2009 SRC Report February

With the help of our consultant, Dr Wolfgang Looss 1 we 2 mapped out the current international structures and desires for change. As a result, we were helped to see more clearly the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that make up the “Feldenkrais Community” and to agree on some proposals for change.

Since 1992, we have a “bottom-up”, democratically organized professional umbrella association in the IFF. Parallel to it, we have an older TAB structure with roots in the group of trainers who initiated it. Today the trainers have a small role in this structure, which in terms of policy development is stuck in the gridlock of the “policy to change policy” 3. We suggest IFF Member representatives go through a similar mapping exercise at the 2009 Assembly to ensure we share our understanding of today’s situation; and for Dr Looss to help us clarify where we are at in organizational development terms.

We discovered thatwe have been attempting to regulate quality (of practitioners) through complex rules and regulations, while a more effective way to ensure quality is through culture. By this we mean that we need to rely on the baseline purposes and principals that underlie our training policy, and then encourage a culture of learning, investigation, sharing, innovation, even competition, to encourage quality.

During our February meeting, we came to see and agree that the decision made years ago to exclude decisions on training policy and accreditation from IFF was a wise one and we are grateful to our colleagues at the time for making it. This helps IFF to fully take on its identity as a federation of national Feldenkrais associations and guilds. From this perspective, it does not make sense to include TABs as members of the IFF, and we recommend that TAB membership in IFF come to an end.

So, decisions about training policy need to be made not in the IFF, but within the training structure: currently the TABs and their Governing Bodies. Our current system for forming policy is complex, expensive and cumbersome. In our discussions with Dr. Looss, we came to the conclusion that the best practical change we as a community could make would be to shift responsibility for training and accreditation to the national-guild level. Then the national associations and guilds could adopt training policies which suit the regulatory climate in their countries. These can mirror the current rules; introduce changes; abandon the rules or reduce them. This change would mean abandoning the 3-TAB system and the “policy to change policy”.

In summary, our proposals are:

1. Representatives from Guilds, TABs and Governing Bodies come to the IFF Assembly to get more detailed information and to participate in a mapping process on April 30.
2. That training policies become the responsibility of national guilds, and that the 3-TAB system be abandoned.
3. The TABs no longer be members of IFF.

(Proposals 2 and 3 are our recommendations; it remains to be seen what the mapping process at the Assembly concludes.)

Background

This process started when the Governing Bodies commissioned what became the IWG reports A and B. See (link to be inserted) These reports were presented at the IFF Assembly in Soesterberg 2006 and further discussed in Bordeaux 2007, when the first Structural Review Committee was appointed. The report of the first SRC to the 2008 Assembly, also in Soesterberg, is available at (link to be inserted) and so is the SRC working draft dated 25 June 2008 on purposes and principles.

The 2008 IFF Assembly appointed a new Structural Review Committee with two members continuing from the previous one: Annette Orphal and Sonia Commentucci, and three new members: Lester Loops, Luz Stanton and Sabine Merz. The Assembly also agreed on the tasks of the SRC. Lester was never able to join in the work of the group. So, the first report (circulated last year) was written by the remaining four suggesting a somewhat different process than originally envisaged. Responses from IFF Members to this report were few, but in favour of the process suggested by SRC. Following Luz' resignation from the SRC at the end of the year, the IFF BOD agreed with the SRC to go ahead with the planned February meeting with the consultant Dr Looss. We also agreed that the group needed strengthening. The SRC invited the BOD to send a representative and welcomed the BOD's offer to search for one or two persons more who could make valuable contributions to the meeting and also help in sharing the outcomes. As a result, Gwendolyn Schwinke, Helena Gezelius and Keith Johnson participated in the 6-8 February meeting. At the beginning of this meeting it was agreed that Gwendolyn step in as a member of the SRC (in a sense replacing Lester), while Helena and Keith participate in the process as resource persons.

The Governing Bodies have remained closely involved throughout the process and representatives are invited to the 2009 Assembly.

Expanded Structure Review Committee

20 Feb, 2009

1. Information on Dr Looss’ website, www.looss-consult.de, is in German, but he has wide international experience as organizational development consultant.

2. Annette Orphal, Gwendolyn Schwinke, Helena Gezelius, Keith Johnson, Sabine Merz and Sonia Commentucci. For information on the process leading up to this meeting, including earlier reports, see separate text on background at the end.

3. This policy paper details a process to achieve consensus, making policy agreement a drawn-out process depending on full agreement among all involved.