Mark Reese was a world renowned authority on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. Born in Chicago, Illinois on March 15, 1951, he was one of Feldenkrais’s original American students, studying directly with him from 1975 until Feldenkrais’s death in 1984. Mark was pivotal in introducing the Feldenkrais Method in the United States, and was among the first American teachers chosen to train new Feldenkrais Practitioners. He became one of the world’s most influential Feldenkrais Method teachers, training over a thousand Feldenkrais Practitioners in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Before meeting Feldenkrais, Mark was involved in music and experimental theater in the San Francisco Bay Area. A 1976 graduate in psychology and philosophy from Sonoma State University, Mark’s passion for science, phenomenology, linguistics, and embodied cognition permeated his approach to Feldenkrais’s theories and practice. He read widely and was profoundly influenced by the applied dynamic systems theory of psychologists Esther Thelen, Edward Reed, and Alan Fogel.
Beginning in the 1980s, Mark contributed numerous articles on the Feldenkrais Method to diverse publications. He wrote the foreword to the 2002 edition of Feldenkrais’s The Potent Self, coauthored Relaxercise (HarperCollins) with David Zemach Bersin, and recorded numerous audio programs on the Feldenkrais Method. Concurrently, Mark began to devote himself to researching and writing this definitive biography of Moshe Feldenkrais, an ambitious synthetic work, tracing the complete arc of Feldenkrais’s intellectual development and maturation.
Mark embodied the principles of the work he loved, and inspired students with his incisive intelligence, generous presence, and brilliant teaching. Mark Reese passed away on June 23, 2006. He leaves behind his sons Nathan and Filip Reese, and his wife Carol Kress Reese.
