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Feldenkrais Research Journal • volume 3 (2007)

Article

Feldenkrais Research Ideas

Russell Delman
CFT, Delman Associates

Abstract
There are two paths of research that I feel could be of great service to our community and to the world.
The first is moving away from emphasis on objective, physically based criteria and toward subjective
“whole person” reporting. The second involves sorting through our collective experience to help define the
personal qualities that are predictive of success for the Feldenkrais client.

Keywords
Feldenkrais Method, subjective, focusing, therapy design, perception

Copyright ©: The copyright for this paper remains with the author(s).

Please cite: (First published in the) Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 3; 2007.

Service marks: The terms Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, ATM®,
Functional Integration®, and FI® are service marked terms of the International Feldenkrais® Federation
(IFF) and Feldenkrais professional guilds and associations in many countries. In keeping with academic
conventions, they will not be service marked in the entire text as may be required in nonacademic use,
but only for the first and most prominent use of the terms. In recognition that these phrases are formal
terms referring to specific practices within the Method, and to the Method as a whole, capitalization of all
the words in each term has been retained.

Published by the International Feldenkrais® Federation (IFF) https://feldenkrais-method.org
Available online at https://feldenkraisresearchjournal.org

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FELDENKRAIS RESEARCH IDEAS  
 
Russell Delman CFT 
Delman Associates 
  
There are two paths of research that I feel could be of great service to our community and to 
the world.  The first is moving away from emphasis on objective, physically based criteria and 
toward subjective “whole person” reporting.  The second involves sorting through our 
collective experience to help define the personal qualities that are predictive of success for the 
Feldenkrais client. 
 
In the former, I am imagining incorporating and connecting with some of the scales of 
development that are already used in other disciplines that sort for qualities of inner 
development such as autonomy, open-mindedness, capacity to deal with adversity, flexibility 
in problem solving, curiosity, concern for others (compassion index), sexual satisfaction, 
intimacy in relationships, etc.  Our most important assertion is about the indivisibility of the 
human being and the prediction that a general maturing of consciousness would result from 
engaging in our work.   Other theoreticians have developed subjective scales for “self-
development”, “maturation”, “moral development” for examples.  Can we tap into some of 
the questionnaires that are in use and have a track record from other domains and apply them 
to ours?   
 
In the second question, I am reminded of the early work of Eugene Gendlin that led to his 
model called “Focusing”.  As a clinical psychologist, teacher and philosopher, he wanted to 
determine if qualities in the patient were predictive of a successful outcome irrespective of the 
therapists’ methodology?  He taped thousands of hours of therapy with a variety of therapists.  
Graduate students were enlisted to listen to hours upon hours of sessions.  Success was 
determined by: 1) the patient thought the course of treatment was successful, 2) the therapist 
concurred and 3) the listeners, through both evaluating the tapes and reviewing profiles 
written by the patients, also agreed.  All three perspectives had to say that the therapy was 
successful. 
 
Gendlin and his colleagues found that the basic perceptual skills of the successful patients 
were so clear that they could predict upon listening to the first session whether the course of 
treatment was likely to be successful.  He claims that it actually became easy and obvious to 
identify the patients who spontaneously had the skills needed to derive lasting benefit 
regardless of the specific theoretical framework of the therapist. 
 
While we in the Feldenkrais world enjoy claiming that all people “with a brain” can derive 
benefit from our work and while I believe this is theoretically true, I wonder if certain 
skills/orientations of perception, thought, inner processing, kinesthetic awareness are 
consistently predictive of positive outcomes.  As a corollary, are certain perceptual 

IFF Academy 
Feldenkrais Research Journal 3 (2007) 

® 2007 by the author 
ISSN 1817-4000 



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orientations predictive of a low likelihood of success?  Are the skills that are positively 
correlated with success learnable (this was Gendlin’s great discovery)? 
 
Thank you for your interest. 


