Chava Shelhav - Child Space: An Integrated Approach to Infant Development Based on the Feldenkrais Method

Chava Shelhav, PhD

with Orly Gat and Tomer Hollander

Forewords by Dov Alexandrovich, MD and Yoram Zandhaus, MD

Copyright 2019 by Chava Shelhav. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

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North Atlantic Books

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Child Space: An Integrated Approach to Infant Development Based on the Feldenkrais Method is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

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To my dear children, Shai and Ayelet, and my beautiful grandchildren, for being a source of pride, happiness, and inspiration in my life. To all the parents around the world that I met and who allowed me to get to know and take care of their children.

Dr. Chava Shelhavs book opens new horizons to all those who take an interest in early childhood development. Her work is based on exact and methodical observation, which, in and of itself, is a breath of fresh air in an era of ever-growing dependence on mechanization. The art of observation these days is in danger of extinction. The uniqueness of Dr. Shelhavs book lies in observing movement intertwined with the general process of development and in emphasizing its role in emotional development.

We clinicians tend to gather developmental data. However, a deeper examination of developmental anamnesis such as this will reveal that developmental milestones serve the examiner as indicators of the rate of development in its entirety. Only a few relate to the emotional significance of the infants stages of movement development. This book comes to correct this narrow focus.

Ever since Freuds historic discovery that the personality is formed through primary interpersonal relationships, a discovery that merited reinforcement and expansion among developmental researchers in the previous century, we have learned to search every shred of information, even if hypothetical, concerning those very relationships. Few clinicians, if any at all, relate to functional development of all sorts, especially as regards movement as an influential factor in the fabric of emotional, interpersonal development. Shelhavs book opens a window to understanding that very mechanism of sensorimotor feedback through which the infant constantly examines his ability and formulates his sense of self.

This contribution makes Shelhavs book recommended reading for all clinicians and required reading for all researchers in early childhood development.

Professor Dov Alexandrovich

(Of blessed memory)

Child psychiatrist, President of the Israeli Association of Psychoanalysis (retired)

A founding member of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society

Dr. Shelhav, a specialist in the Feldenkrais Method, has written a book based on her accumulated experience of working with infants and toddlers. The book offers what has been missing in the professional supervision of managing the home and raising infants and children. Dr. Shelhavs model is supported by forty years of research. The need for certified supervision has been gathering momentum in recent years. Although there are various educational and medical frameworks, it is the parental framework that supplies the infant with the emotional and physical mantle of protection he needs in order to feel secure while experimenting with developmental challenges. Looking at all the existing developmental models (Freud, Margaret Mahler, Bobath, Vojta, and Jaak Panksepp), as well as the blending of the bodys and the brains networks that create the self, and many other approachesnone of these exist without a strong bond between the mother (and father) and the infant (and later the toddler). Without this connection, there cannot be normal development. It will be achieved by creating a good family atmosphere on a basic day-to-day level in a warm home that offers developmental challenges.

Erikson said that development takes place from the beginning of life until its end, and today we know that the path of human development begins even in the womb. The more research is done on this issue, the further back is the beginning, which starts in the earliest stages of life.

Our role as professionals in the field of child development is to guarantee infants and toddlers the possibility of success. We do this by trying to improve their learning curve. We attempt this directly and through their parents, and this apparently is the most effective way to achieve good developmental management. This book provides an additional step in the long journey that parents take with their children through the labyrinthine thicket of human development and responds to the parental need that exists in this competitive and less intimate world in which we live today.

Dr. Yoram Zandhaus, MD

Specialist in child neurology and development

National medical director for the field of child development, Meuhedet National Health Fund

Consultant in pediatric neurology, child development, and attention and concentration disorders

Chava Shelhav

I was born in Haifa, Israel, to parents who immigrated to Israel from Europe in 1933 for ideological pioneering reasons. The younger of two daughters, I grew up in a traditional religious home, and I went to Beit Yaakov, a religious school for girls.

My father was an accountant in the Haifa municipality, and at home he was involved in the revival of the Hebrew language. In Israel, we speak Hebrew, he used to say to me and to my sister. I remember him immersed in his linguistics, searching for words in the Bible and checking the meanings of the language. I absorbed from him values of patience, tolerance, calm, love, acceptance, and the ability to see without judgment. My father died of a heart attack in my presence when I was thirteen years old.