Feldenkrais Method, Rolfing, and Alexander Technique…
Historically speaking, I do not know much about interactions between Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais. I remember a delightfully arrogant pronounciation that Moshe made about Alexander. He said that if Alexander had lived another 10 years, he would might have been able to invent the Feldenkrais Method….
But I have not heard much about Moshe’s impression of Rolfing, Structural Integration, or Ida Rolf. Does anyone have any first hand information about that, or any references? Can anyone point me to accounts of meetings between Rolf and Feldenkrais?
Thanks – Ryan
Addendum: Thanks to Nurit Muchnik in Israel for pointing out this quote:
“…when Ida Rolf integrates structure , as nobody else can, she improves functioning…Rolfing was a revealing and unforgettable experience for me.” – Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
The quote is on the back cover of this book:
Does anyone know when and where the quote was made? Do you have others? Post them in the comments box below if you have a chance.
Also, come back in a few days, I will be interviewing a former “rolfer” or practitioner of structural integration who is now in a Feldenkrais Training program.
Stay informed, put your email in the box below and my automated service will tell you when the next post is made:
Chris Elms at “Wake-Up Feldenkrais” has some nice information about Rolfing on his website: Some thoughts on Rolfing and Structural Integration.
Hi Ryan,
My name is Nurit. I’m a feldenkrais teacher from Israel.
I was just reading yesturday from one of the Yanai books a lecture called “the means” (in Hebrew “haemtsaim”).
He talkes in this lecture about a meeting he had with her.
It’s a little late right now for me, but if you are interested I will summerize it for you tomorrow.
Nurit
I would love to hear more! Thanks – Ryan
In his lecture he says he met her in England and attended a lecture she gave.
During her lecture she explained and demonstrated what changes she can make in one lesson. He says he was surprised when she called him up to the stage and referred to him as “her teacher†since he didn’t know her. She explained that she was a biochemist and that her granddaughter was born with problems and there were movement problems. They searched for solutions but the child continued to grow with movement problems. Than she had the chance to read “body and mature behavior” and she came up with similar ideas to those he was discussing in his lecture. The book gave her ideas to develop a method. He gives her a lot of compliments and talks about how from that book two methods could develop and than he goes on to explain her ideas about the fascia. He also says they became friends.
Hi Ryan — the one story I remember is that Moshe — and possibly you can see it in the Amherst transcripts — but he said. “Ida Rolf and I were friends. She cried on my shoulder ….. “
Here’s an interesting quote:
I studied a
lot with Moshe. Moshe and Ida were old friends, they worked together
in London. Ida said that she learned from him that one could tell
where a person was and what they were by their body, their
personality in their body. She told a story about she and Moshe being
together talking about a physchiatrist from New York whom they both
knew and Ida said “I think he’s schizophrenic”. And Moshe says “How
could he be otherwise, haven’t you looked at his body?”
The other thing we used of Moshe’s, a subtle thing learned, and
that was the muscles generating positive thoughts and attitudes are
the extensor muscles of the body and the negative thoughts and
attitudes are in the flexor muscles of the body. So if you want a
person to feel better and have better attitudes you want to work on
the extensor muscles of the body. Moshe did that. Moshe didn’t lay it
out that way, like Ida did, get your hands in there and work, but
Moshe would use awareness lessons. There are a lot of other things
they had in common but Ida had a structured recipe.”"
It’s from:
http://www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Interviews/leigh12.htm
I’m a certified Rolfer as well as being a Feldenkrais teacher. I’d love to find out how many other practitioners out there have full training in both methods, as far as I can tell there are about a dozen world wide, with maybe a similar number of folks being trained in one approach and maybe a fair amount of exposure to the other but not full training.
I also spent a number of years studying with Dub Leigh, who I believe was one of 2 people to be certified directly by both Ida and Moshe. The way Dub told the story, Dr. Rolf said good things in class about Moshe one day, and since she was not known for speaking so highly about many other disciplines at the time, some of those Rolfing students figured Moshe must be really spectacular and decided to track him down. Dub and some of the other people involved were fixtures at Esalen and that’s how the original invitation for Moshe to teach there originated. Accurate or not I really like the circular nature of this version of the story- Moshe’s book influences Ida, she repays the favor by putting events in motion that lead to Moshe becomeing more widely known. There exists a photo from Dr. Rolf’s 80th birthday celebration of Moshe shaking her hand warmly while Werner Erhard stand between with a hand on each of their shoulders- 3 pillars of the ’70s human potential movement in 1 frame.
I have an audio file of Dr. Rolf lecturing in a class sometime around ’70 or ’71 where she talks about her interaction with Moshe, not sure if this is the same class that Dub talked about or not. Ahh, stories.