Moving Towards a Better You

So I'm reading a book right now called Awareness Through Movement,, by my new favorite movement thinker / practitioner.  The book was first published in 1972 as an introduction to his methods.  

The first thing that struck me upon reading the book was its profound difference from the usual fitness-book fare--even books of that era, which generally touted a vaguely military "manliness" and "readiness" as the main reasons to exercise.  Though he was an expert judo practitioner (he was tapped by judo's founder to teach the art to Westerners) and an avid soccer player, Feldenkrais was no meathead, and he saw learning to move well not just as a way improving health, but actually allowing people to individuate--to become themselves more fully.  In the preface, he laments that people in the late 20th-century essentially adopt the materialistic values of their society, sublimating their own drives and impulses in order to conform to external norms:

...over the years, a man comes to convince himself that society's recognition of his success should and does give him organic contentment.  Often enough the individual becomes so adjusted to his mask, his identification with it so complete, that he no longer senses any organic drive or satisfactions...The great majority of people live active and satisfactory enough lives behind their masks to enable them to stifle more or less painlessly any emptiness they may feel whenever they stop and listen to their heart.

Feldenkrais suggests that one major tool on connecting us again to our 'spontaneous desires,' or "basic organic needs'--those drives which, for Feldenkrais, mark us as individuals rather than simply drones in a hive--is learning to pay detailed attention to our bodies, to our own way of organizing movement, and in the book, he starts to lay out a plan for how readers can do that.

You won't hear rhetoric like that on The Biggest Loser.  And yet--there's something to it.  As far as I can tell, Feldenkrais's methods have nothing to do with a 'correct' and 'incorrect' way of moving, nothing to do with imposing a system on the body, but on helping each person find their own, individually efficient way of moving.