Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora

Buncombe County in Western North Carolina (county seat: Asheville) is fortunate to have three renowned teacher/practitioners of Moshe Feldenkrais's health through body awareness techniques. The first two are John Robson and Lavinia Plonka. I take weekly "Feldenkrais" aka Awareness Through Movement aka ATM classes from both masters at Cheshire Fitness Center in Black Mountain, NC. *** I am a still raw beginner in all things Feldenkrais. Virtually everything I know on the subject comes from my two teachers -- including from books by others that they recommend (Lavinia has written two brilliant ones of her own). After sharing with Ms Plonka the difficulties I had with the first book I read by Dr Moshe Feldenkrais (AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT), I was only too happy to accept her advice to tackle Feldenkrais's book here reviewed - BODY AWARENESS AS HEALING THERAPY: THE CASE OF NORA (1977, 1993). For Lavinia Plonka told me that THE CASE OF NORA is widely regarded as the Master's "most accessible" book -- i. e., one most easily understood by beginners like me. And John Robson was equally enthusiastic for the book's insights into the way Moshe Feldenkrais's mind worked during his "Functional Integration" (FI) hands-on approach to solving concrete problems of individuals with back pains, poor postures or whatever. *** In the CASE OF NORA, Dr (of Science, not Medicine) Feldenkrais was asked to help a well educated, polyglot Swiss woman in her sixties whom a stroke had deprived three years earlier of the ability to read and write. After some initial examinations in Switzerland, Nora and her family were persuaded to send her to be with Feldenkrais at his base in Israel. in THE CASE OF NORA we relive with Moshe Feldenkrais and his students the many months of daily half hour sessions that Nora and Moshe spent together. *** First he helped her regain the ability to read. Later, after a separation while he traveled abroad, Nora returned to Israel able to read but still very weak in writing. She learned. Throughout his text, Feldenkrais shares his false starts, his already formed hypotheses about to to proceed with such a case and the new insights that emerged during his lengthy experience with Nora. He emphasizes the importance of Nora's having to learn to relax. He was surprised to discover how his therapy reminded Nora of her school days, when she had had a dread of coming ate to school -- something that never happened. He lays out important information about our nervous system and brain. *** THE CASE OF NORA is indeed "accessible." It introduced me to "the second half" of Feldenkrais method: Functional Integration aka FI. That is hands-on, one-on-one treatment or physical therapy, healing if you will. This has not been requested by or tried on me -- yet. The first half of "Feldenkrais" is hands-off, classroom instruction, ATM, laid out in Feldenkrais's much more difficult book AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT. *** I find it useful to think of the two halves in terms of my personal adaptation of one seminal metaphor used by Moshe Feldenkrais: in an ATM classroom a piano tuner teaches a group many ways to tune their out-of-tune pianos (their bodies). Whatever the tune or sonata they want to play will sound better on a well tuned body. in FI healing, by contrast, a piano teacher shows me or you how to play those ivories better. I think that is correct to say that it is "FI" that our third Feldenkrais activist, Black Mountain's Clifford Shulman -- along with Lavinia Plonka and John Robson -- practices with his medical doctor-referred patients and others in need of physical therapy. Cliff also gives occasional Feldenkrais-rich ATM lectures, when he can find the time from his healing practice. ATM and FI are two sides of the same coin. And Buncombe County is Feldenkrais country! -OOO-