Book Review: You've Got the Power

Title: You've Got the Power

Author: Lavinia Plonka

Date: 2022

Quote: "As a dancer and a mime artist, I was always drawn to the expression of emotions."

That's what's to like and what's not to like about this book, summarized in a sentence.  It's a Feldenkrais "body work" course in a book.

These courses were so fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s that even I was referred to one. In grade four. My mother didn't drive me to the classes but she bought the book and had my brother and me working our way through it. Among other things we practiced picking things up with our toes to offset the damage that those "sturdy shoes that support the child's active feet" were doing to my naturally high, weak arches. I may not seem the type who'd gravitate to Feldenkrais courses, and most of my readers probably think they're not, but I am. I'd like to suggest that you readers might enjoy this book more than you'd expect, too. Be tolerant about a little "New Age twaddle" (the author holds it down to a bearable level) and just do the easy, exploratory exercises. 

Feldenkrais exercises are not aerobics. They can help you get more benefit from exercising for speed, strength, or aerobic benefits, but as given they're just free-form exercises where you move in a particular way and pay attention to the thoughts and feelings that come up to the surface of your mind. They're courses in exploration. Some people do get big measurable benefits out of them--finding the source of muscle stiffness after an injury or of emotional trauma or whatever else. Some take the classes for social networking. For most people I think the exercises are just a great way to relax and pay attention to what their bodies are trying to tell them. 

What will it do for you to pay attention to the sensations of opening and closing your hand, of turning your eyes one way while you turn your head the other way, and so on? Depends on what's going on in your life and your body. This book makes no promises about reversing what you might have thought of as an "aging process," although Feldenkrais exercises often motivate people to reverse a stiffening process that produces what they've been calling "aging." It specifically says it's not going to lower your blood pressure, although Feldenkrais exercises give you just enough to do and think about that, if you're working to lower your blood pressure, they will help with that too. No book can anticipate whether you need help, or if so how to help, with playing a character, giving birth to a baby, undoing the residual damage from an old injury, looking more attractive (as it might be to customers? stockholders? voters?), or identifying the causes and working through allergy-triggered migraines. Feldenkrais courses can and do help people with all of those things but your results will depend entirely on what's going on in your body/mind. Generally there's unlimited potential benefit and almost no risk in doing a free course, even though some people do feel that they've overpaid for paid courses in "body work." 

This book begins with a look at how posture may help you feel and seem like a stronger "warrior" (in making business presentations? going back to work after sick leave? persuading your family without a big argument?) and continues through a dozen more ways simple exercises that explore an archetype may help with all kinds of other situations you may or may not be in. Whether you want people to think you're "old enough" or not "too old" for a job, want to work through feelings that your parents didn't love you enough or feelings that the outside world (primary school!) was abusive, want to recover range of motion after a stroke or injury or want to learn to play the role of a character with a disability, this book may help you claim the power to do it. Or, if not, it's still a good way to relax and prevent muscles stiffening.

This book needs only one warning. Don't pay more than $99 for a class working through these exercises unless you know for a fact tht a person you want to add to your network is taking the class too. The "California charlatan" stereotype is not based on physical exercise being useless or harmful; it's based on paying enormous fees to take classes where people didn't even meet any movie stars. The book actually helps you not to feel a need to pay enormous fees. You have the book. You can do the exercises when you're at home alone.