{"id":46694,"date":"2026-01-02T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/?p=46694"},"modified":"2026-01-25T07:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:53:18","slug":"ecological-balance-and-personal-potency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/ecological-balance-and-personal-potency\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecological Balance and Personal Potency"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What is Responsibility?<\/h3>

This was the question posed by a student to Mosh\u00e9 Feldenkrais during his 1975 training in San Francisco.<\/p>

The question arose during a discussion on “Potency” (the power or potential for action). In Feldenkrais\u2019s philosophy, “potency” is not about power over others, but rather the ability to mobilise one\u2019s internal resources to act with clarity.<\/p>

The student sought to understand how this individual “potency” connects with others and with society at large.<\/p>

Here is Feldenkrais\u2019s response:<\/strong><\/p>

“Responsibility means that the individual can organise his life so as to be comfortable without disturbing others, particularly the people he is close to. If he disturbs others, then slowly it becomes uncomfortable for himself. This is the responsibility of movement, responsibility of conditions. It is the responsibility of one\u2019s health. It is the responsibility of everything that the individual does while he is alive. That is very difficult to do…<\/em><\/p>

…So, potency, freshness \u2014 it is the same thing. A person who has the strength to stand for himself, to do what is necessary for himself in order to live without disturbing others… because if he disturbs those close to him, it makes it worse. If he has no strength, he better give up and do what analysis would do, what all psychoanalysts would do \u2014 adapt to the environment. That is, to dissipate and integrate into the environment, to become a vegetable, to adapt. There are some who understood that, like Maslow, and others who understood that to adapt is a weakness.”<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A Biological Vision of Responsibility<\/h3>

For Feldenkrais, responsibility is not a moral burden or a social obligation imposed from the outside; it is a biological and functional organisation of the individual.<\/p>

He invites us to shift our paradigm:<\/p>

  • Potency<\/strong>: This is the strength to remain oneself, to maintain one’s “freshness” and vitality.<\/li>
  • Relational Ecology<\/strong>: Organising one’s life to be “comfortable” is not a selfish act, but a necessity. By not weighing others down, we preserve the very environment required for our own well-being.<\/li>
  • The Rejection of Passive Adaptation<\/strong>: Adapting at all costs to one’s environment is to “dissipate” oneself. Drawing inspiration from Abraham Maslow\u2019s work on self-actualisation, Feldenkrais considers forced adaptation a form of weakness that alienates us from our own health.<\/li><\/ul>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    In summary, being responsible means learning to organise oneself so effectively that one’s very existence becomes a positive contribution to those around us, rather than a burden.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What is Responsibility? This was the question posed by a student to Mosh\u00e9 Feldenkrais during his 1975 training in San Francisco. The question arose during a discussion on “Potency” (the power or potential for action). In Feldenkrais\u2019s philosophy, “potency” is not about power over others, but rather the ability to mobilise one\u2019s internal resources to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":46695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1231,1418,1233,1392],"tags":[1966],"class_list":["post-46694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feldenkrais","category-philosophy","category-psychology","category-somatics","tag-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}