From the Fall 2004 Schedule
To Make the Impossible, Possible

Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the Feldenkrais Method, often used to say that the purpose of his Method was “to make the impossible, possible; the possible, easy; and the easy, elegant and aesthetically satisfying.”

This progressive way of seeing things developed from his life-long interest in how living beings grow, and especially how they learn to move. He often compared the source of skilled movement in animals to that in humans. Since animal behavior comes mostly from their genes, their abilities are common to the species. But human skills are mostly learned, and so they reflect the individual.

In discussing this, Feldenkrais wrote, “Think of the mountain goats, where the kids are born on high rocks. The kids right themselves on their feet and then have to leap from one sharp edge to another without previous apprenticeship. Obviously, all the connections, the “wiring-in” of the nervous systems of these animals must be made before they are born.”

In humans, by contrast, “No baby was ever born who could speak, sing, whistle, crawl, walk upright, make music, count or think mathematically or tell the hour of the day or night. Without a very long apprenticeship lasting several years, none of these functions has ever been observed to develop.”*

From this fundamental distinction, Feldenkrais drew the guiding principle of his work: in human life, learning is the key.

Everybody who has lived with an infant has observed that the child first learns to hold up her head, and to roll from her back to her stomach, and to draw up her knees and to push with her feet and many other intermediate steps before she crawls, and then walks, and runs, and jumps.

This type of progression is also relevant to adults. Whenever there is a difficulty in movement, there is an intermediate step that needs to be clarified. And the same is true whenever there is an opportunity for greater achievement. The Feldenkrais Method sequences its study of movement this way, both in the individual lessons and in the group classes. Very gradually. Step by step, from the impossible, all the way to the elegant.

On May 6, 2004 the Feldenkrais international community celebrated the 100^th year anniversary of the birth of Moshe Feldenkrais (1904 -1984).