Awareness Through Movement #387

Knots - IMAGINATION

Vita and Asanga, I think you’ll both really enjoy this one it’s all in the imagination while you lie on your back :)

this not is with a ‘K”

I really enjoyed delivering tonight’s lesson.

I’m not sure I’ve ever explained the process of what happens behind the scenes - I know you know these lessons are from the manuals that the Feldenkrais training teaches potential practitioners from. There are other manuals as well, yet these Alexander Yanai ones are the most sourced.

Let me share about the manuals, some of what I’m about to share is what I’m guessing happened and some of it I KNOW happened.

Moshe died half way through the first ever practitioner training, and he hadn’t been teaching FROM manuals, he WAS the manual. Aside from his books, there wasn’t much written material about the practical teachings at all so a handful of people (thankfully) took it upon their selves to translate all of Moshe’s lessons with a view to understand what it was he was teaching… many practitioners still scratch their heads in confusion… to keep his legacy alive.

This AY series we are learning from, was transcribed by this dedicated group of people who listened to all of the (Hebrew) recordings he made between 1950 and 1970 and typed out what Moshe said word for word during his very early lessons. In chatting with Marianne this week she let me know that some of the difficult lessons were probably delivered on Fridays because Jewish people were not allowed to teach on Sabbath. This meant that practitioners from a variety of other methods, such as judo, gymnasts, dancers, actors, people from other physically active practices came to Moshe’s lessons to learn from him on these evenings. And, I think, he wanted to demonstrate how diverse and challenging his method could be and really get people thinking about the way they move. That’s one of the (known) reasons these lessons are so varied.

The recordings that the transcribers worked from had lessons that were half finished - the tape ended, tapes got lost, some were stolen, others went missing for whatever reason - and practitioners were left wondering which direction to take the lesson, so they abruptly end, mid sentence without a sense of where he was going.

There is a group of practitioners who meet every day and work their way through these manuals, doing the lesson with a discussion at the end.. which often start with “what do you think he meant…. ?”. Ellen Solloway, who was on the team to transcribe the material, AND she learned from Moshe himself is often at these daily lessons to provide feedback from her perspective of where he was coming from… all in all, a lot of what he taught is still a mystery.

There is no concrete manual for the teachings around the world either, so the Australian training teaches from a different angle compared to the American training which teaches different to the European training, which is different again to the spin off’s like the Mind Body Studies Academy and Anat Baniel’s “method”.

Why I’m letting you know this is to include you in my process. Each day I work through the lessons to edit and remove what I call the superfluous words, “to the left, I said to the left…. no, excuse me, I mean to the right” “in order to”, “that means”, “in other words” “of course”, “the possibility of moving to the left” so that I can cut to the actual movements - and include all of Moshe’s tips, words of wisdom and his (now politically incorrect) sense of humour. Depending on the state of each particular lesson, this process can take anywhere between one and three hours.

This one was a little messy, his directions were all over the place and I remember when I first did it I got really really confused - which was common feedback from other practitioners - so I’ve cut 4 pages back to 2 and made it really concise. This is all my very long way of explaining why “I really enjoyed delivering tonight’s lesson…”

and now I’m clicking ‘post’ with my fingers crossed you’ll enjoy it :)