Why do we call Feldenkrais lessons Awareness through Movement, and not the other way round, Movement through/ with Awareness?
In one of the almost 600 lessons that Moshe Feldenkrais recorded in his Tel Aviv studio from the 1960s to the 1980s, he is heard saying (translated from hebrew to english):
You see, it is not important if you do it well or not well. It is important if you pay attention. It makes all the difference when you pay attention. That means it improves and by way of this, a person can distinguish better.
But, if he begins to do an action and does not check (what he does), the movement can continue (be repeated) a hundred times and stay the same.
So, the attention, the checking, is more important than the movement itself. The movement is just a means (an opportunity) to teach the person to feel, to distinguish, and to check, because this is what makes the difference. The rest is nothing.
This extract is from lesson AY293, Distinction of the Vertebrae in swinging (point 5).
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