Moshé Feldenkrais
Most of all Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais was a practical guy, who didn’t accumulate knowledge for its own purpose but made use of it. “How can one learn to be truly human“ was his life-leading question and fuelled his own search, he found answers by exploring the vast fields of different disciplines, learning what could be used for practical application and then he tried it out himself.
He studied physics at the well known University Sorbonne, researched with famous characters of his time, learned to move himself and others by training Judo and explored the psychological and social backgrounds of human behaviour. His magnificent achievement was, to combine all the puzzle pieces of: own experience, smart observation, knowledge, and the application of up-to-date research conclusions and connect them (to integrate them).Out of this, he build a way, that took him closer to the answer of his vital question. He observed the things pedantically exact and took them apart (differentiated), but also put them back together.
The analytic approach and thinking was useful to him but his emphasis came down to the functional synthesis of the exploration: the whole human being.
The circumstances of a knee injury provoked his curiosity to find out how he can help himself and how human structure (knees, bones, nerves…) and functions (walking, playing football...) are related to each other. The interesting point is that he learned how to do what he desired to do with the injured leg and not despite it. He just needed to change the way he uses it, you can call this a relearning-process.
The result of exploring this relearning-process in depth is his life’s wonderful work: Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration®. He taught diseased and healthy people independent of their heritage or their social status and instructed people to be able to do what he did in several teacher-trainings throughout Israel and America.