Cliff Smyth's Feldenkrais Learning Resources Pages

Case Studies and Case Study Research

I have always enjoyed reading case studies as ways of getting a concrete and complex sense of a topic. Our under standing of life and learning have been advanced by many thinkers who have used case studies: the neuroscientists Luria, Sacks and Ramachandran, as well as Freud, Piaget and others - including Feldenkrais in his Case of Nora. Case studies as a tool for reflection on action are very valuable in any new field of human endeavor, such as the Feldenkrais Method: allowing the writer to give a 'whole person' perspective on client, to convey the experience as fully as possible and not reduce it to existing categories and paradigms, and to provide a model of effective professional action.

Indeed many of the early editions of The Feldenkrais Journal contained case studies (see published case studies in English list below), as did the early IFF Journal. Copies of the IFF Journal No 2 and No 3 can be downloaded from the IFF Distriction Center website for free (click on 'Professional Materials' menu, select 'Special On-Line' publications). Recently the IFF Research Journal has carried a number of articles of case study research. Feldenkrais trainer Yvan Joly has written an interesting article emphasizing the importance of qualitative research: 'The Experience of Being Embodied Qualitative Research and Somatic Education a Perspective Based on the Feldenkrais Method'.

Feldenkrais trainer Larry Goldfarb has an interesting new case study 'Accidentally on Purpose', which is then referred to by Alan Fogel, Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah, who provides a detailed manual 'Documenting Cases as a Participant Observer'.

In 2004, I made a presentation on case studies and case study research at the Research Forum of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America Conference in Seattle, Washington. Documents you can down load if you are interested include:

the PowerPoint presentation discussing the value and key questions about case studies as a research tool
a reading list of books and articles on case study research from diverse sources (anthropology to neuroscience) (.rtf document - download and open in MSWord)
a preliminary typology of Feldenkrais case studies in English to date (.rtf document - download and open in MSWord).

Please share these materials for study and research purposes - while respecting my copyrights in these materials - and acknowledge the source if you use them for teaching or refer to them in publications.

You can also find

a list of published Feldenkrais case studies in English that I have been able to locate. (.rtf document - download and open in MSWord)

Please contact me if you are interested in discussing, publishing or writing case studies in the Feldenkrais Method.

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