Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora

"The Case of Nora" is titled, or subtitled, in some languages "A Journey in the Jungle of the Brain". In fact, this book, modest in its dimensions, allows us to take a tiny little but invaluable journey into Feldenkrais' brain, so to say. For anyone interested in how this unusual man was thinking, it is a rare pearl among the Master's books. The text is so condensed that if you want to highlight key sentences you better get yourself a couple of markers, because you are going to highlight almost everything. Poor me, trying to review it: those of you who have read my other reviews of Moshe's books know that I try to reflect the uniqueness of each book mainly by quoting. Thus I hope my reader can get a substatial hint of what the book is about. But here - two thirds of the text are worthy of quotation in a review, so were to begin? Alas, I have already wasted too much space in this foreword... I hurry to the (Hebrew) text. The following will be almost as good as quoting (while translating), but of course I hope you will go to the origin. Moshe's own text is soooo beautiful. The most important kind of learning is that in which quantity becomes a new quality... Often we even don't notice this kind of learning... As if without purpose... and suddenly a new form of activity emerges as if out of nowhere... Repeating and learning by rote, preaching, reward and punishment are of no use... While waiting [some days or weeks] I thought about her [his client] a great deal, as I always do with my clients... I have no stereotype technique... Is is contrary to the principles of my theory... I gradually explore all the body functions. Structure and function are tightly connected... I imagine the nervous systems involved. I imagine a part of the body sending a stream of liquids, sometimes electrical sometimes chemical. After many transformations it ends in muscular action which results in an observable action. When my imaginary picture of the flow is stuck in one point... I ask myself: is it diffusion? Soft obstacle? Deviation? Loss of swing? Break in the continuity? Or perhaps one of the transformations was disabled? Try to put on your shoes in every impossible way and you will be surprised to find out how unlikely is a success by chance is... How wonderful and complex is our usual way of action.... Have you asked yourselves why relaxation and reducing tension were needed prior to this kind of instruction? What is simple and well known is not always easy to understand... In the enabling the adult's learning process it is crucial to guess the age into which the client regressed. Growth means order. It is impossible to reverse this natural order. Had I not learned to perceive minute changes I would not have been able to endure the endless repetitions required in instruction. Spacial Orientation is an abstract concept and as such I can not treat it. I don't know how to correct the function "Spacial Orientation" but I do know how to help a person distinguish

The great educator, Professor Moshe Feldenkrais, describes his work in "An Adventure in the Jungle of the Brain" (Abenteuer im Dschungel des Gehirns) as this book is titled in German. And it is an adventure. A sixty year old business women wakes up one morning and cannot understand what has happend to her world. She discovers that she can neither read, get out of bed properly, cannot differenciate between her left and right slippers, bangs into the wall instead of passing through the bathroom door nor can she speak when she wants to express her irritation. Feldenkrais describes in detail all the steps he takes to discover how he can facilitate her brain to reajust and regenerate her capabilities to cope with the world again. He discribes his investigations, the mistakes and successes. This book is really a description on how we learn to learn and how we need to embrase our mistakes for only due to them we develope the facilities to learn. Gábor, Feldenkrais Movement Educator