Move Better, Live Better
the Feldenkrais® Method
Call or text 647 286-3736 sue@feldenkraistorontowest.com
Sue Seto, Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner
Publications of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
In The Potent Self, Moshe Feldenkrais delves deeply into the relationship between faulty posture, pain, and the underlying emotional mechanisms that lead to compulsive and dependent human behavior. He shares remarkable insights into resistance, motivation, habit formation, and the place of sex in full human potential. The Potent Self offers Moshe Feldenkrais' vision of how to achieve physical and mental wellness through the development of authentic maturity. In The Potent, Self Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais explores such areas as the relationships between habit, emotion, motivation, and posture. He also provides some insight on his technique for addressing human difficulties.
This best selling book by Moshe Feldenkrais contains 12 easy-to-follow Awareness Through Movement® exercises for improving posture, flexibility, breathing, coordination. Each exercise concisely demonstrate Moshe Feldenkrais' ideas while helping you to improve your movement habits and focus new dimensions of awareness, self-image, and human potential.
In 1929, a young Moshe Feldenkrais published his Hebrew translation of the book, The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Émile Coué, originally published in English by C. Harry Brooks. Professor Hugo Bergman, first rector of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote the foreword. Reading it many years after it was published singles out the uniqueness of the young translator. Moshe Feldenkrais not only translated the book, but composed and added his own observations in the two chapters in his Thinking and Doing. For many years, Autosuggestion was a reference point for Moshe as he continued to develop his work.
Moshe Feldenkrais' Master Moves is an edited transcription of a five-day public workshop taught by Dr. Feldenkrais at Mann Ranch in northern California in 1979. The theoretical discussions and the movement experiences are interwoven throughout the book making the relationship between theory and practice in the Feldenkrais Method® more and more evident.
Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora is Moshe Feldenkrais' classic study of his work with Nora, a woman who has suffered a severe stroke and lost her neuromuscular coordination, including the ability to read and write. Feldenkrais uses rational and intuitive approaches to help his student relearn basic motor skills. One can observe here the groundwork of Feldenkrais' extraordinary insights which became known as the Feldenkrais Method®. We follow his detailed descriptions of the trial and error process which led him to see the ingredients that were needed to help Nora reshape her attention, perception, imagination and cognition.
Body & Mature Behavior is considered one of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais' most succinct writings on his study of human development as it relates to the relationships between movement, emotional maturity, and behavioral patterns. First published in 1949 this clear systematic treatment of the psycho-physiological foundations of Dr. Feldenkrais' theories is a widely accepted classic. He describes in neuro-physiological and psychological terms how patterns of movement and posture are acquired and relates movement habits to social and sexual development. This is a rich and somewhat technical book.
Moshe Feldenkrais' The Elusive Obvious deals with simple, fundamental notions of our daily life that through habit become elusive. We carry from one activity to another attitudes of mind that do not make life what it could be. Moshe Feldenkrais considers himself not a therapist but a teacher. In both his individual, hands-on body work known as FISM and his group Awareness Through Movement® classes he guides clients to discover for themselves what normal or optimum movement feels like. This sensing will then reprogram–his term is "rewire"–the brain accordingly. This is a new kind of learning. There is no one "correct" way. Each pupil discovers his own correction functioning for himself. It is a joyful experience, which works on body, mind, and feelings simultaneously. The changes are dramatically visible, not only in better functioning but in a whole new self image.
Moshe Feldenkrais' Embodied Wisdom is a seminal collection that contains all of Moshe Feldenkrais’ English-language articles and interviews and is a must-have for Feldenkrais enthusiasts. Embodied Wisdom contains some of Feldenkrais' most concise and accessible writings. These thoughtful articles and lively interviews explore a diverse range of both Moshe's interests and inspirations. Some of the most prominent themes include—the importance of bodily expression, the primacy of hearing, sleep and consciousness, movement and its effect on the mind, and many more. This book provides the readers with an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the scientific and spiritual principles behind the Method and offers sound strategies for incorporating it into their lives.
Moshe Feldenkrais' Higher Judo goes far beyond self defense, arguing for judo as an educational practice that furthers maturation of the whole person, and revealing some of the fundamentals of Moshe Feldenkrais’ thinking just as he is developing his method. Higher Judo was written at a critical juncture in Feldenkrais’ development, just after writing Body and Mature Behavior, and after 25 years of involvement in the martial arts. The early chapters of Higher Judo are essential reading for every student and practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method®.
In 1933, Moshe Feldenkrais met Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo. Feldenkrais earned a black belt in Judo in 1936. He was a co-founding member of the Ju-Jitsu Club de France, one of the oldest Judo clubs in Europe, which still exists today. Moshe Feldenkrais published Judo The Art of Defence and Attack and he believed that "the essential aim of Judo is to teach, help, and forward adult maturity, which is an ideal state rarely reached, where a person is capable of dealing with the immediate present task before him without being hindered by earlier formed habits of thought or attitude."
In 1942, Moshe Feldenkrais published Practical Unarmed Combat. Feldenkrais had been requested by the British military to teach their soldiers unarmed combat in a few short lessons. After teaching these lessons to a few groups of soldiers, Feldenkrais realized that he would have difficulty in reaching many more soldiers and he published his Practical Unarmed Combat as an illustrated manual to better equip the British military.
Moshe Feldenkrais' Hadaka-Jime: Practical Unarmed Combat is a unique training program that is based on one core technique. Dr. Feldenkrais developed the program as emergency training for soldiers in World War II. Through ten one-hour lessons, soldiers learned to defend themselves against an armed opponent in the most rapid and effective way possible.