Holistic perspectives

Both Feldenkrais and Reich offer analyses concerning the functioning of the human being that bring together elements of the human being that are often treated separately by those who are seeking to understand how we all operate and often are also seeking to heal those human elements that are dysfunctional. Feldenkrais provides a portrait of the human brain that is holistic (anticipating many of the contemporary perspectives on cortical functions). Reich’s portrait is holistic in a different manner: he is looking at the intimate relationship that exist between body and words.

While Feldenkrais and Reich take a somewhat different approach to finding integration of human elements, I suspect that they would support one another’s perspective if they had even met one another. Most importantly, their holistic perspectives inform the concepts they offer regarding human dysfunction and the treatment modalities they recommend (and practice themselves) to ameliorate these dysfunctions.

Feldenkrais–Dynamic interplay among cortical functions:  In setting the stage for his description of treatment plans that help to “oil” the armor, Feldenkrais (1981, p. 19] writes about evolution of the brain:

Nervous structures do look for order, and find it when and wherever it exists and make one where it does not exist. Only a very complex nervous assembly, consisting of such a great number of units as there are in most living creatures, needs consistency and constancy of environment. Primitive nervous systems do not play tennis, nor do they swing from one branch to another thirty feet away. Primitive systems are slower and are not so dependent on organizing invariants. All living creatures are smaller and weaker than their grown-ups, some for shorter some for longer intervals of time. Weak organisms need a more or less constant consistent world so that they can learn and grow into strong organisms. The organism is in itself quite a world of microbeings which needs constancy, order, invariance, homeostasis. if it is to exist.

Thus, for Feldenkrais, the simpler organisms are just fine living with less complex neurostructures – as long as their environment remains consistent. We might even say that they are fine when living with and protected by their own armor and living in a specific, limited environment. They could stand there is the woods and not move for many years—provided that the woods don’t change. Then along comes Dorothy and the Scarecrow, who oil the armor and allow the Tin Man to move. This, in turn, means that the Tin Man (with his complex brain) can move through a variety of environments on his way to Oz.