Translating MF's books gave me a deeper insight into his way of thinking.
He does not write fiction and strives to capture what lies outside the domain of language.
I have been involved in translation of two of MF's books
Together with Feldenkraispedagogue Gunnel Iverus, we have translated two books by Moshe Feldenkrais from English to Swedish. Both books were originally written in English.
Gunnel Iverus had organized Yochanan Rywerants three trainings in Stockholm and later also the Teachers Training. Collaborating together, we deliberated over every sentence in MF's books until we reached a consensus.
Our aim was to translate a comprehensive non-fiction book accurately. We both had good theoretical knowledge of the Feldenkrais profession when we started the translations and yet, we acknowledged that engaging with these two books functioned also as advanced refresher courses for us. Teaching our clients became more refined.
The publications were originally published 32 years apart. Still, we found the same overall material and ideas in both books, with nothing startlingly new or different. One chapter even used twice. We recognized the material from the many lessons we had with Yochanan Rywerant. It was all very familiar and in its complex way, somehow simple.
We translated the first book, Body and Mature Behavior, a Study of Anxiety, Sex and Learning in 2010. I wrote a foreword. I learned then that Moshe Feldenkrais had alternative names for the book, NEW SELF or Gravitation, Impotence and Learning and as an alternative TRUE SELF or Gravitation, Anxiety and Learning. The chosen title with “body” reflects how society has a dualistic language with a division into body and mind, and not the contents of the book itself.
In 1966 he published an English edition at ALE’F Publishers with a different under title than the usual one. "A Study of Movement, Body Orientation and Muscular Perception and Its Impact on Action, Learning Ability, Anxiety and Behavior in General. In short, a Study of Muscles and Behavior.”
The other book we translated was the Elusive Obvious, Basic Feldenkrais. Due to circumstances it was not published, but we still had a pervasive learning experience. The book describes and summarizes Moshe Feldenkrais’ educational work, at the time of the interrupted Amherst training. This book describes his view of the organism, of the learning process, of the biological posture, of the body's anxiety patterns, and nonetheless of the subjective and the objective reality. He reasons about why thinking is not the same as speaking, of the ambiguity of language, and draws our attention to the difficulty of really understanding each other when it comes to the symbolic form of language.
The real meaning of symbolic language becomes complicated when a method/model developed in one cultural context and language usage is transferred to another cultural context with inadequate and even non-existent translations. When I understood how complex it was to translate MF's wrtitings from English to Swedish, I was humbly reminded of the ambiguities that arose with the books he wrote in Hebrew and, in my opinion, are not sufficiently integrated within the profession. In other articles under the Classical Feldenkrais theme, I have made some attempts to overcome this fact.
An inextricable confusion of thought
In the introduction of Body and Mature Behavior Moshe Feldenkrais writes:
“…Coué relied expressly on the unconscious to bring about all the desired improvements. He devised several means whereby he could by-pass the conscious control and plant his ideas '' directly'' in the unconscious. He used the period before sleep when we are half conscious; whispering into the ear of the sleeping; rapid repetition-and so forth, with the idea of reaching the unconscious and avoiding the conscious critical faculty which does not believe in this or the other idea of'' I can,'' and rejects them. Once the idea reaches the unconscious it becomes operative. He explained hypnotism as a successful act of autosuggestion and denied the importance of the hypnotist's powers.
Here, then, the conscious was thought responsible for all the symptoms, as it sifts and picks the ideas that it presents to the unconscious, where they at once become operative.
This theory is obviously radically opposed to that of psychoanalysis. Coue thought the unconscious an executive power. Once an idea is presented to it, be it pleasant or self-mutilating, like the idea of being unable to use a limb or an organ, it is carried out. An idea must be a pure image completely stripped or void of affect before it can reach the unconscious. Thus, the effort of will is a hindrance rather than a means of making oneself do something. Normally, we learn to succeed in presenting the idea in the right way. The divergence of these views from those of Freud is fundamental. The only ground common to the two theories is that the affective content of an idea is a deciding factor; but the roles attributed to it and the whole mechanism of psychic life are completely inverted…”
------
…” All the methods, irrespective of their merits, divide into two groups. Those such as hypnotism, auto-suggestion, psychoanalysis and others that grew historically one out of the other, have one thing in common: the belief that once the mind function is set right the somatic or body trouble clears up without further direct effort. In more or less complete opposition to this group is the other, that puts all the emphasis on training the body directly. The Yogi methods and the relaxation methods that grew out of it, breathing methods, certain schools of dancing, all teach mental balance through the physical body. And curiously enough they have a certain measure of undeniable success. It is difficult to make an accurate estimate of the number of people who obtain relief by such practices. Judging by my own observation the number of people who have been helped to arrive at some sort of stable mode of life by these methods is very considerable. There is hardly a neurotic person who has not tried one or another method, often original personal ones, of training himself. Many have managed to obtain sufficient relief to confirm their belief in their own power.
To sum up, it can be said that men believe in the interaction of the mind and the body. Some methods attribute greater fundamental importance to the mind, others to the body. Both views have some grounds for their beliefs. The result is inextricable confusion of thought. And the reason for this confusion is the arbitrary subdivision of life into psychic and physical. Even by assuming that the two are only different aspects of one and the same thing not much is gained practically…”
During World War II, Moshe Feldenkrais lived in Scotland working for the Admiralty in the effort to fight Hitler, Nazism, and Germany. He gave a series of lectures before the Association of Scientific Workers in Fairlie, Scotland in 1943-44. During some years, 1945-48, he rewrote the lectures into a book, Body and Mature Behavor, which was published in 1949. I advise the reader to at least read the whole introduction, if not the book itself.
In this introduction, Moshe Feldenkrais presents his theories, outlines the project to be developed into the method/model/path I call Classical Feldenkrais. He strives for a system that holds together, combines and takes into account both the emotional/psychic aspect as well as the physical/motor and not least the environment (the influence of gravity), factors that interact simultaneously and not one at a time.
He asks för more than autosuggestion and psychoanalysis, more than yoga, relaxation techniques, breathing exercises, schools of dance, martial arts or physiotherapy.
Throughout this website I report MF's and YR's authorship, both books and articles. What is unusual is that I integrate both writings and show how they complement each other.
Nowhere is there evidence that the profession is a movement profession, that it is movement that is the purpose, but instead it is intended to be the active tool.
Furthermore, in my opinion, one key to understand the wholistic approach is to acknowledge the importance of the self-hypnotic aspect with its rules/approach and realizing how integrated it is in the Method/model/path.
Emotions with an option not to relive the past, but to be in the escaping present. More on that in article 5) and 6)
Transaltion of Eva Lasers Foreword to the Swedish Edition of Body and Mature Behaviour 2010
Yochanan Rywerant's writing crucially fills in Moshe Feldenkrais' gaps in descriptions of the path.