Moshe Feldenkrais published Jiu-Jitsu and Self Defense as a training manual for Haganah recruits in 1930. The Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization, which sixteen-year-old Moshe Feldenkrais joined at its inception in 1920. Ten years later, this book describing his training method was published based on a decade of field experience.

His years of hand-to-hand combat spurred Moshe to write this book that presents his unusual self-defense method. The book is based on all movements of defense, where the first movement is the natural reactive movement that a person does without thinking. He concluded that any effective self-defense system must be based on a person's automatic movements when attacked.

Shortly after Jiu-Jitsu and Self Defense was published, Feldenkrais left Tel Aviv to continue his education in Paris, where he met Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo. After reviewing Jiu-Jitsu and Self Defense, Kano engaged Feldenkrais to co-found the Jiu-Jitsu Club de France.

Jiu-Jitsu and Self Defense is the first blossom of Moshe's genius. This book contains the seeds that germinated and, many decades later, grew into the Feldenkrais Method®.