Mark Reese’s biography of Moshe Feldenkrais is at once a great example of historical research and an odyssey of self inquiry and discovery for the book’s subject, for the author, and for the reader. In a really good biography, it seems to me, one learns about a life and a time and a place not one’s own. A great biography additionally offers another sense of the reader’s own time and place.
From the Book:
Feldenkrais’s perceptiveness seemed to defy the limits of our ordinary senses. Feldenkrais could touch a person’s head and feel patterns of muscular contractions in regions remote from where his hands were placed, such as the spine, chest, and pelvis, all the way to the feet; by touching and pressing on the feet, he could feel reactions all the way up to the head….
The principles that belong to Feldenkrais’s method cut across distinctions between war and peace, competition and cooperation, and accurately reflect nature’s underlying order. Such generality, understood as foundational for complexity, is the hallmark of lasting contributions to human knowledge and capabilities.
