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.

The post Feldenkrais Licensing Programs appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

Not throbbing pain or anything, just intermittent strain with occasional pain. Enough that I noticed it and thought, “Hmm. This could turn into something. I need to deal with it now.”

It gave me anxiety because I had repetitive strain in my hand in grad school.

Now, you might think:

“Ryan, you’re a somatics practitioner. So you probably did somatics for it.”

And normally, yes, that's what I would do.

But this time, I decided I needed to look at my hand habits and environment. No point in "fixing" my thumb if I am doing something that is going to bring back the strain.

You can probably guess what the culprit was...thumb...strain...likely to do with computer, mouse, writing, or a phone, right?

Yep.

I use a Mac with a trackpad. The little square below the keyboard where you can swipe right, swipe left, scroll, click, and do all that.

And the way I use it, I click with my right thumb.

I’ve been doing that for years, perhaps more than a decade. Clicking who knows how many hundreds of thousands of times.

Apparently, my right thumb decided it had had enough.

The pain and strain were basically my thumb saying:

“Hey. Something needs to change here.”

I got on YouTube and started looking up ergonomic trackpads and ergonomic mice. And some of them looked useful. But before buying anything, I decided to test my theory.

I went digging through my old boxes and junk drawers and found a 10-year-old white Apple mouse.

I plugged it in on the left side of my computer. And now, when I need to click on something, I use the mouse with my left hand.

My right thumb gets a break.

It is no longer clicking hundreds of times a day.

And...it seems to work. Feels better.

So far so good.

Worried that it might not be enough, I also dunked both my hands in ice water for a few days. Nothing complicated, just a bowl with ice to reduce inflammation, and get circulation moving through my thumb and fingers.

And those two little non-Feldenkrais interventions have (so far) eliminated nearly all of the strain in my hand.

I'm not giving advice here about specific treatments for pain and strain relief. I'm just saying that it can be good to pause and ask:

1. What am I doing repeatedly that might be causing this?
2. What can I do to change the pattern?

Sometimes the answer is finding what you have been doing over and over, and changing it up until you get a useful change.

Peace!

Ryan

The post Pain Relief Without Feldenkrais appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

But then one day you look at the actual history and think:

"Wait a minute. Who in the hell gave these people this authority? Who certified the certifiers?!"

The term “Guild Certified Feldenkrais Trainer.,” sounds impressive, right? Sounds official. Sounds like something Moshe Feldenkrais must have created...? After all, the Guild has his name on it. His picture. His service marks. His whole aura floating around the thing like nag champa incense at a Yoga retreat.

So it is very easy to assume that the original Feldenkrais trainers were chosen by Moshe.

ha!

It's a reasonable assumption that is completly and utterly false.

When I was younger, I was willing to be diplomatic and say it is a myth that Moshe chose a few of his young American students to become trainers. Now, screw it. Let's drop the diplomacy: It was a lie!

Moshe did not create a trainer certification process.

Moshe did not personally certify any of the Feldenkrais Guild trainers. Not only did he never use the term "Feldenkrais Trainer," he was dead when they started using it! Moshe did not sit in a room, observe them training practitioners, and say, “Yes, these are the people who should carry my work forward.”

The first so-called Feldenkrais trainers began using that title after Moshe was no longer alive to approve, disapprove, clarify, correct, bless, curse, or throw something at them and call them idiots (one of Moshe's favorite words.)

So what happened?

The usual human thing happened: A small group of people got control of the public structure around the work: The service marks. The institutional language. The fancy-looking doors with hieroglyphics and fancy locks.
And then some of them anointedt themselves. And then became the people standing at the doors stopping others from entering. (Feldenkrais Trainers don't wear funny little hats like the Pope and his Cardinals. But they did consider it.)

One of the key figures in all the nuttiness was Jerry Karzen.

He was Moshe’s organizer, secretary, and traveling companion.

Jerry described the early process in his own words:

“In January 1983, I was asked by the Directors of the Feldenkrais Foundation to become its executive director while simultaneously the North American Feldenkrais Guild established the Training Accreditation Board. Soon thereafter, I asked Mark Reese, Russell Delman, and David Bersin to serve temporarily as trainers in Foundation-sponsored training programs...”

Read the little word there. “I asked.”

Not Moshe asked.

Not Moshe certified.

Not Moshe evaluated.

Jerry asked.

And what the hell did Jerry Karzen know? Was he a Feldenkrais trainer himself? NO. Had he trained others to do the work? NO.

And yet this is where the title begins. Not with Moshe. Not with a transparent public process. Not with a demonstrated standard of competence. But with Jerry asking a few men from the inner circle to “temporarily” serve as trainers.

Temporarily.

That is another little word worth noticing.

Because temporary arrangements have a funny way of becoming permanent hierarchies where no one is allowed to ask questions. And that is what happened.

The temporary became permanent.
The permanent became sacred.
The sacred became protected.
The protected became dogma.

(In a future post, I will share some of the terms Feldenkrais trainers have said about my writings: Sacrilege! Abomination! Mentally deranged!)

But I digress.

Decades later, people are still bowing before titles that were not created by Moshe, not certified by Moshe, and not based on any clear competency requirement that anyone can point to. That does not mean these men knew nothing. It does not mean they had nothing useful to teach. It does mean that they got official titles that gave them the ability to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that they were figuring out on the job. And it does mean that they had to lie to others - and eventually to themselves when they said, "This is what Moshe wanted."

And I don't think they realized it puts them below Moshe.

Puts them below a dead man.

Some of these men (and women) are in the 70s and 80s now and they are still not their own authority.

So yes, if you have had the feeling that something is not right in the Feldenkrais world, trust that feeling.
The hierarchy around the Feldenkrais Method is B.S.

It started as a poltical and myth-making hierarchy and not one based on skill
.
And no, it didn't descend from heaven or from Moshe.

It came from people with access, proximity and a willingness to use it for their own benefit. And once you see it - really see it - the whole thing starts to wobble.

Not the work but the "officialness."

The priesthood around the work.

The idea that some people are closer to the source and therefore get to decide who belongs, who speaks, who teaches, and who gets treated as legitimate. Ok, I could go on and on here...and I will. But that's enough for one blog post.

In the meantime, please stop and feel your contact with whatever chair, bed, floor or other surface you are in contact with right now.

Notice your contact.

Not the story about your contact with it, but your real lived contact...

That's real. And it belongs to you.

Peace.

Ryan

The post Not Certified By Feldenkrais appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

The original Feldenkrais training model was not created for your nervous system.

It was created for Moshe’s travel schedule.

The San Francisco training, 1975–78, was organized around long blocks of daily classes. Amherst, 1980–83, was one long summer stretch each year.

Why?

Not because four- and eight-week intensives are magically better for somatic learning.

Not because the human nervous system requires being away from your life, family, clients, and work for a month at a time.

Moshe lived in Israel. He was 71 when the San Francisco training began and 76 when Amherst began. He did not want to fly back and forth more than necessary.

And for many years, sometimes even now, a travel solution for one aging teacher became a sacred educational model for everyone else.

People started acting as if month-long intensives were the deep, traditional, somatically correct way to learn the work.

They are not.

They are logistics dressed up as pedagogy.

Learning science generally favors distributed practice over massed practice. Shorter learning periods, repeated over time, tend to create better retention and deeper integration than cramming. That also fits the earlier, more organic way Moshe taught in Israel: regular weekly learning over time, while people lived their actual lives.
So when a parent, a working practitioner, or someone with a full life says:

“I can’t disappear for four weeks at a time.”

The answer should not be:

“Then you are not serious about doing the work.”

Maybe the better answer is:

“The training model was never designed around you in the first place.”

And once you see that, the whole thing starts to look different. You can study the work in your own way. You can practice the work in your own way. You can acquite and teach voice-guided movement lessons in your own way.
You can learn over time, in your own life - just like Moshe did - with your own students, without pretending that Moshe’s travel schedule was a universal law of awareness.

The work is bigger than the training format.

And it is definitely bigger than the organizations that inherited it.

— Ryan

By the way: When I posted a version of this on Facebook, I got replies from people sayin that they enjoyed the immersive format. It was good for them and enjoyable. That's great. I am not making a statement of the utllity of any training format for any particular person. I am pointing out some of the historical factors behind the design (or lack of design, as the case may be.)

The post Rethink Intensive Feldenkrais Trainings appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

But awareness does not work that way.

Awareness cannot be forced.

Not by me.

Not by you.

Not by Feldenkrais.

Not by any method, teacher, therapist, trainer, or professional organization.

Why?

Because limitations in self-awareness usually have a protective function. People do not avoid certain truths because they are ignorant. They avoid them because seeing too much, too quickly, would threaten the identity they have built their life around.

That does not mean we should hide things. It does not mean we should protect false public narratives. It does not mean we should pretend that professional organizations, teachers, or communities are healthier than they are.

But it does mean that forcing awareness usually fails.

Milton Erickson understood this deeply. In most cases, you cannot rip away a person’s protections. They have to develop the strength and resources to realize harsh truths on their own.

It is just as true in somatic work as it is in therapy.

And it is true in professional communities.

I still believe that open communication is healthier than secrecy. I still believe that the truth eventually gives us more options. I still believe that hiding from reality creates emotional, intellectual, and professional violence.

But no one can be forced to see, feel or move differently.

Awareness cannot be forced.

It can only be invited.

The post Awareness Cannot Be Forced appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

That sounds odd, but it is very often true. Nassim Taleb captured the idea in this quote:

“In nature, we never repeat the same motion; in captivity (office, gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive-stress injury. No randomness.”

You know that feeling of being boxed in by something but not knowing what it is? It comes from getting too comfortable inside our own patterns.

Same streets. Same chairs. Same time of day. Same ways of using ourselves.

Nothing terrible.

Just enough sameness that some part of us starts to feel boxed in.

And as weird as this sounds, I do not look for the “right” change to make. Sometimes I look for any change to make.

Even if it seems weird or pointless.

I will let my dog follow his nose down some street we have never walked before. I will go to a coffee shop or restaurant I am almost certain I will not like. (And even if I am right, it still feels good to go there.)

This morning, I went to one of my favorite parks. It is a bird and nature preserve about 15 minutes from my house. I have gone there dozens of times over the last few years.

But I had never gone there early in the morning.

And the thing is: I did not want to go.

It seemed odd to go so early. It was only about 4:30 am. Too early, too dark. Too outside my normal pattern.

But I went.

And once I was there, I walked on a trail I had never noticed before.

Then I found some rock formations I had never climbed on. We are in the rainy season here in Mérida, and to reach one of the trails, I had to climb down some old stairs that I had never used.

And then it hit me.

This was the first time in a year or more that I had done any real climbing or stair use early in the morning. I do it later in the day or evening but never before sunrise.

Such a small thing. Almost nothing.

But it felt fantastic.

When I got home and started my day, I felt like a new person. Because I had introduced a little “structured” randomness. My feet woke up. My pelvis felt different.

It was awesome. Parts of me that do not get much variety from walking my dogs and riding my bike in the morning had a different kind of conversation with gravity.

And I was floating all morning.

So, just a thought, if anyone needs it. ?

Consider doing something new, or something old at a new time, even if it feels pointless or if you don't know why you are doing it.

Randomness counts in all amounts.

Peace!

Ryan

The post When Comfort and Routine Causes Suffering appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

The Alexander Yanai sessions are a large collection of group lessons taught by Moshe Feldenkrais starting in the 1950s. It was a very fertile and experimental period in the development of his work.

Some of the sessions were taught live by Moshe. But many were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes, which was cutting-edge technology at the time. And when you read the transcripts of him teaching, you can sometimes feel how alive the situation was. Moshe was watching. He was noticing. He was testing ideas.

To me, these sessions are fascinating because they show Moshe Feldenkrais actively developing his ideas. This was a time before Moshe was teaching other people how to “do Feldenkrais” in any formal way. He was still figuring it out for himself. He was experimenting with how to teach, what to teach, and how people responded to different movement ideas and instructions.

To me, that makes the Alexander Yanai sessions even more valuable. They are not always polished, finished lessons.They are working sessions exploring ideas.

We have access to the sessions now because after Moshe's death the recordings were transcribed, translated, and published.

That is part of what makes the work so interesting.

The lesson was not simply about doing the “right” movement. It was about discovering something through the process of paying attention, sensing, trying, adjusting, and learning.

They are not museum pieces.

They are not just old material.

They are a record of a living, experimental process.

Many of the ideas in these lessons later became more familiar parts of his workshops and trainings. You can often find early versions of movements, themes, and teaching strategies that were later refined into other lessons.

That is one reason I keep returning to them.

They give me a glimpse into how Moshe was thinking, teaching, testing, and developing his work in real time.

And for anyone interested in Feldenkrais, movement, learning, or the history of somatic education, the Alexander Yanai sessions are a rich and important source. There are times in my life whe I do several a day, as I spoke about in my post on Alexander Yanai deep dives.

Peace!

The post Feldenkrais Alexander Yanai: What Are They? appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

It feature a live demonstration with a participant dealing with whiplash-related neck pain and restricted movement.

I used Descript editing software (Get a 50% discount for 2 months) to clean and restore the audio and to add captions. Because of that this is the first time I have been able to watch the entire video and hear it! (I have tinnitus)

In this segment, Feldenkrais explores how the head, eyes, shoulders, breathing, abdomen, and overall muscular organization are linked in the nervous system, and how changing those relationships can quickly alter pain, effort, and range of motion.

The demonstration includes Feldenkrais observing asymmetry in the neck and body, working hands-on with the participant, and then using standing movements involving the eyes, head, knees, and heel to produce a striking change in comfort and mobility. It is a vivid example of his approach: understanding how the nervous system has organized itself, then changing the conditions so a different pattern becomes possible.

Audio note: The original recording had significant audio limitations. This version has been substantially enhanced using AI-based audio restoration to improve clarity.

The post Moshe Feldenkrais At CERN. FI Demonstration. Audio Restored! appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

I didn’t learn it from a Feldenkrais teacher. I learned it from a bunch of college students trying to get extra credit: Different context gets different result.

Here's the deal: Between 2002 and 2007, I taught infancy and early childhood development classes in the psychology dept. of the University of Utah. I did whatever I could to weave Feldenkrais ideas into the classes, mainly by using developmental milestones - crawling, rolling, walking - as an excuse to teach Feldenkrais sessions.

I required students to submit 1-page “Field Notes” about the sessions and how they affected their experience. Once they got over the weirdness of it, they loved it.

Something unexpected happened when students asked me for “extra credit.” They wanted a project or paper they could do to increase their grades.I was busy - teaching load, graduate studies, research all of it - so I came up with what I thought was a rather unimaginative idea:

Take Feldenkrais sessions they had already done - and do them in a new context.

• If they normally did sessions in the evening, do them in the morning.
• If they normally did them at home, do some at work.
• Do one in public.
• Do one at a relative’s house.

It didn’t matter to me as long as the context was as different as possible.

I was quite surprised when their papers came back. They described radically different experiences from when they first did a session. Different emotional experiences. Different insights. More relaxing - more impactful. More stress and strain relief . The field notes were longer, more detailed, and more honest. I was impressed.

I came up with the term “the non-habitual, non-habitual” to describe what they had done.

And I’ve used “non-habitual” Feldenkrais strategies ever since. Because you can easily fall into doing Feldenkrais in a habitual manner. And it can be surprisingly instructive to do sessions in what would be - for you - the most non-habitual manner.

You’ll be surprised at how different your experience is - and what you discover about yourself and your ability to let go of stress and relax.

I believe that if you really want to evolve your life and habits at deeper and deeper levels - to break free from more habits and compulsions and drop stress and strain - doing the non-habitual, non-habitual is a requirement.

And if you want sessions that make that ridiculously easy, here are two series you can use right away:

Feldenkrais Primitives (32 sessions, 5 minutes or less)
https://ryannagy.samcart.com/products/primitives

Layered Primitives (14 sessions, about 10 minutes or less)
https://ryannagy.samcart.com/products/layered-primitives

Everything is easy peasy. Just click to play and do the video sessions when they come in via email. No password required. And when you have some new and unexpected results, feel free to let me know. I read each and every email.

Ryan

The post The Non-Habitual Non-Habitual appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

I also made sure that every alert and notification on my iPhone was disabled. No pings from WhatsApp. No notifications of sales of my Feldenkrais products from PayPal or Stripe.

Nothing. Nada.

A few months later, in March 2025, I took the next step and unfriended everyone on Facebook. Everyone! Even my family. Not out of anger but exasperation and need for clarity. That turned out to be a massive improvement in my mental life as it helped me focus on my life and relationships in the here and now and to let go of notifications from people that I have not seen in the real world for 10, 20 years and more.

And about 3 months ago, I took it even further: I turn off all my devices in the evening. Whenever I am done working for the day, I turn off my phone and computer, unplug my internet router and I put them in an old plastic tub - my junk box - where I cannot see them or touch them.

And I don’t turn them back on until the next morning - after I have showered and eaten and walked my dogs. It gives me about 12 to 14 hours of uninterrupted peace every day.

A daily internet fast.

And the results?

For several days after each change, I had more down time and time to think and process. Just like fasting from food gives your body time for autophagy (eating cancerous cells) fasting from information gives your body time to let go of outdated thoughts and irrelevant ideas.

It was difficult at times. But the end is more peace, more creative energy and more time to focus on deep needs. The deepest need for me has been to focus on the integration of embodied language with somatics, a way to reach and respect the unique somatic world that each of us lives in - apart from method, apart from professions and deeper into personal nuance.

My first attempt at putting that into written form was an email (now a blog post) called Somatic Levels of Meaning. More on the way. If interested, stay tuned.

The post Somatic Simplification: Less Noise, More Freedom appeared first on Emergent Somatics.