A connection that we often overlook

In conversation with Abraham Mansbach

By Sabine Kieserling and Bettina Borghardt

How does the method manage to change people during a Feldenkrais training? To explore this, the philosopher and Feldenkrais educator Abraham Mansbach examined 70 lessons. On the occasion of the German translation of his work on the “Power of Self-Transformation”, we talked to him about how he approached the topic.  

Sabine: When you presented your book at AYnT [†] you said at the beginning: “I wanted to know how the method does what it does” You pointed out that we change during Feldenkrais training and that we also notice this change in others. Which I personally can only confirm. You then examined 70 mostly AY lessons.

How did you come up with the lessons? So: how did you go about it? Did you discover the four-part division of the book afterwards or did you have this four-part division in mind beforehand?

Thank you for your questions, which give me the opportunity to refer to the process of writing the book, of how or why I wrote the book.

I am a philosopher by training, and one of the central themes of my research over the years has been the question of identity: How do we become who we are? It was therefore natural for me to explore how a somatic practice can transform not only how we move, but also how we feel and think about ourselves—what Feldenkrais called the self-body-image.

I practiced the method for a long time and immersed myself in Feldenkrais’s writings, lectures, and workshops. Along the way, I also delved into physiology, sensory-motor development, and neuroscience—fields that Feldenkrais frequently engaged with.

The idea for the book emerged when I realized that many of Feldenkrais’s lessons are grounded not only in biomechanics but rather in the developmental process of the human body—both in terms of evolution and individual growth. That insight gave me clarity on what lessons to focus on: those that echo the stages every infant and human being undergoes in sensory-motor development—from rolling to sitting, crawling, standing, and walking.

In the course of this work, I collected more than 100 lessons, from which I selected 70 that most clearly trace these developmental steps. I also included in the book a list of 22 exemplary lessons.

The book evolved organically. I did not have any plan for how many parts it would include or how it would be arranged. The writing process unfolded as a dialogue between practice and reflection—alternating between doing the lessons and writing. My goal was to understand the method from within, and to do that I had to write what I understood as clearly as possible.

The aim of publishing it was to provide a practical resource for Feldenkrais practitioners for both their personal growth and for their teaching, while presenting its scientific foundation.

Bettina: You said: The book is aimed at practitioners, teachers of the method, researchers of somatic practices and kinesthetic studies in general. How could researchers of somatic and kinesthetic studies benefit? Surely they should be lying down on the mat and practicing Feldenkrais®?

Lying on the mat and practicing the lessons is not only the best, but the only way to truly understand and experience what the method does. However, researchers from diverse fields can benefit from the book by focusing on the conceptual framework that demonstrates how a somatic practice embodies general key principles of neuroscience and brain-plasticity.

The book makes it evident that (1) by freeing the body from habitual, automatic movement patterns, (2) reawakening the innate sensory-motor template encoded in our genetic makeup, and (3) amplifying body awareness, one can modify the brain maps and the information flowing through the nervous system. These processes lead to transformations in health, self-image, and overall functioning.

This framework may serve as a hypothesis for studying other somatic practices such as sports, dance, acting, or occupational movement. It also offers hindsight for therapeutic studies and research.

Sabine: Please explain your premise:

“There is no movement without sensation, there is no sensation without feeling and there is no feeling without thought.”

Think about newborns—two or three months old—lying in bed. As they move their limbs involuntarily, they begin to roll slightly onto their backs. They sense the flat surface beneath them—perhaps cushioned—and feel comfortable. They may even physically enjoy the sensation. At some point in their development, they might be curios and think or imagine, “I want to do that again,” and begin to repeat the movement voluntarily.

But the narrative can also be entirely different. An infant lying on a wet or uneven surface might feel discomfort, perhaps even cry. Later, recalling the unpleasant experience, she may become hesitant or cautious when the same movement arises again.

As we grow older, we stop going through each movement as part of a continuous experiential chain. Yet the pattern of moving–sensing–feeling–thinking becomes, or rather is, the fundamental template through which we experience our environment—and ourselves in relation to it. This pattern is imprinted in our brain and nervous system.

The Feldenkrais Method’s premise is that by revisiting and reproducing these foundational movements, we can bridge the gap between how we sense, feel, and think about our self-image. We can therefore restore their original functionality. This process can have health benefits and bring us closer to a more integrated experience of our embodied selves.

Bettina: In our practical test of the selection lessons in your book, I was particularly curious about the strategies you described. Generally, this is not made so clear in the training courses. How did you arrive at this clarity of description?

The strategies described in the book are analytical, aimed at distinguishing between groups of lessons and exploring how they can be applied in teaching and practice.

The Feldenkrais Method is a very rich practice, and lessons can be categorized according to different themes, such as parts of the body. For teaching and learning purposes you will design a workshop putting at the center the lessons on head and neck, ribs, or pelvis.

If we intend to design a workshop on self-healing or transformation, the strategies made in the book should be considered when selecting the lessons.

Sabine: Your central sentence on “awareness” is: It is the awareness of the body through the body. How can this be explained to people who don’t know Feldenkrais®?

Bettina: In your presentation of the book at AYnT, the 3rd part on body meditation seemed a bit short to me. Would you like to go into a bit more detail here?

The most important thing that I learned practicing the Feldenkrais Method is that not all our knowledge comes through the cognitive and reflective capacities of the mind. The body perceives, processes and carries information with similar quality as the mind does. It encompasses knowledge from the outside world as well as from within itself.  But do not be misled, body and mind are not two parts that stick together, but rather a unity. This is a foundational idea of the method, and if you can adopt its full meaning and implications, then nobody will ask for an explanation as to how the body is aware of itself.

A classic example is proprioception. This is the body’s ability to sense its position and movement. It’s how we know where our limbs are and how they move without needing to see them with our eyes. The sensory receptors called proprioceptors send signals to the brain about the position and movement of body parts. The brain then processes this information and uses it to coordinate movement and maintain balance. All this happens without being aware mentally, but rather by physical awareness, awareness of the body by the body and its parts.

The Feldenkrais Method offers various ways to stimulate awareness of the body through the body itself. One approach is revealing how one part moves in response to another — a connection we often overlook. For example, when you are instructed to sit, bend one leg to the side, and turn your chest and head in the opposite direction. The instruction is to observe what the hip does during this movement—how it lifts and returns to the floor. This movement, previously unnoticed, suddenly becomes clear. The hip moves in unison with the movement of the thorax. It’s in these kinds of discoveries that deeper body awareness begins to emerge.

Think about a lesson that asks you to lie on the ground, bend one knee, extend an arm to hold that knee, and gently move the knee toward and away from the chest. Then, change how the arm and knee interact, and now it is the knee that moves the arm.

With these movements, the arm senses the specific movement of the hip girdle, and in turn, the leg senses the structure and movement of the shoulder girdle. The movement of one part of the body becomes a pathway to sensing and understanding another.

Another way is body meditation. Body meditation can be experimented in different ways, and the Feldenkrais method does so mostly through body scanning and the use of imagination. Each lesson includes some form of body scanning, varying in intensity. In several lessons, movements are performed on one side of the body, while the other side is engaged solely through mental imagery. To our surprise, imagining the movements has a similar effect to the side initially moved.

What body meditation does is to facilitate the transition from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system, shifting from a state of arousal and stress (fight-or-flight) to a state of relaxation and restoration (rest-and-digest), which is essential for body awareness.

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This interview was originally published in Feldenkrais Forum 131, 2025, pp.22-24

[†]  https://aynmaltaeglich.org/  Feldenkrais Online Study Group