Awareness Through Movement: Easy-to-Do Health Exercises to Improve Your Posture, Vision, Imagination, and Personal Awareness

I found an earlier printing of this book in a used bookstore some years ago, and that was my introduction to Feldenkrais method. I went about doing lessons from this book, other books, and cassettes, with some benefit. Then my life got busier and I quit. Only when I developed worse problems did I start up again, this time with a human teacher.The greater difficulties I face this time force a different approach upon me. Before I might have studied the stick figures carefully and tried to reproduce the moves depicted. But I am not the stick model; I cannot act like the stick model except by force. What does my actual nervous system wish to do? Maybe afterwards I can compare what I did with the stick model, but ideally I should have been able to discover the move myself, given similar preliminaries.It is difficult to capture this approach to learning in a book, and thus I judge this book against the limitations it faces. It is not an easy or simple book to use. Books can easily tell you what is "right" and "wrong" to do. They cannot do a good job of pacing alongside an active learner, or notice something unique in that person, etc.But perhaps this book is the best there is with which to spark an appetite for such discovery.

This plain little book is full of a beautiful philosophy, whereby to know ourselves, our philosophy and approach to life, all we need to do is look at our body and how it moves. The exercises are extremely gentle but when you look in the mirror afterwards, you look calmer, softer, eyes open wider. Reading this book helped expand my understanding of the concept of our actions (down to how we pick up the paper) being WHAT we are, showing WHO we are, without needing further interpretation. I purchased the book because I was impressed with the results I'd seen in others, and I haven't been disappointed.

Moshe Feldenkrais, renaissance man, scientist, educator, wrote this book regretably in a manner more suitable for his science students. However, to be able to profit the most from these 10 fundamental Awareness Through Movement lessons is to read them out loud and transfer them to an audio-tape while your favourite relaxing music is playing in the background. Then follow these instructions - in your own voice - while being gentle with your body. Be ready to switch off your recorder after each part of an exercise and relax for 18 breaths (= 1 minute)-- or better take consideration of this fact when originally dictating the lessons to your recorder. Permit yourself to fall asleep if you feel you need to do so. Remember that your neurological system needs to be trained to accept these deeply regenerative movements and it may take some time until you feel comfortable moving in a slow and fluid manner. Gábor, Feldenkrais Movement Educator.

Contrary to the review by Mr. Deveno, this book was published during Moshe Feldenkrais' lifetime (he died in 1984) and contains the 10 lessons he felt most important to put in a book for the public. The book is the most succinct and useful of all his books in describing the background, context and application of his remarkable method for improving human functioning through exploring our use of attention to how we move. Doing the Awareness Through Movement® lessons in the book will provide a fist hand experience of the work and may lead readers to seek a teacher of the method in their area. If you can't find a practitioner, this book might be the next best thing.

Feldenkrais was one of the century's great geniuses. Originally recognized for his nuclear physics research and for his introduction of Judo to Europe in the 30s, he developed the gentle Feldenkrais Method during the second World War in respose to his own knee problems. In Awareness Through Movement, Feldenkrais gives you a wonderful introduction to the group part of his method--Awareness Through Movement. The processes are gentle, painless and easy. The best way to use the exercises in this book is to get yourself a cassette player and to then read the instructions aloud into the cassette. Then rewind the cassette, lie down on your back, hit play and be amazed as that magnificent voice on the cassette recording shows your body how to improve more quickly than you've ever believed possible.