Embodied Intelligence: What Somatic Awareness and AI Teach Us About Intuition. A Conversation with Lavinia Plonka (Epi. #267)

The Intelligence of the Body

Somatic Awareness, Pattern Recognition, and Intuition
A Conversation with Lavinia Plonka (Ep. #266)

What if intuition isn’t mystical — but a skill we can train?

In this episode, I’m joined by Lavinia Plonka, movement educator and longtime teacher of the Feldenkrais Method®, to explore how awareness of the body can deepen our ability to recognize patterns, make better decisions, and respond to life with greater clarity.

Together we explore the surprising parallels between how the human nervous system learns and how AI systems learn through prediction and pattern recognition — and why developing somatic awareness may be one of the most powerful ways to cultivate intuition.

Because sometimes the intelligence we’re looking for isn’t in the mind alone.

It’s already present in the body.

✨ In This Episode

• What the Feldenkrais Method teaches about movement, awareness, and learning
• How intuition can emerge from somatic awareness and sensory information
• Why the brain acts as a prediction machine — and how surprise helps us learn
• The difference between reacting and responding when new information appears

🧭 A Question to Sit With

What might you notice if you slowed down long enough to listen to what your body already knows?

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker: Welcome, Lavinia. 

[00:00:06] Speaker 2: Thank you. 

[00:00:08] Speaker: I'm so happy to see you after all these years. I feel like it's been at least two years since you were on my last podcast, 

[00:00:15] Speaker 2: at least. Yeah, 

[00:00:16] Speaker: at least. 

[00:00:17] Speaker 2: Yeah. You've come a long way. I, I'm so thrilled with your progress and process. 

[00:00:22] Speaker: Thank you. I think you were one of my earlier guests and um, just yesterday, buzz Sprout reminded me that I've been doing this for five years and I was like, oh my gosh, I felt like I just started.

[00:00:35] Speaker 2: Right. 

[00:00:36] Speaker: But I've learned a lot. 

[00:00:38] Speaker 2: Yes. But it is good to keep a beginner's mind, isn't it? To kind of feel like, oh yeah, I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. 

[00:00:45] Speaker: Absolutely. I think that's why I also resonate with a lot of the content you produce because it does feel like we're all continuously learning.

[00:00:56] Speaker: Well, I think, yeah, 

[00:00:58] Speaker 2: I think so. 

[00:00:59] Speaker: You think so? [00:01:00] Yeah. Um, well, on that note, I wanted to ask you about something that really first connected me to you, which is the method you, uh, base around, um, your. Content around, and I'm going to butcher pronouncing it, so you're gonna need to help me. Starts with an F. 

[00:01:21] Speaker 2: It starts with an F, and 

[00:01:23] Speaker: it's Felden.

[00:01:24] Speaker 2: It's called, it's called the Feldenkrais Method. Feldenkrais. You know, it's funny because it's, it's just because it's more than two syllables. People get freaked out about it, you know, and I always just tell people, look, it rhymes with paradise. It's just Feldenkrais Paradise. They go together, you know? But when people hear, uh, anything that ends in Christ, they get really confused.

[00:01:50] Speaker 2: They think it's some sort of foreign thing or some sort of religious thing. And it's really just the guy's name. His name was Moshe Feldenkrais. Just like Pilates is named [00:02:00] after Joseph Pilates and Hannah Somatics is named after Thomas Hannah. But for some reason Feldenkrais sounds cumbersome. I know, but eventually people will get used to it.

[00:02:14] Speaker: Now, uh, you were introduced to it and you've embraced it in how you teach. So maybe, uh, you can, on a high level connect it to this concept that is becoming more and more in vogue, which is somatic awareness. I 

[00:02:31] Speaker 2: love that it's becoming more and more in vogue because I've been doing it for 35 years. Yeah.

[00:02:38] Speaker 2: You know, my, my husband once said, you know, it takes 20 years to become an overnight sensation. So, um, you know, so, so the idea of somatic awareness has actually been around for well over 150 years, but it didn't have a label. It didn't have like a, a [00:03:00] box that people could put into it. Uh, you know, physical fitness began sometime at the turn of the 20th century.

[00:03:07] Speaker 2: Before that, people never thought about physical fitness because they were so busy working in their farms and, you know, doing different things to stay alive. So once physical fitness started to come in and people started to realize that, oh, if you do movement, you'll feel healthier. That was the beginning of the process.

[00:03:28] Speaker 2: This realization even a hundred years ago that you know, using movement can actually feel you, help you feel more mentally and emotionally stable. And I'm not gonna bore you with the entire history of somatic learning, but somewhere in the sixties, you know, when all the hippies were kind of all coming alive, there were a bunch of different teachers who had been studying this work.

[00:03:55] Speaker 2: Who just kind of exploded onto the scene. And there [00:04:00] was a man, Thomas Hanna, actually, who coined the word somatics. Uh, and, and Soma, of course, as you know, is based on the Greek word of the body, right? So it's this idea of an awareness of the body. And at this point we start to realize that there's, you know, all kinds of somatic trainings that have been around for thousands of years.

[00:04:21] Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about it, Tai Chi. Qigong Yoga are all somatic practices in the sense that we develop an awareness of ourselves as we do it. So the Feldenkrais method was developed by, actually, he was a martial artist and an engineer. So he put together this idea of the mechanisms of the human body along with the functioning of, you know, a, a really well-trained athlete.

[00:04:49] Speaker 2: And that's how it all began. I mean, that's, that's the very, very short story. 

[00:04:55] Speaker: Um, and what I find interesting, and this is not even something I, I realize until [00:05:00] you just mentioned that he was an engineer and moments before we hit record, I was telling you about some book I'm, I'm reading and that. Also is R grounded in somebody who was an engineer?

[00:05:14] Speaker: Right. And the connection I see is that they are looking at information from a lens that's informing us about our body. 

[00:05:22] Speaker 2: Exactly. He was, you know, basically Moshe Feldenkrais, besides being a martial artist, was also an athlete and he had injured his knees and he was told that he would never walk again.

[00:05:35] Speaker 2: That was back in the forties when they didn't have the kind of surgical interventions that we have now. So he just was like, well, I'm gonna see how this works. He literally put his engineering knowledge to work and studied everything about the body movement, infant development, animals, everything to start to try to understand how he could move better in order to be able to live better.

[00:05:59] Speaker 2: [00:06:00] So the engineering aspect and the process that. All people who are interested in science like yourself, right? Is, is this idea of like, how do I make a plan? How do I create a hypothesis? How do I follow through on an idea and see what works and what doesn't, right? So all of that is included in the way we explore and experience the Feldenkrais method.

[00:06:28] Speaker: I, I just love how you articulated those details. Um. In your work you've drawn, um, from wisdom that you've gained through theater, dance, martial arts, yoga, and um, I think at some point you taught at the Guggenheim Museum. 

[00:06:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was during my transition period. So for 25 years I was a performer. Right. I, I was a mime, a clown, a dancer, a choreographer.

[00:06:58] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. [00:07:00] And while I was doing my training to become a Feldenkrais practitioner, I got this job. Actually, it was kind of cool 'cause I didn't know how I was gonna be able to pay for my Feldenkrais training. And out of the blue I was hired by the Guggenheim Museum for a program they were doing. In the schools where they, they called it learning through art.

[00:07:20] Speaker 2: And so I was the movement teacher going into the schools and teaching movement. So I actually, it was a wonderful time because I had the opportunity to combine theater with the Feldenkrais Learning Principles for children at, in, at-risk schools. It was, it was an incredible opportunity and learning experience for all of us.

[00:07:43] Speaker 2: You know, to see how movement we even, there was even a program we put together that was sponsored by Toyota called Moving Across the Page. I was so proud of that, you know, using movement to teach reading. So all of that was, you know, kind of, it was kind of a beautiful transition [00:08:00] into my next profession, so to speak.

[00:08:03] Speaker: It sounds like you were able to draw that, um. Knowledge into this new CHA chapter where it, it echoes this message. I believe your work is echoing this message that the body isn't separate from intelligence. It's part of how intelligence develops. 

[00:08:22] Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know, uh, Feldenkrais not to keep quoting him and talking about him, but he was a great influence on my life.

[00:08:28] Speaker 2: But he once said that there's no mind body connection. The body is the mind, and the mind is the body. You can't separate them. The it's, it's everything. You know? It's like that movie, everything everywhere, all at once. It's all happening all together. Right? 

[00:08:46] Speaker: Absolutely. Um, and. Perhaps even when I first took your class a few years ago and now I've gained even more understanding of what that means, like the mind body connection.

[00:08:58] Speaker: And it's a whole [00:09:00] new level of depth. And I feel like you, like you said earlier, we keep learning and when we do, it's like layers of onions. You, you, you've learned more, you keep getting 

[00:09:11] Speaker 2: more onion, 

[00:09:12] Speaker: you cry more. Well, my next, uh, question then. Is to, um, it's really a bridge between what you and I have been talking about before we even hit record, which is, um, I feel, and maybe you can share your opinion, that your work suggests that intuition isn't just something that happens in the mind, that's something that emerges through sensations and movement in the body.

[00:09:42] Speaker 2: So. I think that there's different, different levels and different interpretations of the idea of intuition, right? And we have a tendency sometimes to kind of abstract it and think that it's some sort of spiritual thing from the ether. And I'm not [00:10:00] negating that, okay? Because we are living in a, in a universe that none of us understands.

[00:10:05] Speaker 2: And so there could be information coming from out there, but. There's an intuition that comes from having a level of awareness and presence of oneself, your environment, what's happening around you, and what's happening inside of you. Right. Uh, I'm sure that these are terms that you've heard already, but the relationship between ex interoception, right, which is the awareness of the world around me, proprioception, which is the sense, the sense of myself, where my body is in space.

[00:10:40] Speaker 2: And then in interoception, which is uh, an awareness of what's taking place inside of me. And that's, you know, on a certain level, you could say that's our organic functions, like heartbeat and, uh, and you know, what's happening in my gut and my belly, the, the, the movement of my breath. But [00:11:00] there's another level of interoception that we could tune into that really has to do with having an understanding of how to respond to the chemistry that's happening in every moment, right?

[00:11:14] Speaker 2: Because in every moment. Again, we're receiving information. That information then goes to these neuromodulators that are being triggered from the brain so that I feel queasy, I feel giggly, I feel chivalry. I feel different sensations inside of myself, and then the brain makes a story. I'm scared, I'm hungry, I'm happy.

[00:11:39] Speaker 2: I'm based on these internal experiences of ourselves. So what happens is if I can develop a, a finer quality of attention, I can begin to sense what's outside of me, on me and in me in a [00:12:00] way that allows me to make decisions and be aware of what's taking place to make better decisions that another person would call intuitive.

[00:12:12] Speaker 2: There's a, there's a knowledge, there's a quality. Now, there's also the quality, uh, that people could say is intuition for experts, right? Sometimes they say about experts, they don't know what they know, right? You hand, uh, a gemologist, uh, two stones, and they right away go, no, this is the diamond. We say, oh, that, he intuited that, but they didn't.

[00:12:35] Speaker 2: They have so much awareness, so much knowledge that it seems like a spontaneous, intuitive decision, right? So to me, the idea that I can develop my senses it to such a degree that I know more, that I am more informed about the world, I mean. We talk about people like, uh, you [00:13:00] know, the magicians who do mind reading and things like that, and they all say no, I'm not mind reading, but their awareness, their ability to attend to a situation is so developed, and we can all do that.

[00:13:17] Speaker 2: Basically, I'm coming to the point of like we all, we're, we're all, we all have the same amount of DNA in us. It's just how do we develop it? How do I learn to listen? How do I learn to see what's around me instead of just always seeing what I, you know, the, the obvious. How do I learn to kind of tune in to what's taking place, what I call listening?

[00:13:41] Speaker 2: Listening to the inside of myself so that I am clear about what I'm feeling. One of the things that happens with a lot of people is that they experience what they call emotions. They're all tangled, so then they can't get a [00:14:00] clarity. And I'm sure you've had this, uh, known people who've had this experience.

[00:14:04] Speaker 2: It happens a lot with women, for example, where, uh, you know, you'll find a woman sitting there going, I'm 

[00:14:12] Speaker: so angry, 

[00:14:14] Speaker 2: but they're crying. So their, their emotions have become so entangled. They don't really know how they feel. The truth is that perhaps they're unable to own their anger, and so it turns into this sadness.

[00:14:30] Speaker 2: So being able to be, begin to untangle those feelings so that I know what to do, right? Feldenkrais always said, if you know what you're doing, you can do what you want. That is such a loaded statement because do I always know what I'm doing? I don't. Half the time I'm on autopilot. So to begin to really be able to pay attention to what's taking place in a moment is a practice.

[00:14:59] Speaker 2: And that's what [00:15:00] I teach and that's what I'm also constantly learning because guess what? I go on autopilot too. It's, it's the human experience. 

[00:15:09] Speaker: It the way I process what you're sharing, and I just find it so fascinating, is that this term awareness. Is a way in which we are able to gather information more than one way.

[00:15:25] Speaker: Mm-hmm. And so like you, you said, when they're touching, um, a, a gem or a stone and they immediately have an understanding what it is, it's because they've learned to now have this tactile knowledge that's also sending them information v visual knowledge and prob probably other factors. And just the same way we as humans.

[00:15:49] Speaker: Perhaps maybe 'cause of industrial age or whatever aren't in tuned as much as we should be. And like you were expressing like the woman [00:16:00] crying, she may not be in tuned with what emotion she's feeling and how to respond to it. So yeah. And so this intuition, like you said, it may not necessarily be this spiritual intuition, but it, it is in tuning.

[00:16:17] Speaker: To some information that's being given to you and thereby knowing how to respond to it versus react. 

[00:16:25] Speaker 2: Right. And even things like I was just, as you were talking, I was thinking about, for example, uh, a person and how I wanted to be in contact with that person. And then I got an email from that person. Now, I don't know whether one would call that, that I intuited or sent a message to him, or was it that this, um, sense of myself and my need in some [00:17:00] way, uh, was already opening to the possibility that this person was going to be in touch with me.

[00:17:08] Speaker 2: So, so there's, there's so much about our thoughts. I mean, I know that you have studied a lot of Eastern traditions and, and we know that this idea from the Buddha of thoughts make actions, right? That thoughts create actions. So thought is energy as well, and it's not, um. To me, it's not very weird or woowoo or new agey that, that there's a vibration, that there's a quality that's coming out of my thoughts somehow, and therefore, if my thoughts are not clear, I'm just not able to tune into anything, right?

[00:17:46] Speaker 2: As I clarify my thinking, my feeling, and my movement, I'm able to then send out what I need and receive what I deserve. 

[00:17:57] Speaker: Absolutely. I believe that [00:18:00] it feels like the, the description for what that, what you just described is resonance and 'cause you're in coherence and then others become in resonance with you.

[00:18:11] Speaker: Even this topic of you and I having this very conversation happened that way. 'cause I. J just had this, I don't know what, what to call it, this gut feeling like I, I wanna invite her to be on my spotlight. And from there I thought, well, why don't we have another podcast conversation? And then I described very high level to you, this is what I'm thinking of talking about.

[00:18:34] Speaker: You're like, I'm going to be conducting a workshop on the very topic. 

[00:18:39] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. And if you recall. This is even better, right? Because if you recall, I've been getting your newsletter for however long it is that we've known each other, and there was a newsletter that you wrote that resonated with me, remember?

[00:18:58] Speaker 2: And there were [00:19:00] certain words you chose that happened to connect with what I'm thinking about. And so I wrote a note to you saying how much I enjoyed what I read. Right? 

[00:19:11] Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:12] Speaker 2: And so, so that, that to me, did I in, did I intuit that you were going to, you were going to ask me to be on it? Did I intuit that you're doing a month on intuition?

[00:19:26] Speaker 2: Maybe not. But there was something in the, the relationship and in the connection that I sensed in myself, I went, oh, I feel a connection with Shilpa. I want to follow up on that. How many times do you read something and not follow up on it, or how many times, and this is something that I, I speak to people all the time, you know, uh, other students or whatever where they have an idea and then they don't do it.

[00:19:56] Speaker 2: They don't make the call. They don't, [00:20:00] they, they, they don't write the note. They don't, you know, and, and it's because we stop ourselves. This is a whole other conversation, but we stop ourselves because we don't trust the thing inside. I know that your most recent podcast was about trusting that within and how that does connect with my own sense of my own intuition, so I can have an intuition about something, but if I don't trust myself, I'm not gonna follow through.

[00:20:30] Speaker: Yes, I, I agree with you because many, many times I will. Do that follow up in different parts of my life. Whether I read a book and I'm like, I need to reach out to the author, but there's this other part of me that often, in the past, at least now I'm beginning to trust it. That's why I did the whole series on trust, is I would think, well, am I being impulsive?

[00:20:55] Speaker: And not too long ago, a woman who is in the space of [00:21:00] mindfulness and coaching, she in her book wrote, sometimes We Mistake. Those two impulse versus in intuition. But it might be, be indeed not an impulse, it's something telling you follow up. 

[00:21:17] Speaker 2: I think what you're bringing up is really important. And actually, you know, we were talking about my workshop and one of the things that I, I wanna address is when is it an impulse and when is it intuition, right?

[00:21:30] Speaker 2: Because, uh, we can also. Think it's intuition and leap and then realize, oh, I didn't look at the whole picture, or I have a habitual way of jumping the gun that then always creates the thing going wrong. Or, you know, all of these, you know, what do I trust again? It goes, what do I trust? And it goes back to listening [00:22:00] to all the different parts of myself.

[00:22:02] Speaker 2: To take the time, uh, you know, to, to make a decision about something. And there have been, there have been times in my life where I've done the impulse thing and regretted it for sure. And then there have been times where I spent too much time thinking about overthinking it, uh, you know, uh, obsessing about it, and then the opportunity has passed, right?

[00:22:27] Speaker 2: So how do we find that sweet spot? That sweet spot that goes with my, my feeling of, I'm, I'm, I want to do this along with the hard facts of, well, if you do this, this might happen, this could happen. You have to be prepared for all the different contingencies that can take place. So that, that's where I think the wisdom of somatic training can be so useful because this idea that the body is, the mind means that.

[00:22:58] Speaker 2: If I pay [00:23:00] attention to the tensions in myself, if I pay attention to what's happening in my breath, if I recognize that, oh, there's a certain gripping in my stomach every single time I think about this person, then I start to begin to understand how my body mind is either helping me or hindering me. 

[00:23:24] Speaker: Yes, and.

[00:23:27] Speaker: Because, um, uh, at least I can, uh, speak for myself. I came from a very cerebral techie background, even though I was raised with meditation and a lot of Eastern philosophies, but it, it wasn't until recently that I started to really connect things. So when I feel something, I pause. Go deeper with, well, what is my body telling me?

[00:23:53] Speaker: Mm-hmm. It's even sounds like simple things. Like even I, I pay attention to what I eat and what kind of [00:24:00] chemicals are being induced that it's affecting me in the way things affect me. Well, my next set of questions and really quickly wanted to, um, have you share, um. In something you had written, and maybe you can share more with the audience in a moment, but earlier, uh, we had talked about information and I, I think of information, and you've talked about this in your writing as in, uh, it helps you make predictions or understand what will happen.

[00:24:37] Speaker: And you recently, recently, you used the word surprisal and I loved the word and I maybe you can share w. Or elaborate on that and how that connects to awareness, either from our senses or maybe truly a spiritual awareness and how we can make [00:25:00] predictions of sorts. 

[00:25:03] Speaker 2: So, you know, I'm talking, I'm talking through my hat here because I'm just learning about all of this as, as we speak.

[00:25:11] Speaker 2: You know, I, one of the things that I always say is I teach what I need to learn. So, so this came as the result of a book that I've been reading about the brain, and the more I find myself getting into the description of how the brain works. I, it, it starts to feel like computer programming in, in the craziest way.

[00:25:37] Speaker 2: I mean, I, because I know nothing about computer programming and I know you know a lot about that. Um, but when, when it, so in this book that I'm reading about the brain, which I, I don't know, I, it's called The Hidden Spring by Mark Sloans, and he's. I think he's like a psycho neuroscientist or something. So he starts with [00:26:00] Freud and then he goes into scientific experiments and all this other kind of stuff.

[00:26:04] Speaker 2: But he talks about the brain as a prediction machine that basically the brain is constantly, uh, going out into the world and predicting what it is that I'm going to see, what I'm going to experience. That it's constantly working, almost like an algorithm, uh, of, of, uh, prediction error. You know, that, that I assume that when I look out the window, I'm going to see the hedge that grows outside my window.

[00:26:36] Speaker 2: My brain is making that prediction that there's going to be a hedge out there, and if suddenly there was no hedge out there, that would be a surprise all, not just a surprise. It, it's so, the difference between a surprise, you know, to me a surprise is where I haven't been making a prediction. I wasn't making any kind of predictions that, oh, maybe I was, I'm coming home from work and I [00:27:00] open the door and there's a surprise birthday party.

[00:27:02] Speaker 2: That's a surprise. But when I'm expecting a hedge and instead there's a mountain. Front of my then, then that's a surprise because my brain's prediction was making an error. At least that's the way I'm understanding it. Maybe you know better than I do. So in my work, what I realized was that, uh, for example, we teach movement sequences and many times during these movement sequences, people experience, uh, surprising.

[00:27:35] Speaker 2: Improvements in their range of motion or in the fluidity of how they work. And they'll, and they'll go, oh, oh, this is a, this is a nice surprise. Now I can move my arm. But sometimes we, and, and in fact Feldenkrais had a term making the impossible possible. Right? So sometimes we'll start with, uh, setting up a [00:28:00] situation that is impossible.

[00:28:03] Speaker 2: Movement wise for the people in that particular group or class. And then suddenly in the middle of the lesson, they're able to do what they could never do before. And there's a shock in that moment. They go, oh my God, I had no idea that I could roll up to sitting in that way or whatever. And to me, that feels like surprise because they predicted that they would fail.

[00:28:27] Speaker 2: So people come sometimes with an expectation of, oh, I'll move better. I'll feel better. Oh, that's a nice surprise. But then when they have an, an assumption that they're gonna fail or, or vice versa, of course in life you sometimes think something's gonna go really well and it bombs. I, to me that's a surprise.

[00:28:45] Speaker 2: What do you think? 

[00:28:46] Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And I find it that it's, it's because not only was your mind not expecting. A certain condition to [00:29:00] occur, but also, um, there's a, this word, I feel like it's related to this concept that there's cognitive dissonance. Like what your mind or what, where your brain has been conditioned to versus where it's going.

[00:29:17] Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, cognitive dissonance. For me, it, it, it, it is lengthier. Yeah. For, for some, you know, it's, it's, it's co for me, cognitive dissonance is when, you know, I say I believe in something and then all these facts are are telling me the opposite. And, and I'm having to look at that and I don't wanna look at it.

[00:29:39] Speaker 2: To me, that's cognitive dissonance. Um, it, it's not surprising. I'm just, it's, it's like I, you know, it's, I wanna go like, 

[00:29:48] Speaker: yes. 

[00:29:49] Speaker 2: So to me it's a little bit different than, than being surprised. At least in my experience. 

[00:29:57] Speaker: Yes. And in your experience though, with [00:30:00] at least the somatic part, when someone is able to then be in Surprisal, that will probably shift some data for them, because next time they go about repeating something, they're like, well, I, I now have a new data set.

[00:30:21] Speaker 2: That's true. And it, and, and I'm glad you brought up that word, because again, so much of what we do when we're learning is collecting data. Right. To me, those things go together and when I, when I feel like I don't know how to do something, basically the reason I don't know how to do it is that I don't have enough data embodied in me in order to be able to execute whatever it is.

[00:30:47] Speaker 2: By the same token, the brain is a prediction machine. A lot of times what happens is a person has a surprise, a, a pleasant surprise, and then they come in expecting that the next time they [00:31:00] have a class or something like that, that it's gonna be just as amazing. And it's not because the prediction error was, you know, it, it, it wasn't taking in all of the different details of the situation.

[00:31:15] Speaker: Does 

[00:31:15] Speaker 2: that make sense? 

[00:31:16] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the reasons I had wanted to dig deeper around this Surprisal concept is, and I emailed you immediately when I saw that a word used in your newsletter. So I feel like AI, artificial systems learn through very similar pattern recognition. Approaches. And so I wanted to ask you, do you see parallels between how you believe the nervous system learns through movement and how intelligence systems, maybe even AI learn by refining predictions?

[00:31:52] Speaker 2: Well, of course, I don't know enough about AI to give a really intelligent answer, but I do believe [00:32:00] that e, you know. If we think about the fact that the brain works through its own language, right? Even if it's not words, there's a language, there's body language, there's the language of the chemicals that are moving through me.

[00:32:19] Speaker 2: There's, there's, you know, and then we think about the fact that these AI systems that are being developed are called large language models. There's, there's a process that's happening where, um, again, it's data collection, and then based on that, making interpretations. Now, I still think there's a difference between how the human brain organizes information and how the large language model organizes information.[00:33:00] 

[00:33:00] Speaker 2: That's what makes us human. I think that actually we are more prone to rizal than the AI language models. The, the, they're constantly trying to figure out, um, the most logical thing that will happen next where we are taking in information and allowing that process to take place. In order to be able to make our decisions.

[00:33:32] Speaker 2: It's really interesting because, you know, the brain is so complex and just one small thing happening to a part of the brain completely changes the way the brain addresses error prediction recognition. Right. Uh, I'm, are you, you're familiar with Oliver Sacks? Are you familiar with Oliver Sacks? So Oliver Sachs was a amazing, amazing [00:34:00] neurologist who wrote great books about the different mental problems that he encountered as a neurologist.

[00:34:08] Speaker 2: You know, so like one of his books was called The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and he had that, that particular man had brain damage in one small, little, tiny part of his brain, but it was the part of his brain. That worked with prediction error in some fashion, so that when he saw things, he was seeing the wrong thing.

[00:34:32] Speaker 2: So he would take an umbrella and put it on his head, or he, you know, he would go to eat his pencil because it, because his brain told him that this was his sandwich. And, you know, and, and we know that the eyes, for example, the eyes don't see, they just receive light and it's your brain. That's telling you what you're seeing.

[00:34:56] Speaker 2: So, you know, any kind of brain damage [00:35:00] changes our whole relationship to error prediction and everything. Just like, I guess a computer that malfunctions 

[00:35:07] Speaker: Yeah. 

[00:35:07] Speaker 2: Would do the same thing, which is a danger because if we're putting all of our, um, you know, all of our reliance on the machine, and the machine malfunctions in a big way.

[00:35:17] Speaker 2: Um, it's, it, it could affect a lot of aspects of society where if I malfunction, you know, you're just gonna lock me up or something. There's a, there's a big difference there. 

[00:35:27] Speaker: Yes. I mean, the machines machine, uh, or ai, they're built around the way in which we parse information. We learned how to parse information based on studying languages and then turning that into something very mathematical.

[00:35:48] Speaker: But to your point, can surprisal predictions be made by machine? Um. I don't know all the answers. [00:36:00] Maybe at some point in the future, but what I do know is that as humans, we're processing so much information. To your point about all of, like when we talk about intuition, maybe sometimes it's more than something spiritual.

[00:36:15] Speaker: It's like a host of information that a individual that's an expert is able to then. Um, process in their mind. But the arisal element, maybe the surprisal element is what keeps us sharp. 

[00:36:31] Speaker 2: Well, and, and again, I know that you know this, uh, uh, and you just basically said it, that there's, there's probably a million times more sensory data out there than the human brain can absorb at any given moment.

[00:36:50] Speaker 2: And the more I can expand my field of awareness, the more information I have, the more [00:37:00] data I have in order to be able to navigate through life and avoid arisal, right, or be able to address arisal in a positive fashion. So, you know, when I, uh, when I looked up surprises. You know, one of the things that came up was, was simply a chart that that showed like the odds of different things happening and, and I thought, well what's the difference between predicting sur Surprisal and just predicting an event?

[00:37:32] Speaker 2: Right? Because you know, the odds of a mountain being outside my window are one in 10 gazillion, right? And so that's why it would be a huge surprise, but it, it was about odds. And so we have certain expectations, and then when those expectations are suddenly interrupted by something else, that's when we, we need to get more data in order to understand what's going on.

[00:37:59] Speaker: Mm-hmm. [00:38:00] I, I'm also thinking, and maybe there's a connection there that your. Your gift to the world is having this ability to either help people thrive physically and emotionally. I, you know, like you and I said, or they, they're one and the same, hopefully. But, um, it's also to then help them learn to be in the body and pull in all, all this information from different places that we're unaware of often.

[00:38:33] Speaker: Especially when we are so locked in our head. But by the virtue of being able to gather this information, I see it analogous to then saying, okay, I will now know how to respond. 'cause when you're in response mode, you are expanding versus contracting because when you're reacting, you're really putting yourself in stress.

[00:38:58] Speaker 2: And I, and I love that [00:39:00] you use those two terms, react and respond. 'cause I, I use them a lot. The, the ability to, to be able to, um, to receive information. Then send something back, right? Like, uh, you, you'd get a, back in the old days, you'd get a letter and then you would respond to the letter, right? It's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's the word to answer in a way.

[00:39:26] Speaker 2: Whereas to react means that I, in some way have had to protect myself. I've had to tense, um, and. That again, usually we react when there has been a surprise, right? Where if I receive information and I'm able to receive it inside of myself, I am then better able to process that. We talk in my work a lot about, for example, emotional resilience or emotional fluidity [00:40:00] where uh, if I have this relationship.

[00:40:04] Speaker 2: With my nervous system, with the, the sensation of my body, and, you know, somebody says something to me unexpected that I, I have to respond to. I can feel the chemistry moving through me, assess the situation and decide how to present myself in a situation so that we have the best possible outcome.

[00:40:33] Speaker 2: Instead of right away going, well, what do you mean by that? Or, you know, or feeling hurt or, or destroyed or defensive in some way that I can take it in and then find what's, what's behind what they said Is there, you know, what's, what's really happening between us? Why, why am I feeling this in the pit of my stomach?

[00:40:59] Speaker 2: You know, so [00:41:00] many times in my life I didn't listen. To that feeling in the pit of my stomach, which I should have listened to, you know? And then sometimes that feeling in the pit of my stomach is just simply fear. And how do I, how do I feel the difference between being a scaredy cat and really knowing that this is just not right?

[00:41:23] Speaker 2: How you know, to me. That's sometimes called intuition. I have, I have a feeling this is not right. We even say that. I have a feeling there's, um, I, I mentioned this actually in, in the copy for my workshop, but I don't know if you've ever heard of this TV series called Moon Haven. I had never heard of it either.

[00:41:46] Speaker 2: We stumbled on it one time and we watched a few episodes. It's not great. Don't, you know, you don't have to go watch it. But it's about a, a kind of utopian society that was created on the moon to help save the human race from themselves, right? And so these [00:42:00] people had been living on the moon for a hundred years, learning how to be the best possible humans.

[00:42:06] Speaker 2: The entire society was somatic. They danced in the fields. They, you know, and many times they would show up in a situation and, and the people from Earth would be like, how did you know? How did you know to come here? And they would say, I had a dread feeling. A dread feeling. Or I had a feeling and I was like, oh, look at that.

[00:42:27] Speaker 2: A somatic society. But we all have that possibility. We all have that possibility if we could only listen to ourselves. 

[00:42:37] Speaker: And that ties really back to intuition, because intuition is really about listening. Well, maybe that's my, my feeling about it. 

[00:42:48] Speaker 2: Your feeling about it. Right. 

[00:42:49] Speaker: Feeling about it. 

[00:42:50] Speaker 2: I know. And, and I love that you said listening because it's like, well, it's not about my ears.

[00:42:55] Speaker 2: It's an inner listening. It's a tuning in. Maybe that's a better way to [00:43:00] put it. It's a tuning into my, my insides, which we, we forget. We've been conditioned by the whole Cartesian world to, to believe that the, this thing up here is the only thing that matters. And in some ways it is the only thing that matters.

[00:43:18] Speaker 2: 'cause the brain is what sends the information for the chemistry, but it's, it's instant. That's what people don't understand is that the brain is responding. You know, when you cut yourself over here, you feel the pain here, but it's gone to your brain like instantly. So that's, the information is always there.

[00:43:40] Speaker 2: You know, Feldenkrais, I mean, back in the sixties he talked about the human body as an information system. We're an information system. We just are gushy, we're made out of water instead of. You know, ones and zeros. 

[00:43:57] Speaker: I absolutely agree. Yeah. It's, it's, it's [00:44:00] information. One of the things I've been studying more deeply around is, um, the vagus nerve and polyvagal theory and how the vagus nerve longest nerve, right?

[00:44:11] Speaker: It starts at the base of the skull all the way down and sends what I feel like information web through your entire physical body. And that is also information that often we may not be connected to. 

[00:44:29] Speaker 2: There's, I don't know if you're familiar, if you've heard about the controversy right now about polyvagal theory and that Oh yeah.

[00:44:36] Speaker 2: This, this new study came out that, uh, they're like. So there's a, there's a huge controversy. I'm not gonna go there right now. Okay. Um, but, but apparently it's, it's like all over the somatic interweb. Um, because these 39 scientists, some of whom were quoted by Porous, um, are actually have come out and said, eh, [00:45:00] it's not what he said it is.

[00:45:02] Speaker: Oh, 

[00:45:02] Speaker 2: that being said, the vagus nerve is everything that you just said. It was. It does start in the head. It does touch every organ in your body. It does connect with your enteric nervous system. So there has to be, uh, again, it's a communication web, just like the heart brain coherence. You know, the idea that the heart and the brain are connected to each other, and that actually the heart responds first.

[00:45:32] Speaker 2: Most people don't realize that the heart responds and then the brain goes, oh. I think I'm in love, you know? So, so all of those are connected in one way or another? 

[00:45:45] Speaker: Yes. We'll have to have a separate conversation about the, the controversy. 'cause I, I've been, 

[00:45:50] Speaker 2: well, and, and I'm, you know, I'm not really following it like some people are, but it was just really interesting to see that, you know, again, science, [00:46:00] science is always changing.

[00:46:02] Speaker 2: Yes. It says this is what it is. This is, you know, uh, evidence-based whatever. And then 50 years later they go, oh, maybe not. Yes. You know, so, 

[00:46:13] Speaker: well, even hard math was 

[00:46:14] Speaker 2: once flat. Remember that? 

[00:46:16] Speaker: Exactly. Well, even hard math is gaining, um, respect and people are talking about the heart in a way that was not talked about even 15, 20 years ago.

[00:46:29] Speaker: That's right. 

[00:46:31] Speaker 2: That's right. 

[00:46:31] Speaker: Although, interesting enough, like I if having been raised in Indian culture and there's a lot of mantras, a lot of songs and chants that are supposed to evoke vibrations in the heart. 

[00:46:45] Speaker 2: Oh, and I, I believe that, that we are vibration. Yes. I mean we're, we're just slower vibration than light.

[00:46:54] Speaker 2: Right. And, uh, so, and water is vibration. I mean, you know, you see water [00:47:00] VI and we're 75% water. I mean, everything, I know it sounds cliche, but it's all connected. 

[00:47:07] Speaker: It's all connected. That was part of the reason I brought up the poll, polyvagal understanding or nerve um, science part. Because if it's, if we're all connected and on this very, um.

[00:47:21] Speaker: Concentrated form of vibration. We are in the human body. There's still information web within it, 

[00:47:30] Speaker 2: it within with every little part of myself, 

[00:47:33] Speaker: right? 

[00:47:33] Speaker 2: Like, like that book you were showing me my big toe, right? Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, you know, Moshe Feldenkrais once said that he could, he could fix whatever's going on with somebody just by studying their big toe.

[00:47:47] Speaker 2: So. Because everything is a reflection of everything else. We're like mirror images throughout the whole body. The the pelvic girdle is similar to the shoulder girdle. Our legs and arms are [00:48:00] connected our hands and feet. Again, you know, when you think about an Indian tradition and yogic tradition, you know that you've got these points in the palms of your hands and you've got the arches of your feet and you've got your bundas.

[00:48:13] Speaker 2: You know, connecting all the way through and how they're connected to the sphincters and, I mean, it's all, it's all connected in one way or another. Right. So we can, we can learn. I mean, a lot of times when I work with people, if somebody comes in and says they have problems with their shoulder, I never start with the shoulder.

[00:48:30] Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

[00:48:32] Speaker 2: First of all, because that's the place where the trauma is. So why, why traumatize it more by making it anxious? Because I believe that our parts have, again, feelings, but also because it's quite possible that whatever's going on in the shoulder is related or even caused by something somewhere else.

[00:48:53] Speaker 2: And, and so we need to first find out how the whole system is responding to this particular trauma in the [00:49:00] shoulder. That's, I mean, that's just a gross example, but. 

[00:49:03] Speaker: That's, I think that's a great example though, because for years, um, it's, it's been a while since I've done it that I used to go get acupuncture and I was very new to it.

[00:49:13] Speaker: I'd not gone as deep as I normally do into the science part, but what I had done was pay attention to what was happening. 'cause within my first treatment, I felt a relief wherever I was having issues and. I would ask a lot of questions to my acupuncturist. I'm like, well, you know, this is where it's, the issue is, and why are you putting a needle on my ankle and leaving it there for three minutes, and why do I feel so good afterwards?

[00:49:43] Speaker: But it's all connected. 

[00:49:45] Speaker 2: Right, right. And the meridian system is, you know, yet another way of looking at the entire system. 

[00:49:52] Speaker: Yes, absolutely. Now coming back full circle. One of the things that I really enjoy [00:50:00] is knowing how we do have the ability to heal. And you bring a lot of the depth there when you talk about it in your classes and connecting wisdom to our somatic intelligence.

[00:50:18] Speaker: Um, what can you share sort of full circle, uh, about. Intuition as a gift. It doesn't have to be mystical necessarily, but intuition in our ability to be trained so that we can heal our nervous system. 

[00:50:40] Speaker 2: So

[00:50:44] Speaker 2: I wanna give a, I wanna give a good answer, so I'm just gonna take a minute.

[00:50:52] Speaker 2: This vessel that you call you has [00:51:00] within it an incredible amount of possibility for a, a, a, a, an, an amazing existence. And we limit ourselves in different ways.

[00:51:19] Speaker 2: When we ha, when we, when we give ourselves the opportunity to practice some kind of awareness practice. Okay? So I, I wanna differentiate that from just an, a movement practice. Be, and, and, and it's not that movement. In itself is bad. I mean, movement is great. I, everybody says you gotta go for a walk every day, or you know, work out or whatever.

[00:51:50] Speaker 2: And it's very important to move the body. But when you add the element of awareness [00:52:00] or attention, you can use different words in different ways that brings you to a clear sensation of your existence. Then you can begin to feel more fully your real life, and that doesn't happen spontaneously except in moments of, you know, great.

[00:52:31] Speaker 2: I mean from the Christian tradition, for example, St. Paul getting knocked off the horse by a vision from heaven or something like that. Then sometimes we have this moment, this eureka moment, right? That's, that is true. But if I, if I have a practice of some kind, whether it's a meditation practice or a somatic movement practice that brings awareness.[00:53:00] 

[00:53:00] Speaker 2: To my interoceptive and my proprioceptive parts, I will be able to develop an intuition for living my life better. So if, for example, you could go to all the martial arts classes in the world, you could go to all the yoga classes in the world and be beautiful at perfecting every Asana. But if you're only doing it so that you get good at it.

[00:53:29] Speaker 2: If you're only doing it so that you'll be strong, then you are missing this element. The, you could, you could call it the, the, you know, when they talk about alchemical substances, they, they always talked about the fifth element. Uh, they, that was where the word quintessence came from was the fifth element Earth, water, fire, air, and quintes.

[00:53:55] Speaker 2: And that quintes. Is that awareness of [00:54:00] myself, awareness of my being. And that's a practice, that's a practice that has to happen in order to be able to navigate yourself through life in a conscious fashion. Otherwise, we're just reacting. To go back to what you were saying earlier, I'm just a, um, I'm just a, a victim of circumstance instead of the architect.

[00:54:26] Speaker 2: My life. 

[00:54:30] Speaker: Absolutely. My word of the year is amplify. But I didn't mean it in the western sense of being louder or bigger or something. It was to amplify that state of coherence. Hmm. And by virtue of that, you are in resonance with others like you. And I became resonance over these topics that were both, um.

[00:54:57] Speaker: I we're interested in. 

[00:54:58] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. [00:55:00] Yeah, and I think these words, resonance, coherence, another one is entrainment, right? This ability to be able to be with someone or something and be able to feel the vibration of it and understand how to enter it and respond to it in the appropriate way. This is what we're talking about.

[00:55:23] Speaker 2: And, and I really do believe that when people do somatic awareness training of any kind, they can improve that. 

[00:55:33] Speaker: The word embodiment comes to mind. I feel like much of what you're saying is you're taking into this practice, but you're really cultivating the art of collecting information. But it's not just here.

[00:55:46] Speaker: It's, 

[00:55:48] Speaker 2: it's, it, it absolutely embodiment means I am in my body. I, 

[00:55:53] Speaker: but the body may not be just a physical thing. 

[00:55:57] Speaker 2: Uh, well that's a whole other [00:56:00] conversation, isn't it? But from the perspective of my physical envelope, can I, can I have a connection as, as I sit here speaking to you, can I sense my feet on the floor?

[00:56:14] Speaker 2: Can I sense the movement of my breath and the, you know, the sort of subtle vibration of. Whatever you wanna call it, the qi in my hands, the sensation of my hands, touching each other, the connection, you know, here's left and right, left and right brain, I'm connecting it to my midline. I'm feeling the coherence in my own self so that my own self is not in conflict with something.

[00:56:44] Speaker 2: That's when I can make really clear decisions. 

[00:56:49] Speaker: Lavania. This is so beautiful. Just one last, um, question. Let's say someone to come to you for training, whether virtual [00:57:00] or consulting with you, what would be the first exercise you would give them or a guidelines you would give them so that they can start cultivating the art of becoming more somatically aware?

[00:57:14] Speaker: Even a simple. Step. 

[00:57:18] Speaker 2: Well, I always wanna start with the breath, right? Because the breath is there with you all the time, and every emotion that exists has a breath pattern. So when I, if I want to become more coherent with myself, the first thing that I want to do is to sense the pattern of my own breathing.

[00:57:45] Speaker 2: To see if the pattern of my own breathing is, uh, coherent isn't the right word, but is, is in sync with what I'm saying. If [00:58:00] I'm speaking and at the same time my breath is shallow, or my breath is rapid, or my breath is tight through my nose or held, I am already not in relationship. Myself. So I would, you know, I mean there's, there's thousands of ways to move.

[00:58:21] Speaker 2: But if there was just one thing I would say to people, I would say Start with your breath. 

[00:58:27] Speaker: Lovely. Well, the show notes will have all of your information. I am so honored that you were able to go so deep with me. Is there anything else you want to share? 

[00:58:39] Speaker 2: Lordy. We did a lot. 

[00:58:41] Speaker: We did a lot. We did a lot. And I, I really feel like we did a good job covering the different areas, intuition, spirituality, somatic awareness, and you've defined it so well.

[00:58:53] Speaker: And ai 

[00:58:54] Speaker 2: I mean, I, I would just, I, I would just encourage people to remember [00:59:00] that you, you're not going to find happiness just living in your head. To, to find a way to connect with your whole self 

[00:59:12] Speaker: Absolutely. Holistically. 

[00:59:15] Speaker 2: Right. Exactly. 

[00:59:17] Speaker: Well, thank you Lavania. Um, I look forward to, maybe in the future you and I can maybe go deeper on ai.

[00:59:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something we were gonna talk about. Well, we did talk about it a little bit. 

[00:59:28] Speaker: Yeah, we did talk. Yeah. Absolutely. 

[00:59:31] Speaker 2: Alright, thank you. 

[00:59:33] Speaker: Thank you.