Angelica Feldmann

The Feldenkrais Method

The Feldenkrais Method is based on the way we learn movement, how awareness and thinking develop, how we perceive and develop the ability to relate to our environment.

Using precise and sophisticated strategies, the Feldenkrais Method draws on the innate intelligence of the human nervous system to gain a more differentiated perception and expanded capacity for action in all these areas.
Feldenkrais lessons explore a wide spectrum of human movement – from early childhood development to peak performance. The structure of the lessons promotes the revival of our perceptive abilities and the discovery of ease, efficiency and elegance in movement. They expand our ability to act with precision, power and spontaneity and increase our capacity for learning.

Optimising movement and posture not only improves general health and well-being, but also enhances attention, thinking skills, emotional resilience, coordination, balance and easier breathing.

The improvements can target various aspects such as pain, injuries and neurological disorders, as well as promoting peak performance in sports and the performing arts.
The Feldenkrais Method, as ‘education of the self’ in awareness and action, is particularly valuable for anyone looking for new ways to become freer in their expression and attitude to life – whether in everyday life, at work or in their leisure time.

Awareness Through Movement (group lessons) and Functional Integration (individual lessons) are both applications of the Feldenkrais Method and are based on the same theory. They correspond and complement each other and utilise the nervous system’s ability to create more effective and intelligent ways of acting.

Moshe Feldenkrais

The inventor of the Feldenkrais Method

Born in 1904 in a Ukrainian village that was ravaged by pogroms at the time, Moshé Feldenkrais left his family at the age of fourteen and went to Palestine. There he helped establish the first Jewish settlements. To defend his community, he learned jiu-jitsu and taught self-defence.

After graduating from school in Tel Aviv in 1927, Moshé Feldenkrais went to France. In Paris, he earned degrees in electrical engineering and mechanics before obtaining a doctorate in physics. From 1933 to 1940, he worked as a nuclear engineer at the Radium Institute under Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

During his stay in Paris, Moshé Feldenkrais played a decisive role in the development of French jiu-jitsu and judo. He began teaching in 1933, intuitively integrating the principles of physics and his rich cultural background into his self-defence lessons. He co-founded the Jiu-Jitsu Club de France, studied under Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, and was the first European to receive a black belt in 1936.

After fleeing to Great Britain in 1940 to escape the German occupying forces, Feldenkrais worked as a scientific officer for the British Admiralty and continued his judo training. A chronic knee injury inspired him to use his knowledge of physics, body mechanics, neurology, learning theory and psychology to develop a new understanding of human function and maturation. In 1943, he gave a lecture to the British Association of Scientific Workers, which he later summarised in his book Body and Mature Behaviour.

In 1949, Moshé Feldenkrais returned to Palestine to help build the newly founded state of Israel. From 1952 onwards, he devoted himself entirely to developing his own method and founded the Feldenkrais Institute in Tel Aviv, where he trained the first generation of Feldenkrais practitioners in the late 1960s.

Moshé Feldenkrais wrote five books on his method and four books on judo. He taught in Tel Aviv, Europe and the USA. His most famous students included Ben Gurion, Yehudi Menuhin and Peter Brook. Between 1975 and 1978, he trained the second and third generations of Feldenkrais practitioners in San Francisco and between 1980 and 1983 in Amherst.

He died in Tel Aviv in 1984.