Table Of ContentHE FELDENKRAIS ]OURNAL NO.9
!\TINTER 1994
Paralle1 Developments
MOSHE FELDENKRAIS
rgo4 - rgB+
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The Feldenkrais Iournal
number g
Ihble of Contents
2
A Letter from the Editor
3 Letters to the Editor
5 WhyRobots FallDown LawrenceWm. Goldfarb
f5 Feldenkrais & Wittgenstein Carl Ginsberg
23 |ean Piaget: Play and Learning Susan Pinto
27
The CareoftheSkeleton LizDickinson
32 Motor Control Theory: A Possible Framework for the Feldenkrais Method Trish Bate
46 Poems Dan Clurman
47 "One's-Self I Sing": WaltWhitman & Moshe Feldenkrais Bob Hunter
56
Contributors
THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 9 \\'t\TER 1gg-+
A Letter from the Editor
Dear Colleagues,
This issue of the Journal marks the tenth anniversary of the {irst ]ourna-1
as well as the year of the tenth anniversary of Moshe's death. For this
issue we chose the theme of "Parallel Developments." The idea rvas to
put together articles that highlight an aspect of the Method being der.el-
oped in a varietv of differing f,elds. Moshe often drew parallels to other
domains and predicted that in the future the concepts and approaches
taken in our work would become r,r.idely discussed and accepted. Cer-
tainly the last ten years have brought many developments and innova-
tions in a variety of flelds (especially the cognitive and movement sci-
ences) that are congruent with and relevant for our work.
This Journal is a flrst approximation of the "Parallel Developments"
theme. I would like to see this theme continued in future issues of
the Iournal, especially as it relates to discussions and innovations
presently going on in fields that relate to our work. I worry that there
is an unhealthy tendency torvards self-reference and recursion in
our community. I'm hoping that having this as an ongoing theme
in the Journal can help to support a broad perspective similar to that
on which the Method nas founded.
The articles that flnally comprise the issue span a wide spectrum
of time and subjects. Some of the topics are taken from the present,
others from the early part of this century. Some originate in the
scientific domain, others poetic, and still others defy a neat category.
Overall they create a collage of differing perspectives on our work.
In the last issue of the lournal, I raised the question of r,r,hether the
Iournal should stay in-house or be available for members of the public.
Obviously this was a hot issue, and we'd very much like to thank the flve
people who took the time to u.rite in about itl The Journal r,rrill continue
in kind for the time being.
The next issue of the lournal will have Children as its theme. Due to
the lateness of this issue, if you would like to contribute please contact
me or Arlyn Zones (w'ho will be the co-editor for the next issue) immedi-
ately. The 1996 Journal will have a general theme. Articles on any subject
will be considered for both the 'gs and '9G lournals.
I'd like to thank the members of the editorial board for their help,
and Nancy Schumacher for her consistent support and enthusiasm for
the Journal as a project. At this tenth anniversary juncture of the flrst
Journal, I'd also Iike to acknow'ledge Yvan Joly, with whom I launched
the Iournal ten years ago. We, the Journal and the Feldenkrais commu-
nify have come a long way since thenl
kk
Editor
,
WTNTER r994 THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 9
Letters to the Editor
Dear Elizabeth,
I ."l as in Frank's San Rafael training that graduated last year and I r,r.as
feeling very stuck when the journal arrived. My clients seem to think I
\vas great but I often teel iike I'm deceiving them. I remember all the
amazing work I've seen trainers and practitioners doing over the years
and I feel as if I'm cheating people. I'm twiddling and diddlingl If there
\vere any other practitioners close by I would probably have sent my
clients to see them but luckily for me there aren't.
So, r,vhen I read the journal, especialll, the case studies, I was re-
inspired. Arlyn, Michael and Shelley \^/ere so clear about their process,
the questions that arose from their r,vork and their moving through
doubts and changes of direction.
I think I have been touching people in the blind hope that someday
I'd "get it." Roll a thousand heads and all r,r,'ill become clear. Now I see
that trust in the process is not quite enough, I also need to involve my
r,vorking brain in thinking and planning more than I have been doing.
The rvhole journal was great, as always, but I especially love the case
studies each time.. .. The journal is serving a rvonderful purpose if it
makes me feel closer to the whole community every time I re-read it.
Pam Free
trIoslte often spoke of Speranskl,'s bookA Basis for tire Theorv of Medicine.
I utas irttrigued recently by some a.f Robert's contment's abottt Speransky's
importance to the Chiropractic communiry and asked him to turite some-
letter.
thing about it for this issue. In response he sent in this
-ed.
Dear Elizabeth,
Speransky's A Basis for the Theory of Medicine was often a topic of
enthusiastic discussion among chiropractic students at Palmer College
when I was there in the mid '6os.
It gives strong support for the chiropractic contention of the primacy
of the nen'ous system in health and disease. I am glad it is again avail-
able, as a reprint, and offer an anecdote in explanation.
Recently, at dinner with a group of about nine people-all chiro-
practors or chiropractic partisans-the topic turned to Feldenkrais
and his method.
Mv r,vife and I were arguing that there rvas considerable kinship
benveen Feldenkrais and chiropractic theories. It felt like arguing for
mlxed marriage between Serbs and Croats until I mentioned that
N{oshe had strongly recommended Speransky's book. So had B.J.
Palmer, a legendary chiropractor, a generation ago.
The unexpected concurrence caused a shocked cease-flre which
nearlv ruined the dinner party. It took flve embarrassed and disorient-
ing minutes to find something else to argue about lthe (in)accessibility
of the transverse process of atlas vertebra to manual adjustersl.
Best.uvrshes,
Robert Cor,vin, o.c.
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WTNTER r994 THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO, 9
Lawrence Wm. Goldfarb
Why Robots
.
%
Down
THE FOLLOWING TALK WAS FHESENTED as a keynote ad-
dress to Cybernetics in the Art of Learning, the 1993 American
Society of Cybernetics annual conference held in Philadelphia.
Following the formal paper, I led the group through a twelve
minute standing Awareness Through Movement lesson. After
am honored to be here today. Let me begin
bJ, thanking the organizers of this confer- that, Heinz von Foerster and Humberto Maturana gave formal
ence for giuing me the opportunity to comments on the paper, which were followed by a discussion
address you. In Ttarticular, I would like with the audience. Except for a slight, unplanned detour, during
which i detailed some re$earch findings on the black board
to acknowledge Robert Scho enholtz for
organtzing this plenary sessiorz. and discussed them in further depth, the talk is presente<tr in
its entirety.
I am interested in how people learn to move.
The talk builds on the link between cybernetics and the ques-
Often, we think of learning movement as imitat-
tionof how human beings coordinate movement, a connection
ing rvhat someone else does. However, research
that was originally nrade with the publication of l\orbert Wiener's
in the movement sciences has shown that dem-
Cybernetics in 1948. in the introduction to his classic text, Wiener
onstration and imitation are, at best, an unreli-
talks about the importance of kinesthetic perception for the guid-
able strategy. Imitation may be the highest form
ance of movement. He argues that we cannot think aLrout percep-
of flattery, but it is the poorest form of teaching.
tions as inputs and movement as outputs, but rather that we must
In my practice as a Feldenkrais teacher, I work
consider the neryous system as an integrated whole, one where
with people who face different kinds of lirnita-
circular causality, in generai, and feedback, in particular, govern
tions in their movement abiiities, ranging from
sensory-motor correlation.
performance problems in the arts or in sports
As you will see later in this paper, Wiener's ideas continue to play
to chronic pain and neurological disease. Ihe
an important role in understanding self-regulation and movement.
Feldenkrais Method consists of a systemic under-
lfollow-up on this heritage" bringing findings from r"ecen{
standing of the human body's design for motion
research in kinesiology, neurophysiology, and physical medicine
and a perception-oriented pedagogy for chang-
to help us understand the role of feedback in movement.
ing hon, people move (Feldenkrais, rgzz; Gold-
The conference attendees included a wide-range af people
farb, rggo). Despite the best intentions, my stu-
interested in cybernetics: biologists, li ngu ists, rnathematicians,
dents cannot move in the ways theywant. The
psychologists, computer scientists, visual and performing artists,
question that interests me, the question that I
svstems scientists, family theraplsts, business consultants. and
rvill address today, is how do people learn a
graduate students from various fields. Building on sorne of the
movement if they cannot copywhat they see?
original insights of cybernetics and presenting research findings
The incredible complexity of movement is one
from three different areas of investigation-posture, balance, and
of the flrst aspects that appears when one begins
disease -l brought a report from the field, one that expanded on
to consider movement, whether as an interested
cybernetic themes to offer insight into the complexity of hunran
observer or as someone trying to deal with a
movement and the nature of learning.
:l
THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 9 wTNTER r994
problem or limitation. For instance, I raise my hand to adjust my
glasses; in order to guide this movement, I must govern the action
of mywrist, forearm, elbow, and shoulder. Each of these joints allows
different kinds and amounts of movements: since mywrist has two
potential axes of motion, side-to-side and forward-and-back, kinesiolo-
gists say that it has ttlo degrees of freedom. My forearm can only rotate
around itself, thus it has one degree of freedom, like my elbow, which
can onlybend and straighten. Finally, myshoulder allows movement in
three dimensions, thus it has three degrees of freedom. To make sure
that my hand reaches my glasses, I must regulate the amount of turning
and/or bending in each of my arm's articulations, not to mention those
of my flngers. Of course, I am not simply pushing my glasses up the
bridge of my nose, but I maintain my balance and continue to talk to
you while doing so. More on that in a few moments.
The only way I have of coordinating the movement of my arm is to
regulate the relative contraction of my muscles. There are twenty-six
muscles-ten at the shoulder, six at the elbow, four at the forearm, and
six at the wrist-that govern the movement of the four joints we are
considering. Like a string made up of braided threads, each of these
muscles consists of hundreds of fibers. Muscles are organized in bun-
dles made up of groups of flbers and the nerve that activates those
flbers. These functional groupings are knor,rm as motor units;the con-
traction of one of these bundles is the smallest unit of independently
regulated muscle action. The potential for independent action of each
of these muscle bundles adds even more degrees of freedom.
You can see that this seemingly simple movement of my arm requires
the complex temporal and spatial orchestration of all these muscle
fibers: each joint must move the correct amount and at the right time
in order for me to reach my destination and accomplish my task. In the
movement sciences, the problem of managing this complexityis knor.rrn
as the degrees of freedom problem (Bernstein, rg6Z; Schmidt, rg88). This
is a familiar problem to any cybernetician: we recognize it as the prob-
lem that every complex system must encounter, the problem of govern-
ing its uariety, the number of possible states that it can have (Beer, rg74).
The human body, considered as a movement system, has an astronomi-
cal number of states with the hundreds of thousands of muscle fibers
that make up the six hundred and ten muscles that regulate the motion
at the joints formed by our two hundred and ten bones.
The manifold possibilities inherent in the incredible set of combi-
nations afford a rich complexity to human movement. Such potential
freedom of movement and expression poses a problem: how can we
handle all this variety, all these degrees of freedom? To get a taste for
this problem imagine for a moment trying to drive a car that, instead
of having one steering wheel, had four steering devices, one for each
wheel, and that each device controls the direction of each wheel inde-
pendently. Rather than one degree freedom, this kooky car would have
four degrees of freedom. Imagine, if you will, trying to drive this car
around a corner. How could you do it?
This imaginaryvehicle points out the difficulty of driving-or regu-
lating-a multi-degree of freedom system like the human body, which
is the problem that the nervous system constantly confronts. Vly'hen we
consider the complicated nature of everyday movements-standing
6
WTNTER 1994 THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 9
and talking and pushing my glasses up my nose-there are simply too
many pieces for all of them to be regulated independently, it is compu-
tationally impossible.
The potential degrees of freedom must, in any particular action,
be temporarily reduced. This reduction of variety is accomplished by
adding a constraint. In the car, the complexity of steering is simplifled
by having two front wheels yoked together, so that they cannot act inde-
pendently, and having the combined action of these wheels regulated
by the one steering wheel. The back wheels can only spin, and they
do not play an active role in the steering of the car. lVhat mechanism
could exist for decreasing the number of degrees of freedom involved
in movement? Can we imagine an analogous, but momentary, con-
straint thatwould serve as a mechanism for simplifying the complexity
of humanmovement?
Researcher Lewis Nashner and his colleagues conducted investi-
gations in the strategies that people use to maintain standing equilib-
rium (Nashner and McCollum, rgSS; Horak and Nashner, 1986). In
these experiments, Nashner studied howpeople maintained their
balance while standing on a platform that was moved suddenly. In
order to study the responses, the experimenters attached small elec-
trodes to each subject's skin. These recording electrodes were placed
over the muscles of the abdomen, back, buttocks, thighs, and lower
legs. Since the electrical activity of muscles changes as their perfor-
mance changes, the electrodes would record the activity of the muscles.
Through this kind of procedure, knor,rryr as electromyography, the experi-
menters could look at how the muscles functioned in response to a per-
turbation in balance. The electromyographic record of different mus-
cles' activation was correlated with recordings of the subjects' weight
shifts (made by the force platform they stood on), and with the kinetic
analysis of concurrent video records. Would the subjects show
a random set of muscular contractions, different perhaps during each
trial and different from person to person? Or would they exhibit some
kind of distinct, stereotypical activation pattern?
Nashner's experiments demonstrated that, out of all the possible
responses, compensation for the small disturbances in the moving-
platform experiments involved movements of the hip and ankle.
Indeed, there were two distinct compensatory pattems of muscular
activation, which he referred to as hip and ankle strategies. All compen-
satoryresponses involved pure hip movement, pure ankle movement,
or some combination of the two. The muscles of the trunk, hip, knee
and ankle acted together to control the joints they spanned and their
related body segments in what are called coordinatiue structures or
muscle synergies.
A muscle slmergy constrains the relative activity of muscle groups
that span two or more joints, thereby linking them together. The exis-
tence of synergetic patterns offers a solution for the degrees of freedom
problem by simplifying the problem of movement coordination. Rather
than deciding what every muscle should be doing at any one time, the
nervous system only needs to make a decision about which coordinat-
ing configuration should be used. Evidence of coordinative structures
has been demonstrated in other activities, such as walking (Shapiro,
I
THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 9 WTNTER r994
Zernicke, Gregor, & Diestel, r98r) and marksmanship (Tuller, Turvey, &
Fitch, rgBz).
You could well ask horv Nashner's experiment relates to r,vhat hap-
pens in everyday life. Though lve may rarely stand on surfaces that
move unexpectedly, we are constantly maintaining our equilibrium.
We are never still. Due to our body's physiological actions, including
pumping blood, circulating cerebral spinal fluid and breathing, as well
as the constant oscillation of muscle tissue (knorvn as mtLscle tremor),
we move continualiy.
All of these movements are relevant because the human body is not
designed to be static and still. We have three relatir,eir, large masses-
the head, the torso, and the legs-each balanced on relatively small
bases of support: r) the skull on the spine, z) the torso (and head) on the
hip joints and S) the legs (and upper bod-v) on the feet. Consequentlv
even the slightest movement can thrort, us off-ba1ance. \\ihi1e this is an
inferior design for static stability, it is an ideal design for ntovement: we
have a high potential energv and therefore it takes onlv a minimal effort
to start moving. The constant, unpredictable phr.siological motions of
life, not to mention any small or large intentional actions, require us to
actively regain our balance in order to maintain a standing posture.
Standing, therefore, is not static. Standing is a dr.namic, bounded
activity, one that can be described as keeping the center of gravit_v
within stability boundaries, the crossing of r,r,.hich rvould make one fail
over. \&hat we have is a dynamic system that is never stil1, never quiet.
We can see this constant act of balancing in the incessant smail ampli-
tude, high frequency movement knor,rrn as postural sn'ar'. Nlorrement
scientists have noticed postural sway for quite a long time. it shorvs up
in experiments that record the movement of the center of pressure over
the feet and in kinematic analyses that record the sma1l nlovements
of the body over time. This small r,r.obble has, generalir-, been regarded
as noise generated by an imperfect system and ignored. Hou-er,er, pos-
tural sway does not vary haphazardly, but rather l aries uithin specific
limits around a balance point. That is to say, this continual n obbling
demonstrates certain persistent properties-gIoba1 minima and a per-
formance envelope-that are not dependent on quantitative details.
These persistent properties are the kind of topoiogical inr,ariance stud-
ied by chaos theory and qualitative dynamics. \Vhat's more, these stud-
ies have sholtm that the attractor demonstrates functional sensitivity,
changing according to the activity in which the mor.er engages (Riccio,
Lee, & Martin, in press).
Given the precarious nature of our standing balance, the regulation
of movement cannot simpl1, be a set of commands that determines the
direction and extent of movement. In order to maintain equilibrium,
the regulation of movement must also take into account the mechanical
consequences of movements, the inertial forces generated and the
resulting changes in position. To what aspects of sensory experience
do we orient ourseives in order to maintain equilibrium? The question
of orientation in our perception of standing or falling has historically
been dismissed in scientific investigations. The classical argument has
been that r,tre locate ourselves within some objective or external frame
of reference, such as gravity. If this lvere so, then perhaps postural sway
could be ignored as meaningless noise;yet the question of howwe cor-
8
