Touch is at the very heart of the Feldenkrais Method no matter whether we touch with words or hands, because our intention is always to touch the person.
In a way that perceives, addresses and responds to the person in his/her uniqueness.
Even if hands only touch a specific area, such as a knee, there is a significant difference in the experience of the person being touched between “someone touching my knee” and someone “touching ME at my knee”.
This perceptible difference is only possible if it is anchored in the Feldenkrais Practitioner’s inner attitude and orientation. Accordingly, it is not only the hands of the Feldenkrais Practitioner that touch a body part of the other person. Just as no knee leads a life detached from the rest of a person, there are no hands that perform certain grips detached from the person touching – making maneuvers like machines.
In the encounter that becomes possible through this specific Feldenkrais way of touching, two people are present in this very moment with their indivisible physicality and the fullness of their embodied experiences. This presence gives room to whatever may develop.
The difference in touching that can be perceived so clearly in the experience is not easy to recognize from the outside. It is even more difficult to put this difference into words. But it seems worthwhile to give it a try.
What is so special about this way of touching, is there a secret and, above all, how do is it done?
These questions have been driving me ever since I first encountered the Feldenkrais Method over 40 years ago. I have been pursuing these questions ever since from different perspectives – touching and being touched, sensing, feeling and thinking. After countless experiences of this specific way of touching – whether in the role of Feldenkrais practitioner or student – some essential characteristics of touch in the Feldenkrais context have crystallized:
Touch is like a mirror in which the person being touched can recognize themselves in a special way. As with a mirror, when looking into the mirror the materiality of the mirror recedes into the background and the perceived image comes to the fore. The person being touched senses more of themselves – and less of what the other person is doing.
The Feldenkrais Practitioner and his/her hands recede into the background – self – awareness comes into the foreground.
Touch enables new sensory experiences that not only bring to light what is but also point to what is possible: New possibilities to experience oneself and to move.
The touch contains both asking a question – clearly and comprehensibly formulated – and listening for an answer.
The touch is inviting and its way of asking questions is open. It does not push, force or correct, but gives the clients the freedom to answer in their own way. This answer can be surprising for both.
The answer may be surprising, but it does not fall from the sky. It results from the preceding process of mindful searching and dialoguing. This type of search process is based on the principles of the self-organization of living systems. For these, the unpredictable and unplannable are essential characteristic, i.e. it is neither possible to plan nor predict at what point in time and in which way the touch will have an effect.
The Quality of Touch
The quality of touch is closely linked to how “finely tuned” is the Feldenkrais Practitioner similar to an instrument – providing the context for learning. If, for example, the Feldenkrais Practitioner engages a lot of muscular effort to sit, stand or use his/her hands, the ability to perceive and the quality of touch will be compromised. The person’s subtlest reactions, such as a change in tone, cannot be perceived, nor can the clarity of direction and power transmission. As consequence the Feldenkrais Practitioner is not capable of responding to these reactions with fine adjustments in the touch. The moment the Feldenkrais Practitioner makes an effort or wants to achieve something specific, something becomes tighter – in both of them. The focus and the attention become narrower, and the breathing becomes shallower while in the client rises the unpleasant feeling of “something is wrong with me, I should be this way and that way”.
All of this contributes to closing the door to learning, which depends on a fundamental openness to the process.
Dealing with “the Problem”
To make the above a little more concrete, I would like to come back to the example I mentioned at the beginning: Many people seek out a Feldenkrais Practitioner because they have problems with a knee. For them, the problem has a clearly defined location, namely the knee (“the rest is fine”) and they assume that this is where the solution lies. They assume that if an expert touches the knee with their hands, they will know what is wrong and, in the best case, the professional touch will make the problem with the knee disappear.
For a Feldenkrais Practitioner, a possible solution to the “problem” does not lie in the knee. If the Feldenkrais Practitioner touches the knee at all, this touch – whether on the knee or on other parts of the body – will primarily involve the question: In what way does the person use their knee when standing, walking, bending etc.? What role does the knee play as part of a complex set of relationships in specific movements – for example in relation to the hip joint, ankle or thoracic spine? Movement is intrinsic in this way of touching, even if a person is lying still on a Feldenkrais table, the question of movement is always contained in the touch. This means that as a Feldenkrais Practitioner I imagine how the person is moving and using gravity and the ground forces in order to move and act. For example, I might press lightly with my hand against the sole of the foot and ask the question: “How is the impulse of movement transmitted from the foot via the leg and hip joint upwards towards the head?” The movement response indicates how the person organizes the interplay of forces when standing and walking. Perhaps my movement impulse has already “petered out” in the ankle or has been redirected, slowed down or amplified at other points on its way to the head. Whatever happens, the person activates – albeit completely unconsciously – a complex movement pattern, i.e. a very specific way in which all the movement components interact.
When I touch a person in a certain place, I ask non-verbally whether they are ready to make a very specific movement. My way of asking with my hands allows a complex and detailed image of the moving person to emerge. With this approach complex movement patterns can be explored. A movement pattern describes the dynamic relationships between the individual movement components during a specific movement in space, time and gravity. Movement patterns are functional when they realize a person’s intention with a minimum of energy consumption.
Opening a Dialogue
This way of touching opens a dialogue, a kind of question-and-answer game in which each answer generates a new, perhaps even more precise or meaningful question. In this dialogue, the person being touched can recognize hidden aspects of themselves. The knee that has only caused problems can become the starting point for a journey of discovery in which new possibilities for movement and action gradually emerge. Over time, the knee may also be released from the grip of some old and inhibiting habits and movement patterns.
This kind of touch is more of an art and there is no end to the refinement of the quality of touch. However, even the most “artistic” touch is not immune to “failure”, because what is possible in the encounter between two people in this kind of touch at a specific moment in time can never be completely controlled. Sometimes after a “Functional Integration” I hear sentences like: “I’m standing completely different now, I’m feeling completely different; I am different – how can that be, you’ve done almost nothing?” Then I know that a very special quality was present in the touch:
The touch as such receded into the background in order to allow the experience of a new quality of BEING THERE.
This touch has touched so much more than body parts; it touched life – the lives of both of us.
Sabina Graf-Pointner
Sabina’s passion for movement led her from competitive sports to New Dance and Contact Improvisation, and then to various methods of somatic learning, including her first experiences with the Feldenkrais Method in 1983. An accident in 1990 abruptly cut her intensive time as a dancer and teacher of dance and movement short, but this also marked the beginning of an intensive exploration of the Feldenkrais Method. Since completing her Feldenkrais training (1993) in Holland with Mia Segal, Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais’s first assistant, Sabina has worked as a Feldenkrais pedagogue in her own practice in Erlangen. Her Feldenkrais practice became so successful that, starting in 1998, she steadily expanded it into a Feldenkrais Center, where other Feldenkrais colleagues work. In addition to her intensive work as a leader of seminars and training courses for Feldenkrais colleagues, she has participated in various Feldenkrais training programs in Germany and abroad since 1996 – first as a training practitioner, since 2005 as an assistant trainer, and since 2018 as a trainer. Since 2023, she has been leading a Feldenkrais training program in Barcelona together with Philipp Unseld.
Her website: www.feldenkrais-erlangen.de