Lavinia Plonka – Experience the Feldenkrais Method

In this opening week, Lavinia will welcome you to the relationship you’ve been waiting for: your relationship with yourself.

She’ll share why and how trauma, stress, and illness so often create chronic pain that defies medical support.

Lavinia will walk you through how the Feldenkrais Method uses movement to dialog with your nervous system through the language of movement and sensation.

You’ll start by looking at all the ways your body “keeps score” of all the different insults you’ve suffered — and the baggage that literally constricts your muscles… creating patterns of pain on a cellular level.

Often, your breathing and sleep can become compromised, contributing to more inflammation and discomfort. Your breath feeds your cells. Your sleep literally helps flush toxins out…

In this first lesson on moving out of pain, you’ll:

• Learn how trapped trauma and anxiety holding patterns contribute to hypermobility, poor sleep, compromised breathing, and chronic pain
• Discover how to enlist the parasympathetic nervous system to promote healing and relaxation
• Begin to apply the Feldenkrais motto: Less Pain, More Gain — moving effortlessly and with self-compassion
• Master simple strategies for better sleep and stress reduction to facilitate relaxation and healing
• Practice a visualization exercise using “inner eyes” to soften away pain
• Experience a movement meditation for creating inner spaciousness, releasing tension, and literally giving your cells room to breathe

Back pain has become a multi-billion dollar industry. The statistics of the number of people suffering from back pain are staggering.

How did this happen?

In this week’s class, Lavinia will explain how the perfect storm of too much sitting — at desks, in cars, on couches, and more — combined with the constant stress of contemporary life — has literally imprisoned our backs. In fact, sitting is now considered the new smoking.

Stress, fear, and anxiety also march up and down our spines.

There’s a reason for the popular saying, “I’ve got your back.” It evokes the feeling of knowing you’re taken care of…

And when you don’t feel as though anyone has your back, it can become a vicious cycle: your back hurts from work, you protect your back, your nervous system interprets it as a lack of safety — and makes your back pain even worse.

In this module, you’ll:

• Uncover the true meaning of the metaphors and emotions connected to back pain
• Explore how sedentary habits compress the spine — and how injuries can lead to back pain
• Master your first complete body scan, diving into experiential anatomy — your sense of your inner self
• Explore how the gentle, careful movements of the Feldenkrais Method improve movement without unnecessary effort
• Receive actionable tips for relieving back pain — which you can implement when you’re sitting or lying down!
• Pinpoint the places in your back that are contributing to your pain
• Free your back with a powerful, yet safe, Awareness Through Movement^® lesson

Despite the fact that the word sacrum (the lowest part of your spine that connects your pelvic bones) comes from the Latin word for sacred, the pelvis has gotten a bad rap for the last 200 years.

Many of us were (at least implicitly) raised with inhibition and shame around this part of our bodies — resulting in physical and emotional inner conflict.

This week, you’ll discover how the all-important pelvis is literally your geographic center. .. your legs and spine are actually moving along with it!

From reclaiming your sexuality to feeling confident that you have control over your bladder, reconnecting with your pelvic power will ground and empower you.

In this module, you’ll:

• Connect to your diaphragm and your pelvic floor, and, by extension, your breath and your power
• Discover how your pelvic power center helps you maintain inner and outer balance
• Explore the surprising connection between your pelvis and TMJ pain in your jaw
• Improve your stability and balance by understanding the six planes of pelvic movement
• Learn how to maintain the mobility of your pelvic floor as you age
• Discover the holy and holistic elements of your pelvis — and how your organs, the first two chakras, and the root of the spinal energy (also known collectively as Kundalini energy) affect the whole of you
• Explore movement and visualization practices that are powerful alternatives to Kegel exercises

Your posture tells a story… to other people, and to your own nervous system. This week, you’ll discover how to effortlessly improve your stance to support and even embolden you.

Your posture triggers hormonal responses that become the chemistry of your self-image. For example, slumping, looking down, or even turning down the corners of your mouth signal to others that you’re tired or sad… and causes your nervous system to produce the corresponding hormones that lead to feeling fatigued and depressed.

Many of us have struggled since childhood to “straighten up!” as our parents admonished, but not being unable to sustain it. In this session, Lavinia will share why it’s not your fault.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The difference between superficial “power posing” and actually embodying courage
• How your vagus nerve (a cranial nerve that supports the heart, lungs, upper digestive tract, and other organs of the chest and abdomen) affects your emotions — and your posture
• How your seventh cranial nerve controls the muscles of facial expression
• The relationship between tension and relaxation in your face — and how it connects to your posture and emotions
• Why caving in your chest, pitching your head forward, and rolling your shoulders up, limits your ability to respond to life’s challenges
• Why maintaining a posture that defies the human design impacts your ability to breathe, the functioning of your heart, your sense of balance, and even your vision
• How to check in with your attitude anytime with a posture body scan
• An Awareness Through Movement lesson that equips you to actually improve your posture by rounding your back

Put your right hand on your heart, and say, “I promise you…” Now put your hand on your belly and say the same words. Different, right?

This week, you’ll discover how your heart center is the place for your heartfelt feelings, which are often completely different from your reactive “gut” feelings.

For example, if you’ve been hurt, rejected, or criticized, you may have noticed your tendency to try to protect your vulnerable heart…

You may have experienced your ribs tightening, your thoracic spine stiffening, or your breath becoming more shallow — all of which can lead to feelings of anxiety, sadness, and tension in your shoulders and a tightening in your heart.

In this module, you’ll:

• Identify which emotions are held in your heart center
• Sense the difference between giving and receiving with an open heart, rather than a defended heart
• Learn to embody the physical postures and breathing patterns of tenderness and compassion
• Experience a breathing meditation to expand your lungs and release tension in your ribs
• Enjoy a beautiful seated movement lesson that uses self-compassion to soften your ribs

Many of us have a tendency to distract or even sabotage ourselves from achieving our goals. If your intention, for example, is to write a novel, you may find that you’re avoiding it by busying yourself with anything but working on it. Or, if you know you want to end a problematic relationship, you might instead stay in it, despite your unhappiness…

What does this avoidance have to do with the way you physically move?

In this class session, you’ll learn how listening to the information from your nervous system creates both pleasure and pain in your life choices. By recognizing how you get in your own way and gaining clarity about the internal blind spots that sabotage your intentions, you’ll learn to hone in on what you really want — whether it’s pain-free movement, or the person of your dreams.

In this module, you’ll:

• Heighten your awareness of how you move, think, sense, and feel
• Explore your personal blind spot
• Experience a body scan that identifies physical patterns that may be holding you back
• Practice a movement to help identify your “parasitic habits” — such as self-sabotage and self-criticism — and receive insights for improving your movements and your intentions

By this time in the course, you know what your holding patterns are and what’s been in your way. You’ve unlocked innumerable possibilities. In this session, you’ll discover how to listen to yourself and envision what you want. Moshe Feldenkrais said that his method is intended to help people “realize their avowed and unavowed dreams, to restore each person to their human dignity.”

We tend to put our dreams aside for so long… we even forget we had them. It’s time, right now, to re-envision your dreams… to see what’s necessary to achieve them… and to understand how to elegantly overcome the obstacles in our path…

In this final module, you’ll:

• See your goals, and the path to manifest them in a new light
• Create your own mandala of intention, to help you towards clarifying your dreams
• Receive a movement lesson — culminating all that you’ve learned in this course — linking joyful movement with your ability to see with your mind and heart
• Interrupt your habitual way of “trying” by intentionally failing
• Delight in the experience of “pandiculation” (imagine a cat waking up)

We all need a hug sometimes. This hug will offer new insights into your scapulae and ribs, and will also teach you about the joys of rotation and differentiation — two crucial abilities that are easy to lose in our sedentary culture.

In this information-packed discussion, Lavinia and Cynthia explore exactly what movement is — beyond the conscious ways we move our body and our being — and how the Feldenkrais Method offers us the opportunity to change our movement patterns on every level. There is, in fact, nothing we do that’s NOT movement — from the way we digest our food… to the way our cells bump up against each other… to our every breath. Though we can’t consciously control these inner workings, we can influence them more than we realize. Whether pain is coming from the holding and tension in our body… wear and tear on our joints, resulting in an inflammatory process… or emotional upset and the way we respond to life, Feldenkrais offers relief through the comprehensive examination and resetting of the way we move.

Cynthia Allen has deeply explored wellness and traditional health programs for nearly four decades. Twenty years ago she found the Feldenkrais Method — because of the profound personal benefits she experienced, she went on to train as a practitioner and has never looked back. She is a co-creator of Integral Human Gait theory, and founder of the virtual platforms, Your Learning Body and the Feldenkrais Awareness Summit. She is also a Senior Trainer in Ruthy Alon’s Bones for LIfe work and has been published in the Journal of Functional Neurology, Rehabilitation, and Ergonomics.

In this elegant work, you’ll find inspiring descriptions that unlock your mindbody abilities and get them producing for you. Gain an insider’s look at colorful case studies from the Feldenkrais Method® that flesh out the ingredients of balance and alleviate the fear of falling. Lavinia systematically explains how to apply your own skills to transform the fear of falling into greater confidence and ease.