When I finished the first draft for the text portion of „My Feldenkrais Book”, back in 2008, I gave it to my friend John Walker for a first feedback. He’s an experienced Yoga teacher with a love for continuing education and science based publications. I regarded myself lucky to have him look over the draft.

I can’t remember if he actually made a whole lot of annotations, but when he returned the loose pile of pages to me a week later, he just smiled at me and said amicably, „You have a lot of work ahead of you.”

I knew I had to look for a better structure. I researched the popular literature at that time and found two books for inspiration: „Purple Cow” by Seth Godin, and  „Rework” by Jason Fried and DHH.

These authors (and a whole bunch of others at that time) did something exceptional, something that stood out: for each chapter they identified a central concept, and phrased that concise-ly, strong-ly, and very memorab-ly. These were their chapter titles. Then they supplemented each title with a couple of paragraphs. Usually with examples, quotes, and stories – creating a renaissance for story telling along with it. All very tangible. To explain what they mean. Get their point across. Cement their objective into the hearts and brains of their audience.

For me, a pretty novel concept by then. And a bit annoying by now. Because for a whole while everyone seemed to be doing just that. And some are still doing it today. A few weeks ago I bought a copy of the bestseller „The Algebra of Happiness” by Scott Galloway: a headline plus a few paragraphs of text, then the next headline, mostly unrelated to the previous, plus another few paragraphs of text. However, for Scott Galloway I think we need to appreciate the fact that he doesn’t ramble about a single topic for more than a few paragraphs.

I still love „My Feldenkrais Book”. I think the structure held up nicely.

I think the choice of movement sequences is great, the presentation of central concepts compelling. In fact, I flip through it frequently, and I do still recommend it. In fact, I think I should write more of it.