by Lavinia Plonka | Sep 14, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Feldenkrais Method®
So after years of teaching, practicing, writing, and researching, I finally have put together a page dedicated to one of my favorite subjects: Falling. And getting up. You’ll find statistics, stories, products, my Ted Talk and more. And just when I finally...
by Lavinia Plonka | Sep 2, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Creative Body, The Feldenkrais Method®
If At First You Don’t Succeed… “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp Or what’s a heaven for?” Robert Browning How can I realize my dreams without trying? Feldenkrais often exhorted his students, “Try not to...
by Lavinia Plonka | Aug 10, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Feldenkrais Method®
As I was taking a morning walk, in the distance I spied a mangled bird in the road. As I approached, my mind spun: scenarios of its demise, righteous indignation at the callousness of humans, anticipatory anxiety about my potential responsibility for removing it from...
by Lavinia Plonka | Jun 14, 2018 | Movement as Medicine, The Feldenkrais Method®
80% is the alarming number of Americans who will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives. Besides the huge economic cost of lost work hours, medical treatment and drugs (as high as $240 billion a year!), it means there is an awful lot of unhappiness in our...
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 | 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...
