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Basic Training Lasted for 18 weeks Spread over Three to Four Years

YR was training practioners outside the TAB's.
He took matters into his own hands. He couldn't be stopped. He trained his two self-developed models of basic training and trainers training from 1986 to 2010

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Modified: 19 May 2024

Basic Training

Background by Jan Grönholm - Feldenkraismetoden, att lära sig lära igen.
Natur och Kultur 1996. 
Translated from Swedish by Eva Laser

"The first three trainings after Feldenkrais' death were organized by another organization, the Feldenkrais Foundation. It consisted of a number of prominent people with little practical experience of the method. In 1986 Feldenkrais Guild, North America,decided that it was legitimate for others at the Feldenkrais Foundation to organize trainings. The main thing was that they were approved by the Training Accreditation Board (TAB).

However, not everyone was happy with the TAB rules. Two of Feldenkrais’ closest assistants, Mia Segal and Yochanan Rywerant, said that there were also otherways to teach the method. They were not satisfied with the possibilities of the TAB training courses gave to pass on the knowledge.

Mia Segal led her first private training in the mid-1980s in Holland. In 1986, two private individuals in Sweden organized a Yochanan Rywerant Study Group. It was a small group consisting mainly of doctors and physiotherapists. Rywerant wanted to investigate the possibility of teaching the method in a smaller group and starting from day one with the teaching of the method's individual aspect, Functional Integration. In the TAB trainings, the first year was spent at ATM, and only then was part considered the students ready for the Fl teaching.

Rywerant's assessment was that this functioned well, and the study group's activities were transformed into a professional training of Feldenkrais pedagogues.

From a very basic point of view, this created concern in the rest of the Feldenkrais world and especially in Sweden. This training differed in several respects from the authorized model. It was shorter, as it did not contain as much ATM as the accepted training courses, and it was only one teacher. However, the fact that the number of participants was smaller (11 people in the first group and roughly 20 in the following ones) was not seen as a serious disadvantage. No one could deny that there were advantages to being so few, especially with regard to FI during the screening. Ambiguities and objections also arose in Sweden the rights to use the name Feldenkrais.

In 1988, around the same time that Rywerant's study group was transformed into a training group, the first TAB-authorized training in Sweden was started in Malmö with Gaby Yaron. She was trained in the first TA training as well. In 1988 started also a second training in Stockholm with Yochanan Rywerant as teacher. Participants from several other countries came to this training. Mistrust between the two groupings persisted. Both camps naturally wanted to emphasize the advantages of its education and had allowed itself to be forestalled flaws in the others. It is a tedious but not unusual phenomenon. When the founder of a method or method of choice is dead, disputes always arise about the right way to manage the legacy. In 1991 the third training with Yochanan Rywerant started in Stockholm and in 1992 the second TAB training in Malmö.

What all training courses in Sweden had in common is that a majority of the participants were physiotherapists."

Yochanan Rywerant thought a basic training in 90 days. In his opinion 450 effective hours over a time span of 3 years was enough to acquire the basic skill to set up a practice and teach both ATM and FI.

He had an overall planning, and a daily planning, that he adjusted according to the process of the day and what happened in class. Flexible.  He was fluent in all what he had synthesized and conceptualized both in ATM and in FI. He did not teach body parts; he was concerned with the image of action and did not give ATM’s name.

He sometimes used the morning to prepare a sequence to be handled in the afternoon. Do not read that an ATM was transformed to a FI. In his system of thought this was not plausible.

He did not teach function per se, instead he taught the very elements of function.
Like an alphabet. If you know the letters, you can write literature, both of love and of hate. And read and understand meaning. The very same letters.

He taught the elements, the strategies and the tactics. He taught the importance of a line of consequence in a lesson to get acceptance and create process, in ATM as well in FI.

He was teaching and meta teaching in an integrated whole, all the time adjusting to both individuals and the group. Often explaining in detail what he was doing and thinking while demonstrating a FI. But not all the time. If the student at the table needed him to be quiet, he was, of course.

He taught one ATM a day, in Israel sometimes two. He began the day with ATM. He wanted his students to be alert and concentrated in the afternoon. All 90 days ATM, FI demonstrations, after lunch he did supervise FI practice where he was attending most couples for personal instructions. Often a clarification for everybody if needed.

Alon Talmi also taught one ATM a day. 

by Eva Laser

Yochanan Rywerant had an uncompromising demand for quality (vs. quantity) and precision. Through experience he came to 2 conclusions:

  1. He would assume full control and therefore, full accountability and responsibility for the quality of his training programs. Therefore, he would teach He has no assistants.

  2. Given his solo teaching he had to limit the number of students to a size which would enable him to provide each and every student with constant and ongoing supervision. A logistical added consideration was to have an even number of students so that 13 couples would be practicing FI’s. 13 such couples being the maximum he could assuredly provide the kind of supervision and guidance he expected of himself.

His program runs twice a year 15 training days at a time over 3 wks. 90 days total training time.

Training day is 5 hours with one-hour lunch, i.e., 4 teaching hours. However, quantity here is misleading. He is so efficient, and to the point, that the 4 hours are truly intensive without any wasted time, without superfluous talking or philosophizing or group meetings, etc. etc.

YR teaches 90 ATMs in his program. They are very good and clear and are usually presented first thing in the morning.

Personally, I have a tremendous regard for YR work, his commitment, his knowledgeי clarity of thinking and his ethics.

by Robbie Ofir

The Stockholm Trainings

Stockholm 1 1986-1989
Stockholm 2 1988-1991
Stockholm 3 1991-1994

In Stockholm a basic training was 6 times during 3 weeks over a 3-4 year period.
He did all the teaching without assistants and supervised all students in FI. 

10.00 - 11.00 ATM
11.30 - 12.30 Talk & demonstration of FI
14.30 - 16.30 FI practice 

The Tel Aviv trainings

4 basic trainings

Dates are still missing!