"The Potent Self" is the most psychological of all Feldenkrais' writings. He delves deeply into the relationship between
faulty posture, pain, and the underlying emotional mechanisms that lead to
compulsive and dependent human behavior. He shares remarkable insights into
resistance, motivation, habit formation, and the place of sex in full human
potential. The Potent Self offers Feldenkrais' vision of how to achieve physical
and mental wellness through the development of authentic maturity. This edition
includes and extensive Forward by Mark Reese, a longtime student of Feldenkrais,
in which Reese discusses many of the important ideas in the book and places
them in the context of Feldenkrais' life and the intellectual and historical
milieu of his time.
Read a Review by Edwin
Hines, NLP Trainer
"…what is
the theme? Feldenkrais talks about the development of the individual, how
in human beings almost all behaviour is learned, and depends on patterns
of muscular tension to be enacted. These patterns of tension are intimately
bound up with emotional sensation. As such he shows that the mind and body
truly act as a single system.
"His idea is that
these patterns of tension become automatic, and often inefficient for the
task at hand. But because these patterns were often learned at a time when
we were dependant on adults for survival, trying to change them requires
overcoming the survival anxiety on some level. The result is that people
get hemmed into patterns and behaviours, not daring to go outside of them,
and in time forgetting that there is an outside." Click
here to read entire review.
