Though Ease, comfort and
efficiency have become the Feldenkrais buzzwords, little Moshes
own beginnings were far from comfortable. As a fourteen year old Jewish boy
early last century, Feldenkrais escaped the anti-semitism of the Ukraine by
walking across Europe to find refuge in Palestine. Here he spent his young manhood
working as a labourer and enduring the hardships of a pioneer settlement. Despite
these early struggles or perhaps because of the challenges they presented, his
enthusiasm for life was palpable.
One of these enthusiasms was
for his study. In Israel he studied mathematics and then saved his shekels carefully
until he had enough to take himself off to Paris to study for an engineering
degree in mechanics and electricity. He then went on to the Sorbonne to study
for his doctorate, also in engineering.
This is not exactly the conventional
route to take for someone who would eventually deal with the functioning of
human beings. The figures we tend to think of in connection with such areas
are more often grounded in the medical, biological, sometimes spiritual or in
the case of someone like Freud, even the literary areas. However, his studies
and his later work are closely linked. After all, an engineer is faced with
one problem over and over in different guises- How will this work best?
Feldenkrais training in physical problem solving probably helped him to
view the human system in this novel way.
He received his doctorate from
the Sorbonne in 1935, but what that piece of paper did not say was that Moshe
had received another unofficial education. As important for Feldenkrais was
the opportunity he had had to observe some exceptional humans functioning at
optimum level. He worked as an engineer and physicist with Marie Curies
daughter Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie who were in the process
of discovering the induction of radioactivity. This discovery won the couple
the 1935 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Moshes role in this event was as a
physicist and an engineer. He also co-authored papers with Frederic Joliot-Curie
on the cyclotron they engineered and built together to assist with the experiments.
Feldenkrais was as interested
in HOW Joliot-Curie worked as he was in WHAT he achieved. He tells the story
in his book The Elusive Obvious (1981).
He says that late one night he
and Frederic Joiliot-Curie were leaving the lab after installing the instrument
he had designed. Joliot-Curie decided to try the instrument one more time. He
put a metal strip in the chamber (the experiment involved bombarding metal with
alpha rays). Instantly there came a clicking from the chamber and at first Joliot-Curie
was furious. He thought a careless lab assistant had not obeyed his instructions
and had left the machine on. Yet, Joliot-Curie was suddenly struck with another
thought as he listened carefully to the sound. He commented:
"Can you not hear the dying
out clicking? There is no radioactive material here which has such a half-lifetime".
The next day the news had spread that induced radioactivity had been discovered.
For Feldenkrais, this simple
story illustrates a simple truth. The best way to work is with awareness and
careful observation rather than hard slog. Having too narrow a focus, a symptom
of trying too hard, can mean you lose sight of whats around you. Einstein
himself once said some of his best ideas came to him while eating an ice cream.
It is a matter of awareness; being relaxed enough to actually notice what is
going on around you. This is pure Feldenkrais.