Letting Go Without Giving Up

Alexander teachers are always telling their pupils to 'release' and 'let go', both of their muscles and their preoccupation with a specific goal. This often makes their pupils feel that they should try for a kind of beatific non-involvement with worldly affairs and concern themselves with higher things - which can quickly get extremely depressing. Nothing worse for morale than feeling that you shouldn't be doing what you are longing to do.

What is happening, however, is that we are mixing up 'letting go' with 'giving up'. There's an important difference between these two terms which we often fail to appreciate. I know I used to confuse one with the other until I sat down one day (in a released Alexanderly way, I hope!) and sorted them out.

'Letting go' of your aim or goal isn't the same as giving it up.

Giving it up means deciding that you're not going to have it, for whatever reason. Forgetting about achieving it. It has echoes of 'giving up', hopeless, sad, forlorn.

But 'letting go' only means you stop holding on to it - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you stop holding on to the desire for it.

So if we're thinking of wanting the neck to release, the head to go forward and up, and so on, we don't want to be obsessing about how much we want that release to happen/whether it's working/whether we're doing it right/whether it will work tomorrow/whether it will work for the rest of our lives/whether it will help that bad back...

All that just takes attention and energy away from the release itself.

I find it really ironical that it's our very obsession with the result, the desperation of our need for it, that prevents it from happening. Whereas if we're a bit stand offish, and look away, so to speak, with an attitude of,"It's okay whether it happens or not", it very often does.

This standoffishness can be really difficult to reach, because of course, inside I'm just dying for the release to happen, for my bad back to get better, or my frozen shoulder to release, or whatever.

I always felt a bit of a fraud in this situation, and tried valiantly not to want the result so desperately, but to remain centred - until I realised that the very effort of trying not to do it was tightening me up further. And then I had a minor epiphany and realised that I had to let go of the desire - but also of the desire to let go of the desire ...

...but that would trap me in an endless backward loop and unending conflict ...

until I had the real epiphany and realised that I didn't have to let go of anything - I just had to let go, period.

So if I ask for release, and notice that the desire for the result isn't going away, I don't try to fight it. I just let it be and go back to 'neck free, head forward and up...'

Teaching, Not Therapy

I must admit I wasn't prepared for the complete and overwhelming sense of panic that seized me when I actually saw my words out there in the ether for all to see. I had to dive for cover and try to free my neck. Which I hope I have done.
But in the interval between then and now, I've been talking to various people about the Technique, and the thing I've had to keep saying is that it isn't a medical treatment, it's a skill, it's taught, not administered, and your success with it depends completely on how you apply it in your life. Sometimes I feel like I'm making a big deal out of what could be regarded as a minor difference, when I keep interrupting someone and saying, 'Lesson, not treatment', and 'pupil, not patient'.
But then again, I don't think so. Your attitudes and expectations are very different when you go for a lesson from when you go for, say, a therapy session. You expect to learn in a lesson, and what is more important, you expect to practise. To go away and apply what you've learned in the lesson.So it's really important that if you want to take Alexander lessons, you should be clear that the process that you start is not going to stop at the end of the 15 lessons or whatever. In fact, the end of your course is the beginning of your real education, when you start using what you've learnt in the lessons, and using it in a way that is unique to you.
It's your story.
You are the hero/ine, and you are (in a non endgaining way, of course), in control.

Taking Time

It's very difficult, often, to make the effort and stop in the middle of work to take a break.

You might have got nicely into the flow of it, or you might just want to get it over and done with. But the reality is that if you have been working for a long period without stopping, you have tightened, shortened, forgotten to breathe, and lost awareness of your legs.

The Alexander Technique teaches you to stop.

Stopping and releasing, coming back to your whole self from that little sphere of your head, can not only refresh you enormously, but can also prevent actual physical damage. Just taking a few moments to do the 'inner stretch', to lengthen and widen and rest your hands, can allow you to go back to work as an integrated, complete self. ( In contrast to just being a head stuck on a pole)

The State of In Between

Most of us know only two states - either in movement, or tightly held.

Locked solid.

I experience this when I ask pupils to let me move their arms or legs for them.

They either leap into movement with me, or hold on so tightly that I cannot move them at all. There is an in between state of poise and readiness for movement - in stillness. That is, the hand or leg or head is released and free, but not moving. You're able to move if you want, but equally able to stay still while someone else makes the movement for you. In our control oriented society, many people find this deeply threatening, and cannot let go even if they say, or think, that they wish to.

AT junkie

What fascinates me about the Alexander Technique is - well, there are heaps of things, but what caught my attention immediately when I first came across it, was this thing about not using effort. That really grabbed me, because I'm incorrigibly lazy. All the usual rhetoric about hard work, determination, knowing what you want and going for it, leaves me cold. But I'd reconciled myself to some form of the daily grind, mainly because I didn't know there was an alternative. So the minute I came across something that insisted that you've to put in less, not more effort, I said to myself, ' Hey, that's for me!'
Anything that tells me not to work hard gets my vote everytime!
The other thing about it that I really like - this took me some time, because I had to understand a bit about it first - is the fact that it can be used in anything that you do. It doesn't ask for an hour, or two hours, of your exclusive attention. You can use it in your daily life, your routine chores. You can use it for simple acts like sitting, standing, walking, talking, breathing. But it doesn't prohibit you from doing anything else. So you can continue with your Yoga, or your daily walk or jog, and the probability is that it will make these activities even more pleasureable and effective. And then again, you can also use it in complex activities like playing a game or a musical instrument, in singing, dancing and theatre. Not only does it prevent damage,but it also improves performance in a very subtle and powerful way.
It's the subtlety that's fascinating. Lots of other disciplines give power. But that subtle shift, that transforms life radically, yet leaves you asking,'Did that really happen, or did I imagine it?' - that's what got me hooked.

Swagatham

For readers unfamiliar with the word, that means 'welcome'.

Welcome to my Alexander Technique blog - I call it that because AT is what occupies my thoughts a lot of the time at this point. Not just how I can introduce it to people in India, but also how I can use it for myself to get that wonderful quality of 'not doing' ness in whatever I do.

Responses, comments, criticism, suggestions ......all gratefully received!