Book References

A basis for Theory of Medicine - by A. D Speransky

Written by one of the influential figures in Russian medicine, many of Moshe's ideas on how the nervous system is organized, how we respond to stress and how we heal, are derived from this book. Though it is a technical book, it is also quite readable with clear chapter summaries. If you want to delve the source of Moshe's thinking this book is required reading, but be warned it is not for the faint of heart.

A Headache in the Pelvis - by Wise PhD and Anderson MD

A road map to relieve pelvic floor pain and tension and the attendant symptoms offering hope and help. Explains why traditional treatments don’t work and why it is often misdiagnosed.

A teacher’s Window into the Child’s Mind - by Sally Goddard

A noninvasive approach to solving, learning & behavior problems

Activate your Vagus Nerve - by Dr Navaz Habib

Your body’s natural ability to heal: gut sensitivities, autoimmunity, inflammation, anxiety, brain fog & depression using breathing techniques, exercises for mindfulness, tools to improve your digestion, functional medicine testing, acupuncture and massage.

Anatomy of Breathing - by Blandine Clalais-Germain

Breathing practices, exerises and techniques to make breathing better and more life enhancing.

Antatomy of Movement - by Blandine Calais-Germain

Great description of how the body moves through the musculosketeal system and their functional relationship to the movments of the human body. 

Anatomy of Movement Exercises - by Blandine Calais-Germain

Describes the bones, muscle and joints and how they move to coordinate movement.

Aware - by Dan Siegel, MD

Where Awareness Goes, Neurofiring Flows, and Neural Connections Grow” Dr. Siegel is a non Feldenkrais psychiatrist  with international notoriety.

Awareness Through Movement - by Moshe Feldenkrais  1990 *

This is the perfect book for the Feldenkrais student who wants to learn more about Moshe Feldenkrais’ philosophy and have more lessons.   The book contains 12 easy-to-follow Awareness Through Movement exercises for improving posture, flexibility, breathing, coordination. Each exercise concisely demonstrates Moshe's ideas while helping you to improve your movement habits and focus new dimensions of awareness, self-image, and human potential.

"In order to change our mode of action we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us." 

Body & Mature Behavior - by Moshe Feldenkrais 1949 *

This book is considered one of Dr. Feldenkrais' most succinct writings on his study of human development as it relates to the relationships between movement, emotional maturity, and behavioral patterns.

“All perception and sensation take place on a background of muscular activity.”

Breath - by James Nestor

Drawing on his travels, modern research, and thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry and human physiology, Nestor turns conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. It’s a great overview of recently published books like Oxygen Advantage and Wim Hof Breathing ( both on this list as well) in a clear and concise fashion. It reads more like fiction that nonfiction and you may never breathe the same way again. His book, What the Ocean tell us about Ourselves was a 20-15 PEN/ESPN finalist & Amazon Best Science Book of 2014.

Daily Vagus Nerve Exercises - by Marcus Porges

Self hep exercises to stimulate vagal tone, relieve anxiety, prevent inflammation, reduce chronic illness, anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD and more.

Dr Breathe the story of breathing coordination - by  Carl Stough and Reece Stough

Carl Stough discovered “breathing coordination” for efficient respiration with minimum effort which he used as  choir instructor and then applied to patients suffering with emphysema, and then worked as a respiratory consultant 1968 for the US Olympic Committee for the high-altitude Mexicans games. 

Grow Yound with your Dog - by Mary Debono GCFP

Using her Feldenkrais training Ms. Debono has helped animals and their humans live happier, healthier lives.   Helping dogs heal completely from injuries and surgeries, move well despite arthritis and hip dysplasia, recover form paralyzing stroke and run and ply again after being classified as “too old to recover.”

Kids Beyond Limits - by Anat Baniel

Breakthough result for children with special needs such as austism, Asperger’s , brain damage, ADHD and undiagnosed developmental delays.  Anat Baniel has  an international reputation and a clinical  psychologist, who has refined her approach, supported by the latest brain research  to  illustrates how to engage  the miraculous capacities of the brain to change and heal.

Mindful Sponataneity by Ruthy Alon

Excellent reference for Feldenkrais techniques by one of Dr Moshe Feldenkrias’ student back in the 1960’s. She is internationally known in the Feldenkrais community. Alon weaves experiential and theoretical information in a poetic yet pragmatic language, incoroporating exercises that enable many people to tap into the natural wisdom of their bodies and find greater ease and freedom in their lives.

Moshe Feldenkrais: A Life in Movement - by Mark Reese

This is considered in the Feldenkrais community, the ultimate and more dense biography of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ life at 488 pages of this background and journey through the myriad of intersectioning professions, interests and hobbies in his life.  He fused eastern and western philosophies drawing on his nuclear physics, martial arts, and keen observations of neuroscience integrating them into practical ways through hands on to class instruction to holistically help people.  

Moving from the Inside Out 7 principles for Ease and Mastery in Movement A Feldenkrais Approach - by Lesley McLennan & Julie Peck

A wonderful new introduction to the Feldenkrais Method along with themes that are relevant to a wide variety of health professionals. This practical guide elucidates the fundamentals of movement for practitioners, movement therapists, somatic teachers and students, and the curious athlete. And an exciting and lucid presentation of potent ideas behind the practice of the Feldenkrais Method.  A central theme of the text is the pivotal role that how we move plays in our overall health.   Using stories, theory and movement experiments that quickly engage the reader. 

Oxygen Advantage - by Patrick McKeown

Here’s the oxygen paradox. The amount of oxygen your muscles, organs and tissues are able to use is not entirely dependent on the amount of oxygen in your blood. Our red blood cells are saturated with between 95% and 99% oxygen. And that’s plenty for even the most strenuous exercise. What determines how much of this oxygen your body can use is actually the amount of carbon dioxide, also called CO2. Most people learn that carbon dioxide is just a waste gas that we exhale from our lungs, but it is not a waste gas. It is the key variable that allows the release of oxygen from the red blood cells to be metabolized by the body. This is called the Bohr Effect.

Patrick McKeown explains the science behind breath-holding to reduce anxiety, the importance of nose-breathing for good health, and the overlooked problem of over-breathing. The biggest obstacle for your health and fitness is a rarely identified problem: Chronic over-breathing.  The process of breathing has been warped by chronic stress, sedentary life, unhealthy diets, overheated homes, and lack of fitness. All of these contribute to poor breathing habits. These in turn contribute to lethargy, weight gain, sleeping problems, respiratory conditions, and heart disease. 

Singing with your whole Self: The Feldenkrais Method and Voice - by Samuel Nelson and Elizabeth Blade Zeller

Singing with Your Whole Self teaches performers to use the Feldenkrais Method to ameliorate problems of tension, muscle strain, and illness in order to obtain optimal vocal performance. It contains an important and unique feature: modularized Awareness through Movement lessons. These are specifically designed for liberating function in all musicians and in singers in particular.

Skiing with the Whole Body - by Jack Heggie

Allowing ankles to work with the knees to achieve knee flexion, feel every inch of the skiis, find your balance point.

Taking Root to Fly: articles on functional anatomy - by Irene Dowd

Dowd's writing helps Feldenkrais Practitioners, dancers and movers of all kinds understand how the body was designed to move efficiently and effortlessly when it is working within anatomical principles. The subjects of the articles include; the spine the dynamics of touch breathing the feet standing through two legs and one leg finding the center of gravity visualization of movement potential functional and developmental anatomy the relationship of the skin and fascia to touch enfolding and exposing through the upper extremities and more.

The Brain’s Way of Healing - by Norman Doidge, MD

Dr. Doidge is an  MD neuroscientist who in not a Feldenkrais practioner but included an in depth introduction to The Feldenkrais Method in his overview of how our brain can heal us. Doidge explains remarkable discoveries and recoveries from the frontiers of neuroplasticity. The section on Feldenkrais is Chapter 5 page 160.   He explains the mechanics of neuroplastic healing, among many other topics.

Body Awareness as Healing Therapy:  The Case of Nora  - by Moshe Feldenkrais 1977 *

Feldenkrais works  with a woman who had a stroke & lost her neuromuscular coordination, including her ability to read and write. 

The Elusive Obvious - by Moshe Feldenkrais 1981*

This warm conversational book is deemed by many as one of Moshe Feldenkrais's most readable and interesting books. The Elusive Obvious was the last book Feldenkrais wrote and in it he distills his vision of his Method. The book represents a graceful summation of both the theory and practice of the Feldenkrais Method.

The Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais - by Moshe Feldenkrais 2010

This seminal collection contains all of Moshe Feldenkrais’s English-language articles and interviews and is a must-have for Feldenkrais enthusiasts. These thoughtful articles and lively interviews explore a diverse range of subjects: the importance of bodily expression, the primacy of hearing, the mind-body connection, martial arts, sleep and consciousness, movement and its effect on the mind. "A healthy person is one that can live fully his unavowed dreams."

The Master Moves Book  by Moshe Feldenkrais *

This book is an edited transcription of a five-day public workshop taught by Dr. Feldenkrais at Mann Ranch in northern California in 1979. The theoretical discussions and the movement experiences are interwoven throughout the book making the relationship between theory and practice in the Feldenkrais Method more and more evident.

"When you give the body one taste, you learn it better than with a thousand explanations."

The Psoas Book - by Liz Koch

After working for three decades in this field, Ms. Koch explains what the psoas muscle does physiologically, why it gets stressed and how you can relax it  to restore optimal health.  

The Potent Self by Moshe Feldenkrais 1985. *

This is a most psychological of all Feldenkrais' writings as he delves deeply into the relationship between faulty posture, pain, and the underlying emotional mechanisms that lead to compulsive and dependent human behavior. He shares remarkable insights into resistance, motivation, habit formation, and the place of sex in full human potential. The Potent Self offers Feldenkrais' vision of how to achieve physical and mental wellness through the development of authentic maturity.  

"In behavior, what matters in individual cases is not what most people do, nor the statistical average, but the individual personal experience.”

The Secret  of the Ring Muscles - by Paula Garbourg

Both the internal and external “ring muscles” of the body (sphincters) work in coordination with harmonious contraction and relaxation that iniates breathing, digestion, circulation, elimination all muscular motion.   When they all work together we maintain good health and free ourselves from pain, asthma, migraines, backaches, arthritis, impotence sinusitis, incontinence to name a few ailments; and when they don’t work harmoniously, imbalance and illness can result.  There are a series of easy to follow exercises based upon her experience that are gentle, noninvasive way to improve your health.   She is the founder of Paula Garbourg Institute in Israel and move from Germany in 1936. She has refined her practice over the last 50 years. 

The Symphony of Reflexes - by Bonnie L Brandes Med

A journey through our primitive reflexes that not only influence our mental and physical health in our early years of development but also throughout our entire lives. Designed to help children and adults with learning disabilities and neurological conditions by presenting specific movements for each individual primitive reflex.

The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd

Ms. Todd was at the forefront of the mind body connection back in the 1930’s relying on principals from physics, mechanics, anatomy and physiology.   She provides a classic physiology approach and the effect of psychological processes on movement which was well circulated in the dance community.

The Use of Eyes in Movement - by Jack Hegge 

Working with the relationship of the eyes to the rest of the body can be a powerful means to improve physical organization and functioning. Jack Heggie has created this unique system for improving vision that integrates his experience with the Feldenkrais Method and the work of Dr. William Bates.

"The use of the eyes in movement is of great importance for individual well-being and good overall use of the body and mind..."

The Way to Awaken: Exercises to Enliven Body, Self, and Soul - by Robert Masters Ph.D

A revolutionary program of psychophysical exercises that can literally change our bodies, teaching us more pleasureable and efficient ways of functioning. Gentle movements integrating mind and body help us to move with greater ease and grace, quicken reflexes, improve body sensing, enhance physical and mental performance, and even reduce the effects of aging.

The Wim Hof Method activate your full human potential by Wim Hof

Wim Hof is a wild-crafted yogi, who shares his accessible tools of cold exporsure and breath work to return us to wholeness, health and a long life.  This book is a valuable guide to anyone looking to take better control of health, heat, and untapped potential locked away within all of us.

Thinking and Doing - by Moshe Feldenkrais

A small book based on a 1929 book The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Émile Coué, originally published in English by C. Harry Brooks,  that was translated by a young Moshe Feldenkrais into  Hebrew.. Reading it many years after it was published singles out the uniqueness of the young translator. Moshe Feldenkrais not only translated the book but composed and added his own observations in the two chapters in this book. For many years, Autosuggestion was a reference point for Moshe as he continued to develop his work. He mentioned Coué in various aspects in his later publications, among them his two books, Body and Mature Behavior (1947), and Improving Abilities (Awareness Through Movement) (1967). 

You are the Placebo : Making Your Mind Matter - by Dr Joe Dispenza

Dr Dispenza weaves scientific studies together to catapult us beyond thinking of the placebo effect as being an ananomly  but  as a means of using our minds to heal our bodies and obtain optimal health.