Feldenkrais spoke a great deal about movement, aggression and "survivability." As a Jew who lived through WW2 and saw most of his family destroyed by a pogrom in the Ukraine, and as a martial artist, one can see (or at least imagine) how much both violence and self-protection played a part in his life and the development of his ideas. For that reason, I am rarely surprised these days when I read a Feldenkrais quote, like the one below from Alexander Yanai 505:
Nature prepares the baby for a life of defense and attack, for everything that is necessary so it would be able to survive without the police defending him, or the army defending him, because it is not always possible to depend on those brave people who are defending him. Each person needs to know how to defend himself. The world is built like this.
I personally do not look at a baby or child and think how "nature prepares the baby for a life of defense and attack." That seems a bit extreme. Though again, I can imagine how Moshe might have looked at that way at times. Keeping in mind that Moshe never had his own children. If had been a father, would his views have been different?
Much as I have fallen in and out of love with the so-called "Feldenkrais Method" over the years, I have also fallen in and out of love with "Ericksonian Hypnosis" and "Mindfulness" and other methodologies that I have used and practiced.
That is why I am somewhat reluctantly sharing with you a free three part training on what Ron Siegel calls "the number one cause of human suffering." The ideas in the training are very valuable and cover a topic that we study: Survivability. When it comes to basic human survival, avoiding pain is often a key part of the equation, not just physical pain, but emotional pain. And the topic is understudied and less understood by many practitioners.
That is one of the reasons why I am sharing this. The training is free and valuable, but from my Feldenkrais and Ericksonian perspective a bit non-experiential at times. I hope you will consider checking it out and give me your opinion in a comment below. After watching the training series, let me know how valuable you find it. Or not. And if you think about avoidance and survivability in your work.
cheers!
Ryan
By the way, the training will only be available for a few days. Click to check it out now before it goes away forever.
