Feldenkrais Training Programs Are Licensing Schemes
Over the years, I have heard many Feldenkrais trainers say that going through a four-year training is neccesary to create competent Feldenkrais practitioners. The stated purpose is to create professional practitioners.
That is the official story.
The reality is different.
If there is a meaningful requirement for competence, it is have never been meaningfully defined nor enforced. And I have never seen any evidence that the programs reliably produce professional practitioners.
But they do reliably award certificates!
Those certificates allow graduates to use the Feldenkrais service marks, and they are awarded whether or not the graduate has demonstrated the skill required to work competently with the public. Most trainers do not publicly acknowledge this problem. They also do not acknowledge the financial incentive built into the system.
The Financial Incentives
Training programs make more money when they accept more students. It is not in their financial interest to limit enrollment. It is not in their financial interest to for competence. It is not in their financial interest to fail students, remove them from a program, or refuse certification after collecting tuition for four years.
The people running these programs are financially rewarded for admitting more students and carrying them all the way through to certification.
Competency testing would interfere with the business model.
That is why Feldenkrais training programs are not really training programs.
They are licensing schemes.
The Feldenkrais Licensing Schemes
You pay the money for four years. You show up at the training. You complete the required number of days. At the end, you are granted permission to use the service marks, dependent, of course, on continuing to pay money to the guild or professional organization on a yearly basis.
That is the actual transaction.
If lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and other professionals were trained in the same manner as people in the Feldenkrais guild system, it would work like this:
1. Anyone who wants to become a doctor, lawyer, or psychologist applies to a program and is accepted.
2. He or she pays tuition to the institute for four years.
3. The student graduates regardless of skill or performance during those four years.
4. The graduate begins working with the public without an internship or a meaningful period of supervised practice.
5. The graduate pays a fee every year so that he or she can continue using the professional title.
Nobody would take that system seriously as professional training.
Yet that is close to how the Feldenkrais system operates.
And do not forget: Feldenkrais licenses can only be awarded through programs controlled by a very small group of people worldwide, by my count less than 130 the people..those who call themselves Feldenkrais trainers.
They tell us that they do this to preserve and protect Moshe Feldenkrais’s legacy.
Isn’t that a hoot?
The more certificates they award, the more they claim they are protecting Moshe’s legacy.
But awarding certificates is not the same as developing competence.
Controlling service marks is not the same as protecting the work.
Requiring four years of attendance is not the same as creating a professional practitioner.
The title “trainer” does not change the function.
The can call themselves a trainer, coach, facilitator, priest, hooker, or drug addict. It matters not.
Their function is still the same.
They are in the business of collecting tuition and awarding certificates that grant permission to use the service marks to people willing to pay them.
That is a licensing business.
It is not a system for producing competent practitioners.
The distinction matters.
It matters to students who spend four years and a great deal of money believing that completing the program will make them professionally capable. It matters to members of the public who assume that certification represents a consistently enforced standard of competence.
A real professional training system would define competence clearly. It would assess competence honestly. It would require substantial supervised practice. It would limit enrollment when necessary. It would fail people who did not meet the standard. It would be willing to withhold certification, even after years of tuition had been paid.
The present system is not built to do that.
It is built to accept students, collect tuition, carry them through four years, award certificates, and maintain control over who may use the service marks.
That is not professional training.
It is a licensing scheme.
Having said all that, I am not against training programs. They can be valuable. What I am against is pretending that they are the only legitimate way to become competent, teach the work, or create something of your own.
I am against confusing certification with competence.
I am against a small group of people controlling who is allowed to use certain words while claiming that this control protects the public or preserves the work.
You are free to study deeply, practice seriously, develop real skill, and create your own work without asking permission from a guild, professional body or anyone else. Though, yes, I know you must conform to local legal restrictions. Be careful. Don't do anything illegal or get thrown in jail.
You are free to learn from Feldenkrais without becoming dependent on the Feldenkrais system.
You are free to teach movement, awareness, learning, and self-exploration in their own language, under your own name, using methods you have used, tested and developed yourself.
A certificate may give someone permission to use a service mark.
It does not give competence.
And the absence of that certificate does not mean that a person has nothing valuable to teach.
The future of this work will not come from tighter control, more licensing, or more people repeating what they were taught in a four-year program.
It will come from people who are willing to learn, experiment, think for themselves, become genuinely competent, and create something new.
