Russell Delman Explains the Feldenkrais Method®

Article Summary

In this short video, Russell Delman explains the Feldenkrais Method® as a way to recognize and loosen the compulsive patterns that shape our movement, thinking, and behavior. His central idea is that freedom begins when we can notice what we are doing clearly enough to discover another possibility. Delman’s explanation offers a direct introduction to Moshe Feldenkrais’s larger interest in human learning and human functioning.

Freedom Begins with Noticing

Many people first encounter the Feldenkrais Method® because something is difficult. Their back hurts. Their neck does not turn easily. They are recovering from an injury, or they have reached a point where their usual way of moving no longer works as well as it once did.

That is a reasonable place to begin. Pain and limitation get our attention.

But Moshe Feldenkrais was interested in something larger than relief from a particular problem. He was interested in the way a person becomes organized. He wanted to understand why we repeat movements, thoughts, and responses long after they have ceased to serve us. And he wanted to know how a person might learn enough about those patterns to act differently.

Russell Delman explains this larger purpose with unusual clarity. In the video below, he describes the Method as a means of breaking up compulsive patterns and allowing the evolution of human functioning.

“Freedom becomes possible when a habitual response is no longer the only response we can make.” — Russell Delman

That is a concise way of describing what an Awareness Through Movement® lesson can offer. We begin with an ordinary action—turning the head, reaching an arm, rolling, standing, breathing, or walking. We slow it down enough to feel what we are doing. We discover that an action we assumed was simple contains habits, relationships, and choices we had not yet noticed.

And then the action can change.

Recording Info

Video title: Russell Delman Explains the Feldenkrais Method®
Runtime: 5 minutes, 24 seconds
Original publication date: December 4, 2009
YouTube channel: lightcrusader2

This is a short video, but it has substance. Delman gives an overview of the Method and reflects on Moshe Feldenkrais’s contribution. He does not treat the work as a collection of exercises or techniques. He places it in the larger context of learning, awareness, and human freedom.

Russell Delman and Moshe Feldenkrais

Russell Delman began studying with Moshe Feldenkrais in 1975, during the first professional Feldenkrais® training program offered in the United States. In 1984, he became one of the first people authorized to lead professional training programs. Over the decades that followed, he taught internationally and helped train thousands of Feldenkrais® teachers.

His long association with Moshe gives his observations a particular weight. Delman was not simply repeating a definition of the Method. He had studied with its founder, taught it for many years, and continued to develop his own understanding of awareness, embodiment, and human possibility.

In a later published reflection, Delman wrote that Moshe’s “main interest was the potential for freedom in the human being.” That is an important point. Moshe was certainly interested in movement. He was interested in pain, posture, learning, and function. But these subjects were part of a larger inquiry: how can a person become less bound by automatic patterns and more capable of responding to the present situation?

You can read more of Delman’s account of his work and history with Moshe in “Embodiment: Freedom Through Awareness”.

Compulsion Is Learned

We often think of compulsion only in dramatic terms. We think of an addiction or an obvious behavior that someone cannot stop. But compulsive patterns are also found in ordinary movement.

A person may tighten the jaw whenever they concentrate. Another may hold the breath before reaching for something. Someone may lift the shoulder to turn the head, or brace the lower back before bending forward. These actions may have begun as useful responses to an injury, a demand, or a particular situation. With repetition, they become familiar. With enough repetition, they become invisible.

The person does not choose them in the moment. The pattern simply happens.

This is why advice alone is often inadequate. Telling someone to relax the shoulders or stand up straight assumes that the person already knows how to organize themselves differently. Usually, that is the very thing they do not know.

A Feldenkrais® lesson approaches the problem through experience. It does not begin by demanding that a person correct themselves. It creates conditions in which the person can feel how a familiar action is organized and compare it with another way of doing it.

“A habit becomes less compulsory when we can sense its details and discover that another organization is possible.” — Russell Delman

The student may begin to notice that turning the head is connected to the eyes, ribs, pelvis, and feet. They may discover that holding the breath makes an action more difficult. They may find that a movement becomes lighter when it is smaller, slower, or distributed through more of the body.

These are not merely physical details. They are new information. And new information makes a different response possible.

Movement as a Way of Learning

The Feldenkrais Method® uses movement because movement makes our habits available to us.

We may be unaware of how we organize ourselves while thinking, worrying, rushing, or reacting to another person. But when we lie on the floor and slowly turn the head, roll to one side, or move an arm, many of these same patterns become easier to feel.

We can notice where we create effort. We can recognize what remains fixed. We can discover how one part of the body affects another. The movement becomes a way of investigating the whole self.

This is one reason the lessons are often gentle. The point is not to prove strength, increase endurance, or achieve an ideal position. The point is to improve perception.

When perception becomes more refined, the nervous system has more to work with. A person who feels only one familiar way of moving has one familiar way of moving. A person who can sense several possibilities can begin to choose among them.

From Correction to Discovery

The language of correction is deeply familiar to most of us. We correct posture. We correct a movement. We correct a child. We correct an error.

Moshe Feldenkrais took a different view. He understood that a person’s present organization is the result of learning. Even an inefficient or painful pattern may once have been the best answer available to that person.

The question, then, is not simply how to remove the pattern. The question is what the person needs to learn in order to have other options.

That change in question matters.

A Functional Integration® lesson and an Awareness Through Movement® lesson both create opportunities for this kind of learning. In an individual Functional Integration® session, the practitioner uses gentle touch and movement to communicate possibilities that may be difficult for the student to discover alone. In an Awareness Through Movement® class, the teacher uses words to guide students through a sequence of explorations.

The means differ. The educational process is the same.

“The purpose of a lesson is not to impose a better pattern, but to make better choices available to the student.” — Russell Delman

When a student discovers a new possibility for themselves, it does not remain an instruction from the outside. It becomes part of their own experience.

The Larger Meaning of Freedom

Russell Delman’s use of the word freedom is important because it prevents us from reducing the Method to symptom management or exercise.

Freedom does not mean that a person will never experience pain, difficulty, fear, or limitation. It means that the person can become less governed by automatic responses. It means that an old pattern can be recognized as a pattern rather than mistaken for an unchangeable fact.

This may show itself in a physical action. A person may turn more easily, breathe more freely, or get up from a chair with less effort. It may also show itself in how a person meets a demanding conversation, a moment of frustration, or an unfamiliar situation.

The connection is not mysterious. We are organized as whole human beings. The way we hold our breath, contract our muscles, narrow our attention, or rush toward a familiar conclusion belongs to the same person.

The Method gives us a practical way to begin seeing that organization. It begins where we are most immediate to ourselves: in movement.

A Brief Introduction Worth Keeping

Russell Delman’s video is brief, direct, and worth preserving. It does not attempt to explain every aspect of the Feldenkrais Method®. Instead, it points to one of its deepest concerns: the possibility that a person can learn enough about themselves to become less compulsive and more free.

That is the value of this short introduction. It reminds us that the work is not limited to making a sore part feel better, although that may matter greatly. It concerns the larger question Moshe Feldenkrais pursued throughout his life—how a human being can learn to function with greater awareness, adaptability, and choice.

Related Resources

• What Is the Feldenkrais Method®? Students Describe Their Experience
• What Is Feldenkrais®?
• About Moshe Feldenkrais
• Feldenkrais® Research

Video Source and Accessibility

This page embeds the original Russell Delman Explains the Feldenkrais Method® video on YouTube.

The YouTube player currently reports that captions are unavailable. This article is a written companion to the video, not a complete transcript of Russell Delman’s remarks.