The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion

"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.