the Feldenkrais Method with Emma Alter

One of my new students was asking me this week who invented the Feldenkrais Method.

It  was created by Moshe Feldenkrais. He was a Jewish Russian (now Ukraine). Aged 14, he was sent on his own to Palestine to escape the pogroms running across Russia, in the lapse of law after the death of the Romanovs. He made it. (a chapter of a book on it’s own!)
In Palestine, having bought land from the local tribesmen, Jews were starting to build Tel Aviv, and Feldenkrais worked with them. He even laid the bricks for the Tel Aviv Opera House! At their opening night, however, he wasn’t allowed in, as he didn’t own a tux! He determined they’d know who he was pretty soon after that! 

Survival, and self defence was a priority for Feldenkrais. These early years in Palestine, under the rule of the British Mandate began his life long interest in martial arts. After an early failure with jiu-jitsu against Arabs in the Arab riots of the 1920s, (the British Mandate used divide and rule as one of their main organising tactics across the Empire) he began thinking how to improve it. Together, with colleagues, he devised a way of fighting that began with the instinctive movements of survival. This technique went through a few iterations, but today we know it as Krav Maga. 

He also wrote a book on self defence, which was published in both English and French, and was used (successfully) by the French resistance during WW2! It’s very much a Method for improving action!

Feldenkrais was the one of the first western Judo masters, starting a dojo in Paris, whilst he was there doing a PhD. WW2 saw him escape to the UK, on the last boat out of France, and after a brief imprisonment in the Isle of Man, with all the other refugees he was sent to Scotland to work for the Navy improving sonar, for the submarines in the war effort. When he eventually went back to Israel, his first work was teaching classes to Holocaust survivors- moving them back from trauma into action, one Feldenkrais lesson at a time. 

These mainly Jewish, European scientists worked for the Allied war effort in the day, and gave lectures in the evening. Feldenkrais wanted to teach them judo, but soon realised he’d have to first of all teach all of the head-centric scientists where their pelvis was! so he began teaching what evolved into the Feldenkrais Method. It is primarily, a method for action. For survival, but also of fulfilment- Moshe believed health was the ability to fulfil your unwritten dreams, and that practicing Feldenkrais would help you get there.