The Feldenkrais Journal #23 Aesthetics

51 Pages·2010·11.346 MB·English

by  Gay Sweet Scott (ed.)

THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL, NO 23, AESTHETIcS fall 2010
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The Feldenkrais Journal
number 23
Table of Contents
3 Letter from the Editor
4 Dedication to Yochanan Rywerant David Zemach-Bersin
5 Yochanan Rywerant Remembrance Eytan Mandel
6 Yochanan Rywerant Remembrance Ingrid Wilczek
7 affEct: a Hidden Dimension carl Ginsberg & Lucia Schuette-Ginsberg
15 What Does It Mean to See clearly: The Inside View David Webber
22 a Walk in a temple Garden (Kamakura) Keith Wilson
28 awareness through Pictures Helen Miller
39 The Story of Ren and Mere Louise Runyon
45 Points of View Gay Sweet Scott
47 Balance Rika Lesser
48 contributors
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Letter from the Editor
Issue #23 of The Feldenkrais Jounral is dedicated to the memory of Yochanan
Rywerant. We are indebted to David Zemach-Bersin, Etyan Mandel and Dr.
Ingrid Wilczek for their remembrances of him.
Carl Ginsburg, with contributions from Lucia Schuette-Ginsburg, has
written a far ranging article addressing the relationship between movement
and aesthetics, and David Webber has written a lucid account of a series of
lessons with Carl Ginsburg. We are very fortunate to have permission to publish
a series of black and white ink drawings by Keith Wilson. They speak eloquently,
directly of our experience in the natural world.
Helen Miller’s “Awareness through Pictures” bridges issues of teaching art
and Feldenkrais, and Louise Runyon’s account of working with an acquaintance
in a coma in hospital is notable for her openness in collaborating with others.
I have included a suggested reading, and Rika Lesser’s poem, “Balance,” com-
pletes the issue.
•
This issue is my last as Editor. Many thanks to everyone who has submitted
articles to the Journal, past and present—whether published yet or not. Writings
often take time to evolve; most articles we publish have had drafts too numerous
to mention. And many thanks to the editors, past and present and to everyone
who has sustained and encouraged continued publication. Many, many people
have kept the endeavor alive by their generosity and thoughtful care.
The theme for issue #24 is Balance.
The following issue, #25, will be devoted to the theme of Reading. The longer
than usual lead time is in recognition of the time it takes to read and ponder the
opportunity to write about any aspect of reading—how one reads a walk or situa-
tion or provocative text.
Always, continue to write. It’s worth the pain, it’s important for our profession
and one of the best means to further inquiry and reflection.

Gay Sweet Scott, Editor
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Yochanan Rywerant was a unique and learned man. He was a faithful disciple
of Moshe Feldenkrais, and Moshe greatly respected Yochanan’s intelligence
and work. In 1973, when Moshe needed someone to assist him with his teaching
in Berkeley, he placed a call to Yochanan. And in San Fransciso and Amherst,
Yochanan again worked as Moshe’s assistant. At home in Tel-Aviv, every
afternoon for many years, Yochanan and Moshe worked side by side in the
same room, sharing many of the same students. After Moshe’s passing in 1984,
Yochanan transmitted Moshe’s work with true generosity and integrity, and his
contribution to our understanding of the Feldenkrais Method will be of endur-
ing value. I am very grateful to have known Yochanan and to have learned from
him. May his memory be a blessing to all who were touched by him.
—David Zemach-Bersin,
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Yochanan Rywerant, 1922–2010
Courtesy of Eytan Mandel and Ned Dwelle
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Yochanan Rywerant Remembrance
Eytan Mandel
Yochanan Rywerant passed away in Tel Aviv on May 21, 2010 at the age of 87. Diabetes was
the main cause of his death. It was too early for his spirit and his desire to live and teach.
Yochanan practiced the Feldenkrais Method for 58 years (1952–2010). What was it that
made him and his teaching so unique? Maybe that he lived the Feldenkrais Method till his
very last days.
“Hold my leg and allow an ‘effort substitution’ for the tired and sore muscles, aching from the
state I am in,” he said.
Gently, with a lot of patience and respect I followed his instructions.
“Pay attention! I will hold and raise my knee three mm high, just high enough for you to slide
the bandage under it. And don’t forget! The bed mattress is soft, it is not a floor, push it.”
Another time we made an exact plan to move his pelvis so that it would find the chair
next to the bed. He raised his voice, “Pay attention: touch me here! Very slowly! Now!
Accompany my movement so that I will feel safe.” We had to have a few pauses before the
task was complete, so sharp was the pain. “You are ok,” he said smiling, gratefully holding
both my hands. This moment brings tears to my eyes even today.
Yochanan taught anyone who wanted to learn without preferences or liking or disliking,
paid as well as free of charge. His Awareness Through Movement lessons with the famous
“Meta Comments” and his Functional Integration sessions with the famous “gentle &
communicative touch” were open for those who wished to learn more. His three books
and dvds are still open for those who
wish to learn more about the method he
loved, invented by Moshe whom he loved
and admired.
Yochanan’s books show us the path he
followed in his development and a path
for us to follow. Moshe Feldenkrais said in
his foreword to The Feldenkrais Method:
Teaching by Handling, 1983: “The book
in front of you should be re-read several
times. That way you are likely to get the
most of the goodness of the book. Good
luck!” His other publications include
Acquiring the Feldenkrais Profession, 2000,
The Corollary Discharge: The Forgotten
Link, and Remarks on the Body-mind
Problem, 2008 with forward by Eleanor
Criswell Hanna, Ed.D. The books show us
the path he followed in his development
and maybe a path for each and every one
of us to follow.
Courtesy of Eytan Mandel and Ned Dwelle
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Yochanan Rywerant Remembrance
Ingrid Wilczek
When I was asked to write in remembrance of Yochanan Rywerant the task seemed easy.
I would take out my notes, write down a story, and be finished. But what I can tell now
is less a story about Yochanan than a story of a fundamental personal development by
means of him. I had a presentiment of his impact on me—through writing I am stunned
how strongly he has affected me.
Yochanan was one of my first teachers. I met him 1983 in Munich in one of the early
training programs that followed the training in Amherst, Masachusetts. As a very innocent
student I experienced Yochanan teaching Awareness Through Movement and Functional
Integration (fi) lessons, and honestly, I was not impressed. Even worse, I thought I knew
better, better! At the time I was convinced that to feel good, to sense fluidity, to move easily,
to float through space and smile and feel happy was the goal. To talk about my wonderful
relief from trauma and hurt was it, was my, was the Feldenkrais Method!
I felt disturbed when Yochanan upset my paradise with questions:“What is your inten-
tion?” While practising some sort of fi, he disturbed me by asking:“What are you doing?
What for?” I was annoyed by his way of thinking, reflecting, intending. I was smilingly
levitating through a wonderful, light universe. Why should I think, question my intention
and action, why awareness, why act in accordance to my surrounding and demands of
reality. I performed in my private heaven. That was my Feldenkrais Method . . . and, cer-
tainly, it and I felt wonderfully, really, good.
Then I had my first fi with Yochanan. I remember the situation as if it were yesterday.
While lying on the table I sensed myself clearly, moving effortlessly, easy in distinct direc-
tions without any hesitation or apparent limit. Feeling, thinking, intending and acting was
one fluid act. Of course I knew that it was Yochanan touching, directing and moving me.
Yet, at the same time I felt not him but only me, a paradoxical sensation. I sensed myself
exclusively, while at the same time I was conscious that Yochanan was mediator of the
experience. At the end, standing, the world and I had changed. I understood what it means
to live towards unavowed dreams, to be aware and to use movement for awareness. I
understood that thinking, real thinking, is the means for action. I knew because I felt my
self within the gravitational field, senses alert, awake. I had learned by experience, orienta-
tion, direction, intention.
After Yochanan’s fi my desire to learn intensified. I changed from floating and flying
through space to thinking, understanding and acting towards a colorful, interesting,
vital, life and reality, now a real paradise. Several visits in Yochanan´s Tel Aviv home and
practice were of extraordinary richness. In several series of fi lessons I learned intensively
about myself, and about the potential of the work. Learning internally meant growing
towards a mature external capacity—again a paradox. It was a gift to study with Yochanan.
To be served tea and sweets from Yardena, his first wife, was an additional highlight. They
generously shared their knowledge, no matter how innocent or ignorant the student.
Yochanan was never easy: He demanded attention and a desire to learn. His way of
asking clear, seemingly easy, almost simple, yet very refined questions was unique. His
thinking and acting was light, elegant and challenging, as was his teaching . He indicated
ways for personal and professional improvement, and ideas to further better teaching and
better living. His gift to all of us is the means to think and act.
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AFFECT: A Hidden Dimension:
The example of music, dance, and painting
Excerpts from The Intelligence of Moving Bodies: A Somatic View of Life and its
Consequences, Carl Gingburg, Lucia Schuette-Ginsburg, AWAREing Press, 2010
Carl Ginsburg with contributions from Lucia Schuette-Ginsburg
Moshe Feldenkrais famously said, “Movement is the key to life.” While this can be taken as
a catchy statement, Feldenkrais meant something more profound. He observed through
his life’s work that what is basic in living, including self-movement, self-maintenance,
self-reproduction, self-protection—everything involved in staying alive and passing one’s
genes along through biological history—requires the ability to move. Further, he sensed
that movement was fundamental to many of the higher functions for humans, including
perception, cognition and the ability to think. We took this theme as the inspiration of
our book.
In Part II of The Intelligence of Moving Bodies: A Somatic View of Life and its Conse-
quences, we investigated the question of affect, in its relation to action, thinking, learning,
and expressing. The notion of vitality affects as a more general human experience attracted
us, as it seemed to relate to movement and interaction. Daniel Stern1 observed these forms
of affect through his investigation of how mother and infant communicate before the
infant develops language. They are different than those affects we label as emotions, but
are similarly embodied in our action. Stern has suggested that these forms are a key for
observing how movement becomes a power driving the arts, music, dance, painting, etc.
in adult life. The important observation is that affect in general is communicated through
interaction involving movement as the medium. Manfred Clynes2, for example, has shown
how specific labeled emotions are conveyed in the arts through the form of movement as
a direct expression of the feeling involved. Thus the form of an emotion of love is distinct
from reverence; and hate is distinct from anger, etc. The specific form is conveyed in many
modalities. It could be through direct touch, or through music, or in the form of brush
stroke in a painting, or a physical expression of bodily movement in dance, as well as in
an interaction with another person. Vitality affects are similarly conveyed, only such
affects are below the specificity of emotion, but equally potent in creating feeling. Affects
of all varieties are not simply mental feelings. The freedom of affect expression depends
on how capable we are to move ourselves without interference and self-censoring, which
then allows the so-called mental experience.
The excerpts that follow are taken from the last chapter in Part II of the book, in which
we explicate this different view of affect and art.
glenn gould plays beethoven: piano sonata number 13
I am watching the film “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.” I reach the fifth film,
entitled “Hamburg,” which is set in a hotel room in that city. The actor playing Mr. Gould is
on the phone relaying a telegram back to Canada about his bronchitis. A maid is cleaning
the room. A knock on the door and a package is delivered. He opens the package as he fin-
ishes his phone conversation. Inside is a recording. The maid is still cleaning the room, but
he sits her down, places the recording on the phonograph, and puts the phonograph arm
at the start of the second, allegro movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 13. From the
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first notes I am transfixed. I have no thoughts; I am carried by the music to a certain, hard-
to-define ecstasy. I feel it as movement. I feel it as flow, as dance, as a sensation of light-
ness, joy—yes, ecstasy. There is something else, for I am experiencing this performance
in a way that I have never before experienced Beethoven. There is a precision in timing, in
the dynamics of the attack on the piano keys, in the expression of this performance that
exhilarates in a unique way.
This experience is without content or meaning. Above all it is embodied, and enjoyed
not abstractly, but concretely as movement in time. The maid at first sits not knowing what
to expect or what is expected of her. As she listens, she also becomes transfixed by the
sounds, and begins to move her head in time to the music. Her smile reveals her enjoy-
ment. She arises to look at the album cover. The camera shifts to a view out the window
overlooking the Binnenalster, the smaller lake in the center of Hamburg, and a train on
the opposite embankment. The music carries the tone and feeling.
One could say that there is something mysterious, ineffable, happening here. And yet
the experience is common. A communication is happening, nervous system to nervous
system, or better yet person to person. Beethoven’s written music (basically an instruction
as to the performance of his composition) is transformed through Glenn Gould, is trans-
formed again in the nervous system of the listener. It is a peculiarly human kind of com-
munication. Neither my cat nor my dog show any sign with their movement or other
behavior to indicate that something happens to them. It is not like listening to ordinary
speech. At the same time the experience is something comprehensive. It is not just hear-
ing, for one experiences being compelled to move in some relation to the movement of the
sounds. There are subtle, but definite bodily feelings involved, kinesthetic, emotional,
which undoubtedly relate to changes in many parts of the nervous system, including the
autonomic nervous system. The experience cannot be reduced to these changes. It stands
on its own. In some sense it is also a communion. Unlike communications that happen
through symbolic representations as in ordinary speech, this communication is direct and
analogical. It takes on a transcendent quality.
And what can we say of Beethoven and Glenn Gould? We call them geniuses. They
had refined their nervous systems to a very high level. Through the development of their
action and perception, they became capable of very fine discriminations and sensing of
organized sound. Otherwise what they created could not have the observed effect. For
Glenn Gould this refining was a refining of his ability to move his fingers and himself in
relation to his instrument. He did this in a particularly idiosyncratic way that looks impos-
sible when you see films of him at the piano. Sitting on a stool that appears to be far too
low he reached upward a little for the keyboard. His head was forward and erect, yet there
are many times he threw his head back in a gesture indicating complete involvement, or
dropped it forward in a gesture of intense listening. We know from his mastery that this
strange positioning worked for him in the sense that through this way of acting, he could
make the music that he intended. It was not ideal from the point of view of comfort. In
later life he developed pain in his wrists. Nevertheless, in his playing he learned to inhibit
actions of himself that did not serve his purpose. It means that he spent many years refin-
ing his ability in this way by listening to the production of his sound in relation to how he
wanted to hear what he produced, in relation to how he felt himself at the keyboard. The
two acts for him went together, that of listening and that of playing.
One would think, considering the speed of his finger motion that he could not play con-
sciously. Yet he could not play unconsciously. He must nevertheless have gone directly
from feeling the instrument to taking the musical thought into the action of his movement.
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I am emphasizing that the organization of movement is the essential factor in both devel-
oping the skill and developing the listening, i.e., the musical perception. You could say that
he knew what he was doing with the piano. Affect, however, is essential. It determines
what we call the quality.
As a listener, myself for example, I must have experiences in listening and in learning to
listen in order to perceive the music. I do not mean a technical or cognitive learning about
the structure of music. I mean the kind of learning that comes about in listening, enjoying,
and beginning to make more and more discernments and differentiations. One becomes
sensitized. One gains dexterity in learning in a parallel way to how Gould gained dexterity
in playing. I am curious about my process, but even more so about how Gould gained
his mastery. We know that it cannot be through mere exposure and repetition. Although
Gould is gone, luckily we have some recorded testimony on his part about how he devel-
oped his skill.
One story (reported in Payzant)3 concerns some piano trouble that Gould was having
before giving a concert in Israel. The piano available for the concert had a good tone but
a difficult action, one that Gould felt played him rather than he playing it. Gould went
out into the desert to be alone and rehearse in his head the concerto he was to play. Now
he did something that fits beautifully with what I would call a Feldenkrais approach. He
rehearsed, “not upon the mental image he had of the Tel Aviv piano, but upon his mental
image of the familiar old Chickering back home at the cottage in Uptergrove, Ontario.
Every note was rehearsed mentally as if upon the Chickering with its characteristic feel,
sound and surroundings.”
Payzant goes on to describe how Gould desperately held on to the image at the begin-
ning of the concert, even finding at first that it was hard to move the keys, but then discov-
ering that he was enjoying the sensation of “distance” from the Tel Aviv piano. Gould left
the stage in a state of “exaltation and wonder.” Later many in the audience commented on
the quality of his performance. Gould took these reactions as evidence of the possibility of
communication “of total spirit” between performer and audience.
In a more bizarre instance Gould reported (as quoted in Payzant) preparing a concert
in which he began by learning the score without the piano, and then only a week ahead
began to practice it. He became blocked about the piece as a consequence of trying to
work out a fingering system for a variation in the piece. Gould began a process of getting
out of his bind by trying his “last resort.” He placed some radios near the piano, and turned
them up loud so that when he practiced, “. . . while I could feel what I was doing, I was
primarily hearing what was coming off the radio speaker. . . .” He discovered that he had
to do more but commented, “The fact that you couldn’t hear yourself, that there wasn’t
audible evidence of your failure, was already a step in the right direction.” He anticipated
an unrecognized aspect of learning, that we often cannot learn when there is anxiety about
the outcome. Another form of affect dominates the process.
In the next step Gould focused on the left hand and played the notes “as unmusically
as possible. In fact the more unmusical the better, because it took more concentration to
produce unmusical sounds, and I must say I was extremely successful in that endeavor. In
any event, during this time my concentration was exclusively on the left hand—I’d virtually
forgotten about the right—and I did this at varying tempi and kept the radios going. . . .” He
reported then that the block was gone.
Payzant comments, “This is a kind of squinting to bring the peripheral vision into
action, or an averting of the gaze while dealing with a distasteful situation, or a stepping
back in order to the better to leap. But the centipedal interpretation covers it best. The
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