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“I don’t need anyone’s certificate. These idiots should shut up!” Osho

Smiling Osho. He knew how to laugh.

I have been reading the work of a man, now deceased, called “Osho.” He has been heavily criticized, but I like him a great deal. I am cutting and pasting below, not exactly in the order that he presents his ideas. I got these quotes from his book The God Conspiracy but his books are all transcribed from his talks and I believe that these ideas and words appear elsewhere.

Feel free to make what meaning you will. And yes, I was thinking of the Feldenkrais certification process when I pasted these citations below.

“In Christianity you cannot be a saint on your own account. The word saint comes from sanction. You have to be sanctioned by the church that you are a saint; it is a certificate. It is such an ugly idea that the church can give you a certificate that you are a saint. Even a man like Francis of Assisi, a beautiful man, was summoned by the pope: “People have started worshipping you like a saint, and you don’t have any certificate.” And that’s where I feel Francis missed the point. He should have refused, but he knelt just like a Christian and asked the pope, “Give me the certificate.” Otherwise he was a nice man, a beautiful man, but I don’t mention his name because he acted in a very stupid way. This is not the way of a saint.

I don’t need anybody’s certificate for my enlightenment or for my buddhahood. I declare it! I don’t need anybody’s certificate. Who can give me the certificate? Even Gautam Buddha cannot give me the certificate. Who gave him a certificate?”

“After twenty-five centuries, I am not going to be a replica of Gautam Buddha. I have nothing to learn from him. If anything has to be, he has to learn something from me. Twenty-five centuries have not been a mere wastage. Just as everything is progressing and evolving, so is consciousness. But every scholar gets completely fucked-up! He thinks only in terms of his scripture, and the scripture is twenty-five centuries old. I am a contemporary man, and I do not belong to any category. I am a category in myself. I decide according to my spontaneous response, not according to any commandments, not according to any discipline. Whether the discipline is given by Buddha or Mahavira or Christ or Krishna, it does not matter; they are all old. But these people are living in the past.

I am moving moment to moment into the future. I have left Gautam Buddha twenty-five centuries behind. His enlightenment also is twenty-five centuries old. So much dust has gathered on it. But my mirror of consciousness is absolutely fresh, and I am not going to listen to anybody. Nobody is my master! And nobody has the right to tell me what character is and what is wisdom and what is enlightenment. Nobody has that right.

I am a man absolutely free. I live my life according to my own light. I am nobody’s follower, and I don’t live my life according to any scripture. These idiots should shut up!

Feldenkrais, the Stoic Sage and a Veneer of Professionalism

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“For Seneca, the Stoic sage should withdraw from public efforts when unheeded and the state is corrupt beyond repair. It is wiser to wait for self-destruction.” – Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

I have been thinking of the quote above in relation to the Feldenkrais “guild system.” I take the somewhat pessimistic system that the guild system is not amenable to change and that even if it were, spending my time and energy to help fix it would likely not pay off financially. I have a great number of projects that take up my time. For example, learning spanish, blogging, and learning how to effectively use DEVONagent and DEVONthink Pro. I can literally spend all week working on those things – finding it very satisfying – and not making even a dollar. To spend time organizing against the Guild or for change within it? It pays even less than nothing.

Though, I still admit a certain fascination what has happened to “the work” after Moshe’s death. And to spending much time thinking about the insanity of the entire system and what could either change it or replace it. Something that reminded me of the insanity was a recent quote on the FeldyForum by Feldenkrais “Trainer,” who is otherwise a very intelligent and well-spoken individual. He wrote:

“For some, maybe this work is best suited for personal development, and not as a profession.”

At first glance, I had a hard time disagreeing with that statement. It seems rather innocuous and undoubtedly true. But as I thought more about it, I started to remind myself of what Feldenkrais professional training programs really are. They are licensing schemes. Pay your money to a guild certified Feldenkrais training program, attend classes and you will get the opportunity to pay use the trademarked terms, Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, ATM®, and Functional Integration®, amongst others. That is essentially it. Pay your money, get the trademarks.

There are no meaningful standards for enrollment in Feldenkrais training programs other than the ability and willingness to pay. One does not need any particular background or qualifications. There are no meaningful standards for graduation. There is virtually no practicum nor supervised practice. There are no internships, few jobs available, little name recognition.

After 30+ years of this system, neither the guild nor any of its associated organizations nor trainers can point to any meaningful evidence of its own effectiveness nor ability to launch practitioners into practice. And again, the Feldenkrais trainer above notes that: “For some, maybe this work is best suited for personal development, and not as a profession.”

I wonder if he includes himself and his fellow Feldenkrais trainers in that category? He is likely a very skilled individual when it comes to giving Feldenkrais sessions. But does he or his friends have any evidence of the success of their training programs or graduates? Perhaps I should change his statement to give a different flavor being a Feldenkrais Trainer might be best suited for someone who wants to do it for personal development and not as a profession.

Sure Feldenkrais Trainers are good people. They mean well. I assume at some level they believe in what they are doing. But they are not held accountable for any particular outcome, or indeed any outcome at all.

Perhaps you think, I am being to harsh in my assessment?

What if medical schools were run like Feldenkrais programs? That is, if anyone could enter med school as long as they could pay. If they had no evidence of competence of graduates and no internships and jobs available. People might be enraged and offended. But wait! Here comes the medical school professor to explain it: Not everyone is meant to be a medical doctor. Surely not. But would that explain away the incompetence of the medical school?

I think not. And why should the Feldenkrais guild system be any different? Why bother listening to a Feldenkrais Trainer talk about competence, when he himself has no demonstrated competency?

DEVONthink Pro Office on a MacBook Air

DEVONthink Pro Office (DTPO) on a MacBook Air

It has been about 7 months since I first bought a MacBook Air with 4gigs of RAM and a 128gig SSD hard drive. My MB Air is built for a Latin American market and as such has a Spanish-friendly keyboard, and due to taxes and import fees and such a price tag 30% higher (gag) than I would have paid in the U.S. When I first bought the computer I foolishly believed that it was not good enough to run DEVONthink Pro (DTPO) because it did not have enough RAM nor a big enough hard drive. I have recently discovered how wrong I was. Not only does a MacBook Air run DTPO, but it runs it super fast and efficient, even with only 4 gigs of RAM! It runs faster – much faster – than on my MacMini and my former MacBook Pro. And in my case, I have been able to keep my databases on a USB 3.0 Flash drive. Keeping your databases on a USB is not necessary or required but my DTPO databases are about 32 gigs in total and I do not want them clogging up the hard drive on my Air.

I used to believe that main factor on the speed of DTPO was RAM. Why? About four years ago, when I doubled the RAM of my (now dead) MacBook Pro from 2 to 4 gigs it massively increased the speed of DEVONthink. But guess what? When I doubled the RAM on my MacMini (from 4 to 8 gis) it did NOTHING for the speed of DEVONthink. Nada! In retrospect, this should have been obvious. My original MacBook Pro had a hard drive that ran at 7200 rpm. And the standard MacMini runs at 5200 rpm. A slower hard drive will slow down DTPO regardless of the size of the RAM. And the super fast solid state hard drive on the MacBook Air runs DTPO very, very fast.

However, I must add one caveat. I have only tested DEVONthink with smaller databases, from 200mb to 5 gigs. They run great. I have one ridiculously large database with 23 gigs of data and I have yet to use it on my Air. It is too large for my USB and I do not want to put it on my Air’s SSD. I will first buy one of these: Kingston Digital HyperX 3.0 DataTraveler (DTHX30/64GB)
I am guessing that it will be slow and that I will need to split it up into smaller databases. I will let you know.

Fair warning: I may be a geek. But when it comes to technology, I am not a Super Geek. There are many people more knowledgeable about DTPO and computers than I. Blogging about these topics is way to clarify what I think I know and to invite (respectful) feedback. Also, can import my RSS feeds into DEVONthink and my own writings become a part of my database. How fricking cool is that???

Feldenkrais Guild History: A Letter From Jerry Karzen

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Below is link to a pdf of a letter written by Jerry Karzen and faxed from the Feldenkrais Guild of North America to Roger Russell in 1994. I thought you might find it interesting as it contains some nuggets regarding Feldenkrais history after the death of Moshe. Those of you who think that the original designation of being “Feldenkrais Trainer” was some type of skill-based competency achievement may be interested in the last line of the letter where Karzen notes that he asked Mark Reese, Russell Delman and David Bersin to “temporarily seve as trainers.” I do not know on whose authority Karzen designated anyone to be a “Feldenkrais Trainer” nor on what basis. He was not a skilled trainer at the time and was hardly more than a beginner himself. And he certainly was not acting on Moshe’s behalf as the man was dead.

This letter was sent to the Feldenkrais Guild on March, 15th, 1994 a little more than 5 years before the lawsuit that was filed challenging the Guild’s ownership of the service marks. I wonder if the two events were related. Perhaps the Guild was getting ready for a lawsuit? Or perhaps this was related to the lawsuit in Germany in which the German Guild lost exclusive use of the Feldenkrais trademarks? Anyone know? Please leave a comment.

There may be a second page to the letter as the page that I have does not contain a signature. I did not make the markings on the pdf. They were already on the file when I received it.

Letter: Jerry Karzen to The Feldenkrais Guild

For the sake of ease of reading and so that Google can more easily index this content, I have typed the contents of the letter below:

To Whom it May Concern,
In 1978 I was elected president of the No. North American Feldenkrais Guild. During this time I was also serving intermittently as Dr. Feldenkrais’ secretary and traveling companion. In late 1979, at the request of Dr. Feldenkrais. I began to organize the Amherst, Massachusetts Feldenkrais Training Program, and also became his full-time secretary and traveling companion.

Dr. Feldenkrais became ill in October of 1981, and because of his illness in late May of 1982. he recorded on audio tape the names of those people whom he wished to teach in his stead in the third year of the Amherst Program. The appointed people were: Mia Segal, Chava Shelhav. Yochanan Rywerant, Ruthy Alan, Anat Baniel, Bruria Milo, Gaby Yaron, Myrtom Pfeffer, and myself, Jerry Karzen. These same people served as trainers in the fourth and final year of the
Amherst Training Program. I asked Bruria Milo to serve as an assistant in the fourth year, to which she agreed, along with David Bersin, Mark Reese, Russell Delman, Fenny Loc, and Shlomo Efrat.

In January 1983,1 was asked by the Directors of the Feldenkraia Foundation to become its executive Director while silmutaneusly the No. American Feldenkrais Guild established the Training Acreditation Board. Soon thereafter, I asked
Reese, Russell Delman, and David Berin to serve temporarily as trainers in Foundation sponsored training programs along with some of the trainers designated by Dr. Feldenkras in 1982.
(letter from Jerry Karzen)

Feldenkrais Project in Nicaragua

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Feldenkrais Volunteer Opportunity in Nicaragua

Robert Trummer, of Nicaraguan and Swiss background is doing a project called, “Feldenkrais Without Borders ” in Grenada, Nicaragua from the 5th to the 17th of August 2013. In this project practitioners will be working mainly with special needs children (and their families, caretakers and professionals when possible). Below are the details that I have. Feel free to post a comment if you want to know more. I will ask Robert to respond.

There is only space for a couple more Feldenkrais practitioners to join and share this unique experience, don’t wait!

The dates this year are from Monday August 5th to Saturday August 17th (two weeks) 2013. It is in the rainy season but usually it does not rain much during the day and you will be happy for the cooler air ( temp 23 to 31 Celsius, 72 to 88 Fahrenheit).

Anybody interested in volunteering on an other date, any time of the year, is welcome to do so. Get in contact with Robert and he can help arrange your stay. Robert has a house in Granada (his mother was Nicaraguan) which you can use for free. The house has 3 bathrooms, two huge rooms (7mx7m) and two smaller ones, it also has interior gardens and a huge corridor which is actually bigger than the rooms. He can send you pictures of the house. People who want to stay longer can keep using the house, tell him and you can work out the details.

The places you will be volunteering at are in Granada (http://english.corazoncontentogranada.org) and Managua (http://fsdinternational.org/node/215).

Here are several YouTube video about the organizations that Robert sent me. They are in Spanish, but if you do not speak Spanish, you can stil get a feel for the children and what help they need:

Again, leave a comment if you want more information and I will ask Robert to respond.

cheers! – Ryan

Feldenkrais for Eye Strain Relief and Improving Vision (Coming Soon!)

Feldenkrais and Eye Strain Reduction

However, the changes in my vision are minor when compared to the reduction in tension in and around my eyes. I feel a sensation of lightness and relaxation around my eyes that I have never felt. I believe the tension reduction is largely a function of the reduction in strain and stress in my eye muscles. Most of the Feldenkrais strategies that I am experimenting with involve separating the movement of the eyes from the movement of the body. That is, moving the eyes and head in opposite directions and fixing the eyes on certain objects in the environment while moving the body. These are movements that we do not generally do in day-to-day life. Unless you are a Feldenkrais practitioner or other somatic worker, you may not have noticed that your eyes generally lead your movement. I think – though I am not sure – that moving moving my eyes and head and body in opposing directions has relaxed habitual tension that had built up from my eyes muscles rigidly contracting and focusing on objects that do not move, such as computer screen.

I still have a great deal of work to do before creating the product and releasing it on my websites and on iTunes and Amazon. I have created transcripts of the first 4 sessions with an unknown number still to come. I will likely post a free session on this blog and announce the release of the product here first. Sign-up to the blog to get notifications:

- Ryan

Ryan Nagy

Feldenkrais, Technology, Marketing, Travel and The Distributed Self