My first trip to Germany in 1989 was to assist the Feldenkrais training program in Munich. One weekend a group of us made an outing to visit the home of a graduate of the previous training program in Munich. One member of the party was a professor of theology, the husband of a student in the training. Another was Myriam Pfeffer, a trainer, who was one of the original group of students who had studied with Feldenkrais in Tel Aviv in the late sixties. On our return journey, as we were walking to the station, the professor of theology asked, "Do you thing that Moshé Feldenkrais was a spiritual man?"

It seemed like an odd question. The Feldenkrais work we were presenting in Munich invovlved working with movement sequences in group lessons in which the students tried basic movements with themselves and then through exploring many variations in moving, discovered new patterns of sensing, acting and feeling. We call this process "Awareness Through Movement." The work in Munich also involved our touching work, "Functional Integration," in wich one person guides another. The touching is both gentle and non-invasive, yet results in the person touched discovering similar new patterns. On the surface then we seem to be involved in a kind of physical work with the body. What does such movement work have to do with spirituality?

Myriam Pfeffer spoke first to the question. She pointed out that Feldenkrais was trained in engineering and science - he was student of nuclear physics in the laboratory of Joliot-Curie in Paris in the nineteen thirties - and was deeply rooted in the rationalist tradition in Judaism centered in Lithuania. (Feldenkrais grew up in an orthodox jewish family in Baronowitz in White Russia.) Although he was interested in human development and worked with developing sensing, and feeling, which are aspects of our internal experience, he was an experimenter in best of the scientific tradition, she pointed out. His lessons were designed through his exploration of movement with himself and in teaching other to find pathways to enhance awareness of one's self and one's surroundings. This is unusual science. His approch was nevertheless experimental, rational, and non-mystical.

The professor of theology looked to me and asked, "What do you think? You studied directly with Feldenkrais also."

I said, "Myriam is right in one sense. Explicitly he was non-spiritual, even at times anti-spiritual. He rebelled against his orthodox upbringing, and chose a modern, enlightened outlook. He was looking to demystify what he was doing in his work, to make it repeatable and learnable. In another way, however, he was implicitly spiritual."

"How do you mean?" the professor asked.

"It was not in what he did, but in how, in how he approched the person, in how he approached the person, in how je brought his presence to be with the person he worked with. It was also in his own internal attitude of quietude and presence to himself. You saw it particularly when he was working with children. He communicated something like, 'I am here just to be with you. I come with no judgement, no intent to do anything to you, no intent to cure you or make you better, no intent to hurt you. with me you are safe.' And all this was communicated without speaking directly about it, just with his presence and beingness, and his acute awareness in the situation."

"There was something else," I said. "He was always as hirnself, expressing what he genuinely felt. He didn't hide behind a social mask. Sometimes he was outrageous, and egocentric at times. He was never false to his inner intention."

And I then added this, "You know, Feldenkrais also had roots in the Hasidic, the spriritual-mystical tradition in Judaism. He had an ancestor on his mother's side of the family who was a zaddik, a high spiritual rabbi or holy man. This was Pinhas of Koretz who was close to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of modern Hasidism. So there were sources in his life from the spiritual side."

When I was a graduate student in chemistry in the late nineteen fifties, a friend of mine came and said, "you must read Martin Buber!"

I had never heard about this man, but my friend had introduced me to many european writers and thinkers who were interesting me. The bock he suggested was Ich und Du , which had been translated into English at that time as I and Thou . It was a difficult bock, yet I resonated to it. It was also in same way a religious book, but in a way that was unfamiliar to me, and I was attracted to the notion that what was of essence was relation. Man to nature, man to man, man to God. And I was impressed that for Buber, God wasn't some object-being in the heavens, nor some philosophical concept to be proved or disproved. One did not believe in this God. One found one's relation in breaking the speIl of seperation to the world, to the eternal presence.

Caught as I was in seperation, in the scientific material relation to the world and to others - this way of seeing things was strongly appealing. Buber was also a road back to a Judaism that I never knew existed. I avidly read other bocks, especially Tales of Hasidim , reading these teaching stories as antidotes to the dry religion of the German Reform Synagogue I attended as a youth.

Buber struck a chord with me then. I believe that when I met Moshé Feldenkrais something in his way of being and acting struck a similar chord. Feldenkrais refused religion, said he was an atheist, yet acted out of the same sense of relation, eschewing the relation of use, of manipulation and acting upon, what Buher called the "I- it" for a relation of presence. In Ich und Du Buber writes:

When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to hirn, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things.

He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is a You and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing hut he; but everything else lives in his light.

Even a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words, nor a statue of lines - one must pull and tear to turn a unity into multiplicity - so it is with the human being to whom I say You. I can abstract from him the color of his graciousness; I have to do this again and again; hut immediately he is no longer You. (p. 59)

Stehe ich einem Menschen als meinem Du gegenüber, spreche das Grundwort Ich-Du zu ihm, ist er kein Ding unter Dingen und nicht aus Dingen bestehend.

Nicht Er oder Sie ist er, von andern Er oder Sie begrenzt, im Weltnetz aus Raum und Zeit eingetragener Punkt; und nicht eine Beschaffenheit, erfahrbahr, beschreibbar, lockeres Bündel benannter Eigenschaften. Sondern nachbarnlos und fugenlos ist er Du und füllt den Himmelskreis. Nicht als ob nichts andres wäre als er: aber alles andere lebt in seinem Licht. Wie die Melodie nicht aus Tönen sich zusammensetzt, der Vers nicht aus Woertern und die Bildsäule nicht aus Linien, man muss dran zerren und reissen, bis man die Einheit zur Vielheit zubereitet hat, so der Mensch, zu dem ich sage DU. Ich kann die Farbe seiner Güte aus ihm holen, ich muss es immer wieder; aber schon ist er nicht mehr Du. (P. 8)

Feldenkrais embodied this way of being in relation in touching, in acting through his hands through sensory contact. He said, "When you start at the sensory level, you find a language which is communicable and which you can understand without making big mistakes - much better than talking." What he meant is that at this level you can feel another person, and that person you, without the distortion of ideas and concepts. The person feels understood in a way not normally possible in language. Feldenkrais spoke also in relation. With a child, for example, no matter what the difficulty, no matter whether the child could speak or not, he spoke to the child as a person. When parents brought a child to him, he didn't speak to the parents about the child, he brought his eyes to the child, made contact like so, and asked "What is your name? How old are you?" He waited then for the child to come to him, not he to the child, with an obvious openess to the child. He engaged the child in enjoyment and play. Often the children laughed or giggled in delight, and when the tone of their laughter changed, indicating tiredness or that their time in the activity was finished, Feldenkrais stopped and turned to something new. Everything in a "lesson" evolved out of dialog.

The consequences were often seemingly miraculous. Whereas, children with, for example, neurological difficulties often progressed slowly and painfully with exercises and correction, with Feldenkrais new learning seemed to simply emerge in one hour long session with a child.

In a famous talk Feldenkrais made in his second training group in the U.S. he spoke of falling in love like so: "When I love, 'I love you', not 'I love your hand', not 'I love your mind' I love you."

The point was that when you enter into relation, as you do in giving a Feldenkrais lesson, you are with a person, not their shoulder trouble, or their sore foot. The person is treated as if their life is important and they are important, not the trouble they may have. The metaphor Feldenkrais used was of dancing together.

Let me tell you a story which I was witness to. During our study with Feldenkrais in San Francisco in 1979, he demonstrated his work with a number of people. One man, John, had a form of cerebral palsy, whereby his hand involuntarily produced a throbbing contraction during his waking hours. In Feldenkrais' first demonstration with John, the young man lay quiet after about forty minutes without any of his throbbing contractions. Feldenkrais had quietly touched, prodded, moved John, working with the neck, shoulder, ribs, pelvis, arm and hand. He showed that the throbbing contraction was not just a phenomenon in John's hand, but also throughout the right side to the neck and face. And through getting John to become aware of these relations the hand became quiet. As opposed to treating John or trying to cure or correct his trouble, they danced together. And in the dancing John gained a new feeling of himself. As John left the room in the same quiet state, many of us were moved to tears by the seeming miraculous event.

Some week later John was to return for another public lesson. The event turned into a major circus. Karl Pribram, the world renowned neurophysiologist was there to observe. So was a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner and a famous writer from Los Angeles. Feldenkrais had also asked the students to invite friends and family. There was a large crowd.

John was brought into the center of this huge throng, and was sitting quietly while Feldenkrais began to explain to the audience about the miracle he had performed in the first lesson. We students began to become embarassed as Feldenkrais continued to talk about what he had discovered and how his method could produce unparalleled results. As Feldenkrais spoke and John waited, the hand which had been quiet until this point, began to involuntarily contract again in its throbbing rhythm. As Feldenkrais noticed what was happening, he began to sweat. He asked John to lie on the table and he began to try and reproduce the miracle. It soon became obvious that now nothing was going to happen. Feldenkrais looked up at the audience and he said, "I have acted wrongly. I have spoken as if I was the important person here, and in fact it is John who is the important person here."

He sat John up again and began to explain that the lesson set for this day was to help John with his speech. John's speech had been less effected earlier in his life. Neurosurgery was performed on John with the intent of interrupting the nerve pathway of the clonic [throbbing] movement. Instead John came out of the surgery with his speech further impaired. Thus this loss to John was a double blow - thus the importance of this day.

At this point Feldenkrais touched John under the chin. John burst into tears, tears that seemed to cleanse the room of the effects of Feldenkrais' "wrong action". Now that the barrier to the relation was gone, we became witness to a beautiful moment as Feldenkrais proceeded and John discovered his tongue. The relation between them, however, was as if the witnesses, the audience was not there. John spoke at the end and his voice was to our hearing stronger and clearer.

Buber's description of two realms of relationship therefore is not conceptual - not a proposal about the world and man in the world. It is a description of the actuality of man in relationship, always with two possibilities. Here in this story the two possibilities result in diametrically different outcomes. When Feldenkrais is in the realm of "I - it," in his ego where he claims that he is the agent of John's improvement, the bond with John is broken. John feels this and regresses to his previous state.

When Feldenkrais realises his error, he speaks the truth of what happened and withdraws his ego, so to speak, to restore the relation of "Ich - Du" [I - Thou]. In this realm the work between Feldenkrais and John can continue.

Buber writes:

Those who know the spirit's breath commit a transgression if they wish to gain power over the spirit or to determine its nature. But they are also unfaithful if they ascribe this gift to themselves. (p. 176)

Wer den Anhauch des Geistes kennt, vergeht sich, wenn er sich des Geistes bemächtigen oder dessen Beschaffenheit ermitteln will. Aber Untreue übt er auch dann, wenn er die Gabe sich selbst zuschreibt. (p. 123)

The clear and firm structure of the I - Thou relationship, familiar to anyone with a candid heart and the courage to stake it, is not mystical. To understand it we must sometimes step out of our habits of thought, but not out of the primal norms that determine man's thoughts about what is actual. (p. 177)

Die klare und feste Struktur des Ich-Du-Verhältnisses, jedem vertraut, der ein unbefangenes Herz und den Mut hat, es einzusetzen, ist nicht mystischer Natur. Aus unseren Denkgewohnheiten müssen wir zuweilen treten, um sie zu verstehen, nicht aber aus den Urnormen, die das menschliche Denken der Wirklichkeit bestimmen. (p. 124)

Buber thus understood exactly what Feldenkrais understood. And with regard to the teacher Buber says,

The teacher who wants to help the pupil to realize his best potentialities must intend him as this particular person, both in his potentiality and his actuality. More precisely, he must know him not as a mere sum of qualities, aspirations, and inhibitions; he must apprehend hirn, and affirm him as a whole. But this he can only do if he encounters him as a partner in a bipolar situation. (p. 178)

Um den besten Möglichkeiten im Wesen des Schülers helfen zu können, sich zu verwirklichen, muss der Lehrer ihn als diese bestimmte Person in ihrer Potentialität und ihrer Aktualität meinen, genauer, er muss ihn nicht als blasse Summe von Eigenschaften, Strebungen und Hemmungen kennen, er muss seiner als einer Ganzheit inne werden und ihn in dieser seiner Ganzheit bejahen. Das aber vermag er nur, wenn er ihm jeweils als einem Partner in einer bipolaren Situation begegnet. (p. 125)

Feldenkrais says of his relation to his pupils,"I do not teach, but my students learn." He means the same in a different way of saying it.

What was Feldenkrais after in developing a method as he did? In essence he was looking for a process in which the person entering the process could begin to know himself. Feldenkrais noted in his own life and with others that a lot of human misery came from self ignorance - not being able to feel, to sense oneself - not to know what is of essence about oneself - to cover oneself with a mask of conformity and act to manipulate and please others. Self knowledge can lead to freedom - to living one's life more fully and to its potential. But not to dwell in the self at the expense of acting in the world. In the bock, Awareness Through Movement, he says, "lf it is true that instincts come to us as a matter of inheritance, just as awareness is inherited, then it will be preferable to perfect our awareness rather than to suppress the animal in us."

I do not know wether or not Moshé Feldenkrais ever met or even read Martin Buber. It is certainly possible that he did. The important thing though is that they had the same inner understanding despite the outwardly different expression of themselves. Perhaps it is that they had the same roots in the Hasidic Tradition. Buber who was educated in sophisticated Wien, was sent as a boy to live with his grandparents in the province of Galicia where he had contact with the Hasidic movement. It made a lifelong impress on him, although he did not become a Hasid himself. In a very thin little bock called The way of Man According to the Teaching of Hassidim Buber speaks of religious systems of belief in which God can be reached by renouncing the world of the senses and one's own natural being. "Not so the Hasid", he writes. Achieving a relation to God the Hasid "is not required to abandon the external and internal reality of earthy being, but to affirm it in its true, God-oriented essence ."

In the stories that follow in this little book and in their interpretation one is shown that to find one's place in this scheme one must know one's self first and find one's essence in one's heart. But then one must not become preoccupied with one's self. In this way both the person and the world are transformed.

How Buber came to this understanding is clear from his writing and his life story. How Feldenkrais came to this understanding was a life long process for him shrouded in a kind of mystery, for Feldenkrais rarely alluded to any connection to his jewish background or to his ancestral connection to Hasidism. One time he told a story of his ancestor, Pinhas of Koretz, in relation to humility. Humility was something Feldenkrais did not seem to have a lot of, and yet when he was giving lessons he was only present and in touch.

In the story a disciple of the rabbi comes with a little book of sayings. He tells the rabbi he is a humble man and the little book is not really worthy but would the rabbi give his blessing to his book? Three times he comes and the rabbi ignores him. Finally in anger he asks, "Rabbi how is it you refuse me?" The rabbi says, "you yourself said that your book is not worthy. So why should I pronounce it worthy and give you my blessing? The truly humble man knows his place, he knows where he is worthy as weIl as where he is unworthy."

Here is evidence that Feldenkrais came from a rich background in Hasidic lore and absorbed its teaching into his way in the world. Yet its wisdom evolved slowly in his life until its full flowering was present in the teachings he made at the end of his career. Feldenkrais ostensibly rejected the spiritual, but lived it out in his work. Yet one never knows the whole story. One day when he was teaching in Amherst he looks up to heaven and spoke to his ancestor Pinhas of Koretz, "Pinkas", he asked, "how would you answer?"

SOURCES

Quotations from Buber are from:

Buber, (1970). I and Thou. New York, A Touchstone Book, Simon and Schuster.

Buber, (1983). Ich und Du. Philipp Reclam jun. Stuttgart

(Page numbers in text for the English or Deutsch editions.)

Buber, (1998). The way of Man According to the Teachings of Hasidism. Seacaucus, N.J., Carol Publishing Group.

Quotations from Feldenkrais are from Awareness Through movement, (1972). New York, Harper and Row.

Other quotes are from recorded lectures or the authors memory.