Summer vacation has arrived (in the Northern hemisphere). Our Newsletter team is taking a break until September. Before we head for the beach or the mountains, we offer you a review and a preview of the IFF Research Working Group Network activities.
Continue reading “Review and preview of the IFF Research Working Group Network activities”
9pm Central European Daylight Time (CEDT)
Sunday 26th June 2022
For the past year, the IFF Research Database Group has been hard at work updating and improving the searchability of the catalogue of references of the Feldenkrais on the Zotero database.
Please join us as we present the new updated Zotero database.
Some of the topics that we will cover are:
Registration is via mail to iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
Hope to see you there!
Over the past year, the IFF Research Database Task Group has been hard at work updating and improving the searchability of the articles on the Feldenkrais Method on the Zotero database which other members before us have accumulated over the years.
Please join us as we present the new updated Zotero database on
9pm Central European Daylight Time (CEDT)
Sunday 26th June 2022
Registration is via mail to iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
We would like to introduce ourselves.
Continue reading “Introducing the IFF Research Database Task Group”
Date: May 15, 2022 at 5PM CEST (time zone converter link)
REGISTER: via mail to iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
with Roger Russell, MA, PT and Diane Hannemann, Ph.D.
Movement science is one of the many perspectives for researching the Feldenkrais Method. Since its rise in the 1980’s, the field has grown rapidly in the sophistication of research methods, its theoretical depth and innovative applications.
Continue reading “Online Event with Beatrix Vereijken, Ph.D.”
In Paris, between 2002 and 2009, Sabine Pfeffer and Myriam Pfeffer organized four innovative conferences with Alain Berthoz, a professor at the College de France (link). These seminars included renowned scientists as well as experienced, and scientific literate, Feldenkrais teachers. There were many memorable moments. However, for me, there were also a few situations that were “Oh, darn, I wish we were better prepared!” moments.
Continue reading “What is the big deal about the Feldenkrais Data Base Project of the IFF Research Working Group?”
Since 1989, Beatrix Vereijken has contributed over 350 articles and presentations about learning, development and ageing. For a complete overview see her website at NTNU:
https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/beatrix.vereijken.
Beatrix Vereijken has also provided us with the following list of selected articles for the Research Network members that are easy to find online.
Continue reading “Beatrix Vereijken’s Publications”
Date: 15 May 2022, 9pm CEST
REGISTER: via mail to iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
Beatrix Vereijken, Ph.D., a movement scientist and Professor at the NTNU in Trondheim, Norway is one of the principal investigators of a five-year, international study (2019-2024) involving 17 research centers, 2400 participants, and 50 million Euros. (https://www.mobilise-d.eu/ ) . She and her team are using mobile tracking technology and clinical tests for statistical analysis combined with interviews and questionnaires. They want to find out what matters most in the lives of individual patients.
Continue reading “Online Event of the IFF Research Working Group”
At the start of last year, the research database task group came together to see how we could improve the searchability, the functionality and update the articles in Zotero database on the IFF website.
For the past year, the IFF research database task group has been hard at work going through each article. There are currently around 800 articles on the database.
Continue reading “News from the Research Database Task Group”
We are the IFF Research Events Group: Corinna Eikmeier, Anne Frütel and Joanne Bouckley
The events group took up its work in 2021 to create highly informative events on Feldenkrais Method research. We have been building a structure that can reliably provide events. Building it in a way that will also work in the future. If successful our work will remain in the background, only becoming visible if it doesn’t work.
We have multiple goals:
Elements from György Buzsáki, The Brain from Inside Out and Perspectives for the Feldenkrais Method
By Stéphanie Ménasé
Stephanie Ménasé, Ph.D. is familiar with the Feldenkrais Method since the early 1990’s. She finished her Feldenkrais training in Paris in 2012 with Myriam and Sabine Pfeffer. She has been a member of the IFF RWG Data Base task group since January 2021.
Read more about her biography at the end of the article.
Interested in what I do not yet know, and curious to understand, or at least to try to understand, what I do not yet understand well, I immersed myself in György Buzsáki’s The Brain from Inside Out, Oxford University Press, 2019, 441 p[1]. The book’s underlying question is how are learning human beings capable of improvement, in the sense of an evolutionary perspective of individual and species development. It consists of 14 parts, a reference list of more than 50 pages[2], and a remarkably detailed 24-page index allowing for an alternative circulation between chapters.
Continue reading “Book Review: Reflections on research into the functioning of the nervous system”
Recordings and transcripts of the online events with Susan Hilliar and Cliff Smyth in October 2021, and Jim Stephens in January 2022
We are still working on editing and technical details. As soon as the video recordings and transcripts are available online, we will announce it in our newsletter.
The changes that the Feldenkrais Method brings to each person’s personal development are engaging stories. However, not every story is a case study. Jim Stephens pointed out that for researchers, case study methodology is a structured procedure to document those stories. He offered a compact review of four different approaches to how case studies can be done.
April 3rd, 9pm CET
Hillel D. Braude, MBBCH PhD
The Feldenkrais Method as Physiological Psychology in Practice: Research Insights – A presentation with discussion
REGISTER: via mail to
iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
Dr. Hillel Braude is an Integrative Medicine Doctor, Feldenkrais Practitioner and Neuro-Ethicist. Hillel is the Founder-Director of SomaticWell, an Integrative Medicine Clinic providing specialized treatments for infants and children with autism, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Hillel has published extensively in the field of Neuroethics, Somatics and Philosophy of Medicine. He is the author of Intuition in Medicine: A Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Other Online Events
What is in Our Research Toolbox? with Professor Beatrix Vereijken, Ph.D., Norwegian University of Science and Technology
The New Feldenkrais Method Research Data Base: A milestone for FM Research – Presentation and Celebration with the Data Base Working Group
More information in the next IFF Research Working Group newsletter in early April.
Continue reading “Online Event Calendar”
What makes any Feldenkrais lesson work?
Roger Russell
The Feldenkrais community needs to demonstrate that Feldenkrais lessons are safe and effective as well as provide an adequate theory. Policy makers who might consider including Feldenkrais for their constituents will want to know what makes any Feldenkrais lesson work. Looking over various attempts to formulate a theory of the Feldenkrais Method we find several kinds of explanations. The picture that emerges is confusing and often contradictory. This leads us to a resource….
Roger Russell, M.A., PT,training with Moshé Feldenkrais in San Francisco, Amherst and Israel (1975- 1982). A movement scientist, physical therapist and Feldenkrais trainer he is co-director of the Feldenkrais-Zentrum in Heidelberg, Germany. Since 1975 he has been intrigued by the network of ideas which stands behind the practical methods that Feldenkrais developed. He is one of the initiators of the Feldenkrais Science Network and a leading participant in the FGNA/FEFNA symposia Movement and the Development of Sense of Self (2004) and Embodying Neuroscience (2012) as well as presenting Feldenkrais in conferences in Paris, Berlin, Oxford and Heidelberg.Continue reading “Newspaper Science, Nr. 3”
In the near future we will begin publishing book reviews in our Network Newsletter. If you have a book or article that you believe is relevant and deserves attention, then contact us: contact.iffrg@feldenkrais-method.org
Continue reading “Call for Book Reviews”
The IFF Research Working Group is setting up a translation task group meant to offer the upcoming Newsletters and Newspaper Science issues in the several languages of the FELDENKRAIS® Professional Guilds the world over.
First priority languages are German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.
We are seeking volunteers!
Do you have a very good comprehension of written English and command of one of the target languages, as well as some formal training, professional experience, or talent and pleasure in translating or proof-reading texts?
Please don’t hesitate to contact translations.rwg@feldenkrais-method.org
SPECIAL FELDENKRAIS RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
SORBONNE PARIS, 31 AUGUST – 2 SEPTEMBER, 2022
A special Feldenkrais Research Symposium dedicated to the theme of Experience, Reflection, Language: Phenomenology and the Feldenkrais Method will be included in the Fourth International Conference on Brain, Body, Cognition, to take place at La Sorbonne, Paris, France between August 31 – 2 September, 2022. (https://www.movementis.com/)The International Feldenkrais Federation Research Working Group will conduct this Symposium.
Continue reading “Call for Abstracts”
Online Event of the
IFF Research Working Group
April 3rd 2022, 9pm CET
REGISTER: via mail to
iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
Continue reading “Event: The Feldenkrais Method as Physiological Psychology in Practice: Research Insights – A presentation with discussion”Hillel D. Braude, MBBCh Phd
Dr. Hillel Braude is an Integrative Medicine Doctor, Feldenkrais Practitioner and Neuro-Ethicist. Hillel is the Founder-Director of SomaticWell, an Integrative Medicine Clinic providing specialized treatments for infants and children with autism, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Hillel has published extensively in the field of Neuroethics, Somatics and Philosophy of Medicine. He is the author of Intuition in Medicine: A Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
The Feldenkrais Method® is generally described as a form of somatic education or therapeutic practice designed to improve daily function. In this, my second, contribution to the IFF Research Group Newsletter, I continue to develop core conceptual issues on how to go about researching the Feldenkrais Method®. I propose here that the Feldenkrais Method® is a kind of practical physiological psychology.
Continue reading “The Feldenkrais Method as Practical Physiological Psychology”Hillel D. Braude, MBBCh Phd
Dr. Hillel Braude is a Medicine Doctor, Feldenkrais Practitioner and Neuro-Ethicist. Hillel is the Founder-Director of SomaticWell, an Integrative Medicine Clinic providing specialized treatments for infants and children with autism, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Hillel has published extensively in the field of Neuroethics, Somatics and Philosophy of Medicine. He is the author of Intuition in Medicine: A Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Congratulations to the organisers and to Cliff Smyth and Susan Hillier for this well-attended, fascinating online event.
Moshe Feldenkrais gave us a method and a clear research agenda to test the efficacy of his method. The purpose of the method is personal change: gaining the options to realise our intentions and change our lives for the better. The mechanism that empowers the method is learning. As the Feldenkrais Method is a physical practice change is experienced first as improved movement.
Eric Kiernan PhD CFP
Eric had had earlier careers as an academic economist and organisational consultant. Blending the rigours of an academic approach with psychological and somatic approaches allows him to offer his work to a wide range of people.
IFF Research Network 