Today I had a lovely chat with a fellow Feldenkrais enthusiast. At some point she was sharing with me her experience of a time where she had some knee (?) pain, and upon rolling about with a Feldenkrais lesson (?) her knee pain resolved, but then she had shoulder pain. I’m sorry I can’t recall the exact details. But we were talking about this in the context of anxiety, body posture and what I clearly remember was that she was talking to her painful shoulder and she asked herself, “Why am I doing this to myself?” And while we were talking I didn’t think too deeply about it, at first, because I ..read more

I was browsing through the book, “The Elusive Obvious,“ by Moshé Feldenkrais, Chapter “Awareness Through Movement”, when this passage stood out to me: “This seemed to me the real gist of my knee trouble. I could repeat a movement with my leg hundreds of times, I could walk for weeks with no inconvenience whatsoever and suddenly doing what I believed to be the identical movement just once more spoiled everything. Obviously, this one movement was done differently from the former ones, and so it seemed to me that how I did a movement was much more important than what the movement consisted of ..read more

Re-reading and flipping through his books, it seems to me as if Moshé Feldenkrais has failed in some areas he wrote about the most. For example, about fostering independence and maturity, including sexual maturity, and encouraging critical thinking rather than blind acceptance of authority. To quote him verbatim, “not taking other people’s sayings for divine and immutable truths,” or from a paragraph written in more recognisable Moshé Feldenkrais style: “Only children must do things just to obey orders no matter how unreasonable; this is called, by some, learning discipline. But grown-up peopl ..read more

To me, Moshé Feldenkrais is one of the most hilarious old school writers in the library. His books are spiked with knee-slappers. For example, I quote from “Body And Mature Behaviour,” chapter “Localisation Of Function And Maturity”: “Psychoanalysis, in Freud’s writings at least, deals solely with psychic life. Only very rarely is there any allusion to the fact that psychic life does take place in a physical body. [..] Any such treatment is therefore bound to spend its usefulness rapidly, as it did.” –  There’s plenty of critique about Freud nowadays, especially with the rise of fields li ..read more

Ah good heavens, metaphors of language, transfer of meaning, what a tool. Postural recession is my new word now, really? You too, Brutus? I always liked to afford ? myself a bit of individual style and variety in my posture—I mean the way in which I hold my body when I stand, sit, or walk. A bit of slouching in my shoulders, a bit of depression of my chest, and a bit less of pulling my shoulders backwards than all the brave men all around me who are so good at following all the rules and jumping through all the hoops and believing all and everything that is on the News… including the ads… to e ..read more

Perhaps I can tackle this question through writing. Just the other day (as so often) I found myself pondering the idea of learning figure drawing… but then, I quickly dismissed the notion, as per usual. Lack of talent and time, being my reasoning. How about digital figure posing then? As an alternative route (my usual go-to thought after dismissing the thought of learning figure drawing), I googled afresh and opened a couple of figure posing apps. However, even now, in the year 2024, I find the available figure posing apps painstakingly cumbersome. It takes me, “like,” forever, to pick and mov ..read more

I’ve never started to seriously learn figure drawing, because I think it’s too big of a task for me. It might take me years of daily drawing before I see decent results, and I just don’t have the time for that. Yet- I keep entertaining the idea of being able to quickly sketch down a figure for reference. And immediately after I discard the idea, because the journey would be too long, too time consuming. Yet- I think it would be a skill that matches my profession as a teacher in Somatics. But then, it just seems too difficult, too much of a commitment to even start. I googled “how to learn fig ..read more

There’s this lesson by Moshé Feldenkrais for improving the bending of the head to the right and left. It’s called, “AY#1 Bending the head to the side when sitting.” By all means, a great lesson. I myself I can touch my right ear to my right shoulder, easily. On the other side, my left ear to my left shoulder? Not so much. If I were a little bit more concerned about this, or if I would see the promise of substantial gains in wellbeing or chronic pain issues, I would quite surely try to improve the side-bending of my neck with more determination. The main focus of this lesson, however, is not j ..read more

The way you say something—does it matter? I mean, is there a difference between, for example, “take on a supine position,” and “take a rest on your back?” Does it matter how you say something? The way you say something—does it matter? Yes or no? When? To what extend? And why? When teaching movement lessons, Yoga, or animal movement, or physical therapy, or somatic education… whenever you give movement instructions, is there any significance regarding how you phrase sentences? Is it important or not? Does it have consequences, does the way you voice your intention influence the movements and ..read more

A blog post about teaching. An exercise to relief tension in your neck and chest, a moment to improve your coordination, to fine-tune your motor-control, to raise your embodied awareness. A liberating movement meditation, if you will, in which you learn, observe, feel comfortable and are at peace. To do so, consider the following movement: a little bit of sliding of the head to the left and back again. In the following starting position, in the style of a Somatics (or Feldenkrais) class: Describe the starting position You’re lying on your belly, with one hand on top of the other. Your head i ..read more