Moshé Feldenkrais

Moshé Feldenkrais was born in 1904 in Slavuta

Feldenkrais was born in 1904 in Slavuta, in the Russian Empire, to a Jewish family. He grew up in Baranovichi, where he studied in high school for 2 years and received a Zionist education. In 1918 he left for the Land of Israel and worked as a laborer in construction.

He finished his high school exams through Gymnasia Herzliya and worked as a cartographer for the British survey office. He studied self-defense and published a book on Ju-Jitsu. In 1929 he was badly injured in a soccer game.

In 1930 he moved to Paris, earned an engineering degree and then a doctorate in physics at the University of Paris. He worked as a research assistant to Frédéric Joliot-Curie. In 1933 he met Jigoro Kano, studied judo and later earned black belts in 1936 and 1938.

In 1940 he fled to Britain and served as a science officer in the Admiralty until 1946, working on sonar and anti-submarine weapons. His knee injury returned, and he refused surgery and developed self-healing techniques. In 1949 he published his first book on his method.

In 1951 he returned to Israel and worked in defense research. From 1954 he taught his method full-time in Tel Aviv and gave lessons to David Ben-Gurion. He trained teachers in Israel, Europe and North America and stopped teaching publicly after falling ill in 1981.