Heinrich Jacoby

Heinrich Jacoby (1889–1964), originally a musician, was a German educator whose teaching was based on developing sensitivity and awareness. A great role in his researches played the collaboration with the colleague Elsa Gindler, whom he met in 1924 in Berlin. With the advent of nazism in 1933 Jacoby was forced to leave Germany, but he continued his work in Switzerland.

Moshe Feldenkrais, who was trained as an engineer and physicist, told of being quite surprised when Jacoby taught him how to draw credibly in just a few minutes. Jacoby and Feldenkrais were among a small group of European 20th Century innovators who emphasized the "self" in self-development, so that as in the zen inspired arts such as archery or judo or even flower arranging a skill was not an end in itself. Practicing a skill was a path to greater awareness.

The work of Heinrich Jacoby was an important influence to body psychotherapy through the workshops that Charlotte Selver, student of Elsa Gindler, gave to major body psychotherapists at the Esalen Institute in the 1960s.