Unseating Orthodoxy

Isn’t it astonishing how easily the apparatus of practice can narrow our imagination of what the work can be?

Over the last four decades, our professional culture has quietly built an entire orthodoxy around Moshe Feldenkrais’ low, padded table. We invite people to lie supine, prone, side-lying, or, sometimes, in an offbeat alternative such as kneeling on the floor with their chests on the table, to systematically reduce the habitual work of the anti-gravity muscles and facilitate learning. This low-demand situation is potent, to be sure. Yet when lying horizontally becomes our default operating system, we inadvertently paint ourselves into a corner.

While planning the curriculum for the final segment of the third-year Tokyo 5 training with the educational director, my dear friend and colleague Susan Hillier, I found out that very few trainees had tables. And why would they? Paying well over 150,000 yen (more than a thousand dollars) for specialized equipment — a table plus stools, pads, and rollers — that would barely fit in your apartment or house, if it does at all, simply doesn’t make sense.

I proposed a practical alternative to Susan: What if we take the table out of the equation altogether?

I suggested teaching hands-on lesson done on a chair turned backward. The setup is straightforward and unassuming: the student sits astride the chair, facing the back, feet on the floor, and resting their forehead on folded forearms. This requires no specialized equipment, costs nothing extra, and fits in the tightest studio flat or family kitchen.

When we introduced the lesson in Tokyo, the immediate payoff was obvious. The trainees became engaged and excited. The position made giving each other feedback easier. Instead of dreading or avoiding practicing after the segment, they began to look forward to it.

A deeper pedagogical shift also occurred.

Consider the classic post-table conundrum. Someone floats through nearly an hour of low-gravity ease, stands up feeling tall and open, and — all too often — promptly loses the benefits soon after they leave your office. Translating horizontal clarity into upright posture or locomotion isn't automatic or obvious.

Working with a student in a chair eliminates that translation hurdle entirely. Because the student’s nervous system starts (re-)organizing the skeleton in the vertical field from the first touch, stability and ease are discovered directly where life actually happens: in gravity.

At the same time, the stable, supported backward sitting position gives the teacher access to the student's front and back without requiring them to roll over. It also provides an uncomplicated, easy starting place for anyone who simply cannot lie down — whether due to pain, vertigo, breathing challenges, acute distress, or the sheer vulnerability of being flat on their back. The reversed orientation offers physical front-body containment, quieting defensive bracing along the spine and ribs without leaving the student feeling exposed.

Moshe often gave seated lessons — whether teaching a class, demonstrating to a large audience, or working one-on-one in his studio. Somehow, over the generations, that essential part of his craft got sidelined, making it hard for most teachers to imagine working with a seated or standing student.

This winter and spring, I am offering an intimate small-group tutorial to expand our work into this forgotten territory: No Table Needed: A Practical, Remarkably Effective Seated FI. You are invited to join me in a cozy beachside house in Santa Cruz for either of the upcoming five-day sessions — 4 to 8 December 2026 or 5 to 9 March 2027 — each limited to just eight participants.

If you are ready to crack the shell of table-bound practice and learn to work effectively almost anywhere, please take a look at the full tutorial details. Each course is already partially full, so if you are ready to improve your skills and expand where — and with whom — you can work, sign up now.