Diana Gallone (English)

 Photo Frank Höfer ©

Diana Gallone: „... and the changes in my life continued.“, IFF 2006

Diana Gallone, Associazione Italiana Insegnanti Metodo Feldenkrais

Personally I am based in Roma. The first time I heard about the Feldenkrais method was about 20 years ago. Teaching yoga at the time I happened to receive some materials about Thomas Hanna and began studying those books and tapes, privately and also with the director of the school at which I worked. It was a school of personal growth through physical and psychological techniques, in which the physical work was a means to get a better awareness of oneself. But they didn’t know Feldenkrais. After studying this material of Thomas Hanna I was curious to know more of Feldenkrais. And then I met Anna Maria Caponecchi who is one of the organizers of Feldenkrais trainings in Rome, and now is an assistant trainer. She gave me three or four FIs and I got rid of some pains which had bothered me for many, many years. Not only did I get rid of that pain but whenever I had had an FI I had interesting dreams. They were not just dreams but during the night I had the brightest awareness of the physical cause of my pain. My life really changed. So I was soon very interested to do the professional training. It took some time before I could take such long leaves from my school, but finally I did it – and my life continued to change.

Nowadays I am working very little with the Feldenkrais Method because I am still doing
another training as food adviser, a specialisation in my profession as Naturopata (Heilpraktiker). I am very busy with that. But I have a large studio in which two of my colleagues work, teaching weekly classes. Now and then I jump in for one of them teaching ATM or I do some individual FI.

I am 61 now and I have worked in many fields. When I was younger I did social work.

After that I worked in that school, I’ve mentioned already, for about 10 years. Some years ago I began studying again to became a Heilpraktiker. My project is to put together Feldenkrais and food, because I will do my thesis about Osteoporosis, how to heal Osteoporosis with food. And I will learn how to improve Osteoporosis with movement. So I can put together Feldenkrais and Heilpraktiker.

Our association was founded in 1987 and has 329 practitioners. I began working on the board of our guild only last year. I was the first non-elected person as part of a group from Rome that for the first time was asked to be part of the board. (My colleagues were elected.) They asked me to go to Berlin because of my English. And since then, October last year, I have worked a lot with Giovanna Dolcetti, president of the Italian Guild. We worked especially hard on the issue of new government laws, – and also to prepare myself to come to the Assembly in Berlin.

What is it about the government laws? Well, we don’t have to fight anything back, yet, but have to identify and regulate ourselves in order to be part of whatever will be regulated soon… Nothing is very precise, yet and it is very difficult to understand what they are up to. We, as A.I.I.M.F (national guild), are already part of two regional laws.
The national law is still in the phase of being prepared to go to parliament. And it seems, just two days before coming here, they say, that we have actually managed to get inside on the term of ‘organic learning’ together with Rolfing and Trager. Those two methods were the closest somehow and we asked to join them while we were preparing our documents to get in. But the question of recognition is much more complicated in Italy, because we have two sets of regulations we need to be aware of. One gives recognition to the association, the national guild, as a guarantee for the profession of each member. That means our guild must guarantee the qualification, competence and the professional profile of every member, and the standard of their work, to the public. The other law defines each professional profile of numerous new professions that are going to be recognised and regulated. There are some professions that don’t like to be put together with medical professions and others that want to be inside the medical world. The A.I.I.M.F says, we Diana Gallone: „... and the changes in my life continued.“, IFF 2006 3
don’t care what it is called as long as we are in there as ‘organic learning’ – and as long as we aren’t called a therapy.

When the law will be approved it will be necessary to change some things to fit into the new law. The most important thing that has to be matched is the professional training. The law establishes that three years of training are obligatory. Three hundred hours of trainings must be common to all similar professions, and the other nine hundred are for the specific training of each professional specialization. We have four years trainings, but only 1.080 hours and we have to arrive 1200 hours. Well, since the trainings are regulated by EuroTAB it will be necessary to work to this transformation together with EuroTAB. It is part of our international communication to arrive to a solution according also to national legal requirements.

My aim during these days in Berlin is to have contact with each national guild and to understand what their legal situation in their own country is. We need all information from other countries in order to strengthen our case at home. Actually, I’m very proud to be here. I understand that a lot of work has been done those last years at the IFF, especially during the last four years. And I like very much the spirit of this meeting, the beginning, the kind of process we are led through. It makes it completely different from the approach that you have in other meetings or organisations.

I think that from a meeting like this, one is personally fed in the enthusiasm for the profession. And it is my responsibility to communicate all this to the greatest possible number of practitioners in my country. The desire for connecting, the desire of being together and working together for a common purpose. That is something we in Italy lack. Everybody is working in his own small house and hardly finds the time to do anything else besides the actual work. But this takes away some possibility to have a wider view and to mirror yourself in something bigger than yourself.

I hope that I can bring some of this spirit home.

Copyright Diana Gallone and Uta Ruge
First published in Feldenkraisforum, volume 51, 2005