East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. — Rudyard Kipling 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 ..read more

Comfortable is nothing.It’s what you’re used to. — Moshe Feldenkrais 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.  In a departure from the previous three or four years of professional schooling, these ATM-only courses consist of ten weeks of instructio ..read more

Tell me and I forget.Teach me and I remember.Involve me and I learn. — Benjamin Franklin 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 gui ..read more

Life is the dancerAnd you are the dance. — Eckhart Tolle 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.  When I heard the news, I immediately flashed back to one of the best dance performances I’d ever seen. It was the summer of 1997; the occasion was the final program of the second annual San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival. Created by choreographer Keith Hennessy ..read more

Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? — Mary Oliver 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 ..read more

Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? — Mary Oliver Moshe Feldenkrais presented monthlong 1973 training on teaching Awareness Through Movement in Berkeley, California. He commenced with a lesson about breathing. As far as I know, this is the only time he began a course or workshop focusing on respiration.  This unique starting point laid the groundwork for interweaving the role of breath throughout the rest of the program, which consists of what we now consider the method’s masterpieces. For instance, during the unique version of the classic “flexion” lesson ..read more

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance,you must keep moving. — Albert Einstein 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.  Wiener’s work discusses the role of kinesthetic perception in guiding movement, arguing that we cannot think about perceptions merely as inputs and movement as ou ..read more

You can’t fall off the floor. ― Paul the Apostle 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. At some point, I might ask the participants to consider the floor a friend. After all, the floor is so reliable and dependable. No matter where ..read more

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, this event features some of the best teachers from Down Under and the US. The program offers a mix of intriguing panel discussions, informative presentations, and transformational experiential movement lessons. I’m honored to be a member of the Beyond Hacking Your Brain: Harnessi ..read more

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. — Oscar Wilde 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.  In his comments, New Zealand digital artist Julian Butler tells us he used photos along with data acquired from ..read more