I would like to applaud the FGNA board’s attempt to harness social media in order to connect with FGNA members. It is a welcome step. It is nice to be able to see a video and connect names and faces. That being said, the video below has no content. That the board met? We know. That they want to communicate more and better? We hear. But the video below communicates nothing of substance.
A valiant first attempt. Next time, please add some substance?
Last night I received my once-a-week google alert for the term “Feldenkrais.” Google sends me an email with every mention of the the word “Feldenkrais” that it picks up around the web. The list includes blogs, websites, forums, and all points in between.
I took the list, inserted links, cut out the spam and pasted it below. I thought you might like to take a look at what your colleagues, friends and the general public are saying about the method.
Google News Alert for: Feldenkrais
Google Blogs Alert for: Feldenkrais
Personal Euphoria: Feldenkrais
By Maggie Downie
Feldenkrais, from my understanding, is about body awareness and learning how it feels to move your body in different ways. We spent the majority of the workshop moving our pelvis in different directions (up and down, left and right, …
Personal Euphoria – http://personaleuphoria.blogspot.com/
feldypt: This feels like Feldenkrais®!
By feldypt
The best part was when the exhibitors told me that when the pariticpants tried out the SR, they either said, “oh this will be much better for my older clients, or they said “this is truly Feldenkrais.” This was the biggest show room …
feldypt – http://feldypt.blogspot.com/
Feldenkrais® Centre Vancouver
Tags: Feldenkrais Method, olympic experience, Olympic volunteer, Vita Kolodny. This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Olympic Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through …
Feldenkrais® Centre Vancouver – http://www.feldenkraisvancouver.com/blog/
Simple Horse: I Dream of Judo
The day before I had begun reading Higher Judo by Moshe Feldenkrais. Feldenkrais is best known as the originator of the school of movement education that bears his name. He was also a physicist and engineer as well as an early student …
Simple Horse – http://simplehorse.blogspot.com/
Wish you were more flexible? | evolutionvt.com
You do not need prior Feldenkrais experience to enjoy this workshop. If you have never taken a Feldenkrais class before, please show up 10 minutes early, so Uwe can explain the main principles of the Feldenkrais-Method. Saturday, Feb. …
evolutionvt.com – http://evolutionvt.com/evoblog/
Wake UP Feldenkrais: sitting and side bending
Passions: Permaculture, yoga, gardening, walking, being in nature, the work of Byron Katie, the Feldenkrais Method, the Anat Baniel Method, raw and whole foods, wild foods, ongoing love/ happiness/ ecological usefulness, …
Wake UP Feldenkrais – http://wakeup-feldenkrais.blogspot.com/
Franklin Humanities Institute » Blog Archive » Singin’ on Broadway …
… by Leda Scearce on healthy vocal production, a talk by Cathy McNeela on auditioning for college and for professional work, master classes by Wayne Wyman, Sandra Cotton, and Leda Scearce, and a Feldenkrais workshop with Maxine Davis. …
Franklin Humanities Institute – http://www.fhi.duke.edu/
day 25 Moshe Feldenkrais, San Fran « blogosfeld
I’m sure there are many Feldenkrais Practitioners out there thinking that I am making a big deal out of something they do every day. For example if you have a private practice you probably practice Feldenkrais everyday for more than an …
blogosfeld – http://blogosfeld.wordpress.com/
NorthEast MD Feldenkrais: practice, practice, practice
NorthEast MD Feldenkrais. A student’s view of the process of learning to be Feldenkrais Practioner. Feldenkrais links. Feldenkrais Guild of North America. Blog Archive. ? 2010 (1). ? February (1). practice, practice, practice …
NorthEast MD Feldenkrais – http://northeastmdfeldenkrais.blogspot.com/
How do you exercise the neck muscles that controls moving the head …
I was having chronic headaches and neck pain and I went to my son’s Feldenkrais PT (he has CP) and after 4 months, I no longer have neck pain or headaches. Feldenkrais is different than traditional PT and it works really well for people …
No Exercise Klub – http://www.noexerciseklub.com/
Primal Wisdom: Primal Feet Update: Biomechanics of Barefooting and …
Some years ago, when I got some Feldenkrais Method “Awareness Through Movement” education sessions with Jeff Haller, he noticed that I spent more time on one foot than the other when walking, but I could not detect it myself — at least …
Primal Wisdom – http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/
USAF Mom’s Tour at Home: Exercising the SMART way
Moshe Feldenkrais originated one method of neuromuscular re-education. A Russian-born physicist who grew up in Palestine and was educated at the Sorbonne, Parishe conducted some of first experiments in atomic research and is …
USAF Mom’s Tour at Home – http://www.usafmomstour.com/
Video: To Correct is Incorrect. This video explains some of the qualities of the Feldenkrais Method that are nearest and dearest to my heart. I hope you enjoy this small window into one of my greatest passions. …
Conscious Musing – http://consciousmovements.blogspot.com/
Taking Steps « Somanaut’s Blog
IMG_0221. Dan Schmidt is a Feldenkrais practitioner and a bodyworker in Salt Lake City, UT. He has been working in private practice and clinical settings for 18 years. He teaches classes for the public and for massage therapists. …
Somanaut’s Blog – http://somanaut.wordpress.com/
Uncensored Magazine | Help Your Child To Learn (book review) and …
Page 37 of Awareness Through Movement by Moshe Feldenkrais. “To have a minimum of stress, and therefore of strain, within the body, not only must the structure as a whole be in balanced relation with the outside forces, but each part …
The Breathing Blog – http://mountainpeakmusic.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/breathing-quotes/
Google Web Alert for: Feldenkrais
Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ongoing)
Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement with Iren Romoda These lessons use the innate capacity of the human nervous system to learn new patterns of moving, … http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cls/1596979827.html
YouTube – Cerebral Palsy: Working with childhood motor disorders
Sheryl Field, Assistant Trainer of The Feldenkrais Method, has been practicing since her … Childhood Motor Disorders: Feldenkrais & The Field Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rKKyvUh8dA
Feldenkrais® Hawaii : Awareness Through Movement® : Functional …
Moshe Feldenkrais was born in the Ukrainian town of Slavuta. In 1918, he left his family, then living in Baranovichi, Belarus, to emigrate to Israel. … http://feldenkraishawaii.com/moshe.php?id=5
Feldenkrais Method classes Dublin
Weekly classes in the Feldenkrais Method, a gentle and effective way of learning … Feldenkrais Method ‘Awareness through Movement’ lessons help you learn … http://www.learningpoint.ie/courses/feldenkrais-method-classes/
Want to Feel Vibrant Again? Try Feldenkrais Method!
Things started changing when I decided to check out a Feldenkrais Method Class at a local fitness center. Today I can hardly believe I’m the same person. http://www.squidoo.com/want-to-feel-vibrant-try-feldenkrais
Last night I was doing a session from the 1977 1972 Esalen workhop. The Esalen workshop was one of the first public workshops taught by Moshe Feldenkrais in the United States. I was doing lesson #13, called: Head Turning (Cervical). In the middle of the session, the transcript reports Moshe saying;
“Some misuse the penis by using it for something that shouldn’t be done with it, and some misuse their tongue for doing something it’s not meant to do…”
Whoa. Interesting! My first thought was that I was mistaken about the lesson. Perhaps it was really called, “Head Turning and Penis Use.” Or maybe, “Differentiating the Penis by Turning the Spine.”
But no.
Moshe liked to whack people on the head from time-to-time to make sure he had their attention (No comment on the pun). And he usually had multiple reasons and meanings for doing so. But in this case, Moshe did not explain what this “misuse” of the penis or tongue might be. But he did give examples of bodily “misuse” in general.
To his mind, misuse meant doing an act without an awareness of what one enacts and how. Without that awareness, one’s choice is limited and its difficult to choose something else – or to do something in a new and creative way. I am willing to say that the entirety of Moshe’s work comes from that idea: Learning to discover if you are doing what you think you are doing, so you have the option of changing what you do.
To use Moshe’s words from the same session:
We don’t all use the same muscles for the same purpose…I don’t mind…whatever you do..but I want you to know what you do. I want you to know when you are rolling head, and when you are just oscillating the axis around which you roll it as a substitution for rolling.
In the context of that particular session, Moshe was demonstrating multiple ways that a person could turn his or her head and cervical spine. It was an attempt to show that there were more possibilities than his students were using. He wanted them to know what they were doing, so they could have a chance of adopting another movement pattern. It’s a common strategy, used over and over again in Feldenkrais’s work.
“… it is impossible to correct and reform adequately the general use of oneself without recovering sexual spontaneity.” He also mentions that one of his goals is for students to increase their sexual potency.
I can imagine someone taking exception to that. How does improving movement lead to great sexual potency? And what business is it of Moshe Feldenkrais?
To a large extent, is was none of his business. Nor should it be the direct concern of anyone teaching Moshe’s ideas. However, it is an illuminating insight into the nature of self-development. It expresses a crucial idea on how we grow as human beings and creative individuals. To use Moshe’s words:
Although I as a teacher set out to increase the student’s mature sexual potency, it is not for the sake of lust or pleasurable indulgence as found in the immature person. Sexual maturity arrives at the end of the development period, and is the most vulnerable function because of that. All the consequences of improper and inexpedient habits formed through personal experience in the preceding growth period bear on it and mark this function more than any other function that matures earlier. Any arrest in development that may occur during this susceptible period of childhood and adolescence will of necessity affect the function that has yet to mature. Similarly, it is impossible to correct and reform adequately the general use of oneself without recovering sexual spontaneity.
To Moshe, evolving one’s self, becoming more creative, empowered and alive could not but help increase one’s sexual spontaneity and power.
“But isn’t that a no-brainer? Doesn’t everyone know this?”
Not only “no” but “hell no.” For the majority of people in the industrialized world, evolving one’s self means to make more money and achieve more status. To do this, people ignore their bodily needs. They ignore that inner voice and those feelings that tell them that the “success” they have is not quite what they need or want.
“The need for constant support by one’s fellows is so great that most people spend the larger part of their lives fortifying their masks [RN: Their false self]. Repeated success is essential to encourage the individual to persist in this masquerade..The actions and the drive that produces them—necessary in order to maintain a mask free of flaws and cracks lest he be revealed behind it—do not derive from any basic organic needs. As a result, the satisfaction derived from these actions even when they are successful is not a revitalizing organic satisfaction, but merely a superficial, external one.
Very slowly, over the years, a man comes to convince himself that society’s recognition of his success should and does give him organic contentment. Often enough the individual becomes so adjusted to his mask, his identification with it so complete, that he no longer senses any organic drive or satisfactions. This can result in the revelation of flaws and disturbances in family and sex relations that may always have been present but that have been glossed over by the individual’s success in society.”
At which point they go to a Doctor to ask her for a prescription of Viagra. Or maybe Prozac. Or maybe a lobotomy. They are all equivalent. As H.L. Mencken once wrote:
“For every complex problem there is an simple answer that is clear, direct, and wrong.”
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=44e47dd1-a37d-4ebe-9c65-55abe068b173)
Feldenkrais mentions that:
:![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_a.png?x-id=10625e3d-3c01-4fbb-950a-f27da56b8675)
