In his own words: Moshe Feldenkrais’s Intro to 50 Lessons

You see the somewhat worn cover of my copy of 50 Lessons by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais above. This oversized (~9.5” by 13”) tome contains fifty Awareness Through Movement classes created and taught by Moshe Feldenkrais, presented in Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN). Under Noa Eshkol’s supervision, 17 of her student-colleagues transcribed the ATM audio recordings and meticulously translated them into rigorous, spatial coordinate scores in EWMN.

In my previous post, “No Ugly Movement,” I wrote about Noa Eshkol, her extraordinary movement notation system, and the deep, intersecting currents between her work and Moshe Feldenkrais’s approach to human movement. Published in 1980 — after a shorter version featuring only twenty-five lessons — this remarkable reference has remained tucked away on my bookshelf, in private collections, and in specialized archives. It is out of print and virtually impossible to find or purchase today.

Because of this text is difficult to find and fairly obscure, I decided to make Moshe’s original introduction available here for my colleagues, students, and the wider somatic community. What follows is the text exactly as Moshe wrote it. I preserved his original British English spellings, left the idiosyncratic sentence structures untouched, and kept his distinctive cadence intact. (Full disclosure: I added exactly one comma for clarity between the words “spasticity” and “tremor”, but only one.)

Rather than interpret or annotate his thoughts, I will step aside and let Moshe Feldenkrais speak for himself about Eshkol-Wachman notation and his work.

It is a great satisfaction to me to have some of my lessons published in Eshkol-Wachmann Movement Notation, and this on two counts: (1) The Notation shows movement in the same w way as a musical score shows something of the structure of music that is very hard to perceive without the score. (2) Noa Eshkol was formerly a pupil of mine; but in fact she has used what she learned from me in such an original, novel and personal way that I pride myself on what she acquired from me.

Movement is organically linked with life so that we grow practically unaware of the long and thorough apprenticeship we have gone through to be able to move as clumsily and as efficiently as so many of us do. As regards the visual form of our movement the position is even less satisfactory. Efficient movement is pleasant to the eye, but more movements are possible than we need use to satisfy our needs. The movements that are not essential to the maintenance of life per se are, however, essential to our harmonious functioning. We need them not only for expressing ourselves but for the equilibrium of our psychic-somatic functioning.

Efficient, vitally necessary movements are moulded to a high degree of perfection through the purpose which evokes them, but the form and quality of non-purposeful movements need some abstract principles to give them a quality of form equal to the purposeful movements. The notation of movement as seen by Eshkol and Wachmann gives an intrinsic principle for movements. They use the structure of our skeleton in which the principle joints work so that a polar representation and not an axial cartesian one represents their configuration almost as clearly as we see them, but more precisely.

The polar representation shifts the origin of movements to the body itself instead of to some arbitrarv arbitrary point in a space (such as a stage) chosen as an origin of a three-axial system of reference. In the latter, movements of a body can usefully be written down when the body is replaced by a point such as its centre of gravity or any other chosen point. In polar notation one can see the movements with a little practice, as one sees the angles formed by the principle joints of the body, independently of its situation on the stage or in space in general.

An important consequence is that one is brought to educate even the smaller joints which are normally not appreciated, with the same care as the others. In the notation they are to be marked and written, and thereby acquire equal rights. The training of the body is improved in details of feet, ankles, eyes, fingers, to the full richness of their possibilities as part of the body, and not as an occasional necessity to satisfy the musical rhythm or similar considerations.

Training a body to perfect all the possible forms and configurations of its members changes not only the strength and flexibility of the skeleton and muscles, but makes a profound change in the self-image and the quality of direction of the self.

It is in this context that Noa Eshkol has benefited from my teaching, and my way of teaching.

* * *

Movement is the best clue to the activity of the nervous system. Spasticity, tremors, all varieties of paralysis, ataxia, impeded speech and poor muscular control in general, indicate injury or derangement of function of the brain stem or other parts of the nervous system.

There is no means of making somebody do any movement whatsoever unless by one means or another we induce his nervous system to send the impulses that will contract the necessary muscles in the right patterns or assemblies and the right sequences in time. Movement or its absence show the state of the nervous system, its hereditary endowment and its degree of development.

When born, we can do very little voluntary movement besides crying and contracting all the flexors in an undifferentiated global effort. We learn by experience to roll, to crawl, to sit up, to walk, to speak, to run, to jump, to balance, rotate and do whatever we are capable of performing as adults.

Our consciousness becomes gradually adjusted to our surrounding environment in all its varieties. The first contacts with the outside world are through the skin and mouth. Later we learn to use our members separately and regulate them through seeing them. The major problem is differentiation of movements. Thus the ring finger will remain clumsy unless we play an instrument or make a special point of learning to move it at will. We end up by bringing the all-or-none response of the primitive muscular contraction to a more or less perfectly differentiated voluntary activity. We come to this so to speak naturally, i.e. without awareness involved nor of the degree of perfection achieved in our apprenticeship — provided, of course, that we are not grossly lacking in our achievement as compared to others. There must be a real impediment to make us aware that something is wrong. The majority of us achieve a happy-go-lucky mediocrity, just enough to make us one of the many.

My system or technique of bringing about better maturation of our nervous system uses the reversibility relationship of our muscular and nervous systems. Both the nervous system and the muscles have evolved in the gravitational field, which sets the standard both for the development and apprenticeship of each individual, and also for the species on the evolutionary level.

The extraordinary development of the frontal lobes (the supralimbic system in general) in man, shows that the functioning of these in an evolutionary improvement and helps towards the survival of the fittest. This new development of the human brain by and large becoming effective through its growth after birth and is being directed and moulded through individual experience. The result is an extraordinary opportunity, given to no other animal, to build up a body of learned responses, and also makes him vulnerable because of the dangers of going wrong. Other animals have their responses to most stimuli “wired intö” their nervous system in the form of instinctive patterns of action go wrong rarely.

We go wrong more easily than any other creature — and what is even more aggravating — we have little opportunity of becoming aware of where we went wrong, as we are the learner and the judge at the same time; and our judgement depends upon, and is limited to, our learning achievements.

It is almost obvious from our analysis, that is, that to improve we have to better our judgement. But this is back where we started, as ment is the result of learning, which, being adults, we completed long ago

To break this vicious circle, we use the basic quality of the supralimbic part of our brain, which is able to sense and abstract and often even express in words the 'goings on' in our bodies. On reducing all stimuli to their bare minimum we also reduce to their absolute lowest value any change in our muscular system and senses, in general. (This is the Fechner-Weber law in practice.) We thus increase our sensitivity to its maximum and can therefore distinguish the finer details that were beyond us and escaped our notice even when we tried. We are like the person who has suffered from colour blindness and could not see any difference between red and green, to whom the ability to differentiate has been restored.

Once the ability to differentiate is improved, the details of the self or the surroundings can be sensed and the rest is only a question of experience, practice, time and attention.

As we become aware of what we are doing in fact, and not what we say or think we are doing, the way to improvement is wide open to us. The correction deviations discovered is a problem in itself. But in general, the wired-in tendency to optimal conditions takes care of that to a certain extent.

To begin with, the lessons are in the lying position, prone or supine, to facilitate the breaking down of habitual muscular patterns. The habitual pressures on the sole of the feet and the ensuing configuration of the skeletal joints are suppressed, and the nervous system does not receive the habitual afferent stimuli due to gravitation and the efferent impulses are not linked into the habitual patterns. After the lessons, on returning to habitual stimuli, one is surprised to discover a changed response to them.

To facilitate such a result, the lessons should be done as slowly as possible, and as pleasantly as possible, with no strain or pain whatsoever; the main object is not training in what one knows, but to discover unknown new reactions in oneself and thereby learn a better, more congenial way of acting.

The lightness of the movements should be a major concern so that after 15 or 20 repetitions the initial effort should drop to practically nothing more than the thought of it. This produces the maximum sensitivity in the person and enables him to detect the minute changes in the efferent tonus and the change in alignment of the different parts of the body.

In the end one should improve to the point where one feels that one's body is hanging lightly from the head, so that the feet do not stamp on the ground, and the body glides when moving.

The head carrying all the teleceptors — the eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth — which turns right and left in almost every movement of the attention to changes in the space around us, should in the end turn with a smoothness unequalled by the most perfect man-made mechanism. Of all the teleceptors the eyes can also move relatively to the head, and their movement in the direction of the head’s rotation or the opposite to it, should be gliding and easy if the head is to move as it should.

Such training is equal to none as a preparation to the kind of dancing taught by Noa Eshkol, which is part and parcel of Movement Notation.