The Feldenkrais Method was developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, one of the most fascinating men of the past 100 years. It's a product of his unique combination of expertise in martial arts, autosuggestion, engineering and physics.

In 1918 at age 14, Dr. Feldenkrais walked the roughly 1,300 miles from his home in the Ukraine to British-ruled Palestine. He worked as a laborer until he earned his high school diploma in 1925. An excellent athlete, he played competitive soccer and became one of the first Westerners to study the ancient Japanese martial art of jiu jitsu. He also joined the Haganah, which the British regarded as a terrorist group.

In 1929, he published a book on self-defense techniques. He also badly injured his left knee in a soccer match and while recuperating translated into Hebrew an English book on French pioneer Emile Coue's system of autosuggestion.

The British considered the self-defense book subversive, so they encouraged Dr. Feldenkrais to leave Palestine. He went to Paris, where he earned degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering, and worked for Nobel laureate Frederic Joliot-Curie at the Radium Institute. Dr. Feldenkrais also learned judo, a refinement of jiu jitsu, from judo's founder, Jigoro Kano, and published a book about it.

Days before German troops occupied Paris in 1940, Dr. Feldenkrais arrived in London with a briefcase full of research on nuclear fission that had been done at the Radium Institute. He spent the rest of the war working for the Royal Navy on antisubmarine research, and teaching self defense classes.

By the late 1940s, after Dr. Feldenkrais aggravated his old knee injury, it was hard for him to walk. Doctors recommended surgery.

But the injury hadn't crippled him when it occurred, he reasoned, so perhaps his current disability stemmed not from the injury itself but from something he had done in response to it, adapting in some way that made it worse. And if that were the case, perhaps he could learn to adapt differently, and reduce his pain and limitation.

He theorized that movement is natural -- nobody has to teach a baby how to roll over. But as we get older, our response to injury and trauma and cultural considerations cause us to hold our bodies and move in ways that are not natural.

Using slow, gentle movements, he explored how he used his knees. He taught himself how to walk again without pain. He called it Functional Integration, and the Feldenkrais Method was born.