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by Lavinia Plonka
Are You Who You Say
You Are?
You go for a job interview and you think it went well, only to find that you didn't
get the job. At a party where you can’t seem to get a conversation started, you
envy someone surrounded by a group of enthralled admirers. While walking down
a street, you pass a couple of men. Hearing a scream, you turn and see them grab
a woman's purse and run off. Why them and why not you? Is there something in
the way you walk, stand, and act that affects others?
Often, people say one thing and do another. They desire something, then unconsciously
sabotage it. They begin with an intention and then find themselves at cross purposes.
Dreams and wishes seem to get waylaid by life's circumstances so that existence
becomes "a life of quiet desperation." Is it possible that even your successes
and failures in life have something to do with your carriage, your walk, your
gestures - and not just the words you say? Body language affects everything -
your relationships, your potency, your self image. These in turn affect your
happiness, personal power and ultimately, your health.
Back pain, sexual impotence, immune and anxiety disorders, headaches and much
more can often be traced back to how you use your body every moment of your life.
You are not just communicating with others, you are constantly communicating with
your entire organism. Your clenched jaw, gripped buttocks, jutting chin affect
other people even as they are affecting your nervous system, skeletal organization,
the circulation of your blood.
Many body language books teach you about reading others: how to know when someone's
lying, who is the right woman for you. Others offer body language tips for business
success: how to close a sale, land the right job. I propose a deeper study - your
own body language. Through that you will discover the possibility to literally
change your life.
Any-Body Home?
Ask the average person if he is aware of himself and chances are, he'll scoff
(slightly dilated nostrils, pulling nose upward in a signal of dismissal, head
moves back slightly in a gesture of rejection as eyebrows come up and toward
center in disbelief) and say, "Of course I am!" But if you ask him to tell you
what his body just did in reaction to your question, he'll be unable to answer.
We all have an invisible sixth sense - the kinesthetic sense. Our kinesthetic
sense is what teaches us how to ride a bike, gives us our spatial orientation
and our ability to recognize a friend or foe. Yet we are as unaware of this
process as a fish is of water. Most of our lives are spent oblivious to kinesthetic
habits and reactions that are constantly affecting our attitudes, perceptions
and behavior. Many are essential. You don’t want to have to think when avoiding
an oncoming car, or about how to chop an onion. Yet even in the above moments,
a whole world of emotional expression exists. Most of the time, we are driven
by unconscious triggers, yet are unaware of much of what is taking place. The
thoughts run on, emotions churn, the body tenses and relaxes, movement is sometimes
elegant, sometimes awkward.
Awareness of this kinesthetic sense could be called embodiment, literally living
“in the body.” By experiencing fully what takes place in standing, walking,
talking, making love or fighting, it's possible not only to attain what you want
in the world – financial success, creative fulfillment, healthy relationships
- but how to be a different person, by understanding and transforming the tool
with which you chiefly -- and unknowingly -- engage the world.
Movement Is My Life
This book is the result of a 30 year journey, beginning with a career in theater.
As a movement specialist and choreographer, I was trained in the classical arts
of mime, commedia dell arté, and many forms of dance from ballet to Kathakali.
I studied physical acting techniques from all over the world - rigorous training
programs designed to make an actor's body a finely tuned instrument. Many years
teaching both theater and yoga to diverse populations, from professional actors
to at risk children in the inner city, afforded me a magnificent laboratory for
study of human expression.
Yet, there were so many mysteries that begged further investigation. For example,
standing on a corner, your eye catches someone walking a couple of blocks away.
It's a friend you haven't seen in 5 years. Yet even at that distance, you recognize
him from his walk, his carriage. How? Why? What is the relationship between
the way we organize our posture, our physical bearing, and the way we organize
our lives? Why do some people seem trustworthy, confident, and others give us
the creeps? What does it have to do with the habitual postural choices we make
every second? I wondered how my own choices interfered with what I wanted to accomplish
in life. I began to question how much of what I call "me" was just a collection
of habits learned from my parents, education and society.
At that point, I discovered a field called somatic education: literally learning
through movement. After exploring several different approaches, I enrolled in
a FeldenkraisProfessional Training in 1990. Much of the information
in this book is indebted to this elegant method of learning, developed by Dr.
Moshe Feldenkrais, which I will explain in depth as the book unfolds. The training
provided me the opportunity to study on a microcosmic level the relationship between
each movement and my experience of myself.
When I opened my practice, generally people came to see me as a last resort.
Feldenkrais is not a household word, in fact, for many, it's hard to
pronounce. It's not covered by most health insurance. So I received the desperate,
the cynical, the "hopeless." Almost everyone who came had physical pain - due
to injury, illness, or just some undiagnosable discomfort that defied medicine.
My students and I discovered the deep relationships between their pain and movement
habits they'd developed over the course of their lives. Even people with permanent
physical damage due to accidents, birth defects or stroke learned that their particular
approach to their physical challenges affected their development.
When people come into my office, I don't see a collection of symptoms to be dissected
and repaired. Instead, there is a story about to unfold. The defiant little
boy who is still daring his parents to say no at age 59. The successful executive
who still shields her face from the blows she received from her alcoholic father
20 years ago. The 12 year old girl with scoliosis who has no idea what it's like
to stand up for herself. We don't work psychologically, but directly with the
physical habits. Slowly the story emerges, sometimes in words, sometimes in an
elegant re-organization of the posture that makes words extraneous. Suddenly,
a young man who always walks on his toes has his heels on the ground. He is more
confident, more balanced. Another man's chest has become softer, it is not jutting
out and frozen, forcing his arms to move separately from the skeleton and creating
shoulder injuries. He realizes he no longer has to protect himself from jeering
High School peers. Throughout this book, we will study the stories that have emerged
from this work. Many times, in order to illustrate a concept, I will focus on
one aspect of an individual's body language. Understand that each person is
infinitely more complex than the few characteristics I examine in a particular
chapter. The truth is, that each person I work with contains a story so rich
in his walk, her posture, his gesture, her face, that to truly do justice to them,
they'd each merit a book of their own.
Feldenkrais himself often said that pure physical rehabilitation was not his aim.
Instead, it was to help others “realize their avowed and unavowed dreams.” He
defined unavowed dreams as the waylaid intentions and ambitions of our childhood.
We give up these dreams blaming circumstance, fear, society or injury,. They
get buried under myths of security and responsibility and our posture then reflects
this. Compulsions arise that forbid spontaneity, risk taking, freedom of choice.
Eventually walking your talk is no longer an issue, because you’ve long ago forgotten
about that screenplay you were going to write, the trip to India you had planned
or the pilot’s license you had dreamed of. My hope with this book is to re-awaken
for you the possibility of reconnecting with that sense of joyful possibility.
By understanding your physical “instant messages”, you can begin to uncover the
potency and vitality within yourself and be the person you say you are.
How to use this Book
This is a workbook. Every chapter contains not just information, but exercises
and explorations that can begin to awaken your innate kinesthetic abilities. I
have found it extremely useful to have some kind of journal or notebook in which
to collect the information and impressions that the exercises offer. Of course,
there are as many ways to record information as there are styles of learning.
I've had students record their input on MP3, use their insights to create colorful
drawings, make flow charts complete with arrows and circles, write on looseleaf
and add it to a binder along with other materials from other sources. How or
whether you choose to record your insights is up to you. The book is designed
to guide you through the territory known as yourself; to be absorbed not just
with the mind, the way we normally read, but including an inner, kinesthetic experience
that can allow physiological and psychological change. some observations. Some
exercises can be done alone, others need people. After all, the study of body
language requires that we look beyond the pages of a book.
While it is tempting to just read a book through, I invite you to use even the
format of this book as an opportunity to break out of your habitual approach to
learning. Take some time each day, each week to explore the physical exercises
offered. While some are easily folded into the course of the day, some will require
you to find a quiet space, to lie down, to take up to a half hour to explore a
movement pattern or habit. If you need to skip over a section because you are
reading the book on the subway, or in the employee cafeteria, take the time when
you get home to go back and try the sequence. Many of these exercises are done
in a space on the floor. Perhaps your living situation or a physical disability
does not allow complete freedom of movement. You can still do variations of these
exercises by keeping them small, or by imagining the sequences that are not possible
to execute. If space is the limitation however, I highly recommend you explore
the possibility of creating a “movement exploration” space in your home.
We have become so divorced from a true relationship with this two legged creature
that carries our thoughts and feelings around, that we actually think that we
know how it works, what it does. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Only
by intently listening to yourself while engaged in movement, will be you begin
to understand your personal incongruities and learn to truly “walk your talk.”
While doing the exercises and exploring the information in this book is an investment,
I guarantee that if you dedicate yourself to experimenting with the information
in this book, you will never look at anyone, or yourself the same way again.
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