So I see just two job profiles here:

1. the risk taker, like you described above. But for this you don’t need a four years professional training (tom myers/anatomy trains for example didn’t complete his feldenkrais training, i guess he left after 3 years when he had the feeling he had to move on …. like luke skywalker or something) and no devotion to a certain trainer or guild.

2. becoming a trainer, but as it is a pyramid and there are only so many students, there can only be so many trainers. no wonder regulations are so strict.

What I’ve learned in the feldenkrais professional training is part of the most valuable things I’ve ever learned in my live. The Feldenkrais Method is the most profound stuff I know and I’ve looked at I guess everything that’s out there. Including Yoga, Rolfing, Accupuncture, Gurdjieff, you name it.

So right now I’m busy with (1.) and to find out how to employ what I’ve learned in a way that many people can benefit from it, as well generates income for me. I guess Ryan and many others are doing the same. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that pyramid ship will sink eventually.

So my brain wonders this:

How did Moshe’s Amherst training have 250+ people in a time when this stuff was a little woo woo, it wasn’t even a METHOD and there was no internet to virally promote it?

It worked because what he was doing was of quality. He simply wanted to share his findings and create some good. People talked about it – word spread…I think it’s time to remember such tactics…

Given our times and what this stuff is about (human evolution if you really look at it) the occupancy of our trainings should be a log of infinity. Definitely not 12.

but, all the IFF/SRC and political mumbo ‘trademarking” gumbo put aside….I will take this sideways viewpoint:

If you look at one of the reasons as to WHY the Declaration of Independence was constituted, a big reason was to make known the violation of King George the 3rd and that he was unfit to rule….

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

I do think we need to continue to bring such “facts” to our little “candid FEldenkrais world”, especially if there are trainers out there who sense it is their God given right to hold power over how this work evolves and the teaching of it – if so, I would urge and suggest that those of us who aren’t afraid of collaboration and sharing and evolving Moshe work to create our own Declaration so we can get on with it and do great Work.

If this work is to become more mainstream, there needs to be many changes. Will it be Feldenkrais? No one is Feldenkrais, but Moshe himself!

Thank you for opening up this can of worms Ryan!

- Ryan

BTW, in response to your blog about DZB and “The Advanced Workshop That Wasn’t,” I must say that I trained with David and have done a couple of advanced trainings with him, and I disagree with your sense that he doesn’t think FI can be taught in a workshop setting or at least that he doesn’t know how to do it well. While many of your descriptions of his behavior sound familiar, the workshop sounds really, really bad, and your outrage seems merited, I have learned an awfully lot about FI from David’s teaching.

At his best as a teacher, DZB’s embodied understand of FI is so transparent and luminous that it comes through as a kind of direct transmission–maybe much the same way as Moshe’s presence affected his students. And DZB has said things about FI that have stayed with me and helped me in my own work for clients for years.

as i read your articles i start to ask myself questions like
“Does anything that i know about Moshe from his books says can justify existence of such bureaucratic organisations?”
“Is there any development of FM that comes from the officials structures not from individuals as Ruthy Alon or Anat Baniel?”

As far as i know the answer is – No.

For me to see such powerful method (not a placebo as most of psychotherapies but a real thing) to stagnate and struggle to survive in shadows of the past is almost a physical pain.

And i see a lot of pure (almost) commercial self-help methods based on limited experience of their authors market aggressively and successfully providing no more than temporary relief and another delusion. Or things like pilates or core-strentgh exercises that everybody knows about.

What the hell?

Is it arrogant and childish belief of people in charge that efficient method will market itself or just rigidity?

From my point of view the duty of Moshe pupils is at least to fulfill his dream of making Method accessible for everyone not to hide it from the world.