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Feldenkrais Research Journal • volume 4 (2008)

Article

Epistemology for the Feldenkrais Method

Carl Ginsburg
PhD

Abstract
This article reflects on the experiential impact of a Feldenkrais Method lesson for a client and the
difficulties in describing and evaluating these changes of feelings and/or self-perception. The importance
of including in research observations these experiential aspects of our practice, alongside classic
scientific methodologies, is presented. Especially important are the surprising observations that occur as
a consequence of the empirical approach used in our practice. These observations need to be taken
seriously by researchers, psychologists, medical practitioners, etc. and investigated in more detail. How
can we demonstrate them to others and how can we induce researchers to look into our questions? We
need research that excites and expands the basis of what we do.

Keywords
Feldenkrais Method, case study, epistemology, experience, research outcomes, evaluation, observation,
scientific method

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

Please cite: (First published in the) Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 4; 2008.

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

https://feldenkrais-method.org/
https://feldenkraisresearchjournal.org


Position Paper: EPISTEMOLOGY FOR THE FELDENKRAIS 
METHOD 
 
Carl Ginsburg, Ph.D.  
 
 
     I recently gave a Functional Integration (FI) lesson to a young woman who 
was in distress. I knew her briefly as a student in a Feldenkrais training group 
where I was a guest trainer, and had given a lesson to her once before in 
connection with the training. After the lesson she wrote me the following: 
  
     “Thank you for the FI on Saturday. It was a return to my home (myself) and I 
recognized I‟m on the right way. It was a liberation and the feeling for gladness. I 
believe the power I felt will help me to find the right solution.”   
 
     The experiential consequences of the lesson while personal to her situation 
and expressed in relation to her path in life in feeling terms was not an accidental 
outcome of the lesson. Observably, the shifts in her structure and functioning as 
measured by visual and touch observation at the end of the lesson, led me to 
predict to myself that she would have a different self perception and self feeling 
as a consequence of the lesson. The lesson itself was predicated on my ability to 
make precise contact with her in such a way that the small movements I made in 
this contact would evoke in her the necessary neuro-muscular and structural 
skeletal shifts that were necessary to a resolution of her discomfort.  
 
     The result of any lesson does not of course mean that the new state is 
permanent. Life is full of contingencies and the new learning needs to be used in 
daily life. Further learning is also important. Nevertheless shifts of a person‟s 
embodied state seem a common outcome of an effective lesson.    
 
     What I am trying to point out here is that the work I do in teaching through my 
hands or in classes for Awareness Through Movement (ATM) is a precise art and 
perhaps even a science. Yet to evaluate this art seems like an intractable 
problem for a science based on „objective‟ data and third person observation 
alone. How do you evaluate “a return to my home” and “a feeling of gladness”? 
How could an outside observer evaluate the precision of my touch without 
personally feeling what I can do and corroborate that my feeling sense is in fact 
precise in the way I claim. And then could any person detect precision? People 
vary in such a capacity depending on experience and such factors of the state of 
their nervous system. And then the precision is within the contact space between 
the person and me. The specific outcome of the lesson is not predictable from 
the technique or the contact. It is the dance between us that counts, and the 
state of each of us at the moment.   
 
      Recently another young woman who was born with a neuropathy that left her 
without feeling in her lower legs and feet received a lesson from me about 



standing, walking and balancing. She also was in training and having arrived at 
the training barely capable of walking, was now quite functional while still having 
to gird herself to maintain balance. In my lesson I rolled the bottom of her feet 
over a Styrofoam roller and later put each foot the long way on the roller and 
asked her to lift her pelvis on that side. She was lying on her back. After I worked 
with one side, I asked her to experience herself standing. Her first reaction was 
that she had sensations in her foot that were entirely new to her and she felt a 
steadiness on this side that felt quite novel to her. She expressed her sensation 
as “feeling the bones of her foot”. At the end of the lesson she walked with a 
security she never experienced before. The experience led to tears and a 
powerful relief after a lifetime of struggle. Here the change was dramatic given 
the life history of the young woman‟s difficulty. One could say there is no need for 
a controlled study since the person is unique and the improvement is measured 
in terms of comparing the change with the past state of the person. 
 
     Afterwards the class had a discussion about the lesson. A person who was 
trained in the medical field asked how it was possible for this young woman to 
feel anything in her foot given that she suffered the neuropathy, which interferes 
with nerve transmission? From the person‟s point of view, the whole thing was 
suspect and maybe the woman just imagined some sensation. From the person‟s 
training and understanding the diagnosis of neuropathy meant that such feeling 
was impossible. The evidence I detected in touching and moving the young 
woman‟s head in gravity while she was sitting indicated that from a very shaky 
balance before the lesson her reactions to shifts in gravity changed. The irregular 
reactions to movement disappeared.  For me, this was observed evidence that a 
profound shift in her system occurred. Truthfully I didn‟t care whether it was 
possible in scientific understanding. I could only consider her report as truthful to 
her experience at the moment. And it was consistent with the functional change 
in her foot in relation to standing and walking. It was certainly consistent with her 
experience of new sensations in her feet. 
 
     For the young woman, the lesson was a triumph because her physicians had 
often told her she could never improve her condition. As far as she could find out 
the diagnosis of neuropathy meant that her feeling sense was impaired for the 
rest of her life. The diagnosis had no meaning beyond that, as no one could 
explain further or suggest how to help. 
 
     The question is, where is the difficulty? Do we need to expand our 
understanding of what is valid? Are the standards of classical scientific 
investigation and the accompanying model of epistemology adequate to the task 
of dealing with the high level of complexity exhibited by living organisms? How 
can we incorporate experiential material in ways that can be appreciated as 
valid? All these questions are pertinent to research into the validity of the 
Feldenkrais Method.  
 



Limitations of Classic Scientific Methodologies 
 
     Classic scientific epistemology established a norm of scientific investigation 
that very successfully dealt with questions of pre-quantum physical science 
where clear-cut cause-effect relationships exist. The sciences of living organisms 
adopted similar methodologies partly with the intent of establishing the same 
rigor and certitude for biology, psychology and other related sciences. What we 
know from the findings of researchers during the past 150 years has added 
tremendously to the store of knowledge available to these sciences and to the 
practice of medicine. Yet as with the physical sciences, more knowledge has led 
to impasses and revisions. In physics, the discovery of atomic level phenomena 
has led to re-assessments of the notion of cause and effect and the 
understanding of the nature of physical entities. In the life sciences, the immense 
accumulation of findings has given us a glimpse of mechanisms and 
understanding of life‟s processes. Yet at each point of seeming satisfaction with 
explanations, new findings have upset the apple cart. I offer just one example: 
Early experimentation established the fact that nerve cells seem to transmit 
information via periodic impulses which release neuro-transmitters to pass the 
signal to the next neuron. Seemingly the neuron and the synapse where the 
neuro-transmitters are released were fixed entities. Signals were passed forward 
to processing areas. Changes such as happen in learning involved changes in 
the synapse, which increased the probability that the neuron would pass on the 
signals to the next neuron.  
 
     From the resemblance of this process to transmission of electrical signals in 
devices such as computers, scientists postulated that sensory information was 
projected forward to the higher centers of the nervous system where the 
information was processed in fixed nerve nets and then turned into output. The 
brain in other words was a digital machine in which nerve impulses behaved like 
impulses in a computer and input was directly linked to output. This model is still 
frequently invoked to explain brain activity such as controlling movement or 
speech. New findings suggest that this simple model is not at all accurate even 
as a simplification for heuristic purposes. Professor John Smythies in the 
introduction of his book, The Dynamic Neuron, states, “Recent research, 
however, has shown that this classic picture is wildly inaccurate.”i 
 
      Just to point out what is now better understood: Neurons are not simple 
cause and effect linear transmitting devices, but are governed through dynamic 
processes that can involve non linear bifurcations, integrations, synchronizations, 
etc. following complex relations within the context of processing. Even at the 
level of the release of transmitters complex dynamic processes prevail. In the 
highly intersecting web of neurons, neurons are always connected in tandem 
between brain areas so that while feed-forward signals move between area A 
and area B, feedback signals are also directed back to A.ii This is also true for all 
the sensory surfaces. In addition, some neurons are directing activity while 
others are inhibiting transmissions creating a tensegrity dynamics.iii Without such 



balance of activity, order could not be formed in the nervous system. Lastly 
single neurons are never active as individual units but are linked into dynamic 
cell assemblies in brain activity through integrative processes including 
synchronization, and multifarious rhythmic activities. While brain dynamics is at a 
beginning stage of development, dynamic processes seem to govern the activity 
of life at all levels from the molecular and cellular level to the level of organisms 
and then to the level of the environment. Life is complex in a way that was 
unimagined not so many years ago.    
 
     The realization of this complexity of living systems has slowly shifted the 
concepts by which we understand the workings of life on the planet. As the 
conceptual structure changes it becomes clear that findings are often maintained, 
but they are not definitive in establishing interpretations. New findings may clarify 
issues; on the other hand proof of any specific theory or hypothesis is elusive. As 
E. T. Gendlin puts it, “Theories can contradict each other, but findings cannot.”iv 
Complexity challenges many long held theories in biology, psychology, sociology, 
medicine, etc. But it is interesting to note that in narrowing areas of inquiry, the 
conflict of interpretations became common. 
 
     Gendlin gives as an example the historical conflict between behavioral 
psychologists who study animals in the laboratory and ethologists, who study 
animals in the wild. The findings of the behaviorists about conditioned learning 
stand in relation to the learning phenomenon of conditioning as do the findings of 
ethologists that animals exhibit many complex behaviors that seem to never have 
been learned. The contexts under which the observations were made are 
completely different. Their respective theoretical and conceptual frameworks 
clashed and each side made universal pronouncements from the findings. There 
is a myth of scientific proof that hides the question of interpretation. With new 
findings, we can now say neither side of such debates could be definitive with 
regard to general laws. For example, the laws of learning developed by 
behaviorists are specific only to learning through conditioning. For the 
ethologists, the behaviors considered were valid for only the question of a 
released behavior, and not the behavior in relation to animal‟s interactions in its 
living situation. Neither side in this debate addressed the question of 
developmental learning, which was hidden behind the theoretical stance taken 
either in favor of conditioning or released behavior. As Moshe Feldenkrais 
demonstrated, developmental learning and the use of awareness is both rapid 
and overcomes the limitations of conditioning and habit.  Developmental learning 
is perhaps a prime example of the efficacy of dynamic processes in the self-
organization of order in a living being. Complexity does not mean anything goes. 
The order evolves out of the interaction of the person in the environment, which 
includes other humans and the structure of the world including gravity. The 
person finds the order that works through the interaction in calibrating the 
nervous system to the world. The environment doesn‟t cause the learning and 
there is no program to guide the process. Each normal person reaches the same 
developmental steps, but in a personal and unique way. 



 
     In some disciplines the recognition of complexity lags. Much medical and 
psychological research has continued without changing basic cause – effect 
thinking. Such thinking while sometimes useful surely has its pitfalls. For 
example, in our society, medical research is considered the pathway to 
developing valid methods of treatment.  Its successes in understanding many 
disease processes are abundant enough to justify such a designation. Yet the 
lack of recognition of complexity often leads to what seem intractable problems, 
often hidden under the notion of side effects. Thus the use of antibiotics has 
resulted in the appearance of so called super bugs which resist these life saving 
medication and result in serious illness and death. There are many other 
egregious examples involving the misuse of drugs and the effect of 
overprescribing, as well as the unrecognized suffering that can result from 
surgery and its overuse. In diseases such as cancer where there is still little 
understanding despite many years of intense research, the major resort is to 
heroic medicine involving radiation and chemotherapy, which can kill as well as 
save some lives. With advances in molecular biology the complexity of living 
systems still remain as an impediment to unlocking many mysteries of life.  
 
      Nevertheless, we often still hold on to the myth of classic scientific proof. The 
practice of science proceeds slowly at best and always with revision of previously 
held beliefs. This has its good side in that inadequate ideas eventually get 
replaced. But often the very practice of rigorous procedures to find certainty may 
hide what we need to find out. This is particularly so in the basic approach to a 
scientific method, which extols the idea of creating specific limited experiments to 
test hypotheses. Scientific progress often requires thinking outside of the box. 
Sticking to common practice can be an impediment to finding answers.   
 
.      As an example, the drive in current medical practice is to find the nirvana of 
exactitude through data. This particular attempt at hard science can have 
unexpected consequences. Most egregious at the present is the near universal 
reliance on hard measurable data to carry out diagnosis and treatment. The 
attempt here is to eliminate the human observer and thinker. Harvard medical 
professor Jerome Groopman, documents in his book How Doctors Thinkv a 
number of cases in which failures of proper diagnosis occurred.  The extent of 
misdiagnosis or failure to find a diagnosis is probably unknown. But anecdotally 
one hears of numerous cases. Groopman tries to show that the difficulty is all too 
human, that jumping to conclusions and not attending to the person often leads 
to error as physicians focus attention only on tests, body scans, and other data. 
Nicholai Bernstein pointed out many years ago that “an elderly experienced 
physician needs simply to glance at a patient with his weak eyes to diagnose an 
old, neglected disease, whereas young medical students cannot do so with their 
young acute eyes.”vi Good observation then requires an attentive, aware, and 
perceptive human observer in addition to data and other accoutrements of 
modern technology. But even to understand hard data and ask the right 
questions requires human observation and thinking. One wants exactitude but 



often gets statistical inference. Life involves complexity at every level. Scientific 
procedures that were developed for understanding simple mechanical systems 
are inadequate for complexity. The growth of statistical methodologies for testing 
everything covers up a great deal of ignorance.  
 
     Gendlin points out one other difficulty in science. “Science does not include its 
context. One result of this is that when it has a satisfactory analysis, it finds no 
reason to pursue the existence of anything it has not found. Then it claims to 
know all the factors.”vii  Complexity often kicks back. The inventors of antibiotics 
never imagined that the use of these agents would result in the evolution of super 
bacteria that resisted the effects of the antibiotics. Gendlin says, “Actual events 
are interactions, never just patterns and factors.” 
 
The Cyberneticist’s Debate 
  
     Around 1970 a small group of thinkers began to grapple with the implications 
for scientific epistemology of a new idea about living systems. These were the 
cyberneticists who had been gathering together from the 1950 onward to discuss 
the then new concepts of feedback, internal circularity, information, cognition, 
and how these concepts could change thinking about life processes, and control 
at different levels from the cell to society. These were the considerations that 
moved thinking toward the current dynamic view. In a recent publication, The 
Certainty of Uncertainty, Bernhard Poerksen dialogs with a number of people 
involved with this movement.viii One can trace in these discussions the evolution 
of a new epistemology, which could begin to replace „the view from nowhere‟ 
characteristic of the objectivist stance. The idea of objective procedures was to 
eliminate human bias and error from scientific observation and the search for 
truth. In the first dialog in this book, Heinz von Foerster, at one time the Director 
of the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois, and the 
secretary of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics notes, “The moment you try 
to eliminate the properties of the observer, you create a vacuum: There isn‟t 
anyone left to observe anything – and to tell us about it.”ix Poerksen then notes 
that Heinz was quoted as saying, “Objectivity is the subject‟s delusion that 
observing can be done without him.” The human being in this view is essential to 
developing findings and interpreting. Peorksen also notes that Heinz‟s ethical 
stance involves an awareness of one‟s blind spots. Nevertheless, there is an 
opening here to a giving up of any objectivity if such is possible. 
 
    In another dialog, Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana Maturana, who was 
also a friend of Heinz von Foerster, says, “Becoming aware that one is doing the 
observing and then being aware of being aware that it is one‟s self who makes 
the distinctions, one attains a new domain of experience.”x It requires a kind of 
responsibility. He says later, “The concept of the observer is a challenge to study 
the operation of the observer and to face up to the circularity of the 
understanding of understanding… My proposal, however, is to accept this 
circularity fully right from the start and make one‟s self the instrument by which 



the question of one‟s personal experience and one‟s own actions is to be 
answered through one‟s very own activities.”  One can then question the hidden 
assumptions and hidden epistemology of experiments. In the objective stance we 
are attempting to correlate our activity or the activity of a subject to the external 
world. For Maturana it dawned on him “that the correlation I was looking for could 
in all probability never be established.” He shifted his researching to the internal 
correlations in a system.  
 
     Maturana‟s colleague and student Francisco Varela, who at the end of his life 
was research director of the Centre National de Researche Scientifique in Paris, 
said in his dialog, “…scientific truth does not consist in the correspondence 
between theory and reality. Scientific knowledge is inevitably related to 
circumstances of the social world and – between virtual quotes – the reality.” 
And, “My concept of truth…is best understood as a theory of coherence: what 
counts is the consistency of theories, the coherence of viewpoints. Truth is, the 
motto of pragmatism proclaims, what works.” xi  
  
         What can we do with all of this? These observations can lead to an 
abandonment of all notions of an ultimate reality and objective truth. At the 
extreme the temptation is to move to the stance of post modernism and the 
notion that we humans are continually constructing our own reality. Anything 
goes. Gendlin says, “Currently many philosophers say that „nature‟ is a cultural 
idea. The scientific universe seems a mere „construction.‟ If you don‟t like your 
findings, just change your hypothesis. Science is just a game.”xii  He then points 
out the following: “Since we arrive by airplane at our conventions, let us not 
announce there that science is a mere construction. While in the air we have 
been hoping that factors such as the weight, speed, and amount of fuel have 
been correctly calculated in relation to the curvature of the wing.” 
 
Can we be Precise without a Classic Epistemology? 
 
     Last evening a young man came to me in a lot of pain with a back spasm. He 
could not fully erect his spine. This morning he called to thank me profusely. He 
was out of pain except for a few twinges; he slept well; he was now moveable. 
How did that happen? Was it science or magic? Or hypnotism? In fact I observed 
the evening before that he was sufficiently improved. I could with good chance 
predict that he would be much more moveable, be capable of erecting his spine, 
and mostly out of pain the following day. There must be a valid empiricism in the 
process. There is clearly enough regularity in the nature of human beings as 
moving, living beings. But how can it be described in a meaningful way?  
 
     Many people would want to put the process to a double blind test. Take so 
many people with back spasm and pain. Divide them into a control group (do 
nothing), and others into different intervention groups. Evaluate the results by 
people who do not know which person was in which group. Find out if there is 
statistical significance. But my process is not a singular organized, algorithmic 



intervention and back spasm pain is not a singular defined ailment that would 
require a singular intervention. When you observe carefully, each person‟s back 
spasm has different patterns and resulted from different processes. A double 
blind study does not make sense. Furthermore, there is not any new information 
to discover in such a study. It is a blind alley. I am not an aspirin. I contend with 
the evidence of much prior experience that I could repeat similar successes with 
many people in such a situation. Other Feldenkrais Practitioners might also 
repeat successes and others not. We are not all equal in our skillfulness and 
awareness. Is there any way to establish public validity? As long as „experts‟ 
insist on a standard epistemological process, it appears not possible. I contend 
this standard is both limited in its application, and such insistence a political 
maneuver to protect the socially agreed upon consensus. But worse, I contend 
that following a fixed protocol and standard procedure would fail to achieve 
consistent results.      
 
And do We Need a New Empiricism? 
 
     At this point at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the answer seems to 
be yes. Where scientists have begun to consider the extent of complexity in all of 
life and in the relation to environments, it becomes clearer that we need to 
investigate beyond the simple stories we have accepted for understanding 
ourselves and other life forms. In his paper of 1997, E.T. Gendlin dissects the 
epistemological problem in a very interesting way that should be of interest to we 
Feldenkrais practitioners. Gendlin is both a philosopher and a psychologist who 
is most famous for his work in developing experiential psychotherapy, and for his 
process known as Focusing.xiii The process involves teaching people to contact 
the embodied felt sense that accompanies us in daily life, often unrecognized. 
Recognition and processing the meanings involved can become a gateway to 
reorganizing the psyche, thus Gendlin‟s interest in an empiricism, which 
acknowledges experience and alternative routes to validation. The title of this 
paper, “The Responsive Order: A New Empiricism,” introduces a new term and 
one that should prove to be very valuable to us, the responsive order. 
 
     The responsive order goes beyond the logical order that sits behind classic 
epistemology. The logical order need not be abandoned. But the responsive 
order includes “us and our procedures.” Thus the human observer is brought 
back into the picture as is the complexity of interaction between observer and 
observed is acknowledged. Moshe Feldenkrais implicitly understood this despite 
his training in classical objective driven science. His intent was to train himself 
and then other human beings to become much better observers.   
 
The Epistimic Tools of the Feldenkrais Method 
 
       Without accurate ways of assessing the progress of the client or student in 
the lesson process, the outcome of the lesson can vary considerably. This is so 
for FI lessons as well as in teaching ATM. In a successful ATM teaching, the 



practitioner assesses the students‟ progress and modifies the lesson in 
response. In a successful FI, the practitioner has a sense of what needs to be 
learned and can detect when learning has occurred through touching, contacting 
and observing visually and kinesthetically. When moments of shift occur for the 
client, mutually acknowledging the change verbally or non-verbally can affect the 
outcome for the better.  In the lesson with the young man with back pain, I used 
touching and moving my client as the primary source for finding out what I 
needed to know, but also for what he needed to know. When I felt a change, for 
example, in how he allowed his pelvis to move, I asked if he noticed a difference. 
His acknowledgement then signaled that I could move on. While I did not follow a 
fixed protocol, I did create a natural progression for the process. In doing so, I 
also created a contact and presence with him that deepened a trust and 
connection between us. Without this, he very well might not have been able to 
make the shifts necessary for a successful outcome.  
 
     What are the conditions for this practical success? We know as practitioners 
from our personal experience, that our nervous system requires a quiet safe 
state for this kind of learning and changing patterns. Thus we are trained through 
the experiential process of our training to quiet ourselves, to listen to our 
sensations, to use our hands and bodies as instruments for contact and further 
listening, and to use the experience of our own kinesthetic sense in expanding 
self-understanding as well as an ability to access what can work for others. We 
have learned also specific techniques that can evoke outcomes. In the growth 
process of the training, we develop an accuracy in this that exceeds other 
methods of assessment. We become better human instruments. We develop a 
useful implicit knowledge. We are responsive to a context and situation. These 
are our epistemic tools. We use them to know how to proceed. At the same time 
we avoid declaring an objective „truth.‟ Our measure is the outcome of the 
process. How can we use our learned skills to establish both a research track 
and public accountability?  
 
      Primarily, I believe, we have to expand our abilities to document our work. 
Science is not adverse to carefully documented observations. I cite two 
examples: Psychologist Paul Ekman inspired by Charles Darwin‟s study of 
emotional expression in humans and animals began his career by studying 
whether people in different cultures could recognize emotional states from 
observing pictures of human faces.xiv There is a cross here between inner 
experience of emotions and outer expression. Ekman eventually studied his own 
facial movement by detecting how to move each facial muscle movement until he 
could express different emotions and subtle variations. His research has been 
well published, but he also teaches people who need such skills to read 
emotional expression, even slight flickerings of facial movement, which expose 
feelings that a subject may want to hide. 
 
      As a second example I include Daniel Stern‟s research into infant – mother 
interactions.xv Here Stern used videotaped data to infer interactive states 



between mother and child by working in a team to develop a consistent way to 
evaluate the video material, and train others in observing. This work was a great 
departure from previous objective based observing in which human interaction 
was considered as invalidating observations. He created a revolution in thinking 
about infant development. In later work, he explored the experience of present 
moments in daily life through a process called the micro-analytic interview in 
which experimenter and subject discuss a particular experience through back 
and forth examination in detail until a verbal statement is considered a valid 
expression of the incident.xvi  
 
     Although Feldenkrais, trained as he was in objective science, thought hard as 
to how he could use such methodology to publically validate his discoveries. He 
found the challenge too daunting in relation to his need to spread his work in 
training others to develop the necessary skills and abilities. However, everything 
he presented was tested in practice with his assistants. The moves he developed 
in FI work were tried out with others and he had his assistants try the procedures 
out with himself until the effectiveness in learning was clear.xvii ATM was also 
tested with groups and Feldenkrais taped his presentations and adjusted his 
directions until he could observe improvement in the results with his classes.xviii 
In other words, he expanded his idea of the scientific experiment to develop his 
work by crossing the objective procedure with the subjective evaluation. It 
depended, of course, on his own and his assistants observational skills. The 
subjective evaluation is indeed in the realm of what Gendlin calls the responsive 
order. 
 
What Do We Need to Do?  
 
     In the light of what I have outlined so far we need to take certain actions 
individually and communally. First we need to document our work with video, 
interviews, follow up, postural assessment, etc. We need to analyze our better 
lessons and keep notes about what seemed to succeed. A lot of material from 
the training groups and individual practice is already available even though it has 
not been used for formal evaluation. We can learn to use this material in a way 
that expands our understanding. For example, noting how the practitioner may 
use an unusual position and try it out to see what effect it has and then compare 
with alternatives. Second, we need to train ourselves to observe the material and 
find other expert evaluators to find out what can be seen in the documentation. 
Human observers are indeed more sensitive than mechanical movement 
recording as used in the movement laboratory. Third, we need to train ourselves 
in describing the experiential realms of feeling and affect as well as sensory 
changes to be much more precise. In this Gendlin‟s work can be very helpful, 
especially his work in learning to describe the felt sense.xix  I would propose that 
the Research Committee could find practitioners who could form groups to carry 
out these tasks and perhaps find experts to guide us in the learning. Lastly I 
would propose that we look into research questions that make sense to us and 



take advantage of new techniques that can reveal changes in the nervous 
system. 
 
     What I mean in this is that we need to research what we do not know, not 
what could be obviously demonstrated. With an ATM about turning, we can 
obviously demonstrate that people can turn further after the ATM process. On the 
other hand only research using some form of brain scanning might reveal if doing 
ATM over a period of time would enhance the growth of some parts of the brain. 
Other research needs to be done to validate procedures that are part of our 
repertoire. For example, does reducing effort and slowing the process actually 
enhance learning possibilities? Does connecting through the skeleton out of 
gravity result in changes in muscular organization along the pathway of 
connecting? Does feeling a new stability after a lesson or series of lessons result 
in different feeling and affective states for a person? I am sure many other such 
questions can come to mind.        
 
      One aspect of research needs to involve those aspects of our work that can 
inform other investigators.  There are surprising observations that occur as a 
consequence especially of the empirical approach used in our practice. The first 
is that the observation of organized movement, posture, and tonus for a subject 
turns out to have direct links to the states of the nervous system. The second is 
that changes in these observed characteristics imply direct changes in the 
nervous system. This should be an obvious conclusion since the states of the 
musculature are directed through nervous system activation. It is little noted by 
other observers outside our work. We also observe that feeling states are linked, 
although not necessarily one to one, to embodied neuromuscular activity. Thus 
the most direct connection to a person‟s nervous system is through the body and 
through modifications of states of mobilization and organization of tonus. Since 
these factors are directly linked to skeletal organization in gravity, what we call 
posture or what Feldenkrais called acture in a living, moving being has deep 
connection to all other nervous system activity including the autonomic nervous 
system. Changes then will relate to affect, emotion, the feeling of well being, and 
numerous other experiential qualities in life. I believe these observations need to 
be taken seriously by researchers, psychologists, medical practitioners, etc. and 
investigated in more detail. How can we demonstrate them to others and how 
can we induce researchers to look into our questions? We need research that 
excites and expands the basis of what we do. At this point we need to act rather 
than creating more discussion.         
 
Carl Ginsburg, Ph.D.  
 
                                                 
i J. Smythies, 2002, The Dynamic Neuron, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (p. 2). 
 
ii See M. Spivey, 2007, The Continuity of Mind, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, NY, particularly Chapter 
5. 
 



                                                                                                                                                 
iii  G. Buzszki, 2006, Rhythms of the Brain, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, NY, particularly Cycle 3, 
where he states, “Tensegrity dynamics can be maintained only if the excitatory effects are balanced by 
equally effective inhibitory forces, provided by specialized inhibitory neurons. If only excitatory neurons 
were present in the brain, neurons could not create form or order or secure some autonomy for themselves.” 
(P. 61).  
 
iv E.T. Gendlin, 1997, “The Responsive Order: A New Empiricism,” Man and World 30:383-411, available 
at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin4.html. (p. 6 of download). 
 
v J. Groopman, 2006, How Doctors Think, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA. 
 
vi N. Bernstein, 1996, On Dexterity and Its Development, in M. Latash and M. Turvey (eds.), Dexterity and 
Its Development, NetLibrary, Inc., Boulder, CO, (p. 107). Bernstein wrote this text in the 1940s in the 
Soviet Union and before it could be published it was suppressed. It was recovered and translated by his 
student, Professor Latash. 
 
vii Gendlin, 1997, (p. 16)  
 
viii B. Poerksen, 2004, The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism, Imprint 
Academic, Brampford Speke, Exeter, GBR. 
 
ix Poerksen, 2004, (P. 2) 
 
x Poerksen, 2004, (p. 52) 
 
xi Poerksen, (p. 93) 
 
xii Gendlin, 1997, (p. 3) 
 
xiii E. Gendlin, 1981, Focusing, Bantam Books. 
 
xiv P. Ekman, 2003, Emotions Revealed, Henry Holt and Co., New York, NY. 
 
xv D. Stern, 1985, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books. 
 
xvi  D. Stern, 2004, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Daily Life. 
 
xvii Personal communication with Mia Segal and Gaby Yaron. 
 
xviii C. Ginsburg, 1995, “Is there a Science of the Feldenkrais Magic” in Report: First Feldenkrais 
Conference Heidelberg, International Feldenkrais Federation  
 
xix  Gendlin, 1981. 

http://www.focusing.org/gendlin4.html

