Moshe Feldenkrais (1904 - 1984)
"Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself." - Moshe Feldenkrais.
Moshe Feldenkrais devoted over 40 years of his life to an understanding of how human movement can be improved and that self awareness is the key to unlocking our creative potential.
Born in what is now the Ukraine, Feldenkrais emigrated to Palestine as a teenager. During his early years there he developed a keen interest in the martial arts. This interest continued during a 10 year stay in Paris where Feldenkrais studied mechanical and electrical engineering. He began work in the field of atomic research whilst at the same time practising judo. In 1938 he became the first European to obtain a black belt in judo with 2nd degree rank.
Feldenkrais left Paris in 1940 for the UK. Here he began to develop his Method, motivated by the need to help himself deal with a serious knee injury which he had sustained originally whilst playing football in his mid-20s. Drawing on his expertise in engineering, judo, and other martial arts and supplemented by study of many other relevant fields such as anatomy, physiology and psychology Feldenkrais began to use his own situation as a research laboratory. From these beginnings Feldenkrais began to give lectures on his thinking about movement and to teach experimental classes.
Eventually Feldenkrais returned to Israel and started to make his living solely from practising his Method, as more and more clients sought him out. His approach was not to teach movement in a conventional or academic sense, but to rekindle the awareness and curiosity of his clients, so they took responsibility for their own well-being. By the time he died in 1984 he left behind many hundreds of movement lessons which form the basis of the training of Feldenkrais practitioners today. He also trained several generations of teachers to continue his work and published a number of books, of which Awareness Through Movement (Arkana Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-019257-3) is the most well known.
For Feldenkrais the awareness of the self which his Method promotes leads to much more than sound movement. He considered that awareness is the key to true humanity, because it keeps our strong passions and instinctive drives in check, without compromising the creative energy needed to improve the world.
The Feldenkrais movement continues to flourish around the world, in particular in Europe, the United States, Australia and in Israel.
