































Feldenkrais Research Journal • volume 1 (2004)

Article

Walking Upright: On Moshe Feldenkrais

Friedhelm Kemp
Professor of General and Comparative Literature, Munich

Abstract
Tracts and directives on how to attain sound thinking and doing – right living – have been written since
time immemorial. They all advocate some form of spiritual discipline, reflection, contemplation, or
rhythmic technique, and suggest doing less rather than more, while persisting on the chosen path without
wavering. A number of these teachings have exerted an impact far beyond their places of origin. Nearly
all of them fulfill their promise – provided the initiate is really tuned in and has learnt how to act in their
spirit. However, anyone who hopes to find an objective procedure, an infallible prescription, will be
disappointed, usually failing to take into account what is most important: striving for success blocks
salvation, because there is no other aim than the living reality implemented at every step along the way.

I am assured that my freedom has long been an illusion. It is a fact though that I can bend down,
straighten up again, turn my head. But can I really? Such actions are often clumsy and ungainly, involving
effort and pain. Obviously I must be doing something wrong. The question is how to change that. Or more
modestly: How to become more pleasing to myself and thereby to others. A comprehensible little book
provides instruction. Moshe Feldenkraise’s “Walking Upright” [Tr: as Franz Wurm’s German translation of
“Awareness through Movement” was originally called] could be of use for everyone. This book is not
intended for specialists, the “educated”, or cultists, but for all of us lay-people who simply go about our
daily lives.

Keywords
Feldenkrais, Self-image, consciousness, awareness, movement, observation

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

Please cite: (First published in the) Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 1; 2004.

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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IFF Academy 

Feldenkrais Research Journal 1 (2004) 
® 2004 by the author 

 
WALKING UPRIGHT 
On Moshe Feldenkrais 
 
Friedhelm Kemp 
 
Tracts and directives on how to attain sound 
thinking and doing - right living – have been 
written since time immemorial. They all 
advocate some form of spiritual discipline, 
reflection, contemplation, or rhythmic 
technique, and suggest doing less rather than 
more, while persisting on the chosen path 
without wavering.  A number of these 
teachings have exerted an impact far beyond 
their places of origin. Nearly all of them 
fulfil their promise - provided the initiate is 
really tuned in and has learnt how to act in 
their spirit. However, anyone who hopes to 
find an objective procedure, an infallible 
prescription, will be disappointed, usually 
failing to take into account what is most 
important: striving for success blocks 
salvation, because there is no other aim than 
the living reality implemented at every step 
along the way. 
 
People say the world is absurd, meaningless, 
hopelessly lost. We often read and hear such 
statements. But does that prevent us from 
breathing, walking, sometimes even 
bouncing along?  I am assured that my 
freedom has long been an illusion. It is a fact 
though that I can bend down, straighten up 
again, turn my head. But can I really? Such 
actions are often clumsy and ungainly, 
involving effort and pain. Obviously I must 
be doing something wrong. The question is 
how to change that. How to move so that the 
world would not collapse if I were its pivot. 
Or more modestly: How to become more 
pleasing to myself and thereby to others. A 
comprehensible little book provides 
instruction. Moshe Feldenkrais’s “Walking 
Upright” [Tr: as Franz Wurm’s German 
translation of “Awareness through 
Movement” was originally called] could be 
of use for everyone. This book is not 
intended for specialists, the “educated”, or  
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
cultists, but for all of us lay-people who 
simply go about our daily lives. 
 
“We act in accordance with our self-image”. 
That is how the book begins. It is based on 
the premise that our actions are an Imitatio, 
replicas of an already existing mental picture. 
However, the decisive factor is that we are 
the originators of this picture or image of 
ourselves as a moving, sensing, feeling and 
thinking being. Of course by the time we 
pick up this book and begin to read, this 
picture has long been established in elaborate 
detail and placed on its elevated throne, from 
where it rules like an usurper over our 
forgetful self. But since this picture always 
remains malleable, we can – says Feldenkrais 
- teach our lord and master, as children teach 
their parents, or the poet his muse. After all 
this ruler is neither identical with our self nor 
an uninfluenceable alien power. It exists as 
an image of our own making and dominates 
in accordance with our own free will. 
 
Or to be more precise: in accordance with 
our willingness to submit. We may create all 
kinds of random images of ourselves, but 
only one will be really accurate, more or less 
true to our nature, matching our situation. We 
are not a fish, bird, or angel; each of us is just 
a human being, with two feet on the ground 
and a head pointing skywards. We are also 
more or less familiar with the laws governing 
our physical body; we know about them, but 
we don’t sense these laws and lack the 
awareness to live in harmony with them.            
 
Kleist’s famous and much cited essay “On 
the Marionette Theatre” describes what 
confusion consciousness brings to man’s 
natural gracefulness. Only “if knowledge has 
passed through an infinity as-it-were” can 
this lost elegance reappear “in its purest form 
 



 
 
 

F.Kemp/Feldenkrais Research Journal 1 (2004) 

 
2

in a human physical frame which either lacks 
all consciousness or is endowed with infinite 
consciousness, is therefore either marionette 
or God”. In his search for a human method 
located somewhere between those two 
utopias, between a prehistoric state of 
unawakened awareness and an ultimate state 
of total awareness, Feldenkrais attempts to 
obtain a complete picture of the jointed 
puppet – which we are in terms of our 
skeleton, muscles, and tendons – and to 
govern its movements by way of that image. 
  
“L’imagination au pouvoir” (“The 
Imagination to Power”) was a wall slogan at 
the Sorbonne in May 1968. Whether the 
imagination evoked here would be capable of 
governing the social body may be somewhat 
questionable. (One would particularly like to 
ask: whose imagination?) However, there is 
no longer the least doubt that within me the 
imagination is the “reine des facultés” (the 
queen of our faculties), as Baudelaire called 
it, - provided the faculty of imagination is 
understood to mean more than inventiveness, 
and also to include such aspects as keen 
observation, attentiveness and empathy, and 
provided the fact that we ourselves are its 
nearest object, subject matter, and field of 
activity is taken into consideration. Society is 
an abstraction, or occasionally a 
mythological entity. Instead of being a 
completely self-organized whole like a 
human being, it is too complex to be easily 
grasped, and precisely that fact explains 
some of its capacity to instil idolization. But I 
and each single one of us - we are our own 
equipment and our functioning, and can shed 
light on them and thus gain understanding. 
We are able to gain mastery over ourselves 
as a jointed marionette. We only need 
become more conscious of that puppet if we 
want it to learn how to move with greater 
ease, effectiveness, and elegance.  
 
In this book, this kind of consciousness, 
which is not located in the head but always in 
the place where we move (or could move), is 
called “becoming aware”. And what kind of 
movements is recommended in the book’s 
twelve exemplary lessons? The most 

effortless, smallest and softest, leading 
to unexpectedly amazing results. Rolling, 
turning, circling, swinging, rocking, see-
sawing, swaying; gentle stretching, lifting, 
lowering; sometimes freely and fluidly, 
sometimes towards a previously determined 
point - going in the same direction as other 
movements or in opposition to them; 
movements that are observed while being 
carried out and then implemented merely in 
the imagination (which considerably 
enhances their effectiveness). Everything is 
simple, and of course difficult as is any 
simple action for those who lack practice; but 
there is something to be discovered, and all 
experience can be checked on the spot. You 
begin to appreciate yourself as a miraculous 
machine consisting of levers (initially 
material and bodily). While those levers 
continually act on one another, they also 
teach our nervous system and brain, and thus 
ultimately our feeling and thinking.  
 
Are we an image? We don’t see it. Are we a 
word? We don’t hear it. Are we pleasure? 
We don’t feel it. We are content with dull 
routine where we could be virtuosi. We 
demand the extraordinary and expect to find 
it in the future, on the other side of the moon. 
Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s poem “Dream of 
Great Magic” declares: 
 

“Cherub and Noble Master is our spirit, 
Does not abide in us, and in the highest stars 

He places his throne and often leaves us 
orphaned.” 

 
However, the same poem finishes by saying 
that this spirit lives within me, “as I live in 
my own hand”. But who really has a living 
experience of their own hand, the third toe on 
the left, or the right earlobe? “Unfolding the 
powers inherent in human nature will only 
become possible when the whole world is 
unhinged” proclaims the most recent gospel. 
Feldenkrais does not want to do more than 
help us become aware of the hinges around 
which our real powers – not our imaginary 
ones - pivot, powers that might open some 
doors into our own future, beginning right 
now. It is not the hinges of the whole world, 



 
 
 

F.Kemp/Feldenkrais Research Journal 1 (2004) 

 
3

which nobody can manipulate, that are at 
issue here; but our bones, muscles, nerves - 
the rather splendidly fashioned dust we are 
made of.   
 
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, January 19, 1969 
 
 
 
 
 
Letter (originally in French) by Moshe 
Feldenkrais to Friedhelm Kemp 
 
Tel-Aviv, January 28, 1969 
 
Dear Dr. Kemp 
 
I have just read your review of my book 
“Walking Upright”. The first thought that 
came to me while reading was a wish to meet 
you in person. Not many people really 
understand me; apart from you there is only 
Professor Hugo Bergmann, head of the 
Philosophical Faculty at Jerusalem 
University, who is interested in the essence of 
this subject matter and sees it as a rung on 
the evolutionary ladder of the human mind. 
 
If I also tell you that I like your subtlety of 
nuances and elegant ease in dealing with the 
subject, which can hardly be described in a 
few words, you will understand why I feel 
impelled to write to express my unreserved 
admiration. I would like to have written your 
article myself. 
 
Hoping to have the pleasure of shaking your 
hand. 
M. Feldenkrais 
 
 
 
 
LET’S GET THINGS RIGHT! 
Friedhelm Kemp       
 
Is there a method for changing one’s bodily, 
mental, and spiritual state and behaviour 
without effort, simply through attention? To 
lasting effect, and even to be achieved at a 

ripe old age? Let me repeat: by means of 
attention; and of course also a little patience 
with oneself, one’s body and its habitual 
inclination to behave awkwardly, or even 
inappropriately. How can one’s general state 
– usually more or less unperceived except 
when there is pain – be improved and 
transformed into a feeling of well-being, 
heightened by effortless ease and flexibility? 
How can a sense of a truly living experience 
of joy and pleasure be attained without 
having to look for that in pushiness, speed, 
frenzy, or “ecstasy”? 
 
How do you transform yourself – through 
learning, relearning, making up for missed 
opportunities (without ever being too late) - 
into a more likeable fellow citizen both for 
yourself and others, with the possible spin-
off of making a modest and inconspicuous 
contribution towards improving “the state of 
the world”? 
 
That method does indeed exist: not as a 
secret doctrine for initiates who can afford 
long and expensive courses at the foot of 
holy mountains, but accessible to all in word 
and print. There is only one condition 
involved in benefiting from this method: you 
have to submit to it for a certain time; or 
rather let yourself be guided towards 
consciously experiencing what the method 
has to teach in order to become and remain 
“aware of yourself”. This process begins with 
so very little that you might be inclined to 
attach no importance to such irrelevancies, 
but very soon you begin to notice in your 
own body how such tiny little steps can lead 
to the most unexpected changes - step by 
step, repeated several times, and then again 
and again; how these changes can be 
experienced as improvements and ultimately 
developed into helpful habits.  
 
“Every perception of an object, every 
movement toward a goal, is a single, stably 
structured act; and in every act perception 
and movement are firmly linked” (Viktor von 
Weizäcker). However, the degree of 
“linkage” can be modified: perception can be 
intensified; repetition can both ease and 



 
 
 

F.Kemp/Feldenkrais Research Journal 1 (2004) 

 
4

increase the connection. This process is 
accompanied by a change in the quality and 
degree of awareness. And all this takes on 
heightened meaning when the perceived 
“object” is your own body submitted to 
intentional, repeated movements, which are 
themselves continuously being altered 
through controlled repetition. Attention is 
primarily focused on minimal changes. 
Perception becomes more refined through 
focusing on small details. If your own body 
is its object, every refined act of perception 
will transform the body’s behaviour, and by 
way of behavioural changes ultimately the 
body itself. 
 
Do I possess my body? Am I my body? Both 
of these questions are wrongly posed. We are 
always a body in terms of biology, 
physiology, physics, and chemistry. 
However, at the same time we keep on 
influencing, training, or harming this body. 
We handle and maltreat this given datum, 
which is of course dependent on – and 
experiences constant interchange with - the 
world and our specific environment. Living 
thus means to be embodied within the world, 
to move and have our being in this world as 
an incarnated creature. We can change this 
world, and are doing so all the time. But we 
can also change ourselves - by means of 
attention and unceasing practice; and there is 
no end to correction and improvement. The 
goal is not completion or perfection, higher 
achievement or a new record, but instead 
greater precision, refinement and 
differentiation. That also involves the need to 
slow down and stay awhile without rushing 
off to the next experience. Provided we are 
not already somewhere else, we may even 
succeed in being at home in ourselves.  
 
If I am thus at home within myself – without 
effort and agitation – a sense of deep 
satisfaction may arise, a sense of being 
sufficient unto myself, and that will 
extinguish all need for admiration. Now I 
begin to be aware of myself, to sense and feel 
myself, to move consciously and with 
intention: living in and through myself as a 
highest good; as if nothing could happen to 

me any more; as if I should begin to 
radiate light, to give voice to my individual 
sound. While this state of transformation 
lasts, everything is as it has always been, and 
yet different - thanks to that sense of 
“homecoming”. Although that state will 
gradually fade, I now know from experience 
that it can be repeated, can be recognized 
when it is re-experienced – though always as 
something quite fresh and new. Intensified 
newness and surprising freshness are the 
outcome of repeated attention, increasingly 
acute and tranquil, when this attention is 
focused on the imperceptible, as possibly 
what is most important. 
 
This process may be accompanied by a 
surreptitious desire to give up old habits. 
That does not require ascetic discipline. 
Those who begin to observe something more 
“right” about themselves will experience a 
more or less spontaneous awakening of the 
inclination to let go of this or that 
unwholesome habit. The habitual pattern 
simply drops away. Attention – an 
imperturbable, effortless, indeed occasionally 
slightly distracted mindfulness - is simply 
otherwise and more pleasurably engaged. 
With what? Well, simply with learning, as 
part of a continuous, ultimately hardly 
conscious learning process that gradually 
becomes one with life itself. 
 
A number of things would change, a lot turn 
out to be superfluous, if this learning and 
consequent transformation were to become 
general practice, if we were to become more 
skilful instead of sticking unswervingly to 
one particular opinion and solution, and 
insisting with grim determination on having 
to “achieve results”, which are intended to 
guarantee instantaneous success, more 
money and status, but often add up to nothing 
but a waste of time, what Virilio calls 
“headlong standstill”: How many hours are 
spent in front of the TV set every day? How 
many hours in transit on the way to a 
weekend in Salzburg, Prague, or Paris? For 
what purpose? To cast a tired glance at the 
sights there, to visit culinary magicians in 



 
 
 

F.Kemp/Feldenkrais Research Journal 1 (2004) 

 
5

order to overload your stomach with their 
delights … 
 
In contrast, the method I am talking about 
here keeps you constantly on the move and 
benefits body and mind – free of charge, 
requiring no particular effort on your part. 
The kind of movement you learn keeps 
changing and improving through 
mindfulness, turning into pure enjoyment; 
the more skilful and conscious this gets, the 
more it becomes normal behaviour – of its 
own accord.  
 
Of course once we begin to notice the 
positive effect on ourselves as we follow the 
decree “You must change your life!”, other 
worries start assailing us, for instance when 
we have to stand by and witness how our 
children are pushed to “get through the 
curriculum”– just as the students at our 
universities are forced to engage in a 
marathon through masses of secondary 
literature; how virtually all of them hope to 
reach a goal and purpose before they have 
found themselves. In “cultural life” as in 
sport, there is one and the same maxim: 
achievements, results, records please! 
Speedily, insolently, vulgarly absurd! These 
abominations are dished up with 
“contemplative” and esoteric garnish in order 
to tranquillize us, when our attention should 
be focused on one burning issue: How can I 
avoid becoming ordinary, drab, insensitive, 
and worn out? How can I be bright, lively, 
multicolored: “living to marvel and wonder”? 
 
People say we are heading towards a multi-
media information society; we are promised 
a world data bank where all knowledge is 
stored, ready to be retrieved at any time by 
anybody as needed or fancied. Potentially we 
could deem ourselves omniscient and 
omnipotent. However, we forget that data 
and facts are of value only to those who 
know how to use them. Data has no inherent 
value as such. Its worth lies in what we do 
with it, how we deal with it. If we continue to 
remain strangers to ourselves, if dumb 
ignorance of ourselves keeps increasing, that 
informational macro world could easily get 

out of hand, plunging us all into 
catastrophes; and this would leave us even 
more helpless than prehistoric cave-dwellers 
when our technology has packed up and we 
are faced with the smoldering remains of 
nuclear power stations. 
 
If you have looked around a bit, you will 
know what I am talking about. “Awareness 
through Movement” was developed over 
many decades by Moshe Feldenkrais 
(d.1984), who also made the method 
accessible through a number of well-known 
books. His teaching, which does not demand 
faith and is averse to all “mysticism”, shows 
him to be a benefactor of humanity, who 
intends to teach us nothing but what we can 
discover about ourselves and thus also about 
the world by way of autonomous learning. 
Teachers of a new kind, who are also the 
teachers of our adulthood, do not wish to 
overpower us with blinding revelations; they 
assist us on our path to self-knowledge, 
helping each of us to become the person we - 
and we alone – could become if we did not 
allow ourselves to simply drift negligently 
through life: more or less all of us; 
everybody day in day out; lacking loving 
kindness, a blight for ourselves and others.  
                                                                                                
1995/1999 
 
Friedhelm Kemp, Professor of General and 

Comparative Literature, born 1914 at 
Cologne, lives in Munich as a writer, 

translator and expert in his field. 
 

Translations by Ilana Nevill 


