Origin and purpose of the Feldenkrais Network International
The Feldenkrais Network International was founded in 1988 by very many of Mia Segal’s pupils. As its name indicates, we came together as a very loose and free non profit network with no board of directors and without any concrete structure. There was only one „secretary“, who voluntarily held things together, i.e. on an financial and organisational level. Every work which had to be done on national and regional level was done voluntarily by different members too.
The strong wish to come together once or twice a year, to share the work, to share ideas, to exchange experiences to learn and differentiate other styles in the work with this lovely method made this way of doing possible. By this, a lot of free space was given to discuss theoretically and freely different topics which evolved out of this procedure.
Everybody who joined was welcomed. There have been no political boundaries due to different memberships in other Feldenkrais communities, except the Feldenkrais Method itself. Everybody had the same rights. It was the transparency of all things the Network undertook, which held us together.
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In the following years the Network grew and the members themselves built diverse regional and national subgroups who met for instance once a month (Switzerland, partly Germany, The Netherlands) or once or twice a year, respectively. Once a year everybody who wished and could, joined in different places on an international level somewhere in Europe.
We invited at that time leading trainers like Gaby Yaron, Yochanan Rywerant, Ruthy Alon, Chava Shelhav who all were eager to present their kind of work to us, most of them more than one time only. Also we had some lecturers and workshops of other body-related methods like Osteopathy, Sensory Awareness, Neurobiology, Spiraldynamics etc..
Indeed this way of doing turned out to be very fruitful on the levels of content, trust in one’s ability to teach the Feldenkrais Method and thus giving us reliable and differentiated foundations – by sharing, discussing, learning.
The Feldenkrais Network International during these decades consisted of about 500 people who were spread all over Europe like Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, England, France, Scandinavia. Even in the USA, in Ukraine and Russia and in Australia there were and still are some members.
The way how Network grew and developed is maybe a very good example how things could be in the future in one or other way’s: transparancy, communication, development: See it, say it, getting sorted.
September 17, 2025
Dierk Wichmann