But that misses something important. Because Moshe’s first published work wasn’t about Judo. It was about autosuggestion and the unconscious mind.
In fact, at age 25—in 1929—he translated Émile Coué’s Conscious Self-Mastery Through Autosuggestion from French into Hebrew. And he added two chapters of his own. That work is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook thanks to Rueven Ofir’s efforts: Thinking and Doing: A Monograph by Moshe Feldenkrais. (my Amazon affiliate store)
Coué’s approach is dated by today’s standards. A simplified version goes like this: A person visualizes a positive result and repeats a phrase such as “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” The idea is that the unconscious accepts these suggestions and changes how you feel or act.
Feldenkrais eventually moved far beyond this. Rather than issuing commands to the unconscious, he created conditions for the nervous system to discover easier, more adaptive ways of moving and being.
But Moshe never updated his language around hypnosis. Even decades later, in Body and Mature Behavior and Awareness Through Movement, he defined hypnosis as “partial or deep sleep to make a person more amenable to suggestion.”
That’s both inaccurate and limiting.
Hypnosis isn’t sleep.
It’s focused attention.
It’s not about programming someone’s unconscious. It’s about creating a space where new possibilities can emerge—where you can feel subtle distinctions, and follow them into new ways of thinking, sensing, and moving. The unconscious isn’t a passive target for commands. It’s active, creative, and constantly learning—in partnership with our conscious awareness.
That’s one reason I explore the overlap between Feldenkrais and Ericksonian hypnosis. The two approaches resonate deeply, even if few in the Feldenkrais world want to admit it. (And yes, some fanboys and gurus would probably attack me for saying that.)
But the connections are there. And they’re worth exploring.
If you're curious to see where Moshe started—with Coué, autosuggestion, and his early thoughts on the unconscious—you can start here:
Thinking and Doing: A Monograph by Moshe Feldenkrais (Amazon)
