The pioneer and inspirational force behind the Feldenkrais Method^® was Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. Russian born, he expatriated to Palestine as a 14 year old boy. He was a freedom fighter, sportsman and while a secondary school student was involved in civil engineering and construction. His university days were spent in Paris at the Sorbonne culminating in a Doctor of Science in electrical engineering with studies in physics. While in Paris he met Jigoro Kano, founder of Judo and became one of Europe's first blackbelts in Judo and co-founder of the Judo Society of France. When Joliet Curie won the nobel prize in physics, Feldenkrais was his lab assistant. Feldenkrais was a renaisance man in his thinking who as a result of injuries suffered in sports and judo, when no competent surgical intervention was available, found the means within himself to recover and improve his ability to move and function.

The work Moshe did with himself lead him to working in his innovative way with others who suffered from obstacles to their performance and functioning. His work, developed for 40 years began in England where as a visiting scientist during World War II, he worked with sonar and submarine warfare. His method continued to mature in Israel from the early 1950's on and he developed the processes that came to be known as Awareness Through Movement^® and Functional Integration^®. He trained his first gourp of 15 practitioners beginning in 1968 in Tel Aviv. He was invited to visit the United States in 1972 and began a training group of 65 people in San Francisco in 1975. His final training began in 1980 in Amherst, Massachusetts with 220 students in attendance.

Moshe died in July of 1984 as an indirect result of injuries he suffered in an automobile accident in Zurich in 1981.

His legacy is carried on by the students he inspired and trained.

 Introduction  |  Awareness Through Movement  |  Functional Integration