A few minutes ago I found a new Feldenkrais Method video online. It was promoting a Feldenkrais Training. I watched it, took some mental notes, and then prepared a blog post about it. But as I looked at the website of the training institute, I saw some of the same old names—Denis Leri, Arlyn Zones—and I thought to myself, “Do I really want to support these people?” The answer is no. In a split second, I deleted the post.
The Guild system performs some valuable functions. It maintains the service marks and helps practitioners navigate regulatory issues. But it also preserves an extremely restrictive training hierarchy. More than four decades after Moshe’s death, the Guild says there are over 10,000 Feldenkrais practitioners worldwide, yet there are only about 120 recognized trainers.
In practice, the overwhelming majority of practitioners are effectively shut out from training the next generation under the Feldenkrais name. Standards can be maintained without concentrating so much authority in so few hands.
Do people realize that when they take a Guild training:
- They are supporting a trainer monopoly.
- Prices are artificially inflated by limits placed on the number of people who can become trainers.
- The trainings have no demonstrated efficacy.
- The current training model is little more than a mimicking of the training Moshe conducted before he died.
- Guild-Certified Feldenkrais Practitioners are, by definition, becoming second-class citizens within the system they are joining.
There is no path to independent trainings. There is no path to new training models. A Guild-Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner has no political control over his own work. And if one wants to do what Moshe Feldenkrais did and begin a process of learning and teaching one’s work according to one’s inclinations and interests—God forbid!—one is immediately branded a traitor...
What Do We Create Next?
There is lots of good stuff going on in the Feldenkrais community right now. People are taking tentative—and not so tentative—steps toward creating their own trainings and training models. I suppose the question at this point is: How can we support that process and support those people? What type of new organization can arise bottom-up from this process?
If you are looking for answers from me, you might want to stop. My life as a self-identified Feldenkrais person is nearly at an end. I’m living in Mexico, studying Spanish, and moving strongly into other areas. But the need is there.
The growth of the Feldenkrais Method depends on creating a system that is focused on the needs of practitioners and the work itself. A growth model is needed. To me that means, at minimum, not supporting the old guard and not promoting their trainings and workshops. Why put money in the hands of people who are actively working against your success?
But that does not answer the question of what to create now. And how to start.
What comes next in the evolution of a dynamic system?
What do you need?
Republishing note: Originally published in 2012 and republished with light editing in 2026. Denis Leri, mentioned above, has since died. Some circumstances have changed, but the structural issues raised in this post have not. In some respects, they have become more serious: allegations of abuse and serious questions about how those allegations were handled have further exposed the dangers of concentrated authority and weak accountability.
Comments from the Original 2012 Post
The following comments appeared beneath the original version of this article in 2012. They have been lightly edited to correct spelling, punctuation, and formatting errors.
Istvan — July 24, 2012 at 11:08 am
Ryan, as usual, I appreciate your comments and agree with many of your points. I hope you WILL continue to keep up with further developments in the Feldenkrais work!
I would argue with you, though, about the efficacy of the training. It is true that one has to work on one’s own afterwards and that it is not “ready-made,” but isn’t that true in all professions? Isn’t it great, in a way, that you have to find or discover the work yourself?
Didn’t Moshe say, when asked why he did not go to medical school, that he wanted to discover it himself rather than simply have it poured into his head “ready-made”?
Quite a few people do the training for their own benefit, but for the dedicated ones it proves to be quite effective—if effectiveness is measured by how they are able to help people. Pains and aches disappear, movement and posture improve, and clients appreciate the work, queue up for FIs, and attend classes regularly.
Many practitioners also practice other modalities—some form of martial arts or yoga—or begin as physical therapists, philosophers, dancers, teachers, etc., and incorporate those things into their teaching.
Doesn’t everyone have their own handwriting?
Cheers,
Istvan
Dennis, by the way, spells his name with two n’s.
ryannagy replied — July 28, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Hi Istvan—
Thanks for your comments. I agree with much of what you wrote, perhaps all of it.
My greatest experience with this work came when I stopped giving FI and spent the better part of a year working directly with the Alexander Yanai lessons and, later, the Esalen workshop.
What I am not understanding is how this relates to my blog post above. Forgive me if I am being a bit “daft.” I have been reading in Spanish all day and did a couple of ATMs in Spanish by Lea Kaufmann, so I may be missing something.
Finding one’s own handwriting also applies to training others to do the work and to becoming a trainer in one’s own right—something I believe the current Guild system simply cannot support.
—Ryan
Angela Alston — July 25, 2012 at 2:37 pm
I’ve found the training, first in New York City and now in Houston, to be essential to my becoming a Feldenkrais practitioner.
Do I think the trainers have all the answers? No.
Do I think the Feldenkrais Method will continue to grow, expand, and morph beyond the boundaries of the “brand”? Oh yes. For example, Anat Baniel and Russell Delman.
Do I feel anyone is trying to control my growth as a teacher? Absolutely not. In fact, in my training with Paul Rubin, he has encouraged improvisation and empowerment.
I’m strongly in favor of a Guild because we need brand recognition and enhanced public appreciation of what the Method can offer.
I agree that the process of becoming a trainer needs to be simplified. For example, I know of one aspiring assistant trainer—a gifted teacher—who has been put off by the paperwork required. She’s the kind of future we need.
So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s help him find his feet.
ryannagy replied — July 28, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Hi Angela—
Thanks for your comments.
Ultimately, where we put our effort is a personal choice. I’m not interested in working within the Guild, at least not yet.
The Guild, like any other organization, wants to survive. As more and more people leave the Guild and its finances become ever more precarious, I believe it will adapt and change for the better.
But I see no way of improving it “from the outside in,” so to speak, and I don’t have any interest in doing so.
I would rather support people who are working independently to create the best learning experiences they can for themselves and their students, following the work of Moshe Feldenkrais rather than the training ideology created by a few of his American students.
Cheers,
Ryan
Brad Beldner — August 5, 2012 at 12:14 pm
I haven’t used the Guild for anything since 2005.
For what I desire, the Guild is too limited and its thinking too small to promote and expand the work I want to do.
Maybe the Guild is procrastinating—avoiding doing that which is important and meaningful...
Audy — August 5, 2012 at 11:36 pm
Haven’t practitioners in all, or most, areas of human endeavor been the ones who expand the work of their fields, rather than the organizations they belong to?
Maybe a better question is: “What do you expect from the Guild?”
“Use” the Guild.
When I want to find a practitioner anywhere in the world, yes, I use the Guild website. I like to check through “F-Krais Resources” for CDs and VHS tapes featuring Feldenkrais himself.
The society we live in, especially when it comes to working on the human body, often demands some kind of training and certification of practitioners to protect the client and make insurance available to protect the practitioner.
Brad Beldner — August 6, 2012 at 11:48 am
I think the fact that somebody has made it through this certification program doesn’t mean they have a high level of competency.
Guild certification is more like the trophy all the kids get for showing up at the event.
There is no rigorous testing or internship available to keep standards high. The Guild dues are a lot to pay just to have your name on the practitioner website.
ryannagy replied to Brad and Audy — August 6, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Brad—
There is nothing you wrote that I disagree with.
Audy—
Thanks for your comments. The Guild has certain useful functions; no argument there. However, the system also directly impedes—and is meant to impede—the independent growth of practitioners and the Method.
“Feldenkrais” has been artificially and narrowly defined, and only 60 or so of the thousands of practitioners are able to train and develop the work under the “Feldenkrais” banner.
This is a tragedy of huge proportions and is why leaders like Brad Beldner are not joining the Guild system. There are others I am not at liberty to name. They are simply doing the work organically, as Moshe intended, without interference from an organization designed to control who profits from the work.
As I have mentioned before, the current system was in no way set up by Moshe Feldenkrais, and it does not “protect his work,” as others such as David Zemach-Bersin have claimed.
The current system demands—yes, DEMANDS—conformity and creates a caste system.
Those who knew Moshe and became “Trainers” are at the top. Others who give up their independence and conform for 20 years or more MIGHT become trainers.
Everyone else—the practitioners who actually pay for the Guild—is permanently second-class and without a voice.
There is no meaningful pathway to advancement and no way of developing one’s work within the system.
The Guild system is a system of alienation and limitation, regardless of the fact that it does have some use in maintaining the service marks and such.
That’s my two cents.
—Ryan
