“Nothing is permanent about our behavior patterns except our belief that they are so.”
– Moshé Feldenkrais
“Just as anatomy has enabled humanity to get an intimate knowledge of the working of the body, and neuroanatomy that of some activities of the psyche, so will understanding of the somatic aspects of consciousness enable us to know ourselves more intimately.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“For perfection, there is no limit.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“A calm and open mind is a goal to which one should always aspire.” – Morihei Ueshiba
“A frog in a well does not know the great sea.” – Japanese Proverb
“In the struggle between the stone and water, in time, the water wins” – Japanese Proverb
“What humbles me is that I devised the method and found in the product of my own mind something that I did not put into it.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Familiar words lull us often into complacency and in such cases hinder constructive thinking.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Talking is nothing but communicating what has already come into being, though only an instant before.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“An ability results from a structure being trained until a skilled functioning is obtained.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“When you think or say something, who does it? You or your unconscious?” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“We usually see only a small part of our space, but we hear from all around us.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“If you continue the exercise and rely on your ears exclusively until you can manage for a couple of hours without injuring yourself, you will realize how poorly we use ourselves even when our eyes are open.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The experienced Judoka, like the scientist, has learned to test ideas by their experimental value.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Homo sapiens arrive with a tremendous part of his nervous mass left unpatterned, unconnected, so that each individual, depending on where he happens to be born, can organize his brain to fit the demands of his surroundings.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I start each case as if it were my first, and ask myself more questions than any of my assistants or critics ever do.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Just as an academic course is necessary before entry into a university, so should a Judo course be necessary for any physical activity.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Life is not a stable process. Our ability to recover is our greatest quality.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“In Judo, we learn to act so that the reaction of the opponent should concur and coincide with our action and design.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The habitual and familiar we do not question; improvement we grade.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The child’s attention is directed by curiosity, which is innate in all living things.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Long ago I learned that it is too much to expect a human being to foresee the unknown so fully that nothing is a surprise.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
Principles are the universal constraints, the scaffolding and the backbone of a disciplined practice.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Maybe it has not occurred to you that the head—quite apart from its contents—is a very important thing.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The obvious is not always easy or simple to understand.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
The most celebrated Japanese woman painter is over a hundred years old. … She started drawing pictures and a pension at the same time.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Good Judo cannot be learned without intelligent observation and attention.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The Judo way is to action, as the scientific method is to thought.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The working of our thoughts is an endless wonder.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“We already have a considerable body of knowledge about how the world works, but how is very different from what.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The habitual and familiar we do not question; improvement we grade. The former is the automatic background of your system; the latter is the foreground of our awareness.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Furthering the development of any function of the body that became habitually fixed restores harmonious growth of personality.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The body of the person and his self, or his being, are inseparable.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“An animal or solitary man in the jungle would not survive a day if he were not aware of most of the space around him.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“On a clean board, you can write anything.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Subjective reality is anchored in us and is as real as our bodies; objective reality is the measure of our sanity.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Structure and function are tied so intimately that one cannot easily separate them nor deal with one without involving the other.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“A working theory cannot be formed without a fundamental relationship to our world. The world around us is our point of view on what life is all about.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I am keen to understand our ways of functioning so that we can learn to make our lives easier and more enjoyable.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“A skillful opponent is more dangerous when lying on his back than in any other position.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“To rely blindly on contest as a means for furthering maturity is wielding a double-edged sword.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Outstanding excellency in any activity is impossible without generalized coordinated control.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Dynamic stability is as proper to the human frame as speech; both grow through primitive and rudimentary stages to adult maturity.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“No book can replace a good teacher.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Judo furthers the development of our space adjustment in all directions from the origin of our movable coordinate system … teaching orientation in all possible positions of rotation and displacement.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The child’s attention is directed by curiosity, which is innate in all living things.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“It (Judo) is unique in furthering growth towards adult independence in every normal person.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The real difficulty in finding working theories for action in evolution is the tremendous amount of time that must elapse before you can make even the simplest prediction. You can never tell who, or what, is the fittest for survival before survival takes place.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The ancestor after whom I was named by Jewish custom used to say, ‘Modesty is knowing thy place.’ I have had more than once such lesson to learn in my life.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“If you contemplate what you read, you will realize that words are not thoughts, but cues to thoughts.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“There are teachers in this world without whom it would be even less cheerful than it is.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The two hemispheres of the brain are not equivalent, let alone identical.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The word dynamic, when used in connection with human action, generally conveys the idea of something better than static. In mechanics, there can be no such emotional favoritism—both static and dynamic stability have their place in the general order of things.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“There are as many subjective realities as there are subjects. The part common to all subjective realities is the one objective reality.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Judo differs from most disciplines in that, from the first lesson, the pupil is taught to use his body in a way fundamentally different from his own.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The simplest movement we can produce is of immense complexity if consider all that is happening in the body to make it occur.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“A wild animal that has not the awareness of a samurai, knowing what happens behind it and above, cannot last very long.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Purposeful action, which succeeds only when it is correctly performed, is far more important and beneficial than simple muscular effort.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Facts are not independent of the observer.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Many people have never made any but the most primitive use of their feet. As a result, the only use and idea associated with them is that of a plate-like support to the body.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“We have no inkling of the outside world when we arrive in it. For a long time, we know only a sensorial, entirely subjective reality.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Learning is turning darkness, which is the absence of light, into light. Learning is creation. It is making something out of nothing. Learning grows until it dawns on you.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Most of us prefer to hear a teacher than to learn by reading only, though books are often more authoritative. Hearing makes seeing more concrete and easier to remember and therefore also easier to understand.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The essential aim of Judo is to teach, help and forward adult maturity, which is a state where a person is capable of dealing with the immediate present task before him without being hindered by earlier formed habits of thought or attitude.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“The future depends on what we do in the present.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Self-trust is the first secret of success.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We become what we think about all day long.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The earth laughs in flowers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.” – Sojourner Truth
“Truth is powerful and it prevails.” – Sojourner Truth
“It is the mind that makes the body.” – Sojourner Truth
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” – Bruce Lee
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee
“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” – Bruce Lee
“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” – Bruce Lee
“Mistakes are always forgivable if one has the courage to admit them.” – Bruce Lee
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” – Mark Twain
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” – Mark Twain
“Good judgement is the result of experience, and experience the result of bad judgement.” – Mark Twain
“You are as good as you wish.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The more one deals with the obvious, the more one sinks into deeper waters where the elusive is paramount.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I spent nearly forty years first learning to know how I was doing what, and then teaching others to learn to learn so that they could do justice to themselves.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“How one says what one does is at least as important as what one says.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“When your attention and awareness are improved, in a few moments, your judgment will be better, as your sensitivity will increase with the reduction of your efforts.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I believe the future of man is better and more interesting than anything even science, the most vigorous human tool, has provided and may make us believe.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Our speaking is so mechanical, or habit-ridden, that if speaking means thinking, then I for one, feel ashamed for us all.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Walk a single path, become neither cocky with victory nor broken with defeat.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Judo is the way to the most effective use of both physical and spiritual strength.” – Kanō Jigorō
“He who fears loss has already been beaten” – Kanō Jigorō
“Judo can help people learn to control themselves. Through training, they quickly realize that anger is a waste of energy, that it has only negative effects on the self and others.” – Kanō Jigorō
“By training in attacks and defenses, it refines your body and your soul and helps you make the spiritual essence of Judo a part of your very being. In this way you are able to perfect yourself and contribute something of value to the world. This is the final goal of Judo discipline.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Normal people are too busy and miss something that is priceless. They should try Functional Integration.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Today, reality is only the sum total of external and internal processes that we do not suspect to be alterable by us.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Without learning to know ourselves as intimately as we possibly can, we limit our choices.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“This cosmic Reality is so immense and overwhelming that it is only when we are at our best that we can catch glimpses of it.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Improvement of talented people comes through their awareness of themselves in action.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Life is a process not a thing.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“It is more difficult to stand than to move.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Does a newborn baby see the right way up from the start? Movement may be necessary to all living things to enable them to form their objective exterior world, and perhaps their objective internal world.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“When thinking in words, even subliminally, we are logical and think in familiar patterns, in categories that we have thought, dreamed, read, heard, or said sometime before. Learning to think in patterns of relationships, in sensations divorced from the fixity of words, allows us to find hidden resources and the ability to make new patterns, to carry over patterns of relationship from one discipline to another. In short, we think personally, originally, and thus take another route to the thing we already know.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I begin by asking people to lie on their backs and learn to scan themselves. That is, they examine attentively the contact of their bodies with the floor and gradually learn to detect considerable differences – points where the contact is feeble or non-existent and others where it is full and distinct.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“What I understand by maturity, is the capacity of the individual to break up total situations of previous experience into parts, to reform them into a pattern most suitable to the present circumstance, i.e., the conscious control effectively becomes the over-riding servo-mechanism of the nervous system.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Recognizing our insignificance, the unimportance of what we think, do, or cannot do, we find ourselves in full mastery of ourselves to the potential limit of our ability. That sort of unstable equilibrium that is abandoned in each action and recovered for the next is the essence of human maturity.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“What you truly learn best will appear to you later as your own discovery.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The only justification for language is to empower yourself. If the verbal description you create of the situation you find yourself in leads to paralysis and ineffectual behaviour, then throw those damn words away and find yourself a new set. There is always some useful description of the world that empowers and gives you choices and your task, if you are going to use words at all, is to find that set of words.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Never do things others can do and will do, if there are things others cannot do or will not do.” – Amelia Earhart
“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” – Amelia Earhart
“Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn’t be done.” – Amelia Earhart
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” – Marie Curie
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” – Marie Curie
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.” – John Muir
“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” – John Muir
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir
“When you level the cortex, you bring it to that state which some people call nirvana and we call eutony. Suddenly your brain becomes quiet and you see things that you never saw before.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee
“The only way to make someone change their opinion is to speak quietly and reasonably.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Face your fear, empty yourself, trust your own voice, let go of control, have faith in outcomes, connect with a larger purpose, derive meaning from the struggle.” – Kanō Jigorō
“The pine fought the storm and broke. The willow yielded to the wind and snow and did not break. Practice Jiu-Jitsu in just this way.” – Kanō Jigorō
“For one thing, Judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment.” – Kanō Jigorō
“It is much more impressive to beat an opponent with proper technique than with brute force. This lesson is equally applicable in daily life.” – Kanō Jigorō
“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” – Socrates
“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” – Socrates
“At every instant or stage of a correct act, it can be stopped, withheld from continuing, or reversed without any preliminary change of attitude and without effort.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Each language embodies cultural traditions and attitudes from thousands of years of development. Consequently, that language wires in to us a lot of notions which we don’t want, which we accept merely because of learning the language.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I believe that the person who never avowed his unavowed dreams somewhere in his unconscious, in his dreams, feels he has wasted his life, and when he is old he will realize it.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Learning … is not the training of willpower but the acquisition of the skill to inhibit parasitic action and the ability to direct clear motivations as a result of self-knowledge.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The problem is that much of what we have learned is harmful to our system because it was learned in childhood, when immediate dependence on others distorted our real needs.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I have tried to write only what is necessary for you to understand how my techniques work. I have deliberately avoided answering the whys. I know how to live and how to use electricity, but I encounter enormous difficulties if I attempt to answer why I live and why there is electricity. In interpersonal affairs why and how are not so sharply divided and are used indiscriminately. In science, we really only know how.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Peace begins with a smile.” – Mother Teresa
“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” – Mother Teresa
“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” – Mother Teresa
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” – Nelson Mandela
“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” – Nelson Mandela
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Nelson Mandela
“How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.” – Charles Darwin
“The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.” – Charles Darwin
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” – Maya Angelou
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
“The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.” – Dalai Lama
“I am just one human being.” – Dalai Lama
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” – Dalai Lama
“Learning to inhibit unwanted contractions of muscles that function without, or in spite of, our will, is the main task in coordinated action.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Movement is life and without movement life is unthinkable.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein
“The great value of this technique is that by reducing tension in a particular group of muscles, it provides a methodical study of the entire self-image, and through study, improvement.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Without learning to know ourselves as intimately as we possibly can, we limit our choices. Life is not very sweet without the freedom of choice.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” – Bruce Lee
“Stability is nice. It also means difficulty to initiate movement as well as difficulty to be moved… Stability (when one is protected) increases the feeling of safety. Instability means risk but easy mobility. Both are biologically important. Becoming addicted to one of them makes one unsafe for lack of choice.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Progress comes to those who train and train. Reliance on secret techniques will get you nowhere.” – Morihei Ueshiba
“Time passes unhindered. When we make mistakes, we cannot turn the clock back and try again. All we can do is use the present well.” – Dalai Lama
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
“Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Nothing under the sun is greater than education.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Apply just the right amount of force — never too much, never too little.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Judo teaches us to look for the best possible course of action, whatever the individual circumstances, and helps us to understand that worry is a waste of energy.” – Kanō Jigorō
“The teaching of one virtuous person can influence many; that which has been learned well by one generation can be passed on to a hundred.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Consider fully, act decisively.” – Kanō Jigorō
“It is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday.” – Kanō Jigorō
“If there is effort, there is always accomplishment.” – Kanō Jigorō
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” – Pablo Picasso
“It takes a long time to become young.” – Pablo Picasso
“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso
“Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.” – Morihei Ueshiba
“In short, health is measured by the shock a person can take without his usual way of life being compromised.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – Albert Einstein
“Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein
“Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout.” – Morihei Ueshiba
“A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind.” – Morihei Ueshiba
“Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.” – Morihei Ueshiba
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.” – Pablo Picasso
“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso
“When you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Standing is harder than moving.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“People confound, misuse, interchange thinking and speaking, not realizing that speaking is for communication and thinking is for action.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” – Henry Miller
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing–and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin
“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso
“Once the method is found and the new pattern is clearly presented, many can do as well and often better than the originator of the method.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“In order to change our mode of action, we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“My purpose is to allow people to move closer to actually being creatures of free choice, to genuinely reflect individual creativity and emotion, freeing the body of habitual tensions and wired-patterns of behaviour so that it may respond without inhibition to do what the person wants.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“The aim [of the Feldenkrais Method] a person that is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength, but through increased consciousness of how movement works.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself.” – Moshé Feldenkrais
“No matter how closely we look, it is difficult to find a mental act that can take place without the support of some physical function.” – Moshé Feldenkrais