Move Into Life

I have found much on line about Ms Anat Baniel, but not her age or date of birth. The latter I guess to be around 1950 and the former, inferentially, about 61 in 2011. She was born into a scientific milieu in a very young Israel. As a child she met Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, whose apprentice and unusually close associate she became in her 20s. She now lives, teaches and practices healing in California. *** Moshe Feldenkrais was one of a number of 20th Century pioneers who focused on the the human brain attending to bodily movements as a major driver of human health. As structured today, Feldenkrais practice takes two major forms: Awareness Through Movement (ATM), often taught to fairly large groups at fitness centers, and Functional Integration (FI), which tends to be one-on-one work by a client with a certified Feldenkrais practitioner. ATM is said to be "active." A student, more often than not lying on a mat, applies to himself instructions on attending to minute bodily movements (in neck, head, spine, feet, etc.) being given orally by a hands-off instructor. In FI, the client, student or perhaps 'patient' is said to be "passive," being touched, gently guided and manipulated by a Feldenkrais practitioner. Often the client's goal is to be relieved of pain. If Feldenkrais doesn't work. the next step may be surgery. *** Anat Baniel in 2009 issued her first book, MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY. Her reliance on the theory and practice of Moshe Feldenkrais is obvious, admitted and celebrated. But she also cites another dozen or so major sources behind her views. Mainly, however, Ms Baniel presents and draws conclusions from case studies selected from her three decades applying and enlarging the practices of Moshe Feldenkrais. She is up to date on advances in neuro-plasticity and stresses that her work is brain work. She lays out nine ways to train the brain to guide the human body into healthful ways. *** Ms Banat uses black and white drawings by David Gerstein to showcase gentle exercises designed to bring quick changes in awareness of various organs and limbs through active "lighting up" of millions of brain cells. Each of her nine numbered chapters concludes with a kind of test or quiz to allow the reader to measure herself on various aspects of personal vitality: enthusiasm, imagination, goal-setting and the like. And on that basis to concentrate on what needs to be improved. *** BOTTOM LINE: Ms Baniel does not claim originality as an abstract theorist of health. What is original, I think, in Anat Baniel's book is her thirty years of hands-on success in helping her clients improve their healthy, happy living in their bodies. Her sources for theory and some aspects of practice are clearly listed. She generalizes, hypothesizes, derives laws from practical real-life successes. That she was and remains so effective in helping people is a big drawing card to make many readers want to take up her book and peruse it from cover to cover. -OOO-