David Bersin: “Moshe Feldenkrais Is In The Room With Me.”
Last week, I got a marketing email from David Zemach Bersin about his next training program in New York. Bersin leads the email with a quote from one of his students:
“When David is in the room, I get a sense that Dr. Feldenkrais is right there with him. It’s an incredible experience.”
In other words, David’s biggest claim to fame is not who he is a person and what he has done himself but his relationship to a dead man. Don’t go to Bersin’s Feldenkrais training to learn the work. Go to be near Moshe.
For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, David’s desire to be seen as close to Moshe should come as no surprise. As I demonstrated in an earlier blog post, “Moshe Feldenkrais Had No Interest In The Guild“, David Bersin has been claiming for many years that he represents Moshe Feldenkrais. Apart from the fact that Moshe is DEAD (gasp!), there is no historical evidence to bolster David’s claim about what Moshe wanted. And David claims to have been a close personal associate of Moshe Feldenkrais for 12 years. That is simply untrue.
In Bersin’s marketing email he also claims that his trainings “exceed the highest standards set by the Feldenkrais Guild.” That does indeed sound wonderful. Unless you know that Feldenkrais Guild standards have nothing to do with training competency nor becoming competent in the work. They are rule-based standards and focus on meaningless indicators such as the number of training hours per day, how many trainers and assistant trainers need to be in the room and the like.
As I and many others have noted, Guild trainings have no known efficacy in helping people to launch careers in the feldenkrais method. (See: Feldenkrais Trainings: How Many Practitioners Start A Practice?). As for working with David Bersin? Here’s what a recent graduate had to say:
If I could talk to people thinking of enrolling in his training, I would encourage them to ask him for references of people who went through the training and are doing this work for a living (a reasonable request). David might be able to give you a few PT’s or massage therapists who now give some lessons (or some students who now answer his phones and give lessons at the institute, barely scraping by), but there won’t be more than a handful. Given the hundreds of people he’s trained over all these years, it’s a powerful indictment that so few of them actually have developed the skills to do this work professionally.
If you are interested in some of my own experiences in working with him, let me direct you to: “David Bersin and the Advanced Workshop That Wasn’t”
I wish I could close this blog post with some simple advice. I wish I had some type of easy formula that you could use to learn the work and to find a quality training. I don’t. All that I can say right now is “Buyer Beware.” Spend as much time as you can doing the work on your own through recorded sessions and transcripts. Read Moshe’s work. And experience a broad range of styles until you feel ready commit to a training. My hope is that rational and quality Feldenkrais trainings will begin to be the norm and not the exception. But much work has to be done before that becomes the case.
I feel it is sadly true Ryan. About FI: Though participating in 3 training myself, I never had such a clear explanation about FI that was offered on this site by Martin Weiner. The education was mostly on technique, not on the feeling Martin writes about. Further: I had FIs with a number of assistants and ‘top’ trainers over the years – and there was only ONE that really spoke to me, that I indeed felt for many years afterwords. That was a magic experience. In view of this I wonder what preparation do we receive to do FI? How much apprenticeship would be needed after the ‘Training’ to accomplish something?
I really enjoyed my training w Mark Reese and his co-trainers. I have the greatest respect for all of the trainers I’d studied with at that time (1999-2002). Going through that program transformed my life. In terms of developing skills (e.g., presence, precision, noticing difference, simplicity, grounding, connecting the lesson to intension and behavior in a big picture, educating clients so they can apply the lesson to their life) and competency, however, Mia Segal and Leora Gaster’s Professional Foundation Training amazes me. I have now finised the first 2 seminars (18 days) of the Foundation Training, and I’m just amazed at the sensitivity the students are developing over such short time.
Uh Uh … why all the bitterness? Didn’t you know that a fool and his money are soon parted? And what better place than an advanced training to really learn this lesson?
Where is good old irony and funny talk? Wasn’t Moshe teaching his beloved students to rid themselves of feelings of inferiority? Didn’t David succeed in doing so?
Also revisit the talking .. some pracs quote Moshe often enough (always the same quotes though) for making their audience believe this actually must be Moshe in the room, or at least the best organic playback one can get …
David put aside, “Feldenkrais” as a ‘method’ isn’t going to go very far if the current trainings models aren’t challenged and shaken up. ONe trainer I’ve spoken has said “we still haven’t figured out how to teach this stuff and we need a chance to try different models”, And another, “until all the old folks (meaning the original trainers that came from SF, Tel-Aviv, Amherst) are dead, not much is going to budge”.
I’ve been quietly assessing the inner and outer workings of this amazing work for the past few years, and it is quite apparent, for me at least, that until some new blood and new ideas on how to better further and enhance, not only the training model, but Moshe’s teaching, will his work survive and rise to the next level.
I was trained incredibly soundly and had great resource and education going into the training, and have beefed up my knowledge in other areas post-training (especially marketing), and even with this, there are, again in my opinion, huge holes in the Moshe’s teaching. (There I said it!)
Hope everyone is doing well this summer! IRene.