Moshe Feldenkrais
Moshe Feldenkrais was a remarkable man from many perspectives. He was one of those rare individuals who lived a life of great achievement in a few different fields - anyone of which would have been extraordinary by normal standards. Consider the breadth of this experience: He was an accomplished musician and sportsperson. Through his interest in Ju Jitsu he developed his own form of self defence. As an insight into the man and how he thought consider how he taught self defence to his colleagues. After teaching them formal Martial Arts techniques he noticed that they usually forgot them after 6 months. He then went about testing their natural reactions when he would feign a punch or some other attack. Upon noticing their natural reactions, usually a flinch, Moshe Feldenkrais designed particular martial defences for them based on these instinctive reflexes. With these strategies in place they remembered their skills 6 months later. He then tried to teach these techniques to Kano (the founder of modern Judo) who was impressed enough to assign a couple of his top Judo blackbelts to teach Moshe. As such he became one of the first European Judo blackbelts and is credited with introducing the art to Europe. In fact, he founded the Ju Jitsu Club of Paris. The Feldenkrais approach to something like lengthening the hamstrings is different to most. We aren't so much interested in you being able to stretch further, rather we are endeavoring to have you be able to engage the use of your hamstrings in a more integrated and useful manner. This is a typical way of using Feldenkrais Exercises to enable you to be able to reach further as a consequence. Interestingly, as his first sources for his study he modelled his own movement patterns and those of developing babies and young children. He continued this study into the nature of awareness and consciousness. He developed his system into both the hands-on version (Functional Integration) and guided movement patterns (Awareness Through Movement). He brought his Method to many different areas of application and worked with experts from cybernetics, linguistics, systems theory, the arts, sports, politics and so on. Today his legacy lives on with an ever expanding community consisting of over 3000 qualified Practitioners in all corners of the globe and his influence can be found wherever human movement is featured. Moshe Feldenkrais wrote extensively and his books include:
He developed a system that continues to evolve and offer value in an ever expanding way. Perhaps the aspect I most admire about Moshe Feldenkrais is that he never seemed to violate his own principles. He was always well organized in the field of gravity. Return from About Moshe Feldenkrais to the Feldenkrais main page.
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