Books by Bruce Fertman
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What People Are Saying About Bruce’s Book
This is a book that we have needed for a long time — the only AT book I’ve come across that fully expresses the potential for human richness, depth, and contact that can be found in what we do.
Marcus Sly – Alexander Teacher – West Sussex, UK
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"Masterful. This brilliantly insightful collection of essays is a graceful and generous narration of Fertman's own experience in learning and teaching the Alexander Technique. Fertman has a real gift for highlighting the delicate nuances and uplifting depths within the practice of Alexander's work. The volume is eminently engaging and the author's quite remarkable perspicuity and empathy with his students shine throughout. Very highly recommended - it's a true treasure trove."
Amazon Customer Review
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Bruce’s writing is full of emotion – love, peace, joy, sadness, curiosity, but quite remarkably, he manages to express this emotion deeply, beautifully and without sentimentality. He sees past the mundane collection of heads, necks and bodies that the technique starts with; past the next layer of how the student makes life choices; and right into the intrinsic emotional core of who the student is. His stories and images draw us into his classes, and then almost without realizing it, we are learning alongside his students. A book to savour and delight in.
Karen Evans – Alexander Teacher – Ashby-de-la-Zouch, UK
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At long last in the Alexander community I can attest that we have a book about what it means to teach, and beyond this, about what it means to have the teacher learn while teaching, and how this willingness to learn while teaching enriches the process of learning for the student, because the emphasis is on mutual discovery, and not on what could or should be.
Tommy Thompson - Alexander Teacher - Boston, Massachusetts
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This book is full of people, full of life. Bruce’s teaching has become an expression of who he is.
Jacek Kaleta – Alexander Teacher – Tychy, Poland
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I love Bruce’s book – every page is a lesson. I love how it’s a conversation, making it so alive and personal to each reader. It’s the first book I’ve ever wanted not only to suggest to, but even work through with a student.
Annie Davenport Turner – Alexander Teacher – Mere, Wiltshire, UK
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How can you get the book
My first book on Alexander's work entitled, Teaching By Hand/Learning By Heart is now available through www.mouritz.co.uk (English edition). If you live in the Americas, it makes more sense to buy the book from Jessica Rath. Simply write to her at jessica.rath@knottinginto.org and she will send it out to you right away.
The German edition is just out and available in hard and soft cover (click here for details). Please order it by writing to Lara Weidmann at info@werkstatt-auslieferung.de (paperback: EUR 25,- plus shipping). The publisher will mail it right out to you. You can purchase it on Amazon.de but it would help us very much if you ordered it directly from the publisher. Thank you for doing that for us.
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What is the book about
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In Teaching By Hand/Learning By Heart I lead people into Alexander's work via different doors. We enter through sport, ecology, anatomy, sensory life, social biology, theology, psychology, metaphysics, mysticism, and art.
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But Teaching By Hand/Learning By Heart is about more than the Alexander Technique. It's a book about people, about liking people, listening to people, seeing people, nurturing people, talking to people and touching people. It's about teaching without teaching. It's about how to create conducive conditions for learning from the inside out.
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Elie Wiesel writes, ‘We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.’
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Here I share with you universes and within them secrets, treasures, anguish, and triumphs.
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In this book you will find a few of the most popular posts on my blog, which due to publishing rights and regulations are no longer available on my blog.
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For some of you this book will serve as an introduction to Alexander’s work. May it lead you to teachers who will accompany you along your way.
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For those of you who have found your teachers, this book may motivate you to take the work ever more to heart, to delve into the depth and breadth of the work.
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And for those of you who are Alexander trainees and fellow teachers, may this book embolden you to take the work beyond
the body into the realm of being, and beyond movement into the world of meaning.
May this book remind you of all that is worth loving inside the work of F. M. Alexander.
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I hope you will read this book and then, please, write to me and tell me what it was like to read it, what if anything you learned or understood, how in any way, if in any way it shed light on your understanding of Alexander's work, on being an Alexander teacher, or most importantly on what it means to be a human being living a life.
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Bruce Fertman - for the Alexander Alliance International