Buchanan.pmd


Feldenkrais Research Journal • volume 1 (2004)

Article

Attending to the Process of Changing Behavior:
A Reply to Ives' Commentary

Patricia Buchanan
Indiana University

Beverly Ulrich
PhD; University of Michigan

Keywords
dynamic systems theory, Feldenkrais Method®, kinesthesia, perception-action

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

First published: Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, Vol. 74, No. 2, p124-126, (2003)

Please cite: 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

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


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Buchanan and Ulrich

Research Quarterly for Exercise and SportResearch Quarterly for Exercise and SportResearch Quarterly for Exercise and SportResearch Quarterly for Exercise and SportResearch Quarterly for Exercise and Sport
©2003 by the American Alliance for Health,
Physical Education, Recreation and Dance
Vol. 74, No. 2, pp. 124–126

Key words: dynamic systems theory, Feldenkrais Method®,
kinesthesia, perception-action

In our article, “The Feldenkrais Method®: A Dynamic Ap-
proach to Changing Motor Behavior” (Buchanan &

Ulrich, 2001), our stated objectives were to offer a tuto-
rial on the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education based
on the writings of Moshe Feldenkrais and suggest sev-
eral parallels with dynamic systems theory. Briefly,
Feldenkrais teachers and dynamic systems theorists be-
lieve that humans self-organize their behavior from the
interactions among their individual resources, environ-
ment, and task requirements. Both groups acknowledge
that behavior often assembles into preferred or habitual
patterns of varying stability. Changing an existing behav-
ior requires perturbation or a relative destabilization to
create conditions for the reassembly of a related or dif-
ferent behavior. Feldenkrais and dynamic systems theory
explicitly view system behavior as emerging from the
interactions of multiple subsystems and strongly believe
in a continual coupling between perception and action.
As a corollary to our objectives, we hoped to interest re-
searchers in conducting well designed studies of Fel-
denkrais and its fundamentals from an overt theoretical
foundation. We briefly reviewed studies published in
peer-reviewed journals and acknowledged the limita-
tions of many of them before we proposed several stud-
ies formulated from a dynamic systems theoretical

perspective. We do not believe anything in Ives’ com-
mentary substantively suggests we failed to hit our mark.

Ives had four major elements in his paper. He (a)
provided a more detailed review of the literature, (b)
concluded that most studies were not very well con-
trolled or designed, (c) concluded that the empirical
evidence supporting the effectiveness of Feldenkrais is
limited, and (d) suggested an alternative theoretical
basis for understanding select instances in which
Feldenkrais seems to be an effective intervention. We will
comment on each of these elements in relation to the
stated purposes of our paper.

The opening and major section of Ives’ commen-
tary is an extended literature review of Feldenkrais-related
studies. This is a welcome addition to the literature that
our manuscript’s space limitations did not allow. He
supported our conclusion that there is considerable
room for improvement in many of the extant publica-
tions, a large portion of which are not printed in main-
stream motor behavior journals. Later in his closing, Ives
pointed to methodological factors of seemingly special
application to Feldenkrais studies. He expressed concern
about practitioner skill level, subjective assessments,
selection of measures, participant self-reports, and ex-
pectancy effects of both participants and researchers.
While we agree that these are important considerations
in research design, we view them as standard consider-
ations for any intervention study that are not unique to
Feldenkrais research. Nevertheless, we concur with Ives’
encouragement of readers to seek out the original ar-
ticles, review the articles, and form their own opinions
regarding the quality of the experiments and the mea-
sured outcomes.

We find Ives’ summary of his review of the published
research puzzling; he concludes both that Feldenkrais is

Attending to the Process of Changing Behavior: A Reply
to Ives’ Commentary

Patricia A. Buchanan and Beverly D. Ulrich

Submitted: July 15, 2002
Accepted: September 30, 2002

Patricia A. Buchanan is with the Department of Kinesiology at
Indiana University. Beverly D. Ulrich is with the Division of
Kinesiology at the University of Michigan.

Dialogue and Commentary

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ineffective and effective. He separates the impact of
Feldenkrais into body and mind, with its impact on physi-
ology (body) as ineffective and psychology (mind) as
effective. We strongly disagree with this dichotomy and
the implication that Feldenkrais targets one or the other
in isolation. Other dynamic systems theorists (Kelso, Fink,
DeLaplain, & Carson, 2001; Thelen, Schöner, Scheier, &
Smith, 2001), Feldenkrais teachers (Ginsburg, 1999; Reese,
1999/2000), ecological psychologists (Shaw & Turvey,
1999; Turvey & Shaw, 1999), and neuroscientists (Damasio,
1994; Damasio, et al., 2000; Freeman, 1999) have argued
that physiological and psychological categories include
many subsystems that interact, and, thus, affect each
other. Further, emergent behaviors arise from the coa-
lescence of the organism’s subsystems (physiological,
psychological, etc.), the environment, and task or goal
demands.

This point of disagreement emphasizes the need
to understand researchers’ theoretical perspectives, as
much as it is important to be aware of “therapeutic alle-
giances.” Implicit in Ives’ mind-body dichotomy is a hi-
erarchical viewpoint that grants superiority and isolation
to the brain. Perhaps this is why Ives and others are du-
bious of the role of kinesthesia in motor behavior, ex-
cept under limited circumstances. Unlike Ives, we
believe data support kinesthesia—the awareness of
one’s position and movement—as a critical interface in
perception-action and, therefore, of human-environ-
ment self-assembly of task-specific behavior (Turvey,
Burton, Amazeen, Butwill, & Carello, 1998; Turvey &
Carello, 1995). Depending on circumstances, one can
be at different positions along a continuum of attend-
ing to features of kinesthetic information (Gandevia &
Burke, 1992). People with diminished kinesthesia,
whether due to the temporary effects of anesthesia for
dental work or the long-term effects of pathology, have
to be more attentive to the available perceptual infor-
mation to perform tasks ranging from chewing to walk-
ing safely and effectively (Cole, 1995; Nougier & Rossi,
1999). Contemporary research also shows that learning
to make sense of, make use of, and focus attention on
select features of one’s rich kinesthetic resources is a
developmental process (Davids, 1988; Gopher, 1993;
Lee, Swinnen, & Serrien, 1994; Savelsbergh & Bootsma,
1994; Turvey & Fitzpatrick, 1993). From infants’ early
efforts to grasp interesting objects to put in their mouths
to the many reaching actions adults perform through-
out the day, kinesthesia plays an important role in de-
veloping a repertoire of reaching skills. Infants explore
an array of reaching-intended behaviors before estab-
lishing skillful, controlled, and adaptable reaching pat-
terns (Thelen, Corbetta, & Spencer, 1996). By the time
some of these infants develop into college students par-
ticipating in research studies (e.g., Ives, Abraham, &
Kroll, 1999; Kelso, et al., 2001), they have practiced

reaching for about 20 years under diverse environmen-
tal and task conditions. Courtesy of this extensive ap-
prenticeship, most of us can easily continue to read the
words on this page and reach for a nearby cup to take a
drink. Performing such a familiar task requires little
conscious attention to our actions. However, if we were
learning a new phrasing on the piano keyboard, attempt-
ing to tap our fingers in a nonrepetitive sequence
(Jueptner, Frith, Brooks, Frackowiak, & Passingham,
1997), or developing a set of skills to expert level, it
would be useful to be more aware of and attentive to
kinesthetic clues about our actions (Stein, 1992), which
would concurrently increase brain activity in multiple
regions (Jueptner & Weiller, 1998; Stein, 1992). The
result of such attentive practice is a wealth of task-specific
information about one’s actions relative to surroundings
that facilitates development of highly refined, stable, yet
adaptable skills.

We believe there is research support for the impor-
tance of attention and kinesthesia that varies with the
individual’s level of experience, available resources (in-
cluding motivation), and familiarity with the current
task. Our perspectives about kinesthesia and attention are
consistent with dynamic systems theory and Feldenkrais.
Conversely, Ives was dubious of the role of attention and
kinesthesia in motor behavior and disputed the efficacy
of Feldenkrais for changing motor behavior. He briefly sug-
gested an alternative framework—self-regulation
theory—for explaining the effectiveness of Feldenkrais
within the psychological realm. It seems quite likely that
efforts to self-regulate one’s behavior would draw atten-
tion to one’s body position, actions, and other sensations.
These features are not outside the scope of Feldenkrais
or dynamic systems. Nevertheless, we encourage people
to act on our suggestions: establish well designed, theo-
retically based studies to test the impact of Feldenkrais
techniques on behavior and publish in refereed jour-
nals. Just as we outlined a framework for testing if and
how Feldenkrais can change behavior in ways best ex-
plained by dynamic systems theory, researchers with
other theoretical perspectives should do the same. Pro-
ponents of self-regulation theory must carefully design
and conduct experiments to determine if Feldenkrais
can affect the psychological domain without impacting
the physiological realm in a manner best explained by
that theory. Equally important would be to test the
generalizability of both application (Feldenkrais) and
theoretical explanation (self-regulation, dynamic sys-
tems, or others) across behaviors that might range in
complexity from simple, quiet standing to ambulating
to negotiating a path around defenders during a soc-
cer game. As we originally argued in our article, the
results of research endeavors of this nature should be
of interest to movement science theorists and clinicians
alike.

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Buchanan and Ulrich

We appreciate Ives’ interest in our article in which
we provided an overview of the Feldenkrais Method, pro-
posed parallels with dynamic systems theory, suggested
theoretically driven research studies, and encouraged
researchers to develop their own well designed experi-
ments to test the validity of the Feldenkrais Method. Ives’
commentary testifies that our efforts were at least par-
tially successful: people have read and thoughtfully con-
sidered the implications of our discussion of the
Feldenkrais Method. We hope researchers will take the next
step and focus their attention on carefully designing
studies of the impact of Feldenkrais on motor behavior
from expressly stated theoretical perspectives.

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Authors’ NotesAuthors’ NotesAuthors’ NotesAuthors’ NotesAuthors’ Notes

The first author is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Teacher.
We thank Esther Thelen and Patricia Bate for their com-
ments during preparation of this manuscript. Please
address all correspondence concerning this article to
Patricia A. Buchanan, Indiana University, School of HPER,
Department of Kinesiology, HPER 112, Bloomington,
Indiana 47405.

E-mail: pabuchan@indiana.edu

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