by Lavinia Plonka | Apr 14, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Feldenkrais Method®
My TEDX talk is finally live! In celebration, I thought I’d re-post something I wrote last month after it was over. For the last two months, I’d been rehearsing my upcoming TEDX talk. I needed to know these 18 minutes like my own name. I rehearsed in my...
by Lavinia Plonka | Apr 8, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Feldenkrais Method®
When I was a little girl, my father, a small man, would brag about his strength. “Hit me, here!” he’d pound his belly, which felt hard as a rock to me. Like most Westerners, I learned to define strength with a “hard core,” abs of steel, a...
by Lavinia Plonka | Mar 23, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Feldenkrais Method®
The truth is out. There is no quick fix for your back pain. Not in the way you have been conditioned to think of it. Back surgery has been shown to be ineffective most of the time, and often makes things worse. And by now, everyone knows what happens when painkillers...
by Lavinia Plonka | Feb 11, 2018 | Movement and The Spirit, Movement as Medicine, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
I’m not a fan of what I call “Hallmark holidays” where industry has either manufactured a sentimental responsibility like Mother’s Day or hijacked a tradition. I’m speaking of Valentine’s Day. You can’t get a restaurant reservation. Flowers quadruple in price....
by Lavinia Plonka | Jan 13, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
The first time I wrote 2018, I felt different. All year long, I’d been writing 7, across and down, always descending, never ascending. Then 2018 came around. Literally. Down, around and up, an infinite loop of movement. No matter where I started, it was able...
by Lavinia Plonka | May 11, 2017 | Movement as Medicine, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
The other day in class, we were doing a lesson that involved tilting your legs one way, bending the chest the other way, rolling the head and whistling Dixie. OK, just kidding about the whistling. At one point a student exclaimed, “Wait! Wait! My brain is...
by Lavinia Plonka | Apr 21, 2017 | The Creative Body
A couple of years ago, I was privileged to write a short article for Parabola Magazine about the experience of an Awareness Through Movement class. I just learned that they have recorded my article for a podcast – which I am happy to share. My story begins...
by Lavinia Plonka | Mar 9, 2017 | The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
The other day, I was teaching a lesson that put the hand into what some people call “backbend” position, a term which is unfamiliar for many. So I suggested that people place the hand on the floor with the fingers pointing toward the shoulder. One woman...
by Lavinia Plonka | Feb 10, 2017 | Humor/CosmiComedy, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
Now that Ringling Bros. have announced their final season, I find myself reflecting on the word circus. What will happen to it, if there is no more circus? Will it re-boot itself to mean something new? After all, the original “circus” was simply the arena...
by Lavinia Plonka | Jan 7, 2017 | Movement and The Spirit, Movement as Medicine, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
They say if you bang a drum long enough, people start to listen. Imagine my delight when I came across this NY Times article by Thomas Friedman. Ever since I read Antonio Damasio’s seminal book, Descarte’s Error, I’ve been trying to tell people,...
