MF talks about the humility of learning

Teaching by handling is part of the original Feldenkrais legacy!

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About handwriting

About this article.
15 years ago I wrote in this matter for the first time.Then in connection with the international advanced YR held in December 2007. I addressed EuroTAB in a further hopeless attempt to get them interested. YR was not happy - he felt it was up to him to act on the matter himself. It never came off. 

Today I think of one of his expressions. Not to have self-interest but to have the Method in mind. For that purpose, I can still expose myself to criticism and questioning among dissenters.

As I now rewrite this in connection with the update of the tribute on the 100th anniversary of his birth, I often find that this specific understanding is still lacking among many teachers.

It still makes sense to reach out

December 7, 2022
Eva Laser

The book in front of you should be reread several times.

Moshe Feldenkrais
In the early summer of 1973, in a lecture for director Peter Brook and Teatro Campesino, Moshe Feldenkrais is making a point by telling a story.
He is talking about the humility of learning and about knowing one’s place in society in this respect.

To make himself clear he explains the master / pupil relationship in the rabbinic world. He tells how a master, a rabbi, is conducting himself when a pupil of his is presenting a book the pupil has written, asking for approval by his most respected rabbi/teacher. The rabbi then gives his smachta, his support and seal of the book in a special way according to the big tradition.
He is not writing a lengthy introduction, thus outranking the content of the very book,
no, Moshe Feldenkrais explains, he only writes: 

 “I know this man; I know where he comes from,
I know his intelligence, I know his knowledge
and I think it is an important book for you to read.”

"Smachta" has the same root as the noun "smicha" meaning support, balance, rest, authorization, graduation, qualification.

10 years later Moshe Feldenkrais gave his very own smachta to a long term scholar of his, Yochanan Rywerant from the first Tel Aviv training, who has written a book, the first, about FI and the Feldenkrais Method.
 
This is all he wrote.

In The Feldenkrais Method, teaching by handling. MF does not write a lengthy foreword which apparently was opposed to his deeper understanding of humility, learning and knowledge; he plainly writes exactly how he explained it in a lecture for director Peter Brook and Teatro Campesino in the early summer of 1973.

"Yochanan was a teacher of physics in one of the best schools of Israel. He was at that twenty-eight years running. Later he joined the Feldenkrais School. He worked thirteen and a half years within close quarters in the same room in which I worked. He has his own "handwriting" like all the others. Everyone learns the method without imitating his teacher. Yochanan is not imitating anybody. The book in front of you should be reread several times. That way you are likely to get most of the goodness of the book. Good Luck."
Moshe Feldenkrais
Extract from the lecture where Dr Feldenkrais speak about humility and his ancestor Pinchas from Koretz

Helen Workman, a teacher in Canada, sent me the clip from the lecture and asked me to use it to explain its meaning relevance to the foreword of the book Teaching by action.
She told me she was concerned because Y.R.'s book was not regularly introduced to new students of the Feldenkrais method in North America. Being familiar with my contributions to Feldyforum, a discussion forum for teachers, she thought I might have something to contribute on this matter.

Chabad writes about Pinchas from Koretz, Moshe Feldenkrais' ancestor, Baal Shem Tov's disciple. Link[+]

The Feldenkrais Method, Teaching by handling

by Yochanan Rywerant

Read more about the book itself

Read More

The letter to EuroTab in 2007

The humility of learning & the seal seen in a 24 year perspective.
An exploration of the Hebrew culture; its tradition of teaching & learning and its influence on the Feldenkrais Method.

by Eva Laser
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Biography, teachings and views
The author
Colleagues remember

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