УМСТВЕННАЯ ОБСТАНОВКА (№ 5) — Фельденкрайз и дзюдо. (Часть 1)

MENTAL FURNITURE #5 - Feldenkrais and Judo

"... it is bad in Judo to try for anything with such determination as not to be able to change your mind if necessary..." (M. Feldenkrais, Higher Judo, pg. 94)

"From my perspective, which is of course as a martial artist, in the Feldenkrais Method you take my balance and I have to find a new balance." Chiba Sensei, 8th Dan Aikido, after receiving an FI lesson from Elizabeth Beringer, 4th Dan.

The questions arise, how to change one's mind? by what means? in what direction? to what end? We may wonder if a person whose balance is taken is the same person who finds a new balance? Questions which can seem academic in ordinary life become vital in the martial arts where one is thrust into conflict, confrontation and harm's way. The question of survival possesses us: Whether it is on the mat in the dojo, in the ring, or out on the street or wherever and whenever we find ourselves engaged in a conflict or a struggle from which we dearly want to disengage. Here and now, is it to be life or death? Any study of the martial arts must play itself out against the background question of life or death. Martial (mar- from the Greek god of war and strife Mars) arts training may focus on mortal combat but the struggle with an opponent is secondary to the struggle within one's self. Winning the inner battle is knowing how to play the game. It is not 'what' we do but 'how' we do it that matters. "It is correct to say that Judo teaches coordination of quite a different order from any other discipline. It is clearly defined and methodically taught as a concrete thing. The movements are, therefore more or less incidental and determined by a secondary consideration; they are a means of learning the 'way,' the correct physiological human way of doing." (M. Feldenkrais, Higher Judo, pg. 37.)

We all know that Moshe Feldenkrais was an accomplished Judoka, that is, Judo practitioner. We mention it in our brochures. In the second issue of The Feldenkrais Journal one can find an interview I conducted with Moshe in 1977. There, in his own words, he tells how he was swept up into the inner world of Judo. The founder of Judo, Prof. Jigaro Kano, chose Moshe Feldenkrais to be one of the doors through which the East attempts to meet the West. Moshe Feldenkrais, "The Judo way is to action, as the scientific method is to thought. Both are not 'new,' not in the sense that our ancestors have never used them, or that they are foreign to the human nervous system, but because they use methodically what was formerly left uncultivated and therefore a matter of chance or luck." (Higher Judo, pg. 37) Feldenkrais methodology, while not reducible to either Judo or science, is clearly informed and indebted to both the aims of science and of Judo. In previous columns I have pointed to some of what constitutes the aim and the means of science.