In English

|  About the website

My name is Eva Laser and since 1991 I work as a Feldenkrais teacher in Solna, a suburb to Stockholm, Sweden.
The websites name is not Laser or Feldenkrais but Somatik. That is an expression of will and a standpoint. When, through our thoughts and language, we name ourselves as individuals - whole persons - something eventually happens to our awareness and attentiveness.

The wondrous observations of a newborn baby's activity and presence - as well as her/his development in the first few years of life - are seldom categorised as psychosomatic reactions. The Swedish word SOMATIK - somatics in English - as I use the word embraces the human being as subject and totality, living and feeling without excluding, but clearly including. Soma is Greek and means living body. In philosophy, phenomenology is the line of thought that is close to this point of view. The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty uses corps propre, the living body which by necessity is an individuals own and distinguished body. The philosopher Husserl used the expression Leib, in order to characterize the living body different from the dead object which he called Körper.

This use of somatik in this way may involve reflection beyond everyday considerations, but which is very convincing in the context of action and activity. We are affected by language, including its metaphors and symbols, and language, in turn, is affected by the spirit of the time and the course of events in society. My profession of guiding people with the help of the Feldenkrais Method constantly and daily confirms these ideas. This website deals with this approach, and related aspects, in a creative spirit, for students, colleagues and inquisitive visitors.

The Feldenkrais Method approaches our thought through the kinaesthetic sense mostly in a non-verbal way. Still communication between us is largely also through language. Language is always open, the Swedish poet Göran Sonnevi teaches in poem after poem, talk after talk. He wrote a poem in 1983 that includes everything I ever want to accomplish in my teaching and communication. With a generous permission from author and publisher, I publish it in the context of this website and this learning of humanity.

Whose life? you asked 
And I answered
my life, and yours
There are no other lives
But aren't all people
different?
There's nothing
but difference
It makes no difference!
People live in different conditions:
internal, external
I can hold no one
in contempt, for then
you have the instrument
What about those
who don't want to change their conditions,
those who believe
change
is impossible?
It makes no difference
There's nothing but
you, and you
Only when you become explicit,
when you
question me, and I
answer, when there's
an exchange Only then is there language
only then are we human
And this doesn't happen
very often?
No, most everything
remains difference, without seeing
the difference
Will we talk again some time?
Yes

Do you believe change is possible?
Yes, that too

© Göran Sonnevi 1983
from the book A Child Is Not a Knife, selected poems of Göran Sonnevi
Translated and edited by Rika Lesser
© Rika Lesser English translation
Published by Princeton University Press 1993
ISBN 0-691-01543-0

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