Moshe Feldenkrais: Judo and The Art of Defence and Attack

Just a few moments ago on Facebook, Kunihiko Otomo posted a quote from Moshe Feldenkrais’ out-of-print 1944 book: Judo: The Art of Defence and Attack

Kunihiko mentioned, “I see the seeds of his [Moshe's] inspiration and his later Method scattered all over those pages like pieces of gold.” Being intrigued, I did some digging online and found a downloadable pdf of the book (link at the bottom of this post).

Read some of these quotes and see if both the words and ideas are familiar to you by way of Moshe’s later teachings.

From the back cover:

“In Higher Judo he [Feldenkrais] explains how Judo practice can educate and train a person to become independent of his heritage.”

Independent of his heritage. Sound familiar? I believe Moshe is using the word heritage differently than he uses it in later works, such as in Awareness Though Movement where he writes:

The biological endowment of the individual—the form and capacity of his nervous system, his bone structure, muscles, tissue, glands, skin, senses—are all determined by his physical heritage long before he has any established identity. His self-image develops from his actions and reactions in the normal course of experience. (ATM, Preface, p.4)

In the quote above, “heritage” is paired with the word “physical”, meaning one’s biological or genetic heritage. But in the original quote, when Moshe speaks about heritage, I believe he is speaking about one’s self-education, what I like to think of as one’s often mistaken ideas about oneself learned through family, culture and education. By becoming independent of your heritage, you learn that you made some mistakes about yourself and your capabilities. You are more capable than you may have originally learned.

In the passages below, also from Judo and the Art of Defence and Attack, substitute the world “Feldenkrais” for the word “Judo” and you would think that Moshe was writing about his later methods:

“…Judo is the art of using the body in general. It is planned to improve general well-being and a sense of rhythm, and develops co-ordination of movement as no other method or sport can possibly do. The senses of time and space are so much bettered by Judo practice that soon every disciple becomes aware of a certain improvement and progress in whatever occupation, hobby or sport he may have followed previously. Indeed Judo should be considered as a basic culture of the body, much as matriculation is necessary before starting serious work in any of the sciences. ” (p. 11)

There is much more I could write about, but perhaps you would enjoy reading it yourself first?

Moshe Feldenkrais: Judo and The Art of Self-Defence The pdf is on Scribd. In order to download it, you will need to create a free account.

Tags: feldenkrais, Judo, moshe feldenkrais