Whence rollers?

Whence rollers?

Larry Goldfarb June 20, 2023
10 Comments
Moshe Feldenkrais - Whence rollers?
©International Feldenkrais® Federation. All rights reserved.

If you don’t know history,
then you don’t know anything.
You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.

— Michael Crichton

Unlike Styrofoam, which is made of polystyrene and breaks instead of bending, Ethafoam is an elastic polyethylene. It compresses to support a heavy load and then returns to its original shape and size after you remove the forces that caused it to deform. 

This physical resilience makes Ethafoam the ideal material for foam rollers. Before they became popular exercise and self-care equipment, before the physical therapist and Feldenkrais teacher Sean Gallagher introduced them to Broadway dancers, Moshe Feldenkrais originated using these rollers in a somatic practice. 

Foam rollers entered my life at my Feldenkrais teacher training in 1980. It wasn’t until some ten years later when I had to purchase them in bulk for the first Strasbourg Feldenkrais teacher training, that I learned what they are made of. 

Recently, while doing research for my new Foam Roller Revolution workshop, I tumbled down a polyethylene rabbit hole. I found out that it also comes in sheets and other shapes. And I learned that polyethylene was the unexpected and fortunate result of a mishap in a UK lab in 1933. 

During the second world war, the British military revolutionized airborne warfare by using PE as electrical insulation, making it possible to manufacture small, light, and effective equipment to put in fighter planes. Moshe Feldenkrais was doing sonar and radar research for the British Navy in Scotland simultaneously, so that he could have run across this synthetic stuff back then. 

Whether or not that happened, he used other cylinders long before the advent of foam rollers. I know this because my Feldenkrais mentor, Edna Rossenas, showed me the list of the custom-made wood rollers and their diameters he had in his Tel Aviv office. Moshe also used the sturdy cardboard tubes found at the center of the giant rolls of newsprint, which he obtained directly from the Davar newspaper.

According to my research, Feldenkrais didn’t use foam rollers before starting his San Francisco teacher training in 1975. The photo above, taken during that program, shows him working with foam and cardboard rollers. Though I could not definitively determine how Moshe learned about Ethafoam rollers, I heard from one reliable source that Ruthy Alon, a graduate of his first teacher training, may have introduced him to these phenomenal foam cylinders at this time.

I will be teaching Foam Roller Revolution at Castle Hill Fitness on Saturday and Sunday, July 8 & 9, 2023. You can attend in person in Austin, Texas, or online from anywhere. 

The recordings are included in the tuition and will be available online after the workshop.

For information and to sign up, please click here. If you tried to enroll earlier and encountered a problem with the website, please know that it has been fixed. It is quick and easy to register.

I am most grateful to the many senior colleagues who provided background information for this post. In particular, I want to thank Leora Gaster for telling me where Moshe got the cardboard rollers and Kai Schaper, the International Feldenkrais Federation materials manager, for tracking down photos from the San Francisco training. 

Please let me know if you have more information about how Moshe learned about foam rollers.


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Responses

    1. Larry Goldfarb June 22, 2023

      Hello Susan –

      Thanks for letting me know that you’re interested in participating in Foam Roller Revolution. To answer your questions:

      – This is an Awareness Through Movement workshop for the general public. It is not a postgrad program for Feldenkrais Teachers. (So you know, I have been offering such a course for colleagues, called Reclaiming Rollers, for the past twenty or so years. It is considerably longer than two half-days.)

      – You only need one roller of the most common size: 6 inches in diameter and 36 inches long. If you’re a tall person, you might need a longer one; you should be able to lie on the roller from head to pelvis.

      Please let me know if you have any other questions!

      Hope to see you next month,
      Larry

  2. Marian Jarina June 20, 2023

    Hi Larry. The recordings are video recordings right? I know dumb question but somehow feel the need to get that clarified in my head. Second question: Is this for working with ourselves others or both?

    Thank you.

    1. Larry Goldfarb June 22, 2023

      Hello Marian –
      Yes, Castle Hill Fitness makes the video recordings of the workshop availalbe.
      Foam Roller Revolution is an Awareness Through Movement workshop. I’ll be presenting classic Feldenkrais roller lessons, which you can certainly use with your students as well as yourself. (I teach an advanced training series for colleagues about using rollers in individual lessons.)
      Please let me know if you have other questions.

  3. Stacy Barrows June 22, 2023

    Thank you Larry for extending my knowledge on the history of rollers. I was so fortunate that after our FM graduation, Mark Reese was able to get us access to hard rollers made out of cardboard that re-created the rollers he remembered from Moshe for an extensive roller workshop. It just added more to my sense-abilities on using a somatic tool to explore the Feldenkrais method. That has been so in the forefront of making the SmartRoller.

    Besides thanking you for your wonderful blog, I wanted to point out that somebody brought up in one of my teachings when I talked about Feldenkrais and his contribution to foam rollers, she said, what about Bobath? This student was a PT,MD and she was just asking out of curiosity. Since then I have tried to look into that history and have not come up with her timing, but she clearly used rollers in pediatric settings as tools for learning and engagement. So I have included in my introduction to foam rollers, to mention that. But, the uniqueness of how Feldenkrais used them still stands out, as his genius to use them as a catalyst of change (your great quote) and with freedom to learn. Thanks for your wisdom Larry. I took a picture of my rollers from Mark if you’re ever interested. ? be well~

    2. Larry Goldfarb June 22, 2023

      Thanks for the additional background information, Stacy.

      I would love to see the photo of the rollers you got from Mark Reese. (If only the workshop he taught had been recorded!)

      Before foam rollers became so readily available, we would get firm cardboard rollers the local carpet store.

      As far the Bobath’s Neurodevopmental Theray, I know that Bruria Milo, who was a graduate of Moshe’s first training in Tel Aviv and physical therapist, went to Englend to study with the Bobaths. It would be interesting to know if the Bobaths incorporated rollers into the word before or after that!

      1. Stacy Barrows June 24, 2023

        I will see if Martha Eddy has more info, very interesting. And let me know how I can send you the picture, it does seem like Mark got them from the carpet store. And I am so very sorry it wasn’t recorded, it was an amazing learning experience.