Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:00
So I had to play the accordion every day. It was like a rule and he would say, you have to practice, you have to, and I said, okay, dad, okay, dad, I'll practice until it's perfect. And he would always say, there's no such thing as perfection. He said, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes a master. That was something that he would say all the time. And so it kind of stuck with me, this idea that mastery doesn't mean perfection.

00:30
That's the voice of my guest, Lavinia Plonka. She has been a teacher in the Feldenkrais Method for about four decades. We have a great conversation about how she got into Feldenkrais, pursuing mastery, and her thoughts on daily practice. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability Podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Schwingammer. This show looks at how we can continue to grow through life's challenges through the lens of the Feldenkrais Method.

01:00
Here's a little bit more about Lavinia before we start the conversation. Body language expert Lavinia Plonka has helped people improve their movement, behavior, relationships, and careers for over three decades. Her unique expertise connects the dots among posture and movement to emotions and the mind. Lavinia's training and professional career have included theater, dance, yoga, and the martial arts.

01:29
In addition to being an assistant trainer in the Feldenkrais Method, she is also a Level C-L4 Teacher of the Elba Method and an Emotional Body Instructor. She was an artist in residence for the Guggenheim Museum and a movement consultant for theater and television companies from the Irish National Folk Theatre to Nickelodeon.

01:54
Lavinia is an excellent teacher and I've learned so much through her's and Candy Canino's Kinesa program. It's an approach to somatic movement based on the Feldenkrais method. And there are four decades each of study and exploration. So I really enjoyed this opportunity to talk with her. And I hope you enjoy it too. All right, onto the interview. All right, welcome. Hi Lavinia. Welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

02:22
I'm great. Thank you, Jeffrey. Nice to see you. Hear you. Yeah, it's so good to have you here. I'm curious if we could start with you giving us a brief history of all the work that you have done. A brief history? As you like. Yeah. You know, you could I guess you could start where I began and in the theater, right? I started out

02:52
You know, it's kind of ironic actually, because I majored in theater in college, but just didn't think that I was good enough. And when I graduated, I went and just got a regular office job in New York City. And it was boring at night. And so I would go and audition for things because I didn't know what else you do. You know, you major in theater, what else do you do at night? And I got into a show.

03:21
without even realizing that it was a special show and that I was the only non-equity person in the show and You know and people were like, you know, you could really be a mime which I had never even thought about and So my whole life just completely turned around at that point and I spent the next 25 years performing as a mime and as a choreographer and a teacher and That love of movement is really what?

03:48
has continued for me throughout my entire life. The combination of loving movement and emotional expression. So from that, I discovered the Feldenkrais method, which as people of this podcast know is a very potent form of learning and of developing a somatic understanding of our emotional expression. And then I discovered the Alba method.

04:16
which was another somatic approach to emotional expression. And I'm currently also a lead instructor of the emotional body. So that's the real brief phases of my life. But through that process, I mean, I've taught Feldenkrais now for over 30 years. So between my career in the theater and my career in Feldenkrais, I'm really 115 years old, but.

04:43
You know, it's just been a blending of all of the different ways that we can find mastery over our ways of behaving in the world and also kind of just trying to understand the big picture of my place in the universe. You know, just a small ambition I have. What is the meaning of life? And that's kind of been the undercurrent for everything. Right on, right on.

05:13
Well, perhaps we will get to the meaning of life question here by then. We'll see. Uh, I'm curious about, uh, approaching the, the Feldenkrais method. What was, how did you come to it exactly? And what was your first, um, interpretation of it? So, you know, uh, I've, I've, I was thinking about this earlier when we were talking about the podcast and I was ruminating about the fact that

05:41
Basically, my whole life has always been when I'm in search of something, an answer appears, if I can just be open. So like with the mime career, that was something that I didn't know about and I could go into a whole big story about how that unfolded, but it was magic in a way. And the Feldenkrais method was the same. I had a lot of back pain.

06:06
chronic back pain that I'd had for a good portion of my life, even though I was this physical performer. And I encountered an article in a magazine, it was an interview of Moshe Feldenkrais. And he was talking about our parasitic habits and our ways of emotional immaturity. And I'm reading this and I felt like I was reading my biography. And so I immediately went out, this was pre-

06:34
internet. I went to my local bookstore and just ordered all anything that had to do with the word Feldenkrais and just dove in. I didn't even know that there were classes. I didn't know what existed. I didn't know that he was dead. I didn't know anything about him. And so my first experience with the Feldenkrais method was through his books, through his writing, and doing the exercises as best as I understood them there. One thing led to another in terms I ended up

07:01
taking a class in New York City. And while I was right after the class, I was talking to my performing partner about this amazing Feldenkrais method. And his roommate came in and said, oh, you're talking about Feldenkrais. You know, they're doing a training in New York City. Here's all the information. I can't go. He literally was holding the information package for the 1990 Feldenkrais training in his hands. And so.

07:26
That's how my life unfolds. I just went, oh, I guess the universe is telling me I have to do a Feldenkrais training. And so I did. That's really how I ended up there. Wow. Yeah, you mentioned the word magic, right? Like you just, here it is. Here's the next step. You see the meaning of life. Like what does it mean? Right. The answer is yes.

07:56
Um, what, what did you think of the training program? Was it immediately, did it surprise you? Did it feel like, oh, this is it? Or did it challenge you? So I, I enrolled in the training without, I had had one awareness through movement lesson by that, at that point. And, uh, I just went for it and I got there and we're all sitting in a circle. And I.

08:25
coming from the theater, assumed that everyone there would be an actor and a dancer. And we're going around the circle and people are saying, hi, my name is Barbara and I'm a PT and hi, my name is Carol and I'm a PT. And I turned to somebody and I said, what's a PT? I had no idea what a PT was. And then there was massage therapists and there were chiropractors. And then my trainer, Russell Delman, started talking about putting our hands on people.

08:52
And I was like, whoa, no, I don't know. This, I made a mistake. I thought this was for actors. And I actually backed out the door and started leaving because I thought I had made the world's biggest mistake. And my other trainer, Alan Questel, started running down the street, chasing me and dragged me back into the training. Otherwise I would have left because I did not know that that's what other people thought Feldenkrais was. I had gotten from the books.

09:22
that I would perform better, that I would be smarter, that it never occurred to me that I was going to touch people, that I was going to in any way learn anatomy. So yes, it was a surprise. And I decided to stick with the first year because I wanted to know more about improving how I move. And it never, again, it never occurred to me that I would...

09:48
turn this into a profession. It wasn't until my last year in the try every year I kept going, I'll do another year. And then in my last year, I went, you know, this is actually kind of more fun than show business. And so that was when I made the decision to try to get the certification to actually do the work that was required to be certified.

10:12
Wow, very cool. Yeah, I think that highlights an interesting dichotomy or I guess a dichotomy in the Feldenkrais work where there's a sort of recovery from injury or challenge or difficulty, and then also excelling in performance. That it's kind of the same process for both in some sense. And I've come to really appreciate the recovery aspect of it for...

10:41
for many reasons, but this idea of Feldenkrais is that he wanted to restore each person to their human dignity. Whatever that dignity is, whether it's being able to play Rachmaninoff to the best of your ability or to be able to walk up the stairs again, to me that became a really interesting thing. And, you know, I had always, I had gone into the theater because I wanted to move people,

11:11
that they had a different outlook on life after experiencing a performance. I was going there, you know, once again I was trying to save the world through mime and you know it was a lot more rewarding at the end of a Feldenkrais lesson when people would get up and go, wow I feel so different, I feel so much better, thank you. It was more rewarding than the laughter and applause in a certain way because I felt like

11:39
You know, it was like, instead of giving them a fish, I was teaching them to fish. If that makes any sense. Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of your mime work, could we hear that story of getting into being a mime? And, oh, well, it's one of those universe, you know, drops, you know, I mean, clearly when I got a job in advertising, I had gone off my path, you know,

12:09
I mean, suddenly I was an advertising executive going for the liquid lunches and meeting clients and all this other kind of stuff. And I knew it was wrong. It felt wrong, but I was doing it and I was very good at it. And then I got into this play at night and, you know, and then I would be riding home on the subway. And every night there was this strange man that would appear in the subway card and start trying to talk to me. And I was only like 22 years old and I was nervous.

12:39
One time I even ran into the local bar and said, there's a guy stalking me. And I didn't understand what was going on. And then one night after the show, and yeah, I have to say it was a musical and I only had five lines, but I was on stage for almost two acts. And he burst into the dressing room after one of the shows. And I was like, oh my God, he's here, he's real. And he just walked right up to me and he says, excuse me, miss, where have you studied mine before? And I was like, what?

13:09
a what? And I didn't even know you could. And the lead and the musical turned to me and she goes, you know, he's right, you would be a good mime. And so the next day I picked up backstage and there was an ad for a mime school. And I was like, okay, well, I'll try it. And I got there. And it was the first day of the mime school. And it had nothing to do with this person. I mean, I was literally directed to this thing.

13:38
And then when we started to do the mime, there was so much that I already knew how to do. It was like, it was like I was born to do it. And that was why I stuck with it for so long, because it was clearly something in my being that, you know, and I'm not talking about just being a robot or touching an imaginary wall, although that's really fun.

14:01
but it was really the ability to learn how to express and tell a story without words. That was the part that was really, really profound for me and really, really interesting. So that was how I became a mime. So I'm telling you, if you'll let the universe do it, it will take care of you. And that's not to say that I haven't encountered many times where I strayed off the path and found myself banging my head against a real or imaginary wall. But if...

14:30
if I just let it, then it falls into place.

14:37
Right. What gets in the way of letting it?

14:43
Um, I would say different things at different times, but certainly one of the biggest obstacles would be fear. You know, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, fear that I don't deserve it. Um, you know, those, those are the ones that I can identify for myself. I don't know for other people what gets in their way. Uh, uh, you know, certainly.

15:12
the time and the other thing is that fear makes a person, in my case, me, sometimes try to over control my life or my situation, close in in certain ways and not be open to what's possible. So when that happens, then I can actually feel the constriction, I feel it in my body, I feel it in what's manifesting in my life.

15:43
Um, and so then I have to, you know, have a good talking to myself, you know, it's, it's, um, it's a process of self study and being honest with yourself. I mean, I can lie to myself lots of times and say, Oh, Oh, this is just happening to me. You know, this, this idea that life is happening to me instead of I'm manifesting what's

16:12
what's coming at me, you know? And I'm not talking about like that I've got the power to change the United States of America or anything like that. I mean, I understand that I'm living in a consensual reality, but my circumstances, I am the architect of my own circumstances for sure. And I think about that a lot. This has got nothing to do with Feldenkrais, but I think about people, for example, refugees from another...

16:41
country who are trying to survive and that they were they were born already in difficult circumstances and what is it that allows some people to escape to thrive to make it and other people no matter how hard they try it they don't I mean there's there's much more mystery there than I can possibly understand and so I I don't

17:07
in any way say that other people should be trying to live the life that I'm living by any means because it wasn't always easy, believe me. Yeah, 100 percent.

17:20
Earlier you described that between recovery in Felting Christ and performance, there's actually kind of a third path, maybe that one that clarifies either paths, and it's towards dignity. And I found that a real interesting phrasing there. How is it that the Felting Christ method has helped you with finding dignity or helping your students find dignity?

17:50
I think there's a number of different ways that the Feldenkrais method has helped me. I've always been interested in this idea of attention, paying attention. And you know, the words, words are tricky, as you know, as a podcast host, you know that language is very tricky. So what one person calls attention, another person might call awareness, another person might call consciousness. So

18:20
I have to be careful with how I'm using the language here, because for example, Feldenkrais didn't like the word attention. He specifically said that attention is what I'm paying to you, or that it's a mental process, where awareness was something more global. But if you look at other traditions, for example, Buddhism or the Gurj of tradition,

18:47
they speak of attention as that global quality. So the ability to learn how to listen to oneself, maybe that's the better way to put it, to listen to what's happening to my physical sensation and then to attend to my thought process, whatever rumination is going on and the emotional...

19:17
uh, fields that is being created by my sensations and my thoughts is I think using movement, especially awareness through movement, which is so slow. Most of the time it can be challenging physically as well, but it's calling my attention to places in myself that are physically

19:47
locked or in some way inhibited from realizing their full possibility. And, you know, Feldenkrais always said that there's four components of action, thinking, sensing, feeling, and movement, and they're all happening all at once. So if I can be more literally embodied in understanding

20:13
what's happening in my shoulder and my tongue and my breath and my stride. I can begin to see how those physical manifestations are a reflection. They're a reflection of my thoughts. They're a reflection of my emotional life. And by clarifying and organizing them, I am becoming more of who I want to be. That's what I think of when I think of dignity.

20:41
You know, for example, Jeff Haller, who I know you know, speaks a lot about finding the agency or the authority in the midline, that clarity of understanding where, you know, what is neither left or right, that sort of straightness, which is another wonderful way of looking at it. I like to think of it as almost like creating space in my molecules that...

21:11
When I'm working in movement, I become aware of those areas that have inadvertently clenched, where I am refusing the world, where I am holding myself away from experience. And then when I soften or when things become better organized, I can actually receive the world in a different way and then respond because of that.

21:41
When I'm closed, when I'm tight, things that the world bounces off of me, I cannot receive what's being given. But when I can find that clarity in myself, then I can actually look at things more intelligently and make more intelligent choices. And when I find myself caught, like in an argument with my husband or...

22:07
feeling like a failure because I just got a rejection notice or something like that. I can follow that and come back to a state of equilibrium more quickly, which I think is really important for people of our culture. You know, again, if you're living in a society where your life is, your very life is in jeopardy, these kind of self-improvement things are almost irrelevant. You're just trying to hold it together, you know, but

22:37
But those of us who are privileged enough to be living in a world where we can actually ask questions, that I think we have a responsibility to do it. Responsibility to do it, to ask these questions, to develop this awareness. Yeah, to be more present, you know, I mean, I think that that we would probably all fight a lot less with each other if we didn't have so much tension. Right.

23:07
I think in what you're describing is a sort of self mastery. And I think the Feldenkrais work is really compelling to me because it is a path for me that seems unending, that there's always some further exploration, some further learning in the work. And I'm curious how you relate to the phrase mastery or self mastery.

23:37
When I was a kid, my dad was extremely strict. And one of the things that I had to do, you'll laugh at this one, my parents wanted me to become an accordion professional. Don't ask me why, something about being Polish. So I had to play the accordion every day. It was like...

24:04
It was like a rule and he would say, you have to practice. You have to, and I said, okay, dad, okay, dad, I'll practice until it's perfect. And he would always say, there's no such thing as perfection. He said, practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes a master. That was something that he would say all the time. And so it kind of stuck with me, this idea that mastery doesn't mean perfection. Mastery means that

24:33
I have the means at my disposal to continue to function effectively in the world. So mastery can mean so many different things to different people. You know, I mean, I'm can master riding my bicycle, be a master of riding my bicycle and or a master at cooking dinner for my husband. You know, it comes with practice.

25:02
Right? It comes from listening to how I use myself in order to do it better. And then some of us just learn how to ride a bicycle good enough to get to the grocery store and other people end up in the Grand Prix. Right? So it's like, where do I, how far do I want to go with any of these things? So in my case, my deep interest is self mastery.

25:32
I'd like, I did not become a master of the accordion. I got to tell you, even though I did practice and, and, um, and I, and I don't regret it because it gave me great musicality. It gave me the ability to sight read music. It gave me an understanding of music theory and composition, but I would never be in an orchestra, um, and I wouldn't want to be.

26:02
That wasn't really what my calling was, but that ability to practice something is an invaluable, invaluable process. And no matter what you practice, and I think each person can decide what it is they want to master in their lives, right? It seems like mastery involves some component of beauty.

26:30
that you're relating to what is beautiful. If it's not about perfection, it's maybe more about us. I don't know. What do you think of this? Is it related to beauty? Cause Philman Christ said, you know, make them possible, possible, the possible easy, the easy, elegant, and the elegant aesthetically satisfying. And to me that aesthetically satisfying is relating to beauty somehow, or the way I like it at least.

27:00
Yeah, he said aesthetically pleasing, I think. Aesthetically pleasing, which is not that different really, but I've thought about that quote a lot because aesthetically pleasing is also subjective. You'd think it would be objective that everyone who looks at a rose would see the same thing. But again, a person who only remembers roses because they were on their mother's grave.

27:29
is going to have a different relationship to roses than those of us who were raised to think of a roses a beautiful thing. So aesthetically pleasing to whom? And I always think about it as aesthetically pleasing to myself, that if I feel, if I feel elegant, if I feel that quality of grace or presence in myself.

27:57
then that is aesthetically pleasing. I don't want to, I don't care about being aesthetically pleasing to others. Theoretically, one would say, well, if I have that quality in myself, I will be aesthetically pleasing to others. But I don't know if that's true. So.

28:19
But I do believe that when we, a lot of times when we see someone who has mastered something, we have that experience of being touched by something aesthetically pleasing. If you think about, you know, watching Derek Jeter pitch or, or, you know, watching Baryshnikov leap.

28:49
There's a quality there that is so effortless and so clean that you can't help but let your mirror neurons join into that adventure. And that is really so special. And I always, whenever I see someone like that, I just, just watching how they move.

29:16
or watching how they play, if it's somebody, a musician, you know, you can tell, you can watch two musicians play exactly the same piece of music and you can tell which one is connected to their body and which one is hammering out the notes. Because, you know, even if you can't name it, if you're not, you know, trained in watching that, there's something different in the quality. You can tell when an athlete is working versus an athlete that's just

29:46
flowing through it. And it's not because they're naturally talented, necessarily, all the way, but because there's a certain connection that they've made with all their parts.

30:02
In the three decades of being in the Feldenkrais method and across all the practices you've had, would you reflect a bit on how you've learned to practice?

30:21
Well, there's no question that if I don't lie down on the floor and roll around at least a couple times a week, I lose that connection. There's something about life that keeps coming at us, right? And that that's that keeps demanding that I respond, respond, respond or react, react, react.

30:52
brings back some of my old habitual patterns.

30:58
I have a daily meditation practice. I try, I don't think I've skipped very many days in the last 40 years. It's a way of grounding myself. I have a journaling practice that goes right along with the meditation practice, they're kind of the same. So what I'm saying is, I think each person who really wants to experience

31:29
Self-mastery needs time, needs to give yourself time for self-reflection and self-care. And I think that for some reason a lot of people don't value that and don't realize that when I give myself that half hour of meditation or that 20 minutes of writing,

31:56
that it's going to make me more effective for the rest of my day, because there's a clarification.

32:05
of my own inner process that's taking place. Or if I lie down on the floor and give myself time to explore my relationship to movement, it brings me back to remembering what's important for me and giving me space. I mean, there's a sense of spaciousness that occurs when we're...

32:32
tuned into our physical experience. And that sense of spaciousness allows me to see a bigger picture about my life and about my external circumstances. So I don't know, did I answer your question or did I ramble again? Oh no, that was great. Yeah, no, that was great. So in terms of...

32:57
learning to practice, I guess I'm pointing to this towards people new in this practice. Any tips for people early in their practice? What have you learned in terms of how to approach the way of being on this path of mastery? Well,

33:23
you have to, you have to, that's scratch that you don't have to do anything. But you, you, you want to respect that growth takes time that in order, you know, enlightenment.

33:50
I guess every once in a while we read about somebody who went up to the mountain top and was enlightened or went on a vision quest and was enlightened. But a lot of times whatever happened in those moments, those transcendental moments, don't last. You have an ayahuasca experience and then it fades into memory as, you know, the

34:15
rent is due and the baby's crying and all that, you know, how do I continue my path towards self mastery? And there has to be some desire to continue to investigate, to continue to ask questions of oneself, to continue to go inside. And just starting out, I would say two things.

34:44
If you're just starting out, give yourself at least 10 minutes a day to just sit quietly in a room. You don't have to say it's a meditation practice or anything. Just try to sit still for 10 minutes and see what takes place. I would also say study how you move, however you want to do that, whether it's in your sport.

35:11
or in your dance or doing something like a somatic education process so that you can start to see what it is that you're doing you know we're quoting feldenkrais you know and he always said if you know what you're doing you can do what you want what does that mean to know what i'm doing to literally know that i intended to answer the phone in that way and i picked up the phone and i

35:41
hear my own voice and I sense my breath as that's taking place to actually be present to my inner experience as I'm having an outer experience. And so one of the best ways to do that is to do these slow meditative movements that are part of the Feldenkrais method. And I'm saying part of because there are movement experiences and

36:09
Feldenkrais lessons that are quite challenging. And people can enjoy them because you start to see the potential of your ability to move, but you might not necessarily find your own personal self mastery in just those movements. I think you need both. You need to see the potential, but you also need to slow it down. So mostly it's about making a commitment to yourself.

36:38
One of my spiritual teachers used to say, you have to make an appointment with yourself. Every, you know, whatever, every day, you can put it in your appointment book. I have a colleague who writes in her appointment book every single day at 12 o'clock, remember yourself. And she looks at her book and goes, oh right, it's noon. It's time for me to remember myself, you know? But it's literally an appointment that we keep.

37:06
with some part of ourselves. And that those are the things that I would say are great for beginning. You don't have to be religious or spiritual to find that, you know, and Feldenkrais often said that his work is not a spiritual experience. He just wanted the human machine to function as it was designed to function. And he talked about how disorganized we are.

37:35
And that's why we can't get anything done, is because one part of me is cross-motivated with another part of me. And once I start to function better, then my life feels like a spiritual experience. For the human machine to function as it's designed. How is the human machine designed?

38:04
Oh sure. Yeah, what are we designed for? Yeah. It's a good question. It's a really good question because you could say that, you know, we're just designed to reproduce, right? Just designed to reproduce and keep the chain going because the planet needs humanity for some purpose. So is there a way that the human machine can function so well?

38:35
that it expands the possibility of what the machine can do.

38:44
In other words, you know, you could be a mediocre basket weaver because you're talking and complaining at the same time as you're weaving baskets, or you can be the ultimate basket weaver because every part of you is connected to the movement there and the clarity and even the metaphor that's involved in the weaving that's taking place within you.

39:13
You know, I'm not, I'm not speaking about heaven. I don't know about that. Right. Yeah. Uh, recently I talked on this podcast about Feldenkrais' definition of health. The two part definition. One is sort of your ability to recover from shock. And the second is your ability to pursue your dreams. And it seems like there's something in that and what you're saying here about

39:43
What is that dream specifically? Well, it's going to be somewhat unique to you, right? And then to bring that forward.

39:52
Yeah, and-

39:56
You know, it's interesting that you brought that up because when I was younger, I would say my dream was to write. So how did I become a mime, right? Talk about going in another direction, and yet that direction clearly was necessary in order for me to come back to it. And when I was in my Feldenkrais training, this quote was often,

40:23
leveled at us in different ways, this ability to pursue your avowed and unavowed dreams. And one of my trainers was a man named Mark Rees, who's no longer with us. And he was quite the talker. He, he would expound. He was an amazing philosopher as he taught our lessons. And I was kind of, you know, in awe and intimidated.

40:52
but I decided that I was going to muster up the courage at one of our evening gatherings and ask him how I could pursue my dream of writing. How, you know, I'd gone way off track and this is what I wanted to do. And I went up to him and I said, how can I pursue this dream that I've squashed of writing and of being a writer? And he looked at me and he went, right.

41:20
I was offended. It was the shortest answer he'd ever given to a question in all the years I knew him. And it was, I just, I was dumbfounded. It had just like never occurred to me that I should just start writing. And so, you know, thus my writing began. You know, so, and of course, my dream of being a writer when I was a kid,

41:50
It wasn't necessarily going to be the same dream of fulfilling that as a 40 something year old woman when I began, right? Just like somebody who dreamed to be a ballerina now discovers Feldenkrais, it's not like they're going to now be an American ballet theater, but they can find a way to reawaken whatever it was that was in that dream that feels fulfilling for them.

42:19
So yes, I think that this work can be very, very helpful for helping people clarify what they want, let go of their regrets of what could have been and move forward. Right. Well, speaking of moving forward, do you have a sense of what direction you're headed? Where are the edges of your path? Which direction is that going?

42:49
It's kind of, I'm kind of in an interesting place right now because I feel like I'm in the middle of my last dream for myself, right? I had had a dream that I would begin to teach large things online and that has manifested. And then I had this idea of putting all of my work together into a training.

43:16
And that's what I'm in the middle of right now is this training that is really quite, it's very rich and it's taking up a lot of my mental space. But just recently, it's interesting that you're bringing this up, just recently I felt like a kind of an opening of what is possible next.

43:43
What is, what is, you know, where do I want to go next? And I think about the things that give me the most joy, teaching, traveling, being creative. So right now I'm staying open to how that might come together. I'm not trying to make anything happen right now because I'm fully immersed in

44:13
doing this training and really enjoying the richness of the learning that's coming to me because of it and the growth of the collaboration between myself and Candy Canino, who's my integration facilitator for this training. So I, you know, I don't have an answer as to where it will go next. There's some opportunities on the horizon. You know, some people have contacted me, but you know, I also

44:42
want to get back to writing. I mean, you know, I don't write to make money. I write to clarify my thinking and then to share it with whoever is interested in it. So, you know, every few years I'll publish a book that a few people will appreciate. But my intention in my writing is to continue to clarify my own search.

45:10
for understanding myself and how all these stories come together. Actually, I had wanted to tell you a fate story as if the rest of my life isn't about fate. But, you know, when you said, when you started with the Feldenkrais Method. So when I was about, I think I was about seven years old. I'm not sure how old I was, but I was incredibly clumsy. I had some real movement problems and yet I loved movement and I was always trying things.

45:39
And one day I decided that I was going to try to figure out how to do a headstand. And I'm in the middle of the living room, trying to kick up my legs in the air, falling over, kicking my legs up in the air, falling over. And my father walked in the living room and he's watching me and he goes, who do you think you're trying to be? Ben Gurion? And then here I am in the middle of my training.

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And they flashed this picture of Ben-Gurion standing on his head and telling me in my Feldenkrais training that it was Moshe Feldenkrais who taught Ben-Gurion to stand on his head. So I felt like this kind of bookend kind of thing of my dad telling me this in an unforgettable tone. I didn't even know who Ben-Gurion was, but it was just, you know, it was, it stuck in my head and then there it was. I was trying to be like Ben-Gurion.

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Anyway, that's my fate story. Wow, I bet he had no idea where you would go. No, of course not. And he never understood what Feldenkrais was. Wonderful. Lavinia, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk with me. How can people reach you or contact you? It's easy. My website is my name.

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laviniaplanca.com. And as far as I know, I'm the only one in the world. So there's not too many copycat sites of laviniaplanca.com. And I'm on Instagram and Facebook, all my name. So if you're interested, please, I love to answer questions. All right. Is there anything you have coming up? I know there's a lot of unknowns in the future, but if you wanted to direct people to something in particular.

47:35
You know, the only thing I have right now that's really open to the public is that I Every month or so I do a series of four online classes on Thursdays for people Anywhere in the world who want to join my group? That we have a theme we study for four weeks. Then we take two weeks off and then we explore another theme. So There's always a Thursday series coming up

48:03
That's happening. Other than that, everything I have is pretty booked until after January. So check back with me after then. I'll probably have something going on. Awesome. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure, Jeffrey.

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I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lavinia Plonka. You can find the links to connect with Lavinia in the show notes. If you would like to learn more about the Feldenkrais Method and its benefits, you can always check out my free guide, The 9 Surprising Benefits of the Feldenkrais Method, in the show notes too. I invite you to talk about the ideas you hear on the show with a friend. Reflecting through conversation with others helps deepen our learning.

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And the question I would like to leave with you today is, do you have a daily practice? How might Lavinia's thoughts influence your daily practice? Thank you for your attention.