Feldenkrais Guild Service Mark Application (and Conformity Guidelines)
Someone sent me a pdf of the entire Feldenkrais Guild Service Mark registration (Download 3.1 mb) registered December 3, 1985. Now that I have that date, I am going to mark it in my calendar as a day of mourning and warning.
My view of the service marks is that people used them to simultaneously limit access to Moshe’s work while destroying their own pathway to organic development, developing a religious hierarchy in the process. They created social categories such as “practitioner” and “trainer” and “educational director” busying themselves with legal and semantic definitions – not noticing how year after year they slowly became caricatures of Moshe Feldenkrais – caricatures of themselves. What a waste.
But how could it have been otherwise? When you let lawyers define your reality, when you look to and imitate the past, when you look only for external social and legal support for your actions – what else is possible? The Guilds currently have a legal basis for the work, but not a moral or ethical one. As for an organic and developmental basis? Nowhere to be seen.
If you want to understand what has happened in this community look no further than the writings of Moshe Feldenkrais:
“The education provided by society [In this case the Guild] operates in two directions at once. It suppresses every noncomformist tendency through penalties of withdrawal of support and simultaneously imbues the individual with values that force him to overcome and discard spontaneous desires.
These conditions cause the majority of adults today [some practitioners and nearly all trainers} to live behind a mask, a mask of personality that the individual tries to present to others and to himself. Every aspiration and spontaneous desire is subjected to stringent internal criticism lest they reveal the individual’s organic nature. Such aspirations and desires arouse anxiety and remorse and the individual seeks to suppress the urge to realize them. The only compensation that makes life durable despite these sacrifices is the satisfaction derived from society’s recognition of the individual who achieves its definition of success.” (Moshe Feldenkrais quote from, Awareness Through Movement, 1976, p6)
For examples in your life of what Moshe is speaking to, I will simply ask you to look inside your own heart and your own experience. No one can do it for you. It is the road less traveled. Available to all, used by few. But as the ancient mariner maps show at the edge of the unknown: “There be dragons.” Indeed there are. But they are your dragons.
More examples can be seen in other’s actions. How many in the community do you know that are willing to fight to the death – psychological, intellectual and emotional death – to keep their masks? These are the people that find it easier to follow the habitual, to create and follow restrictions to hide from those areas. Legal restrictions and definitions that lead to a lack of awareness that helps force people to change their behavior to conform – force them to overcome and discard their spontaneous desires.
Feldenkrais Conformity Guidelines
Do you know much about the Feldenkrais conformity guidelines? Also known as selling your soul in exchange for a “trainer mask.” The mask, that Moshe noted, a person can use to “convince himself that society’s recognition of his success should and does give him organic contentment.”
The first step in this process is to give your sense of self-worth and social acceptance to some type of external authority. For one small example, take a look at the EuroTab “trainer guidelines.” It’s stunning. It has the requirements for becoming a “Feldenkrais Trainer”. Here are some of the supposed core competencies that you must have and what they consist of:
Got that? You must demonstrate high proficiency as evidenced by your highly skilled lessons and high level teaching. High proficiency as demonstrated by your high proficiency! Are you familiar with the idea of a circular definition?
There is also this:
(Screenshots taken on 7/19/10 from http://www.eurotab.org/ttcguide2.html)
In other words, you must have the ability to develop curriculum as evidenced by your ability to develop curriculum. Holy cow! Sometimes I wish I was making this stuff up. Do people put that kind of stuff online because they think we are blind and will not see it? Or are they themselves blind?
Historically many people have gone through the process of becoming a trainer (it can take over 20 years) only to be told that they do not qualify and cannot be trainers. I am sure that they are given some reasonable excuse. But lets keep in mind, when all is said and done, it is the trainers themselves who have ultimate authority to certify other trainers. And given that many of them can barely fill their own trainings – why should they certify others? What reason could he have for certifying another trainer?
True Feldenkrais
The trainer certification process, built on top of the service marks, is designed to ensure that a small group of people control the financial and ideological aspects of Moshe’s work. It fits both the form and function of a monopoly, if not a religion. It has been over 25 years since Moshe Feldenkrais death and there are only 60 trainers. Sixty trainers out of the thousands of people who have been through the training programs?!
What happens if you don’t get certified to be a trainer or decide not to be one? Not much. There is no other road for advancement within the community. The sensible thing would be not to engage in the process at all. Some people take this route. But as they cannot use the service mark terms they become “other.” They are “doing their own thing.” While others using the service marked terms present themselves as doing “true feldenkrais.” True Feldenkrais based on what again? A legal opinion on who “owns” the service marks? Not much of a basis.
To often ” trainers” confuse an excessive amount of time required to learn something as a good thing , what it often times really say’s is that the trainer does not understand how to best pass on their knowledge .
Yes, it is particularly tragic to see a movement started by such a brilliant man fall into its own shadow so damn fast, but this does seem to me to be a pattern that repeats itself throughout history. I’m not condoning the Guild’s actions in any way by saying that, merely acknowledging that for every revolutionary genius, there’s a band of zealous followers circling like vultures ready to stamp out any trace of life from the work … but “they know not what they do …”
Thanks for your comments Don and Richard. Eventually, I am going to have to stop posting this stuff as it is a bit depressing. And there is so much good in the world to focus on and act upon. But agreed – the pattterns do tend to repeat themselves. But now, with the internet and ability to connect and share information instantly, I think the damage can be limited. People are able to be more self-aware.
Be well! – Ryan
Ryan
I will give some comments about this as well. I am not sure this is evident for a usual reader.
You note competence 4: the ability to develop a curriculum.
The Swedish trainings by Yochanan Rywerant started already in 1986. Yochanan used a basic curriculum until his death now in 2010. He was in the final stage of his last training in Israel where he continued to teach after the Swedish experience. In connection with an international advanced training in the year 2000 he published this outline of a curriculum for everyone to read and use. It is translated to German.
The remarkable thing in this respect is FGNA and FEFNA. I got a mail about the oncoming conference one hour before your mail informing of this blog. In the FGNA mail I find this. http://www.feldenkrais.com/shop/
Look it up and search for the openly published Acquiring the feldenkrais method by YR. FEFNA does not sell YR’s books. Yes it could be many reasons but before I managed to get Al Wadleigh at achieving excellence to start to sell it late in 2006 it was not available online. As it was published privately I do not know what goes on today. I wrote about the book then.
http://www.achievingexcellence.com/p-a_ryw2_review.html
What is remarkable with YR’s curriculum is that he very early, already in 1986 gave an alternative to the Amherst curriculum so widely used. One could think it should be debated, discussed and questioned from a professional point of view. Used to develop the trade. But no.
I have not seen any such open discussion by anyone in the trainer collective, and the political collective in the TAB have not showed any interest more of the opposite. I have from time to time searched the trainer’s websites for their openly published detailed curriculum but my findings have been meager. I think that is what a student would look for when choosing one” university” instead of the other. What am I to learn?
Any healthy group concerned with teaching something as complicated as the feldenkrais method would have taken in the dialectic offered in this open publication.
This I think should be understood by your readers. If I am not updated in this information I apologize from the start and am ready to learn anew.
Thanks Eva. That’s one of the most exciting things I have read in quite some time. I would love to read and publish something like that for others to share and discuss. I will look into and would also welcome any links that you or anyone else can find. I know that Mia Segal and Leora Gastor have a redesigned curriculum – though I have not experienced it directly.
Thanks again. Be well. – Ryan
Ryan, as you know, the content of this whole issue is way to big for a comment on this post that will put forth all my views, (especially on trainings), but here is a piece for your readers:
In attending the keynote to the annual FGNA conference last night, Elizabeth Beringer made a very good point, which deserves mention around “what we teach” and “where Moshe was going when he died”…she brought up the juice and complexity of the AMherst Transcripts and lessons and how different these lessons were “structured” in comparison to AY and San Francisco. The lessons in Amherst were often one sided, and the threads wove over days and days and days and linked to some very meaty and juicy lectures: This was where Moshe got to. And, it seems he never did anything haphazardly or by fluke, so perhaps this would be something to pay attention to…
TO me, it seems we haven’t even begun to really study and teach that material, nor fully understand the metaphor he was teaching in….afterall he said during that time “what I am teaching I could use Mathematics to do it as well…”
It seems such art is a necessary study for those in any Feldenkrais realm. To those that choose to develop their own curriculum, that is fine, but perhaps for those who are lazy, they simply go back to what we have already and decipher the code…OR, here is another stance, perhaps it is the other way around:
Perhaps those who are lazy would much rather create their own curricula and not dive into uncovering the grail and the blood, sweat and tears that goes with it such an endeavour..
I am plugging myself openly now (and Moshe) but I recently wrote a post that goes with the last lesson from the Amherst training, I am quite shocked when I meet people who have NEVER experienced this lesson, nor the significance of it, and the influence it has (can have) on FI practice and the entire spectrum of how we work. I quote Moshe, so you get a paragraph from the Transcripts!
http://pure-feldenkrais-whistler.blogspot.com/2010/07/amherst-diaries-where-real-healing.html
Hi Ryan et al -
The info you posted contains a written consent from Moshe to designate the Feldenkrais Guild “to represent my registered mark “Feldenkrais” for all notices or processes in proceedings affecting the mark in the United States of America.”
I am curious as to whether that means Moshe had already registered the mark, and he was now consenting to have the Feldenkrais Guild represent that mark. (I think, but do not know for sure, that he did register that mark, through the Feldenkrais Foundation, which predated the Guild.) If that is so, Moshe had some reason for registering that mark, and for consenting to having the Guild “represent” that mark.
Moshe was clear at Amhearst that he expected people who practice his work (and in particular, those who practice it for pay) to practice it well enough that they not “disgrace” (his word) his work and his name. Mia, in her interview with you Ryan, indicated that Moshe expressed concerns that his work not be or become diluted. He cared that his work be practiced and taught well, and with integrity to what he was doing.
And so the challenge to us all is:
* What IS it that is the true essence of this fine work that he did and gave to us to learn and do and take out into the world? (Around which we can grow and build and do things in lots of different ways, but which serves as the common core essence that we all share.)
* And are there better ways to do that, and teach that, and grow that, than we have created so far?
I very much see the need need for an alive, lively process of some sort, that people are willing to engage in, that lets us become more clear about that first point.
I have heard lots of people say they are afraid or concerned that clarifying the essense of the work will kill it.
I think that UNLESS we can somehow clarify the essence, we will instead continue to do what we have been doing which is to construct STRUCTURES intended to somehow produce the essense without needing to say what the essence is. I think this way of doing things is going to bite us in the bum more and more often … And – it keeps us stuck in those structures rather than opening up freedom to look at more ways to teach, learn, and spread this amazing work.
Enough for now -
Violet