“When I got word of Jim’s death I was shocked. I had been working with him last summer, and he seemed to be just Jim. The reliable, steady man that I have known since about 1997. It must have been in one of the FGNA conferences in Los Angeles, or Detroit. We began talking about Esther Thelen’s work in infant development. One thing led to the other, and I was asking him to be one of my course supervisors for my Antioch University master degree program. He graciously agreed, and guided me through the complexities of neuroscience, his specialty as a Ph.D. in physical therapy.
Jim and I have worked together ever since on various science-based conferences and symposia about the Feldenkrais Method®. There was the meeting in Paris in 2002, where he presented his work with persons with MS and handled his presentation with smooth grace.
That led to a similar symposium in Seattle in 2004, where Jim and Pat Buchanan were my co-workers on the program committee for “Movement and the Development of Sense of Self”. It was a large project. Jim knew how to do that too. His calm competence in handling the organizational storms of such events was pure treasure. The next conference was at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 2008, where he led a meeting of researchers. In 2011 FGNA was celebrating the Amherst training in Hampshire College, NH, in the gym which everyone who has seen a video of Dr. Feldenkrais’ Amherst training can recognize. Jim was the master of ceremonies at the Research Symposium there too. He was steady, informed, humble, and he knew what he was doing.
Again in Washington, D.C. at the Feldenkrais Annual Conference in 2014. All along he had been quietly mentoring Ph.D. candidates in their research projects concerning the Feldenkrais Method®. Roger was a networker, at the center, guiding Feldenkrais® people in North and South America as well as in Europe.
Jim was a founding member of the IFF Research Network.
He joined the Legacy meetings starting sometime around 2017 and had been one of the contributors in that project, too, until shortly before his death.
When Jim, Pat and I initiated the Esther Thelen Research Fund (ETRF) through FEFNA (Feldenkrais Education Foundation of North America), he worked closely with Pat, creating applications and checklists for research funding, reviewing proposals, and managing the budget of the ETRF.
Jim and his wife Cindy were gracious hosts to me in their home near Philadelphia when I occasionally passed through. He had a quiet hand on the rudder, guiding people and projects for nearly thirty years.
I was terribly sad to hear of his death. I will miss his knowledgeable and gentle presence in our Feldenkrais® community.
I am reminded of the last lines of a poem by Stephen Spender:
“The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
and left the vivid air signed with their honor.”
Jim, we will miss you and remember you. ”
Roger Russell, Heidelberg, Germany
“Jim Stephens valued and exemplified an enduring and genuine sense of ‘sustainability’ and ‘balance’ as definitive virtues in his character for all who knew him – and in a most generous, patient, and dependable kind of way.
His many years of leadership serving as Research Chair for The Feldenkrais Guild® of North America had enabled and cataloged a complex and diverse range of topics for scientific inquiry and application to be made more understandable and assimilative to an equally complex and diverse international community of fellow practitioners and colleagues.
Having guided me through the trials and tribulations of designing and implementing controls for comparative efficacy research between traditional Physical Therapy and The Feldenkrais Method® as my dissertation field advisor, I know this to be so.
May we continue to integrate his contributions and legacy into our expanding fields by forging new pathways and sustaining our environment. Speaking for both myself and the Feldenkrais community worldwide, you gave us so much. Thank You Jim.”
Tim Sobie, PT, Ph.D., Feldenkrais Practitioner ®
Gig Harbor, WA USA