M.

Feldenkrais

Body and mature behaviour

Astudyofanxiety,sex,
gravitation&learning

Contents
Aknowledgements...............................................................................................

vi

Glosary................................................................................................................

vii

Introduction..........................................................................................................

1 Degeneration and Ignorance.................................................................................

2 Some Pertinent Facts............................................................................................ 15

3 Fatigue.................................................................................................................. 28
4 Adaptation and Correlation................................................................................... 31
5 Learness- The Uniqueness of Man........................................................................ 36
6 Conditioned Reflexes and Habits.......................................................................... 41
7 The Antigravity Mechanisms................................................................................ 54
8 Erect Posture and Action....................................................................................... 66
9 Sensation and Vestibular Apparatus...................................................................... 79
10 The Body Pattern of Anxiety................................................................................. 83
11 Motility and Adjustement...................................................................................... 95
12 Measuring Posture............................................................................................. 103
13 The Sixt Sense....................................................................................................... 108
14 Normal Gravitation Adjustement.......................................................................... 113
15 Tonic Adjustement................................................................................................ 117
16 Body and Emotion................................................................................................ 127
17 Muscular Habit and the Sexual Act...................................................................... 130
18 Localisation of Functions and Maturity................................................................ 140
19 Summary and Rewiew.......................................................................................... 148
20 Conclusions.......................................................................................................... 162
Index..................................................................................................................... 164

Acknowledgements
The substance of this book was presented before the Association of Scientific Workers of Fairlie,
Scotland, in a series of lecturesgiven in 1943-44.
I wish to thank Professor J. D. Bernal, F.R.S., Professor SollyZuckerman, F.R.S., and his
colleague,specialist in posture and growth, for reading the manuscript and for valuable suggestions.
I am greatful to my friends Mr. And Mrs. S. Byard, W. Halliday and R. B. Serle for their patient
listening, to Dr. G. D. Morgan for clarifying my ideas on some points in psychology.
I am specially grateful to my friend R. B. Serle for repeated reading and correcting of the
manuscript and Miss Dorothy Smith for typing it.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to Mrs. Vera F. Salomons and Mrs. Charlotte Nissen whose
friendship made this work possible.
M. F.
BM/Moshe,
London, W.C.i.

Glossary
AFFECT, emotional complex associated whit a mental state; the energy of an emotion.
AFFECTIVE, pertaining to a feeling or emotional state.
AMAUROTIC, blinf without apparent lesionof the eye but through disease of the optic nerve, spine
or brain.
ATLAS, the first cervical vertebra supporting the skull.
AXON, the axis-cylinder of a nerve cell.
CATATONIC,a forrm of schizophrenia with phases of stupor and excitement.
CHRONAXIE, the specific time required to excite a nervous or mucular element; the minimum
time at which a current is just double the rheobase (minimum producing excitation).
CLONIC, of a spasmodic nature, where rigidity and relaxation succeed each other.
CORTEX,the outer grey layer of the brain.
DENDRITE, tree- shaped process of a nerve cell.
EGO, the part of the mind which recognises and tests reality and is credited with conciousness.
ENDOLYMPH, the fluid contained in the membranous labyrinth of the ear.
EXTEROCEPTIVE, pertaining to the internal feeling receptors.
LABILE, unstable, fluid, liable to change.
LIBIDO, the energy of he sexual drive.
NEUROSIS, afunctional disorder of the nervous system.
NYSTAGMUS, an involuntary rapid movement of the eyeball.
ORGASM, the point where erotic excitement becomes involuntary.
OTHOLITE, a small stony mass in the membranous vestibule.