The Third Path

The Third Path

To Read as a Deed

Before you lies a text that may appear both familiar and new. In his final published book, Moshe Feldenkrais reminds us that understanding often emerges from doing. This is a longer text that asks you to read—and to let the reading explain itself. I have tried to be clear, while remaining true to the Feldenkrais idea that learning should be non-habitual. By this I mean that the text, rather than being difficult, may be unfamiliar and renewing, and thus require attention.

In 1974, I regularly visited the hall on Alexander Yanai Street where Moshe Feldenkrais taught. For fifty years, I have continually returned in various Paths to this learning that took shape for me there – the place that is the origin of the book I am writing about. I stand in the tradition of offering a new interpretation of a given text – a consistent flow of words, if you will – just as a lesson can feel new when it is reshaped and presented differently to the inquirer.

Keep in mind: the text places no demands on you as reader. It is built like a lesson, and I will approach the theme from several directions.

Words, Fields, and Paths

The theme for the autumn term 2025 has emerged over the summer through a deepened reading of individual Hebrew words, their meanings, and how they are used by Moshe Feldenkrais in his foundational texts on the Feldenkrais pedagogy. His language, often described as archaic, is in fact misunderstood. The language contains meaning-bearing forms that are not added from the outside. A growing understanding of these nuances now gives me a more stable ground for the teaching I have carried out since 1991. I study and teach Feldenkrais in three languages: Swedish, English, and Hebrew. Three become a surface, a field to move across freely. To walk across a real field is to discover something we had not seen before. This field is the same.

I intend to speak more directly about the third path – the Feldenkrais path – based on these new insights. This means placing myself more clearly outside the binary choice that Swedish, English, and Western cultural expression often presume, and conveying more of the ancient tradition in which Hebrew is interpreted and applied.

Summary of the Text

I develop the theme by placing the words hafshata and milulit at the centre, together with the words d’mut atzmenu. The departure lies in Moshe Feldenkrais’ textbook Shichlul HaYecholet: Halacha u’Ma’aseh and the systematic distinction that is lost in the English translation, where two of the words are reduced to “abstraction.”

By showing how milulit refers to the literal level of language and hafshata is not a thing in itself, but a virtue that arises when something is withdrawn, another order emerges—different from the Western dualism between theory and practice, body and psyche, or body and soul.

The four components—thought, feeling, sensation, and movement—function simultaneously and shift internally, which emphasizes the indivisibility of the whole. The text leads to an understanding of the Feldenkrais Method as a Third Path: not a synthesis of opposites, but an undertaking in which language, action, and direction are one and mutually forming.

The First Five – hafshata (withdrawing, so that form appears):

1. Do the practice slowly
   This is hafshata because the tempo is reduced so that disturbing speed and the drive to perform are removed.
2. Do less than you are capable of
   Here hafshata takes place by reducing what is maximal. The unnameable that pushes toward boundary performance is set aside, and thereby the form and organisation of the movement become more visible.
3. It is easier to feel differences when the effort is small
   Hafshata means reducing what overloads perception, so that what remains are the differences in form – as described by the Weber–Fechner law.
4. Do not compel yourself to be efficient
   Hafshata lies in removing the demand for efficiency — where prediction becomes compulsion and obstructs learning.
5. Learning and life are not the same thing
   This is hafshata when the conflation between the conditions of life and the possibilities of learning is pulled apart. When the two are kept separate, it becomes easier to see what is actually learning.

The Five That Follow – milulit (the literal):

6. Complete light and simple movements
   This is milulit because the instruction is literal: do exactly what it says. Simplicity speaks for itself once it is understood and accepted as guiding.
7. Alternate between details and the whole and relate to the space
   This is milulit because the words literally state what is meant: attention in a dynamic action between concrete details, a whole, and how you are situated in the room. This is safety.
8. Look for the pleasant sensation
   Here, milulit is clear: it is a direct invitation, feelings are addressed without detour. Look for what they mean to you. The wording itself points the Path.
9. Do not try to do the movement well, neatly, or correctly
   This is milulit because the negation is literally in the words. The text carries itself: don’t do that – do as it says and meet yourself.
10. Do not say in advance what the final goal will be
    Milulit is what is literally said. Do not go ahead of the process—it blocks new thinking and is based on assumptions.