



























 

Feldenkrais Research Journal​  • ​volume 5​  (2016) 
 
Hypothesis and Theory / History 
 
 

Teaching through movement: 
A detective story 

 
Sondra Fraleigh 
MA, Feldenkrais Practitioner; Professor Emeritus of Dance of the State University of New York; Director 
Eastwest Somatics for Yoga, Dance, and Movement Studies 
 

Keywords 
movement, teaching, phenomenology, Feldenkrais Method 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Please cite:​ (First published in the) ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​ ;​ ​ 2016. 

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) ​http://feldenkrais-method.org 
Available online at ​http://iffresearchjournal.org/volume/5/fraleigh 
 

 
 

http://feldenkrais-method.org/
http://iffresearchjournal.org/volume/5/fraleigh


 

Hypothesis and Theory / History 
 
 

Teaching through movement: 
A detective story 

 
Sondra Fraleigh 
MA, Feldenkrais Practitioner; Professor Emeritus of Dance of the State University of New York; Director 
Eastwest Somatics for Yoga, Dance, and Movement Studies 

 
1. First approximation: Introduction 

I began my studies of the Feldenkrais Method​®​ in my early fifties, and it has blessed my life and 
teaching ever since. Some special teachers I remember are Larry Goldfarb for his humor, Frank 
Wildman for his thoughtful objectivity, and Elizabeth Berringer for her enthusiasm and clarity. I 
had one class with Ruthy Alon, appreciating her rich grasp of movement and ability to connect 
with students. I appreciated the ease of Mark Reese’s classes and the joy of Donna Ray. I was 
hoping to study with Martin Weiner and was about to go to a home-stay workshop with him 
when I learned of his death. I feel I missed something very special, and I especially appreciate 
that ‘The Feldenkrais Journal’ on “Improvisation” reprinted his article on ‘Functional Integration 
as Improvisational Art.’ ​ It appeals to me as a dancer-improviser. 

1

Here I want to explore what the Feldenkrais Method has taught me about teaching, if that isn’t 
too redundant. I employ phenomenology as a method in this attempt to unpack my evolution as 
a teacher over a period of about fifty-two years. I began teaching dance in university dance 
programs when I was twenty-three years old, and I’m now seventy-five. I continue to teach, but 
in a more expansive somatic context. I love teaching; it brings me gladness and peace. I’m 
probably at my best right now, even though I am not the adroit mover I once was, or perhaps it 
depends on the circumstances. I can no longer leap through space as I did when I danced on 
stage and taught high-level performers. But my present performances are more nuanced, and I 
have more expressive potential. As a teacher, I can pay attention better. The students’ 
understanding of the movement at hand is what matters to me in the moment. I’m not distracted, 
and I’m not afraid. I connect to students through what we are doing in a way that wouldn’t have 
been possible for me early on. I pay attention to them and lose myself in the processes we 
experience together. I channel my spontaneous self.  

How did all of this happen? To answer this, I need to research my teaching history somewhat 
like a detective, which is to say, a phenomenologist. Thus, I’m open to discovery. I understand 

1 First published in the “Performing Arts” issue of the ​Feldenkrais Journal​  ​14​ , (Spring 2002), and reprinted in 
the ​Feldenkrais Journal 27​  on “Improvisation” (2014). 
 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 2
 



 

from the outset that The Feldenkrais Method has been important in my growth as a teacher. 
Feldenkrais entered late into my university teaching, and still later is informing my ​Eastwest 
Somatics Institute for Yoga, Dance, and Movement Studies​ . Phenomenology as a philosophy 
and method has been equally influential in my teaching and writing for many years. I hope in 
this short article to identify some common threads between phenomenology and the Feldenkrais 
work, including matters of perception and intention, which are important to both.  

Throughout this article, I expand a view of teaching relative to phenomenology and somatic 
education. At the end, I summarize my discoveries on a Detective Storyboard.  

What does it mean to research a topic or even one’s own experience through phenomenology? 
The first paragraph of this essay might qualify as a self-evidential phenomenological description, 
or a “first approximation” (as I learned this expression through the Feldenkrais work), but it is 
more narrative than phenomenological. For the latter I will need to go more deeply into the topic 
of teaching—more specifically, teaching through movement, and still more specifically, engaging 
people in learning through movement. This will require me to bracket “movement” as a 
phenomenon, to set it aside as undefined, not assuming I know what it is, but letting its 
essences emerge as I consider it in context of teaching and learning. Detectives do this also, 
when they are working on “hunches,” well at least they do in the movies. They question as they 
learn, and learn as they question. 

A phenomenon is simply “a thing”, anything that appears to consciousness. Through its origins 
in Husserl, phenomenology holds that consciousness is directed toward its contents, the things 
or objects of awareness (Spiegelberg 1971). Contemporary phenomenology describes and 
analyzes structures of conscious experience from the first-person point of view, including 
influential contexts of experience. Since Husserl’s first work on phenomenology, published in 
1900, we continue to study the central structure of an experience as its ​intentionality​ , the way it 
is directed through its content (Husserl 1970). The content would be, in reductive terms of 
phenomenology, ​the thing itself​ . It can be great fun to pursue such essences like a detective 
story unfolding, where one doesn’t know the ending in advance. On the face of it, one might say 
that movement is ​the​  ​thing​  we are pursuing, but I think not.  

2. Second approximation: The phenomenon 

Teaching through movement​  is the phenomenon of the present study. For me, teaching through 
movement entails knowing how to visualize and make movement patterns come to life for 
students, contextualizing movement in curious configured sequences, in dance forms, through 
touch, and in yoga. Context births content in movement: shape, line, design, and factors of time 
emerge in terms of the movement mode employed. The “what” of it comes into play. Human 
movement is just an idea until someone actually, well, ​moves. ​ Someone makes a change, a 
shift, a repositioning, or transfers weight from one foot to another to move through space. 
Movers might scoot along the floor also, or walk on their hands. When people move, they make 
a change of location, or a change relative to their own body space. But there is of course much 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 3
 



 

more involved in movement than change, since movement cannot be separated from the mover. 
As a detective, I am already making discoveries regarding oneness, and as a phenomenologist, 
I’m defining a nondualist perspective on movement and mover. 

People are involved in educational interactions, teachers and students who move; thus, I need 
to include ​ways in which people experience movement​  and how teachers and students relate. 
The thing itself​ , or the phenomenon we study, also indicates relationships and ​intentionality​ , the 
intentions of both the teacher and the learner. Without students, the teacher ceases to exist at 
least in her function of teaching.  

Teaching and learning are related processes of education. I try to remember that ​educare, ​ the 
Greek root of education, means to draw forth what the student already knows, as Plato taught.  

2

Teaching is a process of ​facilitation​  in this view and not of “stuffing” information or “training” 
through exercise. Learning is a process of transformation (positive change) and recognition of 
growth. 

As part of our story, the detective (researcher) might identify ​core existentials​  (experiential 
qualities and meanings) of teaching through movement, bringing to the fore the hermeneutic 
phase of phenomenology, or meanings derived from the search. We seek meaning in the form 
of pedagogical insight, and hope to summarize this on the Storyboard. Phenomenology is not 
simply personal, even if it respects intuition; its trajectory is toward shared meanings and values. 
Neither is it simply a study of experience. Rather phenomenology studies ​consciousness of 
experience​ . Phenomenology shares this with the Feldenkrais Method, which emphasizes 
awareness​  of movement experience as primary in changing patterns of action. 

In this study, I draw upon ​my consciousness of teaching through movement​ . Thus, it strikes me 
that I will need to say how movement can become a medium for learning. As a detective, I have 
a hunch that I should consider the content, processes, and methods of movement to make my 
study more concrete. I may be able to come to this through matters of consciousness, capturing 
a fresh view, which is the job of phenomenology. 

We have already mentioned the centrality of ​intention​  in teaching and learning. Intentionality 
develops and deepens through active direction of perception, which as this study reveals at 
several junctures, is a matter of method or approach. A phenomenologist accepts that 
perception is an activity; perception is not passive, even if it has passive phases. We are not 
passive recipients of an outside world. We are in the world and part of the world, which is in us. 
Perception, world, self, and intention all implicate each other. Perception might be activated 
through intentions of care, fear, or apathy, for instance, which result in very different existential 
meanings. We shape experience through intention and interpretation. In this, we are all directors 
of our own lives.  

2 Class Notes, John Caton’s Class on Plato at Brockport State College in New York, 1980. 
 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 4
 



 

I learned much about how such agency develops through body consciousness and in the 
person via the Feldenkrais Method. This method underscores perception in actual movement 
processes. More to the point, Moshe Feldenkrais finally named his method for teaching 
movement to groups – “Awareness Through Movement​®​.” He believed people could improve 
their lives through movement. This was not a completely new concept for me in my teaching of 
dance, but I didn’t know how to put such an idea into practice. Eventually, I learned, and am still 
learning as I expand my teaching repertory, stepping from one movement paradigm to another 
in a full day of teaching: from Butoh (an original dance form that grew first in Post WW II Japan)  

3

into Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement, exploring Depth-Movement Dance (as I 
presently develop this in relation to improvised art), and maybe ending with Somatic Yoga. As a 
detective, I’m not satisfied to rest on one way alone; in the end, I find relationships that surprise 
me. Students seem to enjoy the journey, as they find their own touchstones along the way.  

A large part of the journey for me as a teacher has been learning how to include everyone and 
anyone who wants to experience movement for personal growth. Before I engaged the 
Feldenkrais work, I had only taught select and talented dancers. What an evolution it has been 
for me to work with anyone who wants to come to my classes, workshops, and retreats. I 
continue to get better at teaching a wide-ranging population. My vision of what it means to teach 
has become more elastic. Now I frame potentials through movement rather than insisting on a 
certain product or result. What a relief! As part of my present work, I’m teaching two very large 
classes of seniors in Somatic Yoga. It doesn’t look like Feldenkrais work, and yet my vision of 
somatically inspired yoga wouldn’t be possible without my study of Feldenkrais perspectives 
and other somatic modalities. Of the several I have studied, including The Alexander Technique, 
Craniosacral Therapy, Rosen Breathwork, and Integral Yoga, Feldenkrais has taught me the 
most about teaching. The framework of study in Feldenkrais is about discovery. One doesn’t 
memorize patterns; one explores them, like a good detective or phenomenologist would.  

3. Third approximation: Some things in movement 

One of the starting points of phenomenology through Husserl is that consciousness has 
contents, and that contents structure consciousness, as we noted in the First Approximation. In 
other words, to be conscious is to be conscious of “something.” The content, “the thing”, might 
be an idea, a form, a smell, a touch, a self-moving, a dance, or movement observation. If we are 
teaching something through movement, we assume that there is something to learn in the 
process of moving. We also suppose that movement has content that can be conveyed through 
processes and methodologies. The latter, we hope, will draw consciousness toward greater 
understanding or improvement.  

3 For more on butoh, see Sondra Fraleigh, ​BUTOH: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy, ​ 2010,​ ​ Champaign: 
University of Illinois Press. 
 

 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 5
 

http://www.eastwestsomatics.com/
http://www.eastwestsomatics.com/


 

It is sometimes difficult to discern content in movement, unless one has a context for it. 
Movement exhibits content in shape, time, design, and overall form, to name some of its 
discernable parameters, or elements. Expressivity is also important as movement content, 
inseparable from the person in motion. Expression is a “thing” as soon as we notice some 
expressive quality and name it. Expressive content is individual and elusive, and thus a matter 
of subjective interpretation. In the eye of an aesthetician, movement has abstract shapes, 
expressive and communicative content, and all movement has style: rigid, flowing, sharp, 
closely held, thrown, clear or jumbled, etc. Style is part of content, which might develop in a 
dance form like ballet, or in more personally emergent forms, like my dance improvisations or 
yours. Repetition is part of content (also style, process, and method), as is apparent in ATM 
patterns. We learn movement partly through repetition, but most effectively through 
approximations of these, and not through insistence. Babies learn through trial and error, 
through explorative repetition, and quite naturally through the emergence of their innate 
potentials. Adults can emulate infant ways of learning toward recovery of innocent effectiveness 
and joy. 

Movement can be conceived and taught in patterns. Pattern is readily apparent in spatial and 
temporal aspects of movement and a visible part of content. There could be several ways to 
define a movement pattern. I’ll just say for the sake of brevity that movement patterns are 
configurations of movement that can be repeated, maybe not exactly, but in the sense that they 
can be felt, seen, known, and replicated. Somatic movement patterns often indicate (or intend) 
developmental aspects that go back to infancy, like pushing or pulling, or radiating from the 
center. Stylistic parameters of patterns might be described in many ways, as simple or complex 
for instance, symmetrical or asymmetrical—or as a matter of style in terms of process: done 
gently and slowly, curling inward, reaching, falling, etc. The reader (as detective) might notice 
that structural categories of content and process begin to overlap at certain points, as 
movement itself does.  

We have not yet bracketed “method,” which is a term encompassing content and process. It 
appears immediately that methodology is a very large topic, so for our purposes here, we can 
state quite simply that a method is ​a way, a way of moving, working, and thinking. ​ One might 
also call it an overall approach. Method will likely be an important element on the Storyboard. A 
method is also one of the “things” of movement, as entering into and modifying the entire 
movement milieu of the student and consciousness of the teacher. “There is method in my 
madness,” I sometimes think as I teach. The madness is in the fun, surprise, and tears of it all. 
Movement takes on personality qua method. It lives by way of it in matters of teaching and 
learning.  

4. Related methods: Feldenkrais and phenomenology 

In light of method, I have experienced that ​ways of moving and learning ​ characterize 
Feldenkrais, and these can lead to change in the person. ​Ways of looking, describing, and 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 6
 



 

discerning meaning​  characterize phenomenology, and these can also lead toward change and 
developmental transformation. The operative verb here is “can” as in “able to.” Together, 
teachers and students are able to realize the possibilities of learning through movement. Key 
concepts shared by Feldenkrais and phenomenology facilitate the possibilities, as below we 
view these methods side by side. We start with the study of experience, or consciousness of 
experience, since this guides the rest. 

The study of experience  

Related studies in perception, volition, and bodily awareness are of particular interest to both 
phenomenology and the Feldenkrais Method, as ways of investigating any embodied action. 
Philosophies of existentialism inform phenomenology, holding that experiences don’t occur in a 
vacuum. They root in contexts of place, time, and culture, and they have felt, affective registers 
as well as individual and interpersonal features. Similarly, in Feldenkrais studies, each person’s 
movement is considered to be experientially individual, not part of a type or pathology. Husserl’s 
phenomenological view of consciousness did not include psychological conceptions, whereas 
Martin Heidegger and other existentialists offered ways to conceptualize experience (Nathanson 
1973, Safranski 1998). Existentialism extends phenomenology to the study of experience as 
embedded in consciousness of world, body, and psyche – in memory, imagination, emotion, 
and desire. Feldenkrais implies these connections, but takes them in an oblique direction. Mark 
Reese explains that Feldenkrais created a method of teaching through bodily awareness to 
‘bypass learned ​inabilities. ‘​ Like a great detective, he invented ‘surprise-ending lessons that 
bypass expectations’ (1999: 22). 

My phenomenology accepts that potentially fruitful experiential descriptions of teaching and 
learning through movement are almost limitless. As a phenomenon, human movement is 
existentially textured, and its many contexts are ripe for learning and reflection. People move 
their felt world into being and experience emotional qualities directly through movement, as both 
Feldenkrais and phenomenology teach. Phenomenological works of Merleau-Ponty and others 
put forward the concept of the “lived-body.” Currently we also speak of the “living-body.” In both 
senses, we “are” our body. We are a “feeling” body and at the same time a “moving” body. For 
phenomenologists, affective life is indivisible from embodied movement. Moshe Feldenkrais 
expresses a similar view in ​Body and Mature Behavior​  (1949: 173). 

Less is more, habit, and hidden assumptions 

The Feldenkrais method teaches that “less can be more”, offering the opportunity for deeper 
awareness. Phenomenology teaches one how to hesitate in considering taken-for-granted 
appearances. Martin Heidegger liked to write about “hidden” ground. Phenomenologists believe 
that human life and movement are pervaded with habitual perceptions (1998). This is also the 
perspective of Feldenkrais. Taking apart movement forms to see “how they tick” is useful to 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 7
 



 

learning. “Let us see how this works, and what we can do with it,” I like to ask. “What is available 
that isn’t yet apparent to you”?  

Phenomenology has become popular as a research method that employs first person 
experience and description, but descriptive narrative and story telling, interesting and useful in 
many ways, are not necessarily phenomenological. Phenomenology is a descriptive analytical 
method that wipes the slate clean, so to speak, not depending on conventions of “the natural 
attitude,” the taken-for-granted, or on established theory. I like phenomenology because I can 
start fresh, somewhat the way I choreograph, zeroing myself to invent anew, as also in the 
Feldenkrais approach to individuality. Phenomenology is active: it should teach you something 
new or change your life in some way.  

The Feldenkrais Method is also an activity that proffers change in positive directions. It has 
taught me that movement can be conceived in many creative and interesting ways, and that 
however we appreciate top level performers, we can also encourage movement as the legacy of 
all who want to claim it. I disrupted my habits of teaching dance and movement when I took on 
the perspective of teaching “everyone.” I had to zero myself, and start all over again. I 
summarize the phenomenology of tabula rasa thinking on the Storyboard – specifically in 
relation to habit and the Feldenkrais Method. 

In themselves, habits may be neither bad nor good, but they remain unquestioned, which is part 
of why they are habits. Good detectives question their habits of thought, as they seek new 
solutions, untried paths and novel information. They pay attention to small details. When we 
move and pay attention to our movements, we encounter soma and psyche as our active and 
ongoing body of life. We study ourselves in living dynamic processes of becoming, which are 
sometimes confusing and never quite finished in time. As Merleau-Ponty suggests, ‘I know 
myself only insofar as I am inherent in time and in the world, that is, I know myself only in my 
ambiguity’ (1962: 345). As in an ATM class, one can let go of expectations of being “right” in 
order to be whole in the movement of the moment.   

Connectivity and change through Functional Integration and phenomenology 

Our detective work has unraveled that ​teaching ​ is ultimately about ​learning​ . Now we consider 
this in terms of connectivity. As phenomenology has taught through its many proponents from 
Husserl to the existentialists, we cannot separate ourselves from the world. We are implicated 
from the start, as part of the otherness we perceive to be separate. We are not alone; 
separateness is an illusion, as I have also learned in studying Eastern traditions, including yoga 
and Buddhism. We might feel alone, however, as a matter of experience. Surely many people 
feel isolated, depressed, and empty sometimes.  

Feldenkrais Functional Integration​®​ seems to me predicated on appreciation of the underlying 
wholeness of human life and the understanding that through gentle movement reminders, 
people can access more of their oneness with the world and with others as they feel more 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 8
 



 

integrated: stable, peaceful, cohesive, included, and able to move easily and elegantly. A 
“reminder” in this case might be a movement cue, a prompt or response-producing stimulation 
occurring in the embodied partnership of student and teacher. I learned how to use my hands to 
listen in the Feldenkrais Method, and this created the conditions for relating to the other 
nonverbally.  

I also learned that fixed behavior can be unsettled toward choice, and that this is at once 
physical and emotional in its implications. I summarize this view of Functional Integration in 
several related points on the Storyboard.  Consciousness with kinaesthetic self-knowing is 
available to us in resolving emotional habits through bodily means of movement. As Moshe 
Feldenkrais wrote: ‘When an emotional complex has been resolved, a specifically individual 
body habit is resolved simultaneously’ (1949: 173).  

Movement, awareness, and responsibility 

As an evolving detective, I see a thread of ​bodily becoming​  in the story leading forward. We 
humans do experience separations and pain, as also oneness, ease, and happiness. The world 
of feeling is a shifting one. Such shifts arise phenomenologically – as ways in which the world 
appears to us and is experienced. As a matter of experience, we can feel splits of attention, and 
we can even feel alien to ourselves. We can experience dualisms to be sure, but these are not 
metaphysical separations of body and mind. Rather, lived dualisms are phenomenological (or 
experiential), as I consider extensively in an early work and revisit in a later one (Fraleigh 1987: 
13/15, Fraleigh 2004, Ch. 1).  

Subjectivity is nameless until it coalesces an object of awareness. For instance, we can be 
aware of the movement of others, as also our own movement. In this sense, movement can be 
an object of awareness. In becoming more conscious of ourselves and self-reflective through 
movement, we can grow in awareness and agency. The Feldenkrais work develops such 
conscious awareness – through movement.  

Existential phenomenology stands in contrast to metaphysical essentialism, holding that the 
person plays an active role in shaping the objects of perception. At the root of feminism and 
existential phenomenology, Simone de Beauvoir put it famously in her benchmark work, ​The 
Second Sex:​  ‘one is not born, but becomes a woman’ (1972: Ch. 12). Sartre put the existential 
position succinctly: ‘existence precedes essence.’ ‘What we can become is not given in 
essence; thus are humans in a constant state of becoming as they create new knowledge and 
meaning. The views of existentialism refute notions of determinism, asserting the necessity of 
self-responsibility and choice in the unfolding of experience’ (1947).  

Nonjudgment  

Our detective work has already revealed that the teacher needs to understand the position of 
the student. Moving and learning in positive supportive contexts builds confidence. This single 

 
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realization has done more to improve my teaching and relationships with students than any 
other thing. It broaches the topic of nonjudgment, which is a core existential value of both 
phenomenology and the Feldenkrais Method. As teachers, we can create conditions for the 
learner to feel supported and not judged. This means everything. When I first began teaching 
dance in my twenties, the university environments for learning how to dance had mostly to do 
with how movement “looked.” Was it impressive? Were students improving in their ability to 
“project” movement expressions to an audience? These and many other matters of theatrical 
objectivity were important, and so I learned how to teach movement in this atmosphere of 
calculation. It never seemed right to me however. I was aware of what students were 
experiencing and not just how they were performing. 

Along comes the Feldenkrais Method in my fifties. (I’m a slow starter.) It gave me a framework 
for what I understood intrinsically. It taught me how to teach without judgment, a lesson I have 
never forgotten and employ daily. Nonjudgment is embedded in the method, even if Feldenkrais 
teachers have varying abilities to employ it. The Storyboard speaks further to the importance of 
nonjudgment in teaching. Nonjudgment in phenomenology broaches the topic of prejudice. 
Letting go of one’s favored notions of how things are in order to get out of one’s own way. 

Description 

In my evolution as a student of the Feldenkrais work, I learned how to describe movement and 
accept many possible versions, as the Storyboard takes up. In practicing non-judgment relative 
to description, I became fascinated with the variety, and lost my reliance on imitation as a mode 
of teaching movement and my insistence on how movement should look and be. I learned how 
to accept versions that altered my understanding of my own seemingly correct one. I loved 
being in the process of movement, the morphing of it, even as I understood that patterned forms 
could guide me. Students began to see me as an unusual dance teacher. I have remained so, 
accepting movement on the verge as much as in its finished container.  

In the beginning of my teaching transformation, some dance students wondered out loud if I 
wasn’t just “lax.” Then they began to see the value of self-forgiveness in their lives and careers. 
Things don’t always just fall into line the way we think they will. Students tell me often how much 
they appreciate having a model for letting go in bodily terms of movement and in teaching. 
Some have revolutionized their own teaching, which they tell me about, since I have taught 
many dancers who have gone on to university teaching careers. Teaching through description 
without judging emerging forms doesn’t mean one has no standards; rather, process trumps 
perfection. Being whole in the dance, trumps being nervous about failing. Description is a verbal 
methodological aspect of both phenomenology and Feldenkrais. Description aids discovery in 
both. I provide some specifics about describing movement on the Storyboard.  

  

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 10 
 



 

Discovery 

Being open to surprise and discovery is a core value of both Feldenkrais and phenomenology. It 
is also important in choreography (at least in my book). I bring this up because choreographers 
are also teachers, as they teach the dancers how to perform their choreography. Somatic 
methods open new possibilities for originality in choreography. I modeled a dance work called 
Meditations​  on my involvement in Zen and my Feldenkrais studies. I walked slowly and carried a 
stone in this dance. The active dancers could use my stillness. This work is described briefly at 
the end of the Storyboard.  

My evolution as a teacher of yoga has also been inspired by Feldenkrais openness to discovery. 
I have created a form of yoga called “Land to Water Yoga,”​ (​ 2009) that is respectful of hatha 
yoga, but which takes it in an entirely new direction, more somatic and more Western, 
envisioning the chakra energy centers of the body in terms of infant movement development. ​ ​ I 
gained the courage to go my own way through phenomenology, which I call “tabula rasa 
thinking,” and the Feldenkrais Method of making choices, resting, envisioning options, not 
forcing, and waiting for new kinesthetic pathways to emerge. 

I know my choices have consequences, and have become more aware of these over the years. 
I make mistakes in my teaching, but have learned how to rescue myself, and not get too 
serious. My ideas of what it means to teach have evolved. I also see myself more broadly as 
part of the evolution of teaching in movement education and in professional dance and theater. I 
seek the wider implications of dance and movement practices in community building and for 
personal and human development. Eco-somatics is important to me. I take my students into the 
environment to move and dance, or often to bond, with the soft red sandstone here in 
Southwest Utah. I conceive this beautiful place as a world navel. My teaching has taken a 
somatic turn, because I have. I hope the turn I take helps spur a mentality of participation and 
nonjudgment in teaching and learning.  

Detective Storyboard 

1. We noticed at the outset that teaching is not unidirectional, that the teacher is a learner who 
always keeps the learner in mind. Teaching and Learning occur in relation.  

2. Humans can improve through consciously undertaken movement.  Movement improves with 
patience, practice, and especially through direction of awareness in supportive learning 
environments.  

3. Somatically undertaken movement processes are not simply for the benefit of talented 
movers, but for everyone. 

4. Movement can be conceived and taught in patterns. Dance forms, yoga, and possibly many 
sports can be conceived and taught through patterns, moving from the simple to the complex. 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 11 
 



 

Patterns, in order to be useful, need to be malleable and adaptable to individuality in people and 
particular situations. 

5. Movement can be deconstructed according to patterned parts. I do this often, taking apart 
complex yoga asanas and making them accessible in their “parts.” The whole may emerge at a 
certain point, and if not, people benefit from being able to perform the parts that they can 
perform well, or well enough.  

6. Teaching through movement involves knowing the content, processes, and approaches or 
methods of the movement mode at hand. Being able to comprehend movement patterning also 
helps. 

7. Patterns point to both content and style. They are mediated by method.  

8. Why learn how to move better? Why does it matter? These would be basic phenomenological 
questions. My answer is three-fold. Skills acquisition can be important to people in their careers, 
as it has been to me. More importantly, we involve ourselves in the teaching and learning of 
movement toward the development of our human potentials. Lastly, moving better helps us feel 
better, a matter of health and wellbeing. Humans have the opportunity to change, and don’t 
need to be fixed in character.  

9. Emotional life and movement are related aspects of character. When we shift movement to a 
higher organization through awareness, character also shifts. Character as expressed in 
movement is malleable; however fixed through habit, it is not fixed of necessity. Humans do not 
need to be prisoners of the past.  

10. Making choices is a matter of ongoing awareness and progressive embodiment of new 
possibilities in movement, signaling changes in character, posture, and expression. 

11. Teaching movement through description turns the responsibility of learning over to the 
student. The teacher, however, needs to be ready to accept many versions of her movement 
descriptions. When I show movement to students, I am usually engaged with them in a 
descriptive process already. Teaching through description is modeled in the Feldenkrais 
Method. Experiential description is modeled in in phenomenology. 

12. When it comes to kinesthetically ingrained movement habits, zeroing ourselves is quite a 
challenge. The Feldenkrais Method does this in the way it directs intention in simple movement 
patterns that lead to an awareness of the naturalized attitudes we have embodied as habits. 
Similarly, Husserl also spoke of habits (of thought) as “the natural attitude,” as we saw early in 
our investigation. 

13. Learning through movement in nonjudgmental contexts creates conditions for improving 
lives. This one principle can transform classrooms. How does one grade performance then? 
Well if you have to, as in schools and academic institutions, there are ways that take the “sting” 

 
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out of it. Creating win/win situations is a challenge. We can avoid judging a person’s movement 
as in how well it seems to be performed, and look for other markers. Do students show up, for 
instance, and do they fulfill assignments? How do students themselves feel about their 
progress? Have them write a short story or essay on this. Then you will be looking at their ability 
to self-reflect, and you can assist them from there. If they can’t write, send them to a tutor. 
Schools have these. Human movement cannot be separated from the person. This points to the 
importance of not judging movement and the person thereby.  

14. Describing movement is a teaching technique I learned in Feldenkrais studies. For instance, 
instead of showing someone how to lift their arm overhead, and thus providing a model, I could 
say: “lift your arm up in front of you, somewhere you can see it if you are looking forward. Is it 
out to the side a bit, or directly in front of you? Experiment to see how high you need to lift until 
you no longer see your arm. Keep your gaze forward.” I could go on with the description, 
making adjustments in what I say until the student is doing more or less what I have in mind, 
right down to the orientation of the fingers. Or I could leave the plan more open, and accept 
differing versions of lifting the arm. Another option would be to shift between a more defined lift 
and a more experimental lift. Some instances could call for more definition, and others less. It 
depends on my overall strategy, the full pattern I’m teaching, and how adaptable I can be. Some 
people I teach, the older ones especially, have difficulty lifting their arms high overhead. I would 
never insist that they do. There is always a pathway of movement that they can have success 
with, and improve upon, surprisingly. This adaptable way of teaching translates to dance also. 
No two people have the very same capacities. So we adapt to dance optimally, and we don’t get 
fastened on goals of mastery. Rather do we shine the moments with beautiful movement. It 
doesn’t have to be “right.” 

15. Functional Integration, when it is successful, encourages connectivity within the person and 
in perceptual wholeness. It can serve as a model for teaching through listening and finding 
paths of least resistance. It models offering support, and waiting for changes to occur without 
the need to know results immediately. The teacher doesn’t have to be right. She makes people 
laugh and listens to them. Uncertainty and curiosity are useful in finding new kinesthetic 
pathways in learning.  

16. Movement is lived; we know it through experience. When we move with awareness, our 
awareness increases, and when we share movement with others in a group, individual 
awareness of self in community increases.  

17. Moving with awareness increases connectivity and agency—it increases personal freedom 
to make decisions, to be an actor and not a victim. This has implications for teachers and 
students.  

18. Allow me a personal point on the Storyboard in terms of self-evidence and in respect to the 
agency we just mentioned: Teaching gives me unique access and responsibilities in exercise of 
agency. If I don’t want to be a victim, I understand this in my students also. Teachers should 

 
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never embarrass students: We ought to lift them up. Not everyone would agree with me, but I 
don’t believe negative reinforcement works. Enforcement doesn’t work. Listening works. 
Laughter works. Control is an illusion. 

19. On the Feldenkrais principle of reversal: My ensemble dance, ​Meditations, ​ was performed in 
1990 by eight American dancers in Tokyo through an invitation from Japan’s Women’s 
University. It was qualitatively detailed and mindfully directed, connected with smooth transfers 
of weight—and riding, I hoped, on one whispered breath. I provided the still point of the dance, 
carrying a heavy rock: moving slowly, gently, softly, with the potential to reverse and return, as 
often in the Feldenkrais work. As I stepped forward, I thought of going backward. This helped 
me to find center in the twenty minutes of snail-slow walking. 

References 

Beauvoir, S. (1972) [1949]​ ​ The Second Sex​ , trans. by Parshley, H. M. London: Penguin Books 

Feldenkrais, M. (1949) ​Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation, & 
Learning​ . Berkeley: North Atlantic Books 

Fraleigh, S. (1987) ​Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics. ​ Pennsylvania: 
University of Pittsburgh Press 

Fraleigh, S. (2004), ​Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion. ​ Urbana: University of Illinois Press 

Fraleigh, S. (2009) ​Land to Water Yoga. ​ New York: Universe Press 

Husserl, E. (1970) [1900-1] ​Logical Investigations. ​ London: Routledge 

Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962, ​Phenomenology of Perception​ , trans. by Smith, C. London: Routledge 
and Kegan Paul 

Natanson, M. 1973, ​Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks.​  Evanston: Northwestern 
University Press 

Reese, M. (1999) ‘A Dynamic Systems View of the Feldenkrais Method​®’​, ​Somatics: 
Magazine-Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences 12​  (3)​ ​(Fall Winter). 18-26 

Safranski, R. (1998) ​Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil. ​ Cambridge: Harvard University 
Press 

Sartre, J-P. (1947) ​Existentialism​ . New York: Philosophical Library 

Spiegelberg, H. (1971) ​The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction​ , 2​nd​ Ed.  The 
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 

 
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Biography 
 
Sondra Fraleigh, Feldenkrais Practitioner and Professor Emeritus of Dance at the State 
University of New York at Brockport, is the author of ​BUTOH: Metamorphic Dance and Global 
Alchemy​  (2010), published by the University of Illinois Press. Her other books include ​Dancing 
Identity: Metaphysics in Motion​  (2004); ​Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan​  (1999); 
Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry​  (1998); and ​Dance and the Lived Body​  (1987). 
She has published a book on the founders of Japanese butoh, ​Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno 
Kazuo​  (2006), and a book on somatic yoga and infant movement development, ​Land to Water 
Yoga​  (2009).​ ​ Fraleigh was chair of the Department of Dance at State University of New York at 
Brockport for nine years, and later head of graduate dance studies there. She was also selected 
as a Faculty Exchange Scholar for the State University of New York. Her innovative 
choreography has been presented internationally. Fraleigh is the founding director of ​Eastwest 
Somatics Institute​  ​for Yoga, Dance and Movement Studies.​  For more information on Fraleigh 
and her work see her website: ​www.eastwestsomatics.com 

 
Fraleigh • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  ​(​ 2016) 15 
 

http://www.eastwestsomatics.com/

