Lavinia Plonka
Explore somatic movements, mind-body exercises, and meditations to create a loving relationship with yourself — so you can move beyond limits you’ve unknowingly placed on yourself and become who you’re meant to be.
When you heighten your awareness of the way you physically move through life, you forever change the way you see yourself and your potential...
You expand your sense of moment-by-moment emotional choice, and unlock new freedom…
To put this potential into action, you’ll first need to overcome limits you’ve unknowingly placed upon yourself.
The Feldenkrais framework — a unique, holistic approach to physical and emotional healing — empowers you to access the full potential of your inner archetypes that are waiting to awaken and strengthen you.
Like everyone, you have aspects of each of these four archetypes within you...
- The Warrior’s energy evokes courage and power — helping you ground and show up as a leader
- The Teacher’s energy inspires compassion and wisdom — showing you how to listen deeply and respond from your heart
- The Healer’s energy offers you the ability to... well, heal — focusing your attention on the power in your hands to nourish yourself and others
- The Visionary’s energy gives you insight and forethought — allowing you to see beyond literal vision to the clarity you need to understand your needs and those of others
Which aspects of the do you have trouble believing are living within you, waiting to be unleashed?
Embark on this empowering 12-module advanced course from body language expert and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Teacher Lavinia Plonka's, which includes at least 10 Awareness Through Movement lessons. You’ll discover gentle Feldenkrais movements to deeply understand the transformative archetypal energies within you.
Lavinia's course will guide you to ask yourself, What are my perceived limitations? (specifically in relationship to the archetypes).
This course will help you reach a place of balance and uncover new possibilities for how these archetypes show up in your body and your life.
You’ll learn simple, yet sophisticated movements to alleviate pain, improve your range of motion, build upon your resilience, and liberate essential parts of your personality.
You’ll discover how mindful movement can literally change your brain’s habitual patterns so you can move into the life you want.
With Lavinia's course as your guide, you’ll refine your ability to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency — not through muscular effort, but through increased consciousness.
You’ll look closely at the powerful emotions, as well as physical and mental blocks, that are cropping up in your life. As you’ll discover, these challenges are all related to each other...
As you put your inner archetypes into action, you’ll explore the link between your inner and outer experiences — and discern how your physical movements reflect your feelings about your deepest potential and your place in this world.
During this experiential course, you’ll:
- Experience at least 10 of Lavinia’s Awareness Through Movement lessons to increase the flexibility of your body and mind, clarify your self-image, reimagine your possibilities, and more
- Learn how these Awareness Through Movement lessons will teach you to track and release your interfering habits (as well as your back pain!)
- Move through an ongoing meditative sculpting practice to envision your Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary self-images — and re-envision your life
- Release unnecessary tension in your hips, shoulders, and neck that interfere with your personal clarity
- Learn to work with your personal “kryptonite,” based on your archetypal characteristics
- Embrace yourself to free your ribs
- Improve your ability to breathe in ideas and breathe out compassion
- Create your wellbeing mantra/affirmation
- Move through an ancient meditative practice to reframe your relationship with physical and emotional suffering, heal your wounds (both visible and invisible), and more
- Re-examine your perceived limitations and understand how they impact your decisions
- Learn to turn your inner visions into outward creations with a powerful drawing exercise (no art experience required!)
- Rewrite your autobiography to reflect your new possibilities
What You’ll Discover in These 12 Modules
In this 12-module transformational intensive, Lavinia guides you through the somatic movements, mind-body exercises, and meditations you’ll need to create a more loving relationship with yourself — so you can move beyond limits you’ve unknowingly placed on yourself and become who you’re meant to be.
Meditative Sculpting for the Archetypes
During this 12-module training (which includes complete demonstrations and practice sessions), Lavinia also introduces fascinating practice, meditative sculpting for the archetypes.
This course will show you how to create a clay sculpture that brings you a tangible experience of yourself… to bypass your thinking mind and lead you to a deeper understanding of who you are.
No art experience is needed — there’s no such thing as a “good” or “bad” sculpture. The felt experience and expression are what’s important.
You’ll only need some white modeling clay (the kind that doesn’t harden) so you can creatively express whatever you feel reflects you in that moment. you'll be guided to create your sculpture, and to revisit it regularly throughout the course. As you work through each archetype, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of yourself — and glean more insight to add to your sculpture.
The Beauty of On-Demand Video
This course features step-by-step teachings and experiential practices from Lavinia Plonka. Each session builds harmoniously upon the previous ones, so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to explore the archetypes and gentle Feldenkrais movements for personal empowerment and body-mind-spirit transformation.
You'll experience Lavinia's teachings through on-demand video. The beauty of on-demand is that you get to take the course at your own pace. Rewind and replay any section as many times as you wish. Immerse yourself into each of the modules. Let the information, practices, and wisdom really soak in. Your purchase includes 24/7 ongoing access to your course content, allowing you time to review the materials at your own pace and integration.
Note: If you have not experienced Lavinia’s archetype teachings before, you’re welcome in this advanced training but we ask you to complete the included foundational Unlock Your Archetypal Strengths With the Feldenkrais Method 7-module program on your own as a prerequisite, which will be included in your registration and can be completed before or in tandem with this advanced intensive.
Module 1 The Threshold of Possibility
How do you perceive yourself, your possibilities, and your limitations? With every passing moment, you’re making choices according to the way you view yourself.
To see more options of who you really are, you need to have a clear self-image — a deep understanding of what you’re capable of and what you want most.
Your thoughts, emotions, and sensations all participate in every action you take.
In this opening module, you’ll:
- Tune in to your own body map
- Expand your attention to include your whole self
- Release unnecessary tensions in your hips, shoulders, and neck that interfere with your personal clarity
- Begin a process of meditatively sculpting your self-image
- Experience an Awareness Through Movement lesson to clarify your self-image
Module 2 Losing the Battle, Winning the War
When your power has been shaken, when you’ve lost your center, how do you feel? What happens when the rug has been pulled out from under you?
This week, Lavinia will explain how the Warrior’s kryptonite destabilizes, weakens, and disempowers.
Fear comes in many guises. As you’ll discover, your first step is to say hello to fear and learn how your awareness can become your ally.
In this module, you’ll:
- Identify the many types of fear that diminish you
- Learn to work with your personal kryptonite
- Discover an alternative to feeling the fear but doing it anywa y
- Reconnect with “zero breath” and the “bell hand” to allay anxiety
- Experience an Awareness Through Movement lesson that grounds from the feet through the pelvic floor to the spine
Module 3 Intentions, Actions & Power
A warrior acts with intent.
In this session, Lavinia will explain how in Carlos Castaneda’s books, his teacher, don Juan, taught the art of “stalking.” Not stalking others, but stalking oneself.
For your intentions to become the actions you want, you need to pay attention, stop getting lost in habitual reactions, or turn away from your experience...
As Lavnia will share, developing this superpower is also the secret to success.
In this module, you’ll:
- Receive a meditation for building your attention
- Enjoy a game for sharpening your ability to pay attention
- Learn to track and release your interfering habits (and your back pain) through an Awareness Through Movement lesson
- Clarify your own intentions
- Use your clay sculpture to envision your Warrior self-image
Module 4 Investing in Failure
Ask any successful person to talk about their greatest learning experience, and it’s likely they’ll talk about their biggest mistakes.
Yet, so many of us are afraid to admit when we don’t know something. No one likes a know-it-all — and thinking we know everything prevents us from learning and growing.
This week, Lavnia will explain how the Teacher’s kryptonite is fear of being wrong, of looking bad, of failing. In contrast, in the Tarot, the Fool trusts the unknown.
Lavinia will guide you to give yourself permission to admit that you don’t know...
In this module, you’ll:
- Embrace the wisdom of the Fool and the importance of failure
- Experience an Awareness Through Movement lesson that increases flexibility of both mind and body
- Use movement to learn how YOU learn
- Turn your liabilities into assets
- Discover the core principles of learning
Module 5 Embracing Your Wisdom Self
As you learn to listen to yourself, you’ll begin to distinguish between the wisdom of your higher self and the chatter of negative self-talk.
This week, you’ll discover the Teacher’s superpower — listening, discriminating between useful and toxic information, and responding with compassion.
As Lavinia will share, you teach in order to learn — and as you learn, you teach.
In this module, you’ll:
- Embrace yourself to free your ribs
- Improve your ability to breathe in ideas and breathe out compassion
- Experience how random words can inform your creative side
- Create your clay sculpture to bring your Wisdom Self to life
- Experience an Awareness Through Movement lesson that teaches both body and brain how to differentiate thoughts and actions
Module 6 Accessing Power & Wisdom
As you move through this empowering work with Lavinia, it’s essential to take time to integrate, connect the dots, and find new “ahas” after a period of somatic learning.
This advanced course features two mentorship modules — opportunities to come together with Lavinia and your new community for meaningful dialogue and deeper questions.
In this first mentorship module, Lavinia will respond to questions you submit in advance and anything that arises in the moment.
She’ll also guide you through a movement and/or meditation to expand the newfound wisdom that’s emerging from the first half of the course.
Module 7 Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional
The Healer’s kryptonite can lead to self-pity, despair, and an endless, often fruitless search for its opposite.
Your nervous system communicates with you through the power of sensation. Your brain then turns sensation into perception.
This week, Lavinia will share how you can turn what you perceive as pain into pleasure(!).
In this module, you’ll:
- Learn to distinguish between sensation and perception
- Create your wellbeing mantra/affirmation
- Experience how accessing your parasympathetic response can reduce pain
- Use an Awareness Through Movement lesson to reduce neck and shoulder pain
- Move through an ancient meditative process to reframe your relationship with suffering — whether it’s mental, physical, or emotional
Module 8 The Way of the Healer
What are we made of, really?
A collection of atoms, energy, or as the great astrophysicist David Bohm once said, “crystallized light.”
This week, Lavinia will share how the Healer can access that energy, that light — and send it to self and others.
This light flows through your body and out of your hands. Lavinia will explain how it can empower us to heal the world, together.
In this module you’ll:
- Verify how emotions affect the healing power of your hands
- Release tension in your shoulders and ribs
- Discover the connection between healing and learning
- Use your hands to energize your healer self-image
- Add elements of the Healer to your clay sculpture
- Awaken the spiraling energy within with an Awareness Through Movement lesson that moves from your center out through your hands
- Receive a meditation for moving energy to heal your wounds — both visible and invisible
Module 9 Eyes Wide Shut
O, wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as others see us!
— Robert Burns
Robert Burns penned this poem over 200 years ago, and we’re still blind to what we don’t want to see.
You may have heard that not being clear on how others view us is actually an evolutionary survival strategy. However, the Visionary’s kryptonite is tunnel vision, seeing only what you want to see, at the expense of possibility.
This week, Lavinia will explain how you can begin to see parts of yourself more clearly.
In this module, you’ll:
- Take a new look at your perceived limitations
- See how your perceptions impact your decisions
- Relax your whole body by using inner vision
- Learn to turn your inner visions into outward creations with a powerful drawing exercise (no art experience required!)
- Reimagine your possibilities with an Awareness Through Movement lesson
Module 10 I Can See Clearly Now
Joseph Campbell once said, “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”
Yet, you have the power to see what’s necessary, to see the truth, to envision the future. This clarity is the Visionary’s great gift.
In this session, Lavinia will explain how to take action based on what you see — so you’re able to take what you see, enact your vision, and follow your path!
In this module, you’ll:
- Learn how your eyes receive information and create your reality
- Understand why the eyes are the “windows of the soul”
- Experience a powerful lesson that connects the movement of your eyes to action
- Connect the movements of your eyes with safety and danger
- Use your eyes to resculpt how you see yourself
Module 11 Giving & Receiving Energy
During this second mentorship module, you’ll have the opportunity to investigate your relationship with the Healer and Visionary archetypes.
This is your integration time with Lavinia and your fellow participants — to ask questions and go deeper into somatic explorations based on your interaction and discoveries.
Module 12 You Are A Star
When you access your superpowers, acknowledge your kryptonite, and travel down the path of your personal journey to wholeness, you come full circle.
In this closing session, Lavinia will guide you to celebrate your new power, insight, wisdom, and healing.
In this final module, you’ll:
- Rewrite your autobiography to reflect your new possibilities
- Experience the sublime connection among the 4 Archetypal centers
- Recognize your stellar relationships
- Enjoy an Awareness Through Movement lesson that ties everything together
- Create the sculpture that sums up your experience
SPECIAL BONUS OFFER
In addition to Lavinia’s transformative 12-module course, you’ll receive this special bonus offering to complement the course and take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.
Start Here!
Before you start this class, please watch Lavinia's "Welcome and Course Preparation" video and review the handout titled "How to Set Up Your Space for Movement Practices" (both available below). This is an experiential course, meaning you will be moving while you learn and learning while you move! For all who are able to join us for the live video class, Lavinia is inviting you to turn on your camera and set up a space on the floor to move. (If it is difficult for you to get down on the floor, there are other options.) Having your camera on will enable Lavinia to provide specific guidance to participants throughout the weekly lessons. Of course, you are welcome to participate in the live class with your camera off if you prefer. If you are unable to join us live, no worries! A video and audio replay will be posted within 24 - 48 hours so you can go through the lesson in your own time.
Your Heels Connect to Everything
Audio Teaching From Lavinia Plonka
We really don’t pay enough attention to our feet. Yet the 26 bones in your feet profoundly impact your posture and ability to move. There’s even a connection between your feet, pelvis, and pelvic floor! In this teaching, Lavinia shares how to make small changes with your feet and ankles that affect everything, including how you stand and walk, and the organization of your hips and back. It’s one of Lavinia\'s beloved “back-lying lessons,” so all you’ll need is a comfortable place to lie down.
Where Is Your Head? Posture, Ease & Clear Thinking
Video Workshop From Lavinia Plonka
Your head weighs 15 to 18 pounds. If it’s not sitting on top of your spine, it’s dragging you down, and your spine along with it. How you carry your head impacts your posture, your mood, and even your character. Whether you bow your head in thought or cock your head in question, your choices tell others the story of your life. And finding your head’s happy place can relieve neck and shoulder pain. Join Lavinia for this rich workshop to lighten your load and gain new understanding of the phrase “putting your head in the right place.”
The Emotional Body
Video Dialogue With Lavinia Plonka and Laura Bond
Back Relief
5-Part Audio Teaching From Lavinia Plonka
By now you’ve heard the news. Surgery doesn’t help most back pain, and painkillers are addictive and destructive. And most back pain seems to benefit from exercise. But what most of these observations leave out is that your back is connected to the rest of you. Often, back pain is the result of something else, not the cause. It could be posture, an old injury, bad work habits, emotional trauma, or another factor. That said, it’s not always important to find the “smoking gun.” In this audio, Lavinia shares five Awareness Through Movement lessons to help you find a better relationship with your back — and a movement approach that leads you toward a pain-free life.
Going Deep
Video Dialogue With Lavinia Plonka and Francine Bonjour Carter
Explore a lush discussion on how myths, archetypes, and embodiment can help us develop our potential to lead grounded and creative lives. Francine is a Feldenkrais practitioner who has integrated her somatic practice with a study of the psyche — including Earth Medicine teachings and practice, ancestral connection and Family Constellations, and archetypes and Jungian psychotherapy. As you’ll discover, she helps people combine writing with somatic practices to reconnect with their mythic selves and create their own origin stories.
Breathe In, Breathe Out
PDF Article From Lavinia Plonka
The ability to breathe freely, comfortably, and fully is connected to a state of equanimity, organization, and wellbeing. In this fascinating article, Lavinia shares how her personal search for wellbeing led her to the revelation that her definition of “deep breathing” was actually compromising her oxygen/carbon dioxide ratio and contributing to her tension and back pain. As you’ll discover, Moshé Feldenkrais taught that while breathing is certainly automatic, by studying the function of the breath, you can improve everything.
What People Are Saying About Lavinia Plonka…
Los Angeles, California
London, United Kingdom
Ontario, Canada
Mesa, Arizona
Chester, England
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Twelve Pre-Recorded 90-Minute Modules
Experience a unique opportunity to learn from Guild-Certified Feldenkrais Teacher Lavinia Plonka from the comfort of your own home. Each session includes a streaming video and guides you to discover specific skills and abilities to create a more loving relationship with yourself.
Twelve Transcripts of Sessions
In addition to the high-quality videos and MP3 audios, you’ll also receive session transcriptions. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.
Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
Between sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each lesson.
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join the Online Course, Put Your Inner Archetypes Into Action With the Feldenkrais Method
Your Satisfaction Is 100% Guaranteed!
If you don’t absolutely LOVE Put Your Inner Archetypes Into Action With the Feldenkrais Method — or don’t feel that it meets your needs — please submit your refund request form 14 days from your date of purchase and we’ll happily issue qualifying customers a refund.
More Praise for Lavinia Plonka
Calgary, Canada
Cleveland, Ohio
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Cofounder of ReWilder and collaborating author with Richard Rohr on The Divine Dance
President of Shine Like the Sun and author of Live Light: Simple Steps
About Lavinia Plonka
Body language expert Lavinia Plonka has helped people improve their movement, behavior, health, and careers for over 35 years. Her unique expertise connects the dots between posture, movement, emotions, and the mind. Lavinia is the founder of Kinēsa®, an educational process that integrates movement, science, and ancient wisdom traditions.
Lavinia’s training and professional career have included theater, dance, yoga, and martial arts. A former vice president of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America, she has taught the Feldenkrais Method® for over 30 years, is a lead instructor of the Emotional Body® and an ISMETA Master Somatic Movement Educator. Her theater credits include the Guggenheim Museum’s Learning Through Art program, international tours, commercials for Nickelodeon, and more.
Lavinia has written several books exploring the intersection of movement, awareness, and wellbeing, including What Are You Afraid Of? which has been translated into seven languages. She is director of the Asheville Movement Center in North Carolina, where she maintains a busy private practice.