contributors
Foreword by Jerry Karzen
Preface by Staffan Elgelid
Preface by Chrish Kresge
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part 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

Part 2

Moshe Dō: From Martial Art to Feldenkrais® Art Moti Nativ

Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement®: Transforming the Lives of Children with Special Needs Anat Baniel

Integrating the Feldenkrais Method® into Scholastic Learning Eilat Almagor and Dorit Aharonov

Movement Intelligence® for Bone Health and Graceful Aging Ruthy Alon

My Path from Feldenkrais® to the Tellington TTouch Method® Linda Tellington-Jones

Stress, Anxiety, and Trauma Donna Ray

Creativity: Thinking While Moving Lavinia Plonka

Feldenkrais® for Music and Voice

A Behind the Music Andrew Gibbons

B Voice/Singing Marina Gilman

The Feldenkrais Method® and Dance Paul Pui Wo Lee

The Feldenkrais Method® and a Theater of Enaction Thomas Kampe

Moving to Learn, Training to Win Dwight Pargee

Feldenkrais® to Enhance Yoga Staffan Elgelid

Somatic Education: Feldenkrais® and Pilates Stacy Barrows and Matthew Barrows

Part 3

The Feldenkrais Method® in Orthopedics Staffan Elgelid

The Feldenkrais Method® in the Rehabilitation of Neurological Conditions Karol Connors

Pain and Curiosity Deborah Bowes

Practical Maturity: The Feldenkrais Method® and Human Development Cliff Smyth

A Future Vision of the Feldenkrais Method® Chrish Kresge

Further Resources

Permissions

Index

‘The Feldenkrais Method®: Learning through movement is an excellent resource for yoga or movement teachers who want to better understand the history of Feldenkrais and how to apply it to their teaching. Each chapter is written by a different teacher, which allows you to learn from many people with a specific expertise within the Feldenkrais method. This book also offers specific applications on how to apply Feldenkrais to yoga, pain, creativity, and more.’

Trina Altman Online Continuing Education for Movement Professionals; Author of Yoga Deconstructed®: Movement Science Principles For Teaching

‘This is a great book! It provides an accessible and excellent overview of the Feldenkrais Method and well illuminates its benefits and wide-ranging applicability. It is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to explore somatic learning and self-enhancement – and in particular, it is a must read for the movement therapist within all disciplines who would like to better understand functional, organic movement.

Feldenkrais was a man before his time. Long before ‘neuroplasticity’ became common parlance, he understood it and was experimenting with it. Neuroscience is now beginning to support some of his ideas.

He saw that the way someone habitually holds themselves and moves, can distort that person’s self-perception and interfere with that person’s potential for optimal function, health and well-being.

He was interested in the central nervous systems ability for learning through movement. With curiosity, enquiry, keen observation and experimenting with movement, he devised a sophisticated and unique approach to changing movement behaviour through stimulating sensorimotor exploration and somatic awareness.

However to date it seems that the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education hasn’t enjoyed the popularity it so deserves. For a start, his approach isn’t easily explained away in a succinct sentence. And being an experiential, process oriented, ‘qualitative’ form of exercise, it is perhaps counter-intuitive to the current vogue for ‘quantitative’ high achieving exercise – where the ‘more’ effort and strength and reps the better – the ‘feeling the burn’ and ‘no pain no gain’ approach.

This can also occur in yoga and Pilates.

However, when we use excess effort we develop more tension and cant sense ourselves – and this can be the precursor and contributor to many so called ‘injuries’ we see within the fitness industry

Doing Feldenkrais is very different. It brings about moving with more ease and a lightness of being.

The thoughtful layout of the book assists the reader ‘to get what Feldenkrais is all about’.

The editors have invited contributions from twenty five or so Feldenkrais practitioners around the world, which nicely helps to illustrate the widespread applicability of the concepts in improving human functioning.

The chapters in the first section provide a foundation for understanding the man and how the method evolved – and in particular the basic concepts and principles of his comprehensive approach. This part anchors the book as a reference to better appreciate the following chapters.

Each of the chapters in the second part showcase various examples of the diverse ways in which Feldenkrais practitioners have applied the approach to improve learning and performance – for example in optimising creativity in the arts, ability in the martial arts, in elite sports and in enhancing the practice of other forms of exercise such as Pilates and yoga – and so on.  We also see how the Feldenkrais method can assist in our self-regulation of stress and following trauma.

The third part contains chapters which focus more upon examples of the Feldenkrais method being applied therapeutically in conventional rehabilitation settings. I share Elgelid’s frustration with the limitations of much of the formal physical therapy training – which also led to me exploring the somatic practices of Hanna and Feldenkrais – whose thinking and principles have certainly been a significant influence in the development of my work in seeking ways to redress the movement dysfunction in people with spinal pain disorders.

A valuable added resource is the inclusion of a Feldenkrais ‘lesson’ at the end of most chapters which further inducts the participant in experiencing aspects of the method. This can be easily accessed by a QR code on your phone.

This book is a good read and I highly recommend it.’

Josephine Key Dip Phys; PGD Manip. Ther; MAPA; Neuro-musculo-skeletal physiotherapist, Author of Freedom to Move: Movement therapy for spinal pain and injuries

Review of The Feldenkrais Method®: Learning through movement by Shona Lee, Editor, Feldenkrais Australia

Bringing together a compilation of wisdom, insights, and understandings from an array of practitioners is where the value of our Journal lies. Somehow each individual article seems to be enhanced by appearing alongside the other articles, for a more complete picture; illustrating the adage (and Feldenkrais whole system philosophy) that we are more than the sum of our parts… to view the whole, contextualises detailed nuance.

A new book, The Feldenkrais Method – learning through movement published by Handspring Publishing this year, is crafted with a similar principle. Compromising of 24 chapters/topics with contributions from 26+ accomplished practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method and 27 accompanying audio-visual movement lessons that are accessible via QR codes. Collated and edited by Staffan Elgelid and Chrish Kresge, this publication offers accessible value in a nicely structured package.

It is the sequencing of this book that especially stands out. They have structured the content into three sections. Part one details fundamental terrain underpinning the Feldenkrais Method® (who was Moshe; this method being a learning system; how the brain learns; how practitioners are trained; definitions of Function, Differentiation, and Integration and where the Feldenkrais Method sits in the science vs spirituality categorisation). Part two offers examples of how the Method is being used in specific settings ranging from: performing arts, to sports, to children, to animals, to scholastic learning, stress, anxiety and trauma. Part three zooms in on Feldenkrais in the rehabilitation setting and we finish with a future vision (collective dreaming) of where Feldenkrais may be headed in a number of years. The alphabetical index at the back of the book allows you to quickly reference relevant topics.

So who is this book for? Clearly the aim of the publication is to open up an accessible understanding of the Feldenkrais Method to those with no prior (or minimal) experience of our work. The authors are careful to begin at the beginning and clearly define concepts without getting bogged down in how many layers there are to how we work. Their priority of communicating in clear language doesn’t strip away the signature style of each individual contributor and there will undoubtably be some sections that more resonate more deeply with the individual preferences of each reader; as per the nature of a smorgasbord. The book features case studies that explain our working rationale step by step in plain English.

But before more seasoned veterans assume that they’ve heard it all before, here’s what I think you might enjoy:

There are personal, first-hand accounts / anecdotes from folks who spent a lot of time with Moshe in real life, which allow us glimpses of who he was and the context in which he lived. Definitions of Function, Differentiation and Integration based on their specific meanings from the physics / mathematics domain. And who doesn’t love being inspired by uplifting stories of profound change that are peppered throughout, encapsulating the deeper meaning of what it is we offer people. Actually, it’s not only people – Chrish Kresge interviews Linda Tellington-Jones on the work she does with animals and how Tellington TTouch evolved.

Perhaps the gold you might extract from this publication is a ripper quote that summarises the essence of the Feldenkrais Method in a succinct sentence or two. Some of my personal favourites:

Moshe was committed to creating new generations of healthy people whose physical and emotional state was not dictated by past traumas…Generations who could live viable and full lives with the ability to have free choice in every moment. Chapter 1, p9, Elinor Silverstein

… an important result of evolution is the ability to meet a situation never before encountered with a response not specifically learned but, rather, spontaneously produced, derived from all past learning and phylogeny’ Chapter 5, p44, Lisa Burrell

‘… understanding intention-driven, perception-guided, self-organised orchestration of human motion…’ Chapter 4, p33, Larry Goldfarb

Other gems I enjoyed were clever layering of rollers for training musicians described by Andrew Gibbons pp120-121. ‘The Feldenkrais context offers an intelligent retreat from performance mode, where a musician can train the instrument that plays the instrument….passive assumptions about how the body works are replaced with active literacy’  p118. I valued the clear layout of factors for long-term learning that Susan Hillier laid out in Chapter 3, p27 – amount and quality of practice, level of meaning or relevance, salience (meaning the degree to which something stands out or grabs your attention) and specificity. Hearing Donna Ray recount deliberate reasoning in what side of the body she might start touching first when working in the terrain of trauma was also insightful (Chapter 12, p102).

I feel somewhat patriotically proud, to report that the contributions to this book that came from our own Australian practitioner community from Susan Hillier and Karol Connors (can we also claim Anastasi Siotas as our own?), stand out as being scientifically sound, well-researched and articulated with clarity,

Have I sold this enough so that Handspring Publishing sells out their first print edition?! Whilst we kind of already know that the punchline of each mini essay is that the Feldenkrais Method is wonderful, it’s what we learn through the process along the way rather than the end destination that’s most fascinating right….?! I think Staffan Elgelid’s analogy, in his preface for this book, of the Feldenkrais Method being a very BIG basket is apt; it certainly comes through in this offering.

Shona Lee, Australia, July 2021