Walking Your Talk

Description

In Walking Your Talk, award-wining performer and movement teacher, Lavinia Plonka, reveals the fascinating connection between how you move and how you feel. What’s more, Plonka shows how changing our movements and body postures can be a crucial first step in altering our emotional behaviors and improving how we are seen by others.

Drawing from her years of experience as a Feldenkrais Method® instructor, Plonka provides simple exercises, thought-provoking lessons, and real-life examples that help you grasp the relationship between your movement patterns, and your emotional state. She demonstrates how to develop a kinesthetic “sixth sense,” which will empower you to effortlessly command your postures and gestures, and change your self-sabotaging attitudes and expressions to new, more effective ones. You will then be able to embody your words and literally “walk your talk.”

After beginning with an overview of both historical and modern ideas about the correlation between bodily movement and human emotion, Plonka then addresses each major area of the body – and the psychological baggage held there. Through exploratory exercises, we learn:

• how we carry stress – from responsibilities, family issues, and financial burdens – in our shoulders;
• why we “freeze” the pelvis – the bodily center of personal freedom, power, spontaneity, and sexuality;
• the self-confidence (or lack thereof) we convey through our carriage.

Listen to the Companion Audios

1. The Mechanics of Walking
2. Listening To The Hand
3. Lip & Jaw Service
4. Putting Your Head In It’s Place
5. Opening The Nose
6. Relaxing The Eyes
7. The Pelvic Clock
8. The Breath Of Life
9. The Real You
10. Every Move You Make

Walking Your Talk Worksheets

Breath Quality Worksheet
Goal Setting Worksheet

Whether she is examining how a depressed chest can make us feel psychologically depressed, how body language is used (or abused) to deceive others, or how loosening our pelvis can help us break a life long cycle of self-destructive behavior, Plonka is always good-humored, caring, and insightful, guiding you to a deeper awareness of how changing your posture has the potential to transform your whole life.

What people are saying about Walking Your Talk

“In this accessible paperback she explores the basics of body language with special chapters devoted to legs, arms and hands, chest, pelvis, head, and face…… The most interesting chapter is “Giving and Receiving — The Arms and Hands” where Plonka also covers the shoulders. Each joint in the body reveals aspects of the emotional life. The shoulders have been called the hiding out place of the emotions. She points out that the term “to shoulder responsibility” has been taken literally by many people who walk tensely with their shoulders raised.” ~ Spirituality & Practice

“An invigorating investigation into how the body carries, stores and expresses emotions… ” ~ Body + Soul Magazine

“I like that Lavinia brings people from her workshops into the text of the book, allowing us to see ourselves through the body challenges of real people who have worked through them. ….It is clearly written, and the depth of Lavinia’s experience with the method shows in the exercises as well as the stories.” ~ Western North Carolina Woman