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.

Something that I have been tracking over the years is the different ways that people categorize somatic sessions with words—and how that affects learning, pain relief, and other needs.

Words are labels, right?
Labels pointing to experiences.
But the words are not the experiences themselves. They just point to them.

People can use the same word and embody it differently. And they can have similar experiences but wildly different interpretations of that experience.

Different Words for the Same Lesson

For example, people will do a session and use different labels to describe it. It can be called:

• relaxing
• illuminating
• tiring
• difficult
• impossible
• boring

Of course, pain-reducing and stress-releasing are also common themes. And in my sessions, “meditative” and “hypnotic” come up from time to time as well.

However, your experience of those words will be different than mine or anyone else’s.

And that difference isn’t a small thing.

It’s actually the starting point for how people learn, change, and even relieve pain.

For one person, a movement feels “tight.”
For another, the same movement feels “protective.”
Someone else says it “releases the pain.”
Another person calls it “strain,”
and someone else says “well, that was pointless!”

The label can alter the experience — and the experience can alter the label.

Different embodied meanings.

Different pathways for comfort, learning, and action.

What the “Founders” Thought

And then there are the founders and teachers who do not like particular words.

For example, you can see Moshe Feldenkrais on video getting impatient during trainings and saying to students:

“No, no, it is not about relaxation!”

Or when he was annoyed that someone compared one of his sessions to meditation, he would go on long rants calling meditation “idiotic.”

I do not like that, because I find it an unhelpful intrusion on another person’s worldview and experience.

A person’s experience is their experience and they can talk about it any damn way they want. I do not impose my movement on them, so why would I impose my language and thinking?

Somatic Levels of Meaning

I am writing about this now because I am pulling together a framework called Somatic Levels of Meaning. It’s been a long time in the making! Decades.

It is about helping people reclaim and respect their own embodied movement and language — respecting that each person organizes and talks about their experience differently.

It is based on a framework used by Gregory Bateson in the 1970s called logical levels (originally a mathematical model), and later refined by Steve Andreas, a colleague and mentor of mine who passed away in 2018.

I do not know exactly how I will roll it out.

It might be in a series of YouTube videos or blog posts.

It might be a webinar or course.

Whatever I do, I will make an announcement here. And I hope you stick around to see it.

Peace!

Ryan

By the way, this article was originally going to be sent only to folks in my Easy Feldenkrais Members email list. But at the last minute, I thought others might be interested as well. If I was wrong about that, my apologies. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming soon. ?

The post Somatic Levels of Meaning appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

Just a few moments ago, I bumped into a note from several decades ago where a Feldenkrais trainer expressed online one of the founding myths of the Feldenkrais Guild system:

"Moshe wanted a strong guild to protect his work. That was his expressed wish."

That's a myth about Moshe. A good myth for someone who wants to claim to be a direct descendant of Moshe, working on his behalf. But it flies in the face of what some of Moshe’s closest students have said over the years, including:

Moshe had no interest in the incorporation process, and not very much interest in the “Guild.” With Moshe working hard and traveling, he did not want to waste time with the confusion common to the Guild, with several factions wanting to control and influence its activities. From: Moshe, No Interest In The Guild

And even more to the point: All the polices, procedures and politics of the various organizations came about after Moshe's death. Apart from one of Moshe's original Israeli students - Mia Segal - none of the original American Feldenkrais trainers were training with permission from Moshe. Moshe did not certify anyone as a "trainer" and never used that word. I can say that with complete confidence as Moshe was dead when the first group of people began calling themselves Feldenkrais Trainers!

If that is true, where did the first Feldenkrais Trainers come from? They were chosen by Moshe's "traveling companion" Jerry Karzen. Karzen himself was not a Feldenkrais trainer and had never trained others to do this work. You might ask on what basis he chose others to train?! A great question. I published an article on this in 2013: A Letter from Jerry Karzen.

Just a short reminder: Every tribe nation, religion and yes, professional group has its origin myths. They are designed to create legitimacy and authority, keep money flowing to the founders and keep system intact—whether the myth is true...or not.

The post Myths about Moshe and The Feldenkrais Guild appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

It was about a research study on interventions for knee pain and it said:

"A new study has found that adjusting walking style can effectively alleviate knee pain and slow cartilage degradation....and demonstrated that gait retraining, involving small adjustments to foot angle, provided pain relief comparable to medication."

In plain terms: they claimed that adjusting how people walked eased knee pain more than medication did.

Curious, I dug a bit deeper—and found that it was quoting high-quality research from The Lancet. The article explained it this way:

“By making a small adjustment to the angle of their foot while walking, participants in a year-long randomized control trial experienced pain relief equivalent to medication.”

And that’s what struck me most. Here’s top-tier research confirming what many of us have seen for years in Feldenkrais: small, personalized adjustments can change everything.

But I believe Feldenkrais works even better than the research intervention, because instead of prescribing a single ‘correct’ pattern, Feldenkrais helps your nervous system to discover variations that fit your body best—so the improvements feel natural, lasting, and effortless.

It reminded me of my Walking With Ease, Power & Grace series that I have not spoken about since 2023. Each short standing lesson helps you explore small variations—how your feet touch the ground, how your knees and hips support you, how your spine and breath join in—until you find the version that feels best for you.

The result? You stand better and walk better. Less strain, more stability, and a lighter, easier walk that doesn’t mask pain but reorganizes how you move so the pain can lessen or go away.

If you are interested, you can check out the series below. Walking sessions are great because you can do them with virtually no preparation. You just take off your shoes and begin...

Learn more and get the series here

The post Feldenkrais Better For Knee Pain Than Medication? appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

If you’re new to Feldenkrais, you might not be familiar with the idea of using “rollers” in the context of Feldenkrais sessions.

In gym culture and physical therapy, rollers are often used for self-massage, stretching, or so-called “myofascial release.” But this has little to do with how Moshe Feldenkrais used them.

In Feldenkrais and other somatic approaches, rollers are used to support the body gently, precisely, so it can rest more fully, move more easily, and learn without strain.

Moshe began using rollers back in the 1950s—but not for massage. They weren’t even made of foam at first. He used wood, cardboard tubes, and other soft materials in various sizes to support different parts of the body.

Some went under the ankles or knees while lying on the table. Others were used under the spine, or the neck. The goal was never to press or release tissue—it was to support the person just enough so their system could organize itself more efficiently.

Moshe used rollers to place a person’s body in a position that echoed upright standing. He believed that if the nervous system could experience new movement patterns while lying down—but still organized like standing—those patterns would be more likely to carry over into daily life.

He once described it like this:

“When you put a person on the bed [Feldenkrais table] you must support all the gaps… with rollers, sponges, little pieces of rubber… What for? To bring the lying body into a state where the reaction from the table would be uniformly annihilating the weight.”

In the late 1980s, physical therapist and Feldenkrais student Sean Gallagher began using foam rollers for self-massage. Accoring to the website Physical Culture Study, he introduced the idea to Broadway choreographer Jerome Robbins, whose dancers were performing night after night. The cast experimented with rollers backstage—and the results were so positive that they quickly became a staple for dancers on Broadway.

Then, in the 1990s, physical therapist Mike Clark helped rebrand foam rolling as “self-myofascial release.” His training manuals and fitness programs helped spread the technique across gyms, clinics, and athletic performance centers. By the 2000s, foam rolling was everywhere.

That’s why I couldn’t help but laugh earlier today when I read a New York Times article called “The Best Foam Rollers.”

It opened with:

“Foam rolling... is extolled by physical therapists, massage therapists, and personal trainers alike for improving flexibility and reducing stiffness (and even pain).”

Plenty of praise. But not a single mention of where foam rollers actually came from—or how they were originally used by Feldenkrais and other somatic pioneers.

There is nothing wrong with using rollers however you want to. If they work for you, that’s great! I simply want to point out that their origin—at least in the world of movement education—had nothing to do with grinding out tension or “breaking up” fascia.

Moshe Feldenkrais used rollers to reduce effort, not create it.
To quiet the system, not challenge it.
To make learning possible by making comfort available.

That’s the difference.
Not pressure. Not pain. Not effort.
But comfort that allows for change.

So next time you see someone grimacing and grinding on a roller at the gym—just know:
It didn’t start that way. And his rollers were never about pain.

They were about possibility.

Peace!

The post The Feldenkrais Origins of Foam Rollers appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

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)

The post Moshe Feldenkrais, Hypnosis, and the Unconscious appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

My approach to learning has been outside the mainstream for decades. Not only with Feldenkrais, but learning Spanish and most recently going deeper into Ericksonian hypnosis. If you are reading this, you are likely outside the mainstream as well.

Perhaps in more ways than you realize consciously!

I do not know exactly, because I have not met all of you. But from my conversations with many, people have massive, untapped and unrealized potential.

(Though, strangely enough, not everyone wants to know about their untapped potentials. So I do not always explicitly mention it.)

Analog Learning Using Feldenkrais

Before I engaged in formal Feldenkrais training, I had about 5 years of studying and practicing his methods independently, without any formal training.

Have you done something similar?

I call pre-internet learning, "analog" because for me it largely involved reading sessions from books, doing them from audio cassettes and also recording transcripts on tape and then doing them.

The changes that I underwent exploring Feldenkrais on my own were very deep. And as I had no one to tell me otherwise, I began coming to my own conclusions and integrating Feldenkrais the with the work of Milton H. Erickson and many of his direct and indirect students such as Stephen Gilligan, John Grinder, Steve Andreas and many, many others.

From 1994 to 1998, I took a formal “Guild Certified Training.” The training was useful. But it was still largely analog. I could only review sessions via cassette tapes and paper notes. It was expensive to buy transcripts of sessions and they were still in paper format.

Digital Accelerated Learning (Feldenkrais, Spanish Hypnosis)

Fast forward a few years starting around 2003 and my experience began to accelerate, as it did for others.

I was able to scan my old physical transcripts of Feldenkrais sessions and acquire others in digital format (pdf). And I quickly amazed a database of over 1000 sessions (that is just an estimate, I did not count them).

Using text-to-speech software built into my Mac laptop. I was able to have my computer read the sessions to me. I did three sessions per day, every day, for months.

I estimate that I had the experience of doing 5 years of Feldenkrais classes, in about 3 months. To put that in perspective, Moshe Feldenkrais created and taught around 600 sessions at his studio on Alexander Yanai street in Israel. He taught there for about 27 years. One would have to go daily to Moshe’s classes for 5 years or more, to receive what I did in several months.

This strategy of leveraging technology for my Feldenkrais practice turbocharged my development in ways that were both astounding and sometimes painful. My feelings and actions changed so rapidly that I stopped fitting into my life contexts. It was psychologically and emotionally painful.

Feldenkrais trainings and trainers began to bore me. I could see how they were warping the ideas to fit their limited understanding and agenda of selling the work piece-by-piece to maximize their income and feed their egos.

My professors in grad school began to bore me as well. There were times in grad school meetings where I sometimes had to pinch myself to stop from laughing. I was in this altered physical state from doing Feldenkrais and they were talking about latent variables, manifest variables and all kinds of made-up ridiculous bullshit that I couldn’t take seriously anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. I still deeply study certain aspects of language and cognition. There are hugely valuable distinctions to learn and use. But the most valuable ideas are - like Feldenkrais - outside the mainstream (for now). And while trainings and classes are useful, they are not always necessary as you can get access to source material outside of Universities and professional organizations.

I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but I realize now that many of my teachers and colleagues were living in an analog, hierarchical, dominance world while I had shifte into digital, emergent ways of living without realizing it.

Many people are doing the same.

Gentle But Accelerated

When I started doing massive amounts of Feldenkrais sessions via computer I was speeding up my developmental time. I think of it now as a form of computer-augmented time-shifting (see comment section). By having my computer read the sessions, I was able to condense what would typically take a decade of weekly classes and sensory-motor learning into just a few months.

This concept has been on my mind a lot lately as it's becoming widespread. From chess to poker to software development, child prodigies and newly-minted adult superstars are emerging everywhere.

People can learn more deeply and quickly than ever before and they can do so outside dominance hierarchies, such as a University Department, Feldenkrais Guild or other professional organization.

My self-directed learning experiences led me to create an online practice in two different fields (Feldenkrais series and Psychotherapy conferences) and then sell most of my belongings, and leave the United States to live in Mexico.

Next

Now, I am in the process of making another significant shift. That is why I am writing now. I want to share it with you to stimulate your own processes. I am adapting using the same strategy that I used to do Feldenkrais to also master Ericksonian language patterns.

I have done this before, but not as intensely as I am doing it now. I am reviewing dozens of digitized books and papers by Milton Erickson to immerse myself in Ericksonian hypnosis, just as I did with Feldenkrais's work.

My basic process is this: When I am interested in a certain idea in the area of hypnosis and language, I will search my personal database of digitized books (using a software program called DevonThink Pro Office). DevonThink will give me each and every example in the books. For example, I search for “double bind” “post hypnotic” and every unique group of words that interest me.

And those that do, I write down on index cards (yes, physically). And then I create audios of myself reading those words and experience them. This is very close to what I did when learning to teach Feldenkrais. I would record sessions in my voice. And then I would do the sessions. That would give me the experience of being the teacher and the student.

You can do the same, if you want. Pick any transcript from any teacher. Record it and then do it. Over the course of days, weeks and months, you will start to create your next transformation almost automatically.

Whether that transformation is teaching live for the first time, or creating a new product or workshop it does not matter. By experimenting with whatever materials that you can get your hands on, you begin to see yourself (bit by bit) as a knowledgeable person who has a ton to offer.

Or, perhaps you already know that.

And knowing that you create your own next-level transformation.

Just some ideas.

I hope you find them useful at some level.

Ryan

The post Unlocking Genius. Accelerated Learning in the Digital Age appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

They had minimal experience teaching others when they started leading trainings. They got ahold of Moshe’s service mark terms, started teaching by imitating him, and that was that.

Many of you reading this right now—practitioners, advanced students—have more direct experience with the work than the first trainers ever did when they stepped up to teach.

That’s not a knock on them. It’s just what happened.

And it’s worth knowing.

Because it’s easy to get stuck thinking you need permission from someone else to share what you’ve learned. To help others move better, live freer, or even teach your own version of this work.

You don’t.

And you know what? Moshe himself wasn’t immune to dogma. Sometimes he didn’t leave space for people to express emotions or find their own meanings in the work. He had strong opinions, and he was a product of his time.

But he was also a lifetime learner. He encouraged exploration. He wanted people to experiment, to discover what was possible for themselves.

We can honor that spirit, while dropping the layers of hierarchy and fear that have built up in the Feldenkrais world over the years.

If you feel the pull to share what you know—do it.

If you want to teach others, start.

If you think you need permission, you don't.

Just start. It's your body, your mind and your life.

The post Hidden History of Feldenkrais Trainers (And Why It Matters For You) appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

"My contention is that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality, that they are not entities related to each other in one fashion or another, but an inseparable whole... " (link original source at the end of this email)

Over the years, I have spent as much time studying language and psychology through Milton H. Erickson as I have Moshe's work. And it has always nagged at me, that I did not understand why metaphor and language can evoke such powerful responses in the body.

If Feldenkrais was correct, there must be some type of brain and nervous system processing of metaphors, no?

Well, I was amazed recently to discover that there are various scientists who are now attempting to show how metaphorical language is created and processed in the human nervous system.

They want to demonstrate that metaphors activate specific sensory-processing areas of the brain.

And they are beginning to do so.

For example, tactile/sensory language such as "She had a rough day," or "The session will be smooth sailing from here" seem to activate the same areas of the brain that process touch. That is, the areas of your brain that become active when you touch your own skin or a rough or smooth object can also be activated when you think about metaphors that evoke roughness and smoothness.

How cool is that?

I spent several hours last weekend reading about some of the various ideas. Some scientists would disagree with the findings and take issue with them. But to me, it is heartening that the ideas of embodiment and embodied cognition have more of a foothold now in academia via research and research labs.

Below is a link to one full-text article on the topic that you might find interesting. It is called:
Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3318916/

Peace out!

Ryan

By the way, if you want to see Moshe's words on the unity of mind and body in context, it is from the interview below:

https://www.ryannagy.com/pdf/ImageMovementActorFeldenkrais.pdf

The post Metaphors Meet Feldenkrais (And Milton Erickson) appeared first on Emergent Somatics.

I think it is important to show Moshe as an engineer and Judo teacher, guided by real needs and lived experience. He was NOT doing neuroscience as we know it currently. But he did draw from the brain science research of his day to guide his action.

Why does that matter?

Because you will often see ideas similar to this one online:

Feldenkrais is based on decades of research in physics, neuroscience, and biomechanics.

That gives people the idea that Moshe read books and research on biology and brain science and that he developed the work from that.

No!

It was the other way around.

He began developing his work first—and later used science to explain and expand on what he was doing.

He was already teaching, writing, and thinking deeply about martial arts and movement before he encountered the scientific ideas that he would talk about later.

Many of the ideas we could now call “Feldenkrais” came straight from his practical experience teaching Judo and self-defense.

Short timeline of his early publications:

1929 – Jiu-Jitsu and Self-Defense at age 25 in Israel (with a revised French version in 1934)
1942 – Practical Unarmed Combat
1944 – Judo: The Art of Defense and Attack
1949 – Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation, and Learning—his most scientific and brain-based work.

His first 3 books on the martial arts are full of ideas that he developed into Awareness Through Movement. For example, from Practical Unarmed Combat:

"Real speed [in learning Judo] is gained by simple, smooth and well balanced movements... with calm repetition—especially in the beginning before you are absolutely sure that you have well assimilated the text."

Sound familiar?

Go slowly.
Do less than you know that you can do.

In Judo, it's related to seiryoku zenyo—using techniques that require the least amount of effort for the most effective learning and outcome.

It aligns with the Fechner–Weber law, which shows that to notice small changes—a just noticeable difference—we have to reduce effort. The nervous system can only detect subtle shifts when the overall intensity is low enough to make them stand out. (He would have encountered this in his engineering studies in France—if not earlier).

That’s just one example. Here are a few more ideas from his Judo practice that he later expanded with scientific support:

Reversibility of movement – Feldenkrais often spoke about reversibility. In Judo, a movement that can’t be reversed is dangerous. It makes you predictable and vulnerable to your opponent. Feldenkrais made reversibility a foundation in many of his sessions: every movement should be organized well enough so that it can be stopped or reversed at any moment. I do not think this was understood in science then or now. Though Moshe was likely aware of Russian neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein, who wrote about motor control and motor theory.

Learning through variation, not repetition – In Judo, one has to adapt constantly and Judo exercises reflect that. Feldenkrais adapted that idea from Judo by not practicing a movement over and over again, but by exploring it in different directions, speeds, and intentions.

And that was also a major focus of Moshe's "Awareness Through Movement." He designed hundreds of sessions to increase people's experiential base. This, to me, is where we see Moshe demonstrating neuroplasticity decades before it became a common idea.

Again, my point here is not to dismiss neuroscience.

It is incredibly important.

I love it and read it to clarify my thinking and action. And, yes, it most definitely influenced Feldenkrais (the man and the work).

You can see many of the scientific ideas in his 1949 book, Body and Mature Behavior. But that book wasn’t the start of his method. It was an attempt to explain and develop it further. He wanted to give his work a credible foundation using language the scientific world could understand.

So, Moshe was not working on abstract theories "inspired by neuroscience."

His ideas came from real, lived experience—on the mat, watching how people move, learn, and change.

And yes, he was relentless: If a scientific idea seemed useful, he’d test it in his sessions to see if it worked with his students.

And I had better stop now, before this becomes a book!

I hope that was useful.

More to come,

Ryan

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