Quotes from F. Matthias Alexander (1869-1955)
you translate everything whether physical or mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.
Those things that do not exist are the hardest to get rid of."
"Mr. Cox has spoken of posture.  I don't like the word posture."
     (St. Dunstan's Lecture 1949)
"I must admit that when I began my investigation, I, in common with most people, conceived of 'body' and 'mind' as separate parts of the same organism, and consequently believed that human ills, difficulties and shortcomings could be classified as either 'mental' or 'physical' and dealt with on specifically 'mental' or specifically 'physical' lines. My practical experiences, however, led me to abandon this point of view and readers of my books will be aware the technique described in them is based on the opposite conception, namely, that it is impossible to separate 'mental' and 'physical' processes in any form of human activity."
    (The Use of the Self, chapter 1, italics Alexander's)
"I do not claim to have discovered any new method of breathing, but to understand the only true one - Nature's;" 
     (Introduction to a New Method of Respiratory Vocal Re-Education 1906)
" . . . . .for Nature does not work in parts; she treats everything as a whole."
     (Introduction to a New Method of Respiratory Vocal Re-Education 1906)
"You cannot change something by repeating that which you have."
     (St. Dunstan's Lecture 1949)

belief is a matter of customary muscle tension. FM Alexander

At times I have been put to condusion and driven to despair of ever explaining something for which I could not account but which my senses told me to be true. Galileo, Two New Sciences

One has to make the discovery for oneself, starting from scratch, and to find what old FMAlexander called "the means whereby," without which good intentions merely pave hell and the idealist remains an ineffectual, self-destructive and other-destructive "end-gainer". Aldous Huxley

the crucial educational problem is that of procuring the postponement of immediate action upon desire until observation and judjment have intervened. John Dewey, Experience & Education.

I can teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The Merchant of Venice, I. ii
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Moshe Feldenkrais, D. Sc., (1904-1984)

Moshé Feldenkrais (Doctor of Science, Sorbonne) was an engineer, physicist, inventor, martial artist and student of human development. Born in eastern Europe, he emigrated to Palestine as a young man.

Polish\Russian born, When he was 13 he left home to study and earned his doctorate in physics from the Sorbonne in Paris. One of the First Europeans to receive a black belt in Judo and founded the French Judo Association.
He incorporated his knowledge of Judo and physics with studies in human development, anatomy and physiology in the creation of a unique Educational system now known as the Feldenkrais Method. Dr. Feldenkrais’s inspiration for developing these ingenious lessons came while he suffered with a crippling knee injury.
Dr. Feldenkrais is the Author of 3 books The last years of his life were spent traveling all over the world teaching huge groups of people (200) in one training these Methods.
 
If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want. Dr. Feldenkrais
Ordinarily, we learn just enough to function. But our ability to function with a greater range of ease and skill remains to be developed. Moshe Feldenkrais
"What you truly learn best will appear to you later as your own discovery."  (Moshe Feldenkrais)
 
"Each of us speaks, moves, thinks and feels in a different way, each according to the image of themselves that they have built up over the years. In order to change our mode of action, we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us."
--Moshe Feldenkrais, from "Zen and the Art of Making a Living"

"Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don't divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation." - Moshe Feldenkrais
 “The aim is a person who is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength, but through increased consciousness of how movement works”. Moshe Feldenkrais
“Through awareness we can learn to move with astonishing lightness and freedom-at almost any age-and thereby improve our living circumstances, not only physically...but emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.” Moshe Feldenkrais
“What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains. What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity.” Moshe Feldenkrais


 
 Surely if it is possible for feeling to become untrustworthy as a means of direction, it should be possible to make it trustworthy again. F.M. Alexander