by Lavinia Plonka | Aug 2, 2021 | The Creative Body
I scroll down the NY Times feed with my morning coffee. Delta variant is threatening us. Delta 8 is offering to make me forget my fears. Delta Airlines is offering an escape with flexible cancellation. You know the rest of the headlines. I scroll and find that after...
by Lavinia Plonka | Jun 2, 2021 | The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
Misery or Samadhi? When I was a child, I had to practice my accordion for an hour every day. While I loved the sound of the instrument, I found the endless repetition tedious. I wanted to wail with rock ‘n roll songs, or improvise crazy gypsy sounding melodies...
by Lavinia Plonka | May 8, 2021 | The Creative Body
The other day, a friend told me about her new cleaning lady. “She’s lovely, hard working, and…she’s a liberal,” she grinned. I remember reading an article about the war in Afghanistan where the writer spoke about tribalism and how American ideals can never compete...
by Lavinia Plonka | Apr 2, 2021 | The Creative Body
There is a Persian folk hero named Mullah Nassrudin, the kind of wise fool you find in many cultures’ folk tales. In one story, Nassrudin is standing under a street lamp looking intently at the ground. A passerby asks, “What are you looking for, Mullah?” “A...
by Lavinia Plonka | Mar 2, 2021 | The Creative Body
Growing Neurons? Photo: Ron on an e-bike (2021) It was one of those unexpected February moments when the temperature blasted up to 70 and I turned to my husband Ron and said, “Hey, let’s take the e-bikes for a ride!” The relatively new bikes had been gathering dust...
by Lavinia Plonka | Feb 1, 2021 | Humor/CosmiComedy, The Creative Body
Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash I get an idea. Half-baked. Disparate elements. Nothing comes together. I pace. I ruminate. Then look up the word rumination and discover it has to do with thinking about the past. So if I’m not ruminating, what am I doing? I try to...
by Lavinia Plonka | Jan 14, 2021 | The Creative Body
Photo by Ron Morecraft My husband Ron and I ventured out yesterday to one of the many local antique/flea market venues, hoping for a safe, socially distant, adventure in shopping for nothing. As I perused potential end tables, and fantasized about a $700 antique,...
by Lavinia Plonka | Oct 11, 2020 | Body Language, Humor/CosmiComedy, The Creative Body
I go outside and look up at the stars in the winter night, imagining that the light is coming to me from millions, even billions of years ago. I think of myself, a speck on this piece of rock hurling through space, and I imagine someone 1000 years ago, looking up,...
by Lavinia Plonka | Sep 21, 2020 | The Creative Body
I heard that some people don’t know what to do with all the time on their hands during this “stay home, stay safe” period. Others have begun amazing new hobbies or are running around with their hair on fire juggling work from home, homeschooling,...
by Lavinia Plonka | Mar 10, 2020 | Humor/CosmiComedy, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
I bought what I thought would be a cool, new circular hairbrush that I could use with a blowdryer to volumize my hair (just a few decades late to the party.) After a few curls, my hairbrush got stuck. I tugged. I tried to reverse my way out of the tangle, which merely...
by Lavinia Plonka | Jan 29, 2020 | The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
A brilliant Feldenkrais mentor once told me that we must learn to “follow the yes,” to sense where there is resistance and look for what is willing to yield. In his less than successful comedy, The Yes Man, Jim Carrey portrays a man who makes a covenant to...
by Lavinia Plonka | Dec 26, 2019 | Movement as Medicine, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
I got in the car and reached for the key in the ignition. Except there was no key. This car, which I’ve had over three years, has a keyless remote. You simply push the bright blue button on the dash and voila! you are engaged. But my hand had decided to enact an...
