































Feldenkrais Research Journal • volume 1 (2004)

Article

On Research:
Reply to Jim Stephen’s first version of this article from 1999

Carl Ginsburg
PhD

Abstract
This article has very nicely articulated the criteria used by medical groups to “evaluate” research, and
reports on how research on the Feldenkrais Method “stacks” up (not very well). Although the article
presents this as if the question is simply a scientific one, what the author has presented so well is the
basics of the political mountain we in the Feldenkrais community must climb in order to get recognition
from the medical and scientific community. He is, of course, right in this. But there is another side of the
coin. The response considers the basic assumptions behind this medical model of what is valid.

Keywords
Feldenkrais, evaluating research, qualitative

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 

ON RESEARCH
By Carl Ginsburg

“The closer one looks at a real-world problem, the
fuzzier becomes its solution.”

-Lofti Zadeh

In a piece entitled, “How does the world evaluate research on
the Feldenkrais Method,” (In Touch, Third Quarter, 1999) Jim
Stephens has very nicely articulated the criteria used by medical
groups to “evaluate” research, and he has also reported on how
research on the Feldenkrais Method “stacks” up (not very well).
Although this is presented as if the question is simply a scientific
one, what Jim Stephens presented so well is the basics of the
political mountain we in the Feldenkrais community must climb in
order to get recognition from the medical and scientific community.
He is, of course, right in this. But there is another side of the
coin.

What are the basic assumptions behind this medical model of
what is valid? One can be mesmerized by the seeming rigor and
exactness. To look under the façade, there is much that is hidden.
First of all is the notion that the world must be described in yes-
no, right-wrong, logical terms. What is hidden is that such
descriptions never fit an actual living world. Second is the notion
that a verbal analysis and description can impart the information
that you need to proceed. This works, of course for pills, surgical
procedures, and exercise regimens. What is hidden are the instances
when the procedure fails or simply doesn’t fit the person’s
situation. Thirdly is the notion that any effect to be valid must
result from an actual physical agent, thus the notion that a placebo
effect is something in the way and must be eliminated as a factor.
There is an accompanying lack of curiosity about the placebo effect
and how it may work or how human contact may be a factor in the
results. Fourthly there is the notion that the important measure of
anything is statistical significance. Thus the intense scrutiny of
such issues as sampling, controls, randomization. Statistics can
hide huge areas of ignorance of individual situations. Rather than
increase the quality of information, statistics set up a betting
situation. I can choose this procedure because 60% of the time in
similar circumstances it “works.” Remember that the Feldenkrais
Method was developed (according to legend) when Feldenkrais chose
not to bet on knee surgery. Lastly is the assumption that the
authority of the process confers safety and validity for the
procedures. Note that it is the national medical groups that make
recommendations for treatment. The person using such authority then
does not need to observe or think further in the situation. When
there is failure, it is just a part of the probabilities.

In Feldenkrais we want to be precise about the individual, and
of necessity we are fuzzy in our verbal descriptions. This is the
opposite of the criteria that Jim Stephens describes. We do not work



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with fixed protocols, even in ATM. We guide people to their own
self-discovery and away from accepting any external authority. But
the outcomes of this precision does not lead to predictability.
Heinz von Foerster used the terms trivial and non-trivial machines
to distinguish systems that have predictable relationships between
input and output and those that have a feedback loop, which
generates internal states. The behavior of such systems becomes
unpredictable. Fuzziness is then a characteristic of living
creatures and their interactions. Von Foerster often noted that
human beings had a propensity to try to trivialize the non-trivial.
In our Feldenkrais work we need to resist this desire for
predictability (triviality). In fact our successes are dependent on
staying in an open relation with those we work with.

There is a funny trade off between our verbal imprecision and
actual working precision. It is a consequence of the nature of
complex systems, which suggests that Feldenkrais is more accurate to
our non-trivial life processes. I quote from the engineer Lofti
Zadeh who was instrumental in developing the mathematics of fuzzy
sets. “As the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make
precise and significant statements about its behavior diminishes
until a threshold is reached beyond which precision and significance
(or relevance) become almost mutually exclusive characteristics.”(As
quoted in Bart Kosco, “Fuzzy Thinking,” Harper-Collins, 1994.) The
net consequence is that it is more than difficult to fit what we do
into the classic statistical research model. That is not to say that
we cannot do research. As I have pointed out before (see my talk “Is
there a science of the Feldenkrais Magic,” Report of the First
European Feldenkrais Conference, Heidelberg, 1995, IFF Publication
100) our work crosses the boundary between what is phenomenological,
i.e. experience, and the realm of external observation. What we need
is to develop another way of doing science, one that accounts for
the way complex interconnected systems behave, and accounts for the
relevance of experiential data.

In most of current science and medicine Zadeh’s analysis is
pure heresy. It puts into question the whole foundation of the
research game, which depends upon the mathematics of probability.
There are other ways of doing research and operating successfully in
the world. Bart Kosco in his book (ibid.) describes how fuzzy logic
makes for much more precise control in designed systems such as the
focusing mechanism of video cameras. The real shame is how often
scientifically valid procedures (i.e. correct based on the so called
probabilities) lead to human disaster for an individual. Feldenkrais
used the idea of fuzzy before it was named as such, and he heaped
scorn on bivalent, cause-effect thinking as well as statistical
medicine. Statistical medicine fuzzes up the question of why a
procedure works for one individual and not another and hides the
ignorance behind the statistical analysis. So what can we do in this
situation?

First and foremost, I believe, we need to work primarily with
individual instances. Neurological researchers do it all the time,
and accumulate information that can apply to many nervous systems.
Secondly it seems to me we have to become clear about what we want
from research. If it is just to validate the method, I think we
cannot succeed. That forces us to attempts at randomized controlled



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trials. Our method is not a pill; it is not one clearly definable
thing. It depends on the qualities and skills of the person
presenting the ATM or FI as well as the persons participating and
how they are willing to enter the process. Research can be and
should be about what we do not know. It can be about new discoveries
about functional interconnections that we observe in our working
with individuals or teaching ATM.

Let me give some examples. In the same issue of In Touch
(third quarter, 1999) Russell Delman in his column writes of his
experience in working with fixing and opening the attention and how
this relates to experience of pain. He makes some astute
observations. Here is a whole area for experiment and research. In
some experiments I have done in my classes, it has been demonstrated
that an open attention changes the observational ability of
students, and more interestingly it changes the quality of touching
another person as well as changing something in the feeling of the
person touched. Research in an area such as this could contribute to
the general body of knowledge.

Here is another example. Some years ago I taught an ATM class
for a large corporation for people with back pain. This class was
combined with a back care program taught by a PT using the ATM work
as a basis. We did a survey that compared personal results with
prior treatments the participants received. The results were
encouraging, but the survey was not rigorously constructed. Some of
the individual stories, however, were fascinating. One man with
years of pain became pain free after one particular ATM lesson that
helped him recover movement in his pelvis, back and hips. That
lesson was for him. But how was that possible? In my years of
practice I have found that by feeling the change of quality of
movement of say the spine during a lesson, I can predict if a person
will experience much less pain after the lesson. Here is an
important research topic. What is changing for the person and how is
it that some people who seem disorganized in their structure and
movement may never complain of pain in their entire life?

There are other phenomena to research. For example, I have
observed with a number of people a correlation of some missing parts
of the visual field of imagining the hand in moving with body-image
disturbances and disturbances in the vestibular system and balance.
This could be something really important to explore and could be a
discovery of something not known.

The results of our work are not easy to document, and vary from
person to person. Primarily, at first, when results are dramatic,
they are phenomenological, i.e. they involve a big change in a
person’s experience. Changes in posture, movement, breathing,
behavior are much more subtle and can be seen clearly more easily by
a trained observer. What shows up on computerized movement analysis
equipment is small and barely detectable in machine terms. Tests
such as range of movement are often too crude a measure to find the
significant change. And we do not know what we might see with brain
imaging techniques. Experience also shows that sustaining changes
happen over a long period of practice with the method, not just with
a few lessons. This is even more the case with neurological
difficulties.



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To really look at our work we need to document a lot and over a
long time period, to develop the quality of our observing and
describing, to create notes, make photographic and video
documentation. We also need to continue our own development and
learning, and discover in ourselves what makes for real quality and
success in what we do. We need to go to the laboratory situation
with a clearness of what we are investigating and what our claims
are. I have been negative toward the classic model of research.
Nevertheless I do support a research effort. Let us begin again with
more sophistication and in our own terms.

Reading Suggestions:

Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosco. Harper-Collins.

Hare Brain Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think
Less, Guy Claxton. Fourth Estate (London).

Molecules of Emotions, Candace Pert. Scribner.

Understanding Systems, Heinz von Foerster, and Bernhard Poerksen.
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.
 


