Diana Romano (English)

 Photo Frank Höfer ©

We are like a seed in Latin America

Diana Romano, Associacion Argentina Feldenkrais

I was a sociology student in Buenos Aires and also studied in Boston, Massachusetts in the States. In 1974 we had a military government and my career was forbidden forever almost, and since I got stuck without knowing what to do with my life, I decided to go into movement in 1974. I did a training in what was called “expression corporal” with a very good teacher: Patricia Stokoe. She was very well known outside Argentina, too. And she was the first contact we had with the Feldenkrais method.

She decided to get in touch with Moshé Feldenkrais and was invited by him to be in one of his summer courses in London (she was actually born in London).  Patricia was then the first to bring an idea of what the Feldenkrais method was to Argentina. Since then I was really in love with the thinking of the method. Well, I didn’t have the chance to be in a training, so I had to wait a couple of years to be formally trained. Finally Beatriz Walterspiel did a Feldenkrais training in Argentina in 1994.

One of my students, the music teacher Violeta Hemsy de Gainza – a very influent teacher in Argentina and head of couple of programms for the education departament of the UN – asked me to write a book about the Feldenkrais method. She teaches a lot also in Europe. Being aware of the difficulties musicians can have with their instruments  during the long hours of rehearsing, she was very interested in bringing this method to them. She is head editor of a series of books about body, health and art, each book is about one teaching method. I did my best trying to explain for the general public what the Feldenkrais method is – and as far as I know it is the first book written in Spanish for this purpose. ("Introducción al Método Feldenkrais - El arte de crear conciencia a través del movimiento").

I have a private practice teaching FI lessons and several ATM-classes. The way teaching is organized in Argentina is quite different from Europe and the States. As far as I know you have short-time workshops for a couple of weeks. But in Argentina the most frequent way is to organize regular teaching for a whole year, once a week for about an hour and a half each meetiong. Most of my students are professionals from different areas. Musicians, medical doctors, writers, psychoanalists, dancers, university students, etc.

Psychoanalysis and "body work” are very popular with Argentinian middle class people and it was truely amazing how even during the painful economic crisis in 2001 people tried to hold on to their Feldenkrais lessons. That's the way I work and earn my living. I’ve been working in different movement techniques for the last 25 years and very slowly I turned my hole practise to Feldenkrais.

Our Guild was set up in 1998, when the first training finished. During the first years it was all done very simply. The president of the board just worked from her home. Meanwhile we have rented an office and and the first administration produced a web page so the general public can get in touch with us. Some years ago we got in contact with the IFF and that’s why I’m here now, even though it was financially quite difficult for us. But we thought it was a priority to be here to get in touch with other associations. The guild asked me to come here to represent our membership. They thougt it would be interesting to bring my little book that had just come out. The Argentinian guild has 70 members. There are more people who finished the trainings, but 70 people are registered. We have had two trainings in Argentina. Beatriz Walterspiel was the educational director – and since she speaks Spanish we were taught in our mother tongue, at least most of the time.

This is my first international meeting with the IFF members and my first impression is very positive. I thought it would be more bureaucratic but it's quite easy going and dynamic. I'm happy being here even though it took me like a month to decide to say yes, and it was a long and ardous journey to come here. I think I will go back to Argentina with a lot of ideas and new ways of interacting. One of our most pressing problems is the lack of teaching material in our own language. We don’t have any in Spanish. I talked to many people here: The Israelis have their material; English speaking people have it translated, Germans already have a lot. But it is expensive, paying royalties etc… And Argentina is in a very difficult economic situation. It would be great if we can buy the Spanish language rights for the Yanailessons little by little and translate slowly one thing after the other with permission from the IFF. The Mexican representative and I are planning to work together on this. We got in touch through emails some weeks ago in order to be able to link up in Berlin and communicating about our common interest in terms of Spanish translations. Geografically Mexico is very close to the United States, and Argentina is at the end of the world. They get many teachers to visit and we don’t… I hope the IFF can help us also with this. The Spanish speaking world is vast and if there is a real and honest intent of spreading the method and teaching and making a living of it, something has to be done. In a way we could be the pioneers for our language group. We consider Argentina the main place for this method in our region. Uruguay doesn't have a guild, Chile doesn't have one. But in Argentina we have quite a number of members who can do a lot for the Spanish speaking world and spread out this method. It's like a seed in Latin America. When we have the chance to bring trainers or good teachers to Argentina we are also trying to offer these courses to our neighbours. We send out information by email to all of them. Recently Mia Segal came and it was terribly expensive for us and only 35 people took part, of which only 15 were Argentinians (of 70 members). In my view there still is a need to explain to the international Feldenkrais community, how important it is for us to get further education. This is one of my priority issues to bring to this assembly.

Copyright Diana Romano and Uta Ruge
First published in Feldenkraisforum, volume 55, 2006