Feldenkrais Trainer: No Competency Requirement
The original process to become a Feldenkrais Trainer was not based on competence.
It has been much longer than I wanted before publishing this post. It has been sitting in my “drafts” folder for several weeks.
Why?
Part of the reason has been that I did not want to publish it and increase the amount of suffering in the Feldenkrais community. I do not want to criticize anyone or open up old wounds. But I also want to be a voice for people to understand some of the hidden dynamics in not only the Feldenkrais Guild community, but also many other hierarchically organized professions.
So in the interests of the public good and keeping people safe and aware let’s talk about some history in the Feldenkrais Guild system and who got to call themself a “trainer" decades ago.
I am writing this to help people understand not only the history and genesis of the Feldenkrais trainer community but to also understand the bullying that goes on.
For those of you who do not know, there can be a great deal of bullying and generally “meanness” behind the scenes in the Feldenkrais Guild community. Some of the violent behaviors came from Moshe Feldenkrais himself, who would have emotional outbursts when he taught in the San Francisco and Amherst training. He would get angry at people, call them idiots and idiotic, and often act like a bully.
And the behavior has been continued by a few of his students.
But Why?
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