Review of Acquiring the Feldenkrais Profession

by Eva Laser

In the summer of 1986 a small study group gathered on an island in the Stockholm archipelago to begin a process of acquiring the Feldenkrais® profession. The trainer in question was Yochanan Rywerant (b 1922) who for the first time in an independent setting was able to implement the experience, knowing & understanding of The Feldenkrais Method®. The endeavour to teach in this setting and context received well and two more basic trainings came about in Stockholm before Yochanan Rywerant continued to teach the same framework in Tel Aviv. The Swedish group asked him in 1994 to set up a trainer's training to get the utmost of his excellence for the future. A 40-day training came about where Yochanan Rywerant in his meticulous way laid out a scheme of approaching the method from a didactic and principal point of view. The enormous verbatim material often named as the Feldenkrais legacy was digested down to a touchable frame of reference and thinking presented also in text. This trainer's training is continuing in Tel Aviv.

In the fall of 2000 the book Acquiring the Feldenkrais Profession was published by the Feldenkrais institute in Tel Aviv. Material presented at Moshe Feldenkrais 3 professionals trainings in Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Amherst , numerous advanced as well as Yochanan Rywerant’s own basic training & trainer's training are the embryo of this book. Between the lines, Yochanan Rywerant is vividly present as an everlasting student, teacher and trainer. As a senior trainer, he gives clear direction by his own implementing and organisation of the material he learned and developed in cooperation with and from the founder of the Method, Dr Moshe Feldenkrais.

In the preface, Yochanan Rywerant explains the 3-fold function of the book:

• Trainers might use it as a compendium for much of the material, which is to be presented in a professional training program.
• Practitioners might use it as a reminder and refresher.
• The general reader interested in The Feldenkrais Method will find here not only a general overview of the Method, but also plenty of items, which, on one hand, constitute an extensive definition of the Method and, on the other, show, by their mere structure and didactic processing, how a complex system like this Method could can be taught efficiently.

In the here published article, Envisaging the future of the Feldenkrais Method also published in the Feldenkrais Journal, Yochanan Rywerant expresses worries for the future of the profession, becoming a copy styled teaching instead of the original learning to think and apply the very matrix of the Method. The article ask for a closer study of the themes presented in this book.

The book thin by size and rich by contents and with the modest prize of 20 dollars is Yochanan Rywerant’s gift to all of us that cares about the Feldenkrais Method. Read it!

Stockholm 04/11/2006