Guy Sela - Widegevity: An Appetizer for the Feldenkrais Method

I was something of a bookworm growing up, reading pretty much anything I could lay my hands on. But it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I came across a book that was really worth reading. When I tried to articulate to myself just how much that book floored me, the thought that came to me was that if I had a child who I knew was going to read just one book in his entire life, this is the book I would want him to read. The book was Moshe Feldenkrais' The Elusive Obvious .

A few years have passed since then. I've read all Feldenkrais other books in the meantime, plus a whole lot of other stuff, and my opinion has only strengthened. The way I see it, Feldenkrais is Plato on steroids. The steroids being the 2,500 years of accumulated knowledge that separate Feldenkrais from Plato.

A few things had me wondering as I dug deeper and deeper into the Feldenkrais method. Why do so few know about it? Why do the people who do know about it almost always have a significantly inaccurate impression of it? Why are even experts in the field nearly always perplexed when asked to explain it?

I finally posed this question to myself: How would you define what one "gets" by "doing Feldenkrais"? My answer was: widegevity. And thus the idea for this book was born. I had to come up with a new word as the reality to which it points is new. Using any preexisting term felt too much like pigeonholing. Widegevity is obviously a metaphor. I hope that by the end of this book you'll have a clearer idea of what it means to you.

I wouldn't have taken the trouble to write this book if I didn't think that it's really warranted. What makes it warranted? Look around you. Read the statistics. We're not living in paradise just yet. Now, obviously Feldenkrais isn't the answer to all of humanity's problems. It answers only some, but they're very fundamental. In the context of an individuals life, it's the most potent game changer I've come across when properly understood, and as far as methods go . People should know that this option exists. I wish it hadnt taken me 30 years to find out about it. My life could have been a lot better.

Anyway, better late than never.

There's plenty of material about the Feldenkrais Method and the aim of this book isn't to repeat it. I'm only trying to fill in what seems to me to be the most pressing lacuna, namely, the lack of a non-esoteric guide to the method. Feldenkrais' books are exquisite, but unfortunately, almost only uber-nerds read them (unjustly, by the way; they're not that difficult). Guides written by others have tried to spread the word further but have had very limited success.

Can the Feldenkrais meme become viral? I see no reason why not. In fact, I think it's inevitable. It's just a question of how it's going to happen. One thing's sure: a virus is small, very small. It's easily carried. It's also easily transmitted. You should be able to describe it in just a few words, within a casual conversion. If it's "heavy," it won't work. If it's cumbersome or seems obscure or inexplicable, it won't work. The thing is that the Feldenkrais Method is none of these. At least on an appetizer level, it can be fully described, explained, and demonstrated very easily.

The book is structured from the concrete to the abstractdemonstration, description, explanation, and context. But if you feel more comfortable the other way around, you're welcome to change the order of things. You can shuffle the chapters any way you like.

As a sign off, I offer some recommendations on how best to proceed beyond the beginners' stage.