Your Wish Is My Command

By Lavinia | Published: July 15, 2010

The morning of my birthday, I dreamt I worked in a Parisian parfumerie as a clerk.  All the women were delicate, formerly lovely creatures who still dolled up every morning as if to meet a beau.  There was a distinctive Umbrellas of Cherbourg vibe to their cheery, twittery chatter as they compared new kinds of make up and exclaimed over hairdos.  I felt a deep sadness that so many lives of great promise had ended up in a loop of empty optimism and unfulfilled dreams.

I woke up and screwed my eyes shut to try to sleep longer, “It’s your birthday, dammit, you can sleep in.” But the dream’s heavy atmosphere billowed around my fragile self image as gremlin voices nagged, “Well, how are you any better than those ladies?  Do you have an Academy Award?  Have you published your novel?  Are you a millionaire?”

I looked at the pile of bills, the unpainted floor, the to do list (go to Sam’s Club for brie, pick up cat food, kill the blister beetles, mow the lawn) and fought the urge to just fall to the floor and whine.  What had I done to deserve this?  This mediocre, ordinary life of petty responsibilities, inconsequential worries (Come on!  There’s a war in Afghanistan for goodness’ sake!) and lack of celebrity, or acclaim, or at least wealth.

At my computer were dozens of Happy Birthdays from my Facebook friends.  Most were people I never speak to, some I don’t even know.  Instead of being moved, my bitter attitude scoffed, “Yeah, it’s so easy to just click on my Wall with Happy Birthday, like they really care.” Then came the E Cards, and my wall began to crumble.  Funny cards, sentimental cards, goofy Jacquie Lawson cards.  Tears began to well up.  And then I saw an email from my mother.  She lives in Hospice, dying of ALS.  She can’t walk, talk, eat, hold her own head up.  She struggles to write every word, using her left hand to push her right hand.  Yet somehow, she had communicated with one of the aides there to open her computer and type me a Happy Birthday email.  I melted in incoherent sobs.  My poor husband Ron, who has witnessed countless breakdowns, just stood there patting me saying, “There, there.”

“Why am I crying?” I cried.  He shrugged.  “It’s your birthday, you can do what you want.”

“I just don’t understand, what did I do wrong in my life?  How is it that Robert Downey Jr. can be arrested for drugs and drinking and still be a multimillion dollar movie star and I try to do the right thing and it gets me nowhere?”  Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoy Robert Downey Jr.  I just suddenly saw that the equation my parents tried to drill into me, “Work hard, be impeccable and you will be rich,” doesn’t always hold true.

“You don’t know,” replied Ron.  “Maybe Robert Downey Jr. is still searching for meaning as well.  Maybe all that money doesn’t mean much, so he drinks to feel something or to fulfill a lack.”  Right.

“So it’s your birthday.  What do you want to do?” he asked.  I honestly didn’t know.  Part of me felt like I should keep working.  The list would never be done.  Instead, I said, “Let’s go for a hike.”  Silently I prayed, “Dear God, or Goddess, please send me a sign.  Just any sign that lets me know life is worth living.” As we left, I grabbed a plastic bag.  I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice to find some chicken mushrooms on my birthday?”

We’ve been experiencing what the newspaper has called “a mild drought.”  So hoping for mushrooms of any kind seemed quixotic.  But within ten minutes of our hike, spread out on a log as if they were a presentation, was a spectacular row of chicken mushrooms.  I stared.  I had gotten exactly what I asked for.  For the whole rest of the hike, there was not a single mushroom.

It couldn’t have been a clearer message.. Ask for chicken mushrooms.  Get chicken mushrooms. It’s like God was sitting up there with folded arms saying, “I’d really like to give you what you want.  But you keep sending mixed messages. So I send you a little prosperity, a little adversity. The good and the bad.  As soon as you figure out what you REALLY want, I’ll send it Fed Ex, no wait, I’m God, I can just instantaneously make it manifest.  Happy Birthday, kiddo.” Needless to say, I’m having chicken mushrooms for my birthday dinner.  And I’ve decided I didn’t have an emotional breakdown.  It was an emotional breakthrough.  What a birthday gift.

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Unlocking the rib cage

By Lavinia | Published: May 20, 2010

I was working with someone recently who had a great deal of back pain. She was lying on her side on the table and I was gently exploring the area where her spine connected to her ribs. “What are you doing” she asked.
“I’m exploring how your ribs move,” I answered.
She shot up and stared at me in disbelief. “My ribs are supposed to move?” She was incredulous. After she calmed down, I assured her that she moved her ribs all the time: bending, reaching, twisting. They do all these marvelous movements without us ever noticing. But when back pain, shoulder pain, even neck pain strikes, we rarely think that it might have something to do with the ribs.

While it’s true that the bones of the ribs can look like a cage, it’s an inaccurate image. Each rib can move in relation to the others, coming together and apart according to the activity. The bars of a cage are immobile. For some people, this “cage” becomes almost like a suit of armor, over protecting parts of the trunk. Emotional trauma often affects breathing and posture, which causes the ribs to seem almost stuck, leading to a vicious cycle of immoblization. My ribs are stiff, my breathing gets shallow. My breathing is shallow, my ribs move less, etc. That’s when the ribs do become prison bars! As student told me a story of a faculty meeting at his school where someone had proposed a program he was uncomfortable with. “I sat there and folded my arms across my chest as I listened to the proposal. I don’t think it’s a habitual posture for me, but as the other teacher talked, I felt myself full of resistance to his idea. All of a sudden I realized that my arms were holding my chest so tightly that I was barely breathing. I put my arms down by my sides and instantly felt more air coming in. As my ability to breathe increased, I was literally better able to take in his idea, let it move around in me.”

A frozen rib cage interferes with freedom of expression. After all, even an exhale is an “expression” of air! In theater there is a saying, “The chest does not lie.” This statement infers that your true emotional state is reflected in the carriage of your chest. Unconsciously, we are both communicating as well as reading others’ emotions in sometimes subtle, but sometimes large shifts in the chest. For the last 200 years, science and medicine insisted that the organs in the torso are merely mechanical devices; pumps and bellows that keep the human machine running. The idea that emotional life is somehow connected to these physiological functions was ridiculed. And yet, we would talk about someone walking around with his chest “puffed up.” Or having a “gut feeling.”

Neurotransmitters have been found in the stomach indicating that a “gut feeling” may be a kind of intelligence that informs the thinking brain. New discoveries in the field of neurocardiology are prompting some to call the heart another brain, the seat of the emotional intelligence. While science may have forgotten, or misunderstood its importance in relation to our body language, our “kinesthetic sense” has always been there for us to see as St. Exupery’s Little Prince once said, “Not just with the eyes, but with the heart.”

Here’s a simple exercise to try. Find a neutral stance. Where do you find your chest right now? Is it forward or back of the plumb line? Is this where your chest is all the time? Walk around a little bit and experiment with the position of your chest. Try expanding it , puffing it out. How does that affect the rest of your walk? How do you feel? Sink your chest in and down, as if you had pushed all the air out of your lungs. Walk around a bit like this and notice what comes up.

When you try an exercise like the above, it is important to give yourself a little time to let the posture sink in. Many people are afraid to experience different postures, especially in the chest, because it interferes with our habitual posture, shaking up our self image. But what a wonderful way to experience not only new options for yourself, but how you might better understand others who carry themselves differently from you.

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Standing Back Up

By Lavinia | Published: April 25, 2010

Moshe Feldenkrais defined health as the ability to recover from shock.  Shock can come in many forms: injury, illness, war, physical trauma, losing a job. I recently got a phone call that my fifty year old brother had been found dead of a heart attack.  Even now as I sit here writing this, waves of grief flow over me, bringing unbidden tears.  For a week, I had to be strong: for my mother, his daughters and my sisters as huge undertakings from caregivers to funeral arrangements took place. I don’t know how I would have been able to stay standing without the gentle support of Awareness Through Movement. When I noticed that my body was so tense it didn’t even feel as if I was touching the chair I was sitting on, I stopped and allowed my attention to soften the gripping.  During moments of extreme stress, some  inner voice would softly remind me to notice my breathing (which had often stopped.) Sometimes all I wanted to do was lay on the carpet and moan.  Which I did.  But after moaning, I remained there, quietly rolling my head, inhaling and exhaling, then slowly rolling to my side to stand back up.

As much as we think we are in control of this life, there is no guarantee that things will stay the same or that everything will go according to plan.  Just when you least expect it, fate, fortune, the universe, whatever you call it, comes and knocks you up side the head.  It doesn’t differentiate between rich or poor, good or bad.  So instead of trying to control life, perhaps it’s better to find ways to be flexible.  Then when the blow comes, you can literally roll with the punches and easily regain your balance.

One of the greatest gifts of Awareness Through Movement is the opportunity to connect with thoughts, emotions and sensations while moving.  It allows the nervous system time to process the countless impressions that are streaming in every moment.  After a shock, giving oneself the gift of awareness can speed the healing process.

I’m sure the months and even the years ahead will bring piercing moments of sadness as a picture falls out of a book, or I hear one of his favorite songs, or a random thought crosses my mind.  But I’m standing.  A little shaky maybe, but gratefully putting on foot in front of the other.

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Creative Failure

By Lavinia | Published: February 28, 2010

This past December after one of the many North Carolina snowstorms, we had no power for four days.  No phone, no water, no light. No computer, no TV.  It was hard to read by candlelight.  So I decided to do something I’d been avoiding since the New Age Movement began.  I was going to make a vision board.

A vision board is a collage of sorts. You gather images and glue them to paper – like a visual statement of goals or a non-verbal affirmation.  Mind you, I had nothing against vision boards.  In fact, I thought the idea was kind of cool.  It was the cutting out and gluing part I was avoiding.  The joke, “I flunked art in kindergarten,” was no joke for me.  Give me a bottle of Elmer’s glue and within minutes it’s all over my clothes, the desk and of course, rippling up the images that are glued to the paper.  Scissors, look out!  I can cut myself on children’s scissors.  And it never fails that my hand slips and slices off a part of the picture I was so carefully trimming.

I pored through every magazine.  I snipped images, words, icons.  I layered them, re-arranged them and finally, after two days, had my vision board.  My husband Ron, who is an amazing fine artist, came over and stared.  “Wow,” he said.  “It’s so….neat.”

It was.  Pieces fit together.  No jagged edges.  Cool ideas.  I realized in that moment that as I had been working on the vision board, I hadn’t felt any rush.  No compulsion to do a “good job.” My inner critic had taken a vacation along with the electricity. I didn’t even realize until then, that some little girl in me always felt a pressure to perform, even in doing art.  In that pressure lie the roots of failure.

I’ve met people who are afraid to cook for others for the same reason.  Others have even given up yoga because they weren’t “good at it.”.  And yet this compulsion to perform comes from my own habitual behavior, it has nothing to do with the people we think we are performing for, or competing against.

One of the things I love about the Feldenkrais Method is that it interrupts this habit.  Instead of asking students to perform, it asks students to investigate, to explore, to experience.  There is no one watching how well you raise your head, or lift your leg.  There is no one judging if you have “succeeded” at rolling up the “right” way. A teacher of mine once challenged the class to free itself from “the stench of striving.”  And Moshe Feldenkrais would often advise his students to “Try not to try!”

It’s a paradox, that when I try less, but with more attention, more ease and presence, I accomplish much more than by straining, pushing and trying to perform.  Feldenkrais lessons can help us interrupt not just our movement habits but our behavior, to allow enjoyment of every activity, not just what we are “good” at. And magically, we improve!

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ShapeShifting into 2010

By Lavinia | Published: January 10, 2010

We’re a culture in love with super powers, or rather the idea of super powers. Whether it’s superheroes battling evil forces, aliens from a superior civilization or our own fantastic imaginations, there is a longing to go beyond our perceived limitations. I remember a particular episode of NPR’s program, This American Life where people chose whether they’d like to be invisible or be able to fly. And while these powers are certainly attractive, if we all had them, they wouldn’t be super anymore would they?

I’ve always been partial to shapeshifters. The notion that at any moment I could become anything and everything, that the only thing holding me back from this is some crazy Newtonian notion of permanence, is so appealing. We are told every cell in our body is replaced many times in our lifetimes. Each one of us is just a swirling mass of particles that have generally agreed upon a shape called human, called Lavinia. How I perceive myself is the function of how my brain organizes me. Jill Bolte Taylor, the author of , is a brain scientist who survived a stroke. She was able to observe her brain function collapsing. “This amazing brain had been capable of integrating literally billions of trillions of bits of data in every instant, to create for me a three-dimensional perception of this environment that actually appeared to be not only seamless and real, but also very safe….I saw myself as a complex composite of dynamic systems, a collection of interlacing cells capable of integrating a medly of sensory modalities streaming in from the external world.” One of the things that helped Bolte-Taylor recover from her stroke was The Feldenkrais Method, in one case literally shifting her shape in helping her jaw recover its shape after surgery.

Sometimes when I look into a mirror, I appear to be twenty years older than I feel, other times, I am shocked to see a young face, sometimes thinner, sometimes fatter. Am I changing, or is it only my perception? A Feldenkrais lesson can feel like a shape shifting experience. As perception shifts, so does the actual shape. As my awareness expands to include my back, it begins to lengthen; my arms and legs soften. People smile when they stand up. Not only do they feel taller, they are taller, gliding around the room as gracefully as the people of Pandora in the movie Avatar, long limbed, with keen eyes and easy grace. Somehow, those billions of trillions of bits of data have reorganized our carriage.

I still haven’t figured out how Feldenkrais can shape shift me into being 5’7” or transforming me into a lynx. But it can help you maintain the height you have, maybe even add an inch. And the ability to turn, run, jump and roll, well these are superpowers, they are what make us human.

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Waiting For the Sun

By Lavinia | Published: December 16, 2009

We’re told that one of the reasons for all of our holiday rituals stems from early humanity’s anxiety that the sun would never return. The Solstice celebrated the relief at the return of the light. While we no longer worry about whether spring will indeed follow winter, human existence is still a dance with uncertainty; from the economy to our health. We all seem to long for certainty, yet is it possible that allowing ourselves to “hang out” in the unknown is makes us human?

By facing the unknown, we challenge our perceptions and open ourselves to new experiences. Moshe Feldenkrais once said we move according to our “perceived limitations.” This attitude is reflected in our certainty about ourselves: “Oh, I can’t do that,” “My neck absolutely won’t move,” “They’ll never buy my script.” Many of the things we are absolutely sure of limit our possibilities for the future. Each time we challenge our “knowing” and open ourselves to not knowing, surprises can occur that assist in our evolution. Let’s not forget all those folks who were absolutely certain that the earth was flat, or that Pluto was a planet (poor Pluto!)

There’s a wonderful old folk tale, told and re-told many times, of a man who had one son and one horse. One day his horse ran away. The neighbors commiserated, “Wow, such bad luck!” The man shrugged, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” His son went off in search of the horse. He returned with his horse, plus the pack of wild horses he had joined. “How lucky! You are now a rich man!” the neighbors cried. The man shrugged, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” A few days later, his son broke his leg while trying to break in one of the new horses. “Oh how awful, and just when the harvest is due!” sympathized the neighbors. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” said the man. A war broke out and the Army came and drafted every able-bodied young man. Naturally, the young man with a broken leg stayed with his father.

My resolution for the New Year is to challenge my beliefs in what is possible and to not worry about how things should turn out. I’ll let you know next December how things turned out!

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An Attitude of Gratitude

By Lavinia | Published: November 25, 2009

Congratulations! If you’re reading this,  you still have a computer, you’re not sitting out on the street, and more than likely, you will eat at least one meal today. Somehow, in spite of Bernard Madoff, Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, AIG, all the doom and gloom, all the betrayals and disappointments, we’re still standing (and sitting, lying down and rolling around!)

The holiday season always ramps things up: whether you are steeped in tradition and family or anti-holiday, there are always challenges to our equanimity between now and the new year. It continues to be my commitment to the community to keep prices for classes at Asheville Movement Center affordable. I haven’t raised class prices in several years and I plan to keep it that way.

In those moments when it seems there’s no time and everything is overwhelming, I’d like to offer a paradoxical suggestion: take a moment to do nothing. There only seems to be no time when I’m rushing towards the future. When I’m in the present moment, time doesn’t exist. Here’s a short exploration that can help remind you to be grateful for the present moment. Moshe Feldenkrais called this the “prayer lesson.” Or click here for a free audio version excerpted from my book: What Are You Afraid Of?

Sit comfortably in a chair and slowly bring your palms together in front of your chest. Barely touch them and then separate them slowly a few times. Feel how sensitive your fingers become. Now bring them together so that everything has a solid contact. Begin raising your hands, still palm to palm, toward the ceiling and back down in front of your chest. Notice your breath. Where do your eyes go? Your head? Repeat this several times, taking in whatever information comes up. Then rest.71

Once again bring your palms together. This time as you raise your hands and arms, raise your head and eyes. As your hands return, bring your head and eyes to neutral. Does this feel any different? Is this what you were doing before? What do you feel in your face? In your belly? Rest.

After resting, try the same thing, but this time, each time you raise your hands up, lower your head and eyes. Feel what happens to your back. Are there any images that come up for you? Rest again.

If you wish, you can repeat this, alternating the direction of your head. Allow yourself to exhale each time you raise your arms. Feel how this movement of the arms is connected to your back and chest. 72

Any time you feel insecure or lacking, take a moment to pause with your hands in front of your chest. When you are about to go into a meeting, need to make that call, are afraid you will be inadequate, take a moment. Place your hands together and do a few of these movements, sensing your breath. You can do it full out, or use very tiny movements – it’s not the size of the movement, but the attention paid to the movement that counts. As the movement centers you, perhaps gratitude will replace the feeling of lack that inhibits your possibility.

Thanks for being in my life!

Lavinia Plonka

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Bone Dance

By Lavinia | Published: October 28, 2009

A few years ago, I got one of those amazing viruses that totally incapacitate you for twenty four hours. At a certain point, my fever must have gone through the roof. I began to babble (unfortunately I was alone, so no one took notes of what channeled wisdom from the astral plane I may have imparted). I closed my eyes to try to calm down and suddenly saw my skeleton illuminated, as if all the other parts of me had been burned away in the fever. Every bone, my skull, the joints were visible against a brilliant red background. “How beautiful!” I exclaimed, overwhelmed by the intricacies of my structure. As I shifted in the bed, this magical hallucination animated for me, a graceful dance that involved ribs and spine, clavicles and skull. Then my fever broke.

My husband teased me, saying I was having Feldenkrais visions, but to this day, I can’t forget the sense of awe at seeing my bones moving. Mabel Todd, a movement studies pioneer from the early twentieth century once compared the human organism to a bridge, with the bones being what are called in engineering the “compression members”, like the steel and concrete pillars of the bridge .The muscles, ligaments and tendons are the “tensile members,” the suspension cables of a bridge. You can imagine what happens to the compression members and ultimately the structural integrity of a bridge if one of the cables is not exactly the right length. It would eventually collapse.

Because the human “bridge” is constantly in motion, as well as weight bearing, our suspension cables need to constantly re-organize according to our needs. Sometimes some of the muscles and tendons, due to habits, trauma, tension or other factors, begin to shorten or lengthen unnecessarily, pulling the skeleton out of its most effective uprightness. Rounded shoulders, head protruding forward, pot belly or side leaning all affect our central axis. Then, “ …more muscular effort must be exerted to maintain its position in space, which involves an unnecessary strain and waste of energy,” says Todd in her book, The Thinking Body.

You can’t just “command” your skeleton back into balance. But you can learn new, more effective habits that help balance the intricate relationship between stability and mobility. Feldenkrais lessons become like an inner dance, where awareness leads and all the other parts are delighted to follow. Try this free mini-lesson to see how your skeleton likes to dance!  Happy Halloween.

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Nuances of Thought

By Lavinia | Published: October 26, 2009

Here is an interesting post by Bruce Zeines from the Brooklyn Free School on body language.

Posted in Brooklyn Free School by bzeines on October 23, 2009

We do not have a legitimate television in our home. That is not to say that media does not get to us here—it does. But it reaches us through Netflix or the internet. There are no newspapers here either, and we have by default, moved away from listening to the radio, except occasionally on the internet. The reason behind my media interests is that my key complaint is about commercials invading my consciousness. They not only intend to sell me. They intend to alarm. Cause stress, increase anxiety, and ultimately break us down psychologically.

Now this really has nothing to do with what I want to muse about today. It is just an introduction to my own media habit. Because even though I do not watch TV or network media in general, I have of late developed a like for one particular Fox show which I can access on Hulu.com. That show is Lie to Me.

lie_to_meIt is interesting to note, that my wife and I have both gravitated to particular shows on Hulu. She likes Bones which focuses on forensic anthropology to solve a crime, whereas I have developed a like for Lie to Me which focuses on the nuances of facial and voice inflections to disguise truth. This being used to solve mysteries.

Tim Roth plays the key scientist, Kal Lightman in Lie to Me and is expert at reading facial gestures. Little movements on the face that tell us whether his subject is hiding something, or feeling guilt or any other subtleties that are too in depth to go into here.

The reason this has occurred to me, stemmed from a conversation I had this morning with an intern at the school, and my observations of peoples faces on the subway after I left. As for the latter, I was standing on the train trying to ponder my own concerns, with calm, while at the same time, noticing that I was able to suddenly see someone overtly THINKING. The fellow I was observing, was moving his lips slightly and I could tell that he was trying to work out some major concern in his own life. As I moved onto the train, I could see that almost EVERYONE was in some state of worry or economic concern. One man was sweating profusely, with bloodshot eyes (not well?) as he stroked his forehead. Another, an orthodox Jew, was making a similar gesture, but it had the tone of business concern. All throughout the train I was in a state of heightened sensitivity to the facial nuances. What I saw everywhere was varying degrees of anxiety. This mirrored my own thoughts as I am in a period of very little paying work. I have worked hard to try to stay relaxed in the face of these life changes in order to see what my next opportunity could be. Too much worry diverts my energy, which in turn, blinds me to what is in front of me. These moments collided, and suddenly a truth that everyone was in the same pickle, but hiding it, was made apparent to me. It is one of those key insights that has altered my life at crucial times and places.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to take a workshop with Lavinia Plonka, a movement and drama coach (http://www.laviniaplonka.com/). We worked for only an hour or two, but in that brief session, she opened a whole world of awareness about the subtle movements we all make habitually, and what they infer. For instance, when someone begins to speak, but just before speaking, they scratch their ear or nose, it usually means that what they are about to say is emotionally charged for them. It would also mean that there is an aspect to what they are about to relate, that they have not come to terms with, and therefore are about to alter the truth about what they are going to relate.

In the workshop, she had me up front, with a friend who is a professional actor. We began to mime a whole interaction simply by moving our bodies in very specific ways. He would jut his head forward. I would respond by turning my hips 45 degrees. He would respond with another movement, maybe by looking up, and I would respond by looking down. It actually was very funny to the audience watching and I learned a great deal from the interaction. It made me much more aware of many of the habitual movements I make all the time. By becoming aware of them, it has made me fine tune my manner of self expression, and acceptance of myself in a very deep way.

Now how to relate my intrigue with Tim Roth’s character, to that of being a free school parent. I can’t. But I am talking about sensitivity here. You see, what I observed on the train speaks to something else about our society that we never talk about. Everybody is affected by the economic downturn, but everyone also feels like a failure in the face of it. They struggle to contain their shame, therefore it manifests in the facial worry lines that become embedded on our skulls as we age. To accept ones’ condition, and to continue to face it in, dare I say, a Zen way, then what was a worry, now becomes an opportunity for transition. It is through this isolation, that our problems become perpetuated. In a more perfect world, we could feel free to express our concerns and fears to each other, without judgment, as a way to finding a way out of our situations, or as a way to grow community.

Now the unrelated conversation that triggered all of this, started this morning at BFS.  I was sitting with an intern when one of the children just blurted out an extremely lucid and intelligent remark. It was one of those remarks, that you have to say “that came out of the mouth of a child?” The intern then began to relate to me the many things she has observed since she came to the school this year. She expressed her amazement at how our children learn in this environment. How deep and nuanced are their expressions and how complicated the games that they create.

One game she observed among the younger group was a game called Boys vs. Girls. In this game you have two forts, one with girls and the other boys. If a member of a fort tags an opposing player, they are immediately turned into the gender of the other team. What she found interesting in this game is that some of the younger ones seemed to relish being turned into a boy or a girl. What struck me, was the rich, psychological material that was being explored in the guise of a game. And another observation was that there was nothing malicious or competitive about the play. But it was very aggressive and wild.

Another thing she told me was regarding a certain young boy, who commonly gives the teachers and everyone a hard time. He throws tantrums often. He does not always respond to some of the few rules in the school. Chief among them, the STOP rule, which means that if someone says STOP, then the other has to stop what they are doing, which usually consists of bothering the other. As I am not a full timer at school, and just drop in, my observations of him have usually resulted in irritation, so I avoid too much interaction. But the intern observed this boy, who all the others have a hard time with, in an act of profuse generosity. One day at the park, he took money from his own pocket, to buy a special snack from a vendor, for all the other children to share in. The intern told me that afterward, his entire demeanor changed, and it filled him with a kind of happiness that lasted the rest of the day.

Now I will let you try to figure out if there is some connection between the two varied subjects I have written about in this post. My own feeling is that in the first, I was observing the prison we all live in. A prison constructed of worries, anxiety, shame, fear and shear fantasy of just about everything. And in the second, was seeing the rare situations where those prison bars can be diminished, or just plain obliterated. And if you have learned anything here, it is that I prefer the latter.

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Embracing Change

By Lavinia | Published: October 7, 2009

For a month, I kept banging my head.  Unintentionally, or so it seemed.  Suddenly everywhere I turned, I encountered a barrier.  Obstacles leapt in to connect with my forehead, my temple, the top of my skull.
Cursing, but pushing on, I walked into more doors.  I hit my head on the car door frame more than once.           “You’d think after over forty years of driving, I’d remember to withdraw my head before standing up,” I told myself.
Finally I remembered.  This had happened before in my life. It’s easy to block out klutz memories. This wasn’t just one of my “clumsy phases”. I hadn’t tripped over my carpet. I had not pratfalled down a slippery slope (although at least then the metaphor might have been clearer.) I hadn’t sliced half a finger off while cutting a bagel or a vinyl tile.  I hadn’t poured the entire contents of a pot of stock into a colander with no pot underneath, nor baked an eggplant parmesan while forgetting the cheese. OK, I did perversely try to wipe some “schmutz” off of a scalding hot saucepan with my fingers.  But I do that every day.
These latest klunks however, were head specific.  One evening as my husband Ron and I were cleaning up after dinner, I stood up from stooping to the dishwasher and connected my head to an open cabinet door.          “OW! I’m not happy!”
“I wouldn’t be either if I hit my head like that, are you OK?” Ron tried to smother his laughter with a look of anguished compassion.
“No, I mean, I just realized I’m banging my head because I’m not happy!” I said happily.
Everything was illuminated.
“Why aren’t you happy?” asked Ron.  “Your practice is going well.  You have friends.  I love you.  Everything is going wonderfully!”
“Well where’s the challenge in that?” I retorted.
I’ve been here before.  Even down to the headbanging.  At various points in my life, when life was going so smoothly that it seemed like I was just cruising along, an uneasiness would arise in me. The next thing I knew, I’d be snacking my head into the car’s side view mirror, walking into walls and once even getting hit with a brick. (Thank goodness it wasn’t a ton of bricks). My sister says it’s a habitual love of chaos.  There’s truth to that, although I do believe that within what I perceive as chaos there is an implicit, hidden order. Some swirling world of probability that keeps bringing me back to the relationship between stability and mobility. “One must have chaos within oneself if one is to be a dancing star” said Nietszche.
Robert Pirsig, celebrated for his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,  wrote another less known work, Lila. Lila was a crazy, spontaneous, unpredictable woman who introduced chaos into Pirsig’s stable, routine world.  He mused on the physics of dynamics vs. stability.  A dynamic society is growing, learning, expanding, often after a chaotic event, like the American or Bolshevik revolution.  It is reaching toward a peak, or more realistically, a plateau of stability.  Once stable, it tries to hold on to what it has accomplished.  But then the laws of entropy come in and the society begins to fall apart.  He proposed a way of being he called “dynamic stability.”
Years later, I encountered the same terminology in Moshe Feldenkrais’ teaching.  Dynamic stability is about choice.  I can be still, but ready to move.  I can be moving and know that I am free to stop.  So many of us get caught in one or the other.  I realized that I had plateaued.  Again.
I opened a magazine called Fortune Small Business. In it there was an article about a guy who was a sculptor working at the Met.  He got hit in the head by a falling piece of sculpture.  After months of law suits and bed rest, he discovered a new career making furniture out of scraps.  Coincidence?  I think not!
“But I don’t want a new career!” I said to Ron.  “I love what I do.”  It’s true that in the former head banging periods in my life, the dynamic tension between stability and mobility had propelled me from ad executive to street mime, from street mime to touring artist, from performer to Feldenkrais teacher, from owning my business to moving to Asheville. When I spoke to my younger and wiser sister about how I was feeling, she said, with just a hint of sarcasm, “So, what are you going to do; move, or become a physicist?” Suddenly the world of possibilities is open before me again.  The only things that aren’t possible are becoming a Rockette (too short) or a soldier (I have thing about uniforms.)
I was visiting my mother in Florida last week.  She’s a Luddite who still gets the morning paper delivered to her door every morning.  Next thing I knew, I was reading the Comics page.  In the Dennis The Menace cartoon, Mr. Wilson, the curmudgeon old neighbor is sitting on the stoop quoting Zen. (Oh how far we have come!)  He tells his wife, “Don’t just do something, sit there.”  Coincidence?  You tell me.
It occurs to me that I’m not unhappy because of anything that’s going on outside. It’s something that’s happening inside. It’s the chemistry of discomfort and I’ve named it: unhappy.  And then I need a story to go with it.  But why not just call it growing pains? And this time, instead of running toward something outside myself, I choose to go in.  Like the travelers in Fantastic Voyage, I’m taking a journey within to listen to the chorus of neuropeptides and amino acids that are singing the song of change.  Instead of attaching a story of dissatisfaction with a wonderful life to the discomfiture whirling through my nervous system, I’m staying put and listening. Who needs to burn bridges?

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