“Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself.”
Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais
Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais was an Israeli physicist, engineer and judo teacher who began searching for an alternative path to healing after suffering a severe knee injury, that doctors believed, could not be rehabilitated.
Born in Russia in 1904, he emigrated to Palestine in 1919. In 1930, he moved to Paris to study electrical engineering and mechanics. From 1933 to 1940 he worked in the laboratories of Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie. Shortly before the German occupation, he fled to Great Britain, where he conducted research for the British Admiralty, contributing to the development of sonar technology.
Sports such as football and judo were lifelong passions for him, and he wrote several books on autogenic training and judo. His studies in neurophysiology, anatomy, neuropsychology, human development and various movement sciences helped him to rehabilitate his own knee injury.
In 1951 Dr. Feldenkrais returned to Israel and devoted himself entirely to developing his own movement-based learning method. He began teaching a small group of students regularly and worked with clients in individual sessions, including Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir.
His first book on the Feldenkrais Method, The Path to the Mature Self, was published in 1949, followed by numerous other publications on the method. From the late of 1960s until shortly before his death in 1984, he trained generations of teachers in his method. A significant part of his private practice focused on supporting children with physical disabilities.
He left behind an extraordinary body of recorded lessons and was far ahead of his time with his interdisciplinary understanding of neurophysiology and human development.
Marlies Reitmeier
For as long as I can remember, I have been preoccupied with questions about the meaning of life. It has been an essential part of my quest to better understand myself, who I am, to explore my deepest feelings, hone my purpose in life, and achieve mental and emotional fulfilment, integrity and authenticity.
For me, the seeking of personal growth and maturity represents the most central and meaningful aspect of being human. A clear understanding of the intentions behind our actions helps us to live together with self-responsibility and harmony.
I was born and raised in Munich in 1970. After finishing school, I sought freedom and independence, worked in gastronomy and travelled extensively. My curiosity about human motivation led me to train as a state-certified medical massage therapist. Experiencing people up close and listening to what moves them, always helped me to better understand myself.
In 1999 I began a three-year full-time training programme to become a state-certified alternative practitioner and deepened my medical knowledge. In 2003, love brought me to Athens. And it is not only the love for my husband and our son, born in 2006, that keeps me here, but also my deep affection for this wonderfully chaotic city and its life-affirming, individualistic people, who never cease to fascinate me.
Working as a massage therapist was the ideal way to gain a foothold in a foreign country. Hands need no language, and the personal, close encounters with people nurtured my curiosity about this culture and its inhabitants. In 2012, I began my professional training in the Feldenkrais Method. I completed it in 2015 with certification to teach group classes, and in 2018 to give individual lessons. In 2015, I started teaching small groups, including a voluntary group at the Municipal Senior Centre in Melissia, Attica.
The Covid-19 epidemic and a personal illness shook me out of the routine life I had been accustomed to and helped me to take the step out of my safety zone toward creating my own center for the Feldenkrais Method. In September 2022, I opened the Feldenkrais Exarchia Center, named after the neighbourhood in the heart of Athens where it is located.
I continue to participate in international professional training courses in the Feldenkrais Method. The varied and versatile depth of the method enables lifelong learning and development.
A Feldenkrais lesson, whether in the do-it-yourself form of ATM, or the hands-on form of FI, always brings me into deep contact with my body and feelings. I experience it as a meditation in motion, where I turn my attention to myself for an hour and forget the world around me. Becoming mindful of my present condition, enables me to release involuntary and unconscious tensions that steadily manifest themselves in my body and mind in daily life.
Emerging from this, I feel light and liberated. I experience the parts of my body connected in harmonious functional unity. The improved mobility revitalises me and strengthens my resilience in everyday life. This continually optimized self-image becomes a familiar and habitual sensation and accompanies me throughout life.
Marlies Reitmeier is a Feldenkrais practitioner certified by the International Feldenkrais Federation
