Making a Note of It

Keeping a record of lessons and of the process of your learning can be invaluable; I recommend it to everyone who comes for lessons.

It can seem a bit of a drag, keeping notes after a lesson, and every once in a while, but once you're used to it, it becomes an integral part of your learning.

One very important benefit, I think, is that it sharpens your observation skills. I remember when I started training, every now and then, and usually when I wasn't thinking Alexander, there would be a fleeting sense of release. Just a slight shift, so small that I couldn't be sure whether I felt it at all, or it was just wishful thinking on my part. It was a bit like glimpsing someone out of the corner of your eye - a flash, and gone. But I soon learned to accept that as a release that I had indeed picked up, and I found that it became easier to notice when these releases happened again. Record keeping helps you to capture these little will o' the wisps as they flit past. Sit down at the end of a lesson and jot down anything that occurs to you; even if nothing does, the very fact that you took the time to think about it makes it easier for you to observe things the next time round.

The other thing that record keeping helps with is when you are on your own, after a series of lessons, trying to apply Alexander in your life. You remember a couple of things that were done during your lessons, and you work conscientiously at them; but as time goes by, and you don't work at anything else, mainly because you don't remember all the other stuff that was done, the chances are high that you'll get bored, and gradually let things slip completely. If you have a record of the various activities that you worked on, you have a number of alternatives that you can go on to explore.
Another very useful result of record keeping is that you start to have a picture of an ongoing process. That really comes in handy when, as happens sometimes, your body adjusts to the changes that are happening, and you forget that there was an earlier and more unhappy time when you were troubled by sundry aches and pains. You think you were always as you are now, and you may start wondering whether the Alexander Technique did anything for you at all. One look at your record will tell you exactly what, and how much, it did.

I've also found that as I make notes on a particular session, things that happened a long time ago suddenly start making sense. I'm able to make connections between my observations now, and events earlier in my life; in fact, I've found that it links up past and present in a way that I hadn't anticipated at all.

The View at the End of Your Nose

Back from my visit to Hyderabad and Delhi, but deciding to stay put in Bangalore to set up my studio here properly. No sense in running around madly distributing pieces of myself in half a dozen places!

One evening I had a visitor who'd just dropped in on some other errand, and we got talking. She was going through a spell of bad back pain, and having to watch every move she made, and I told her how the Alexander Technique could help.

"Oh, I know the Alexander Technique!" she exclaimed. "We had a teacher come in to the office to help us with better posture - but it was so boring!!"



That did gave me a start, because I've never had someone describe AT to me as boring - strange, bizarre, inexplicable, even disturbing... but never boring!

So I questioned her a little more, and it turned out that many years ago, when she was working abroad, their company had an Alexander Technique teacher come in to help people with their working posture, and apparently what she did was to go around making adjustments to the way people sat. At least, that's what this lady remembered it as. It didn't work at all for her because she was already suffering from her back pain, and all she wanted to do was lie down - which of course the teacher was not in a position to offer her, not in that setting, anyway!

I thought that teacher must have had an uphill job - table work is such an important part of the work for me that if I couldn't offer it, I'd feel I wasn't giving my pupils all the help possible in re-educating themselves for a better quality of life.

Also, I guess she must have been under tremendous pressure to produce results quickly to justify her employment by the company. In that situation, one's focus can shift from what is actually best for people to what looks most effective - only it might not be.

I've faced that dilemma with people who come with pronounced back pain or some such problem - how to not just make a difference, but to be seen making a difference, and quickly too. So far, I've been able to stay back from jumping straight into addressing the problem, and luckily for me, within a few lessons, they've been able to get a sense of what's happening and take it on for themselves.

I've been lucky, I should say - will I continue to stay lucky... well, I certainly hope so!

And my visitor - I didn't have the time to give her a lesson as I'd have liked to, but I did take her through semi-supine and explain how she could use it for helping her back - so I hope that helps!

Walking Skywards

This is a lovely phrase that one of my pupils used as we were applying Alexander ideas to walking and movement.

It struck me then that life would be so different if we could access that state of ease and harmony as a matter of course, and if that elusive quality could be something we take for granted rather than something that we view as a delightful aberration.

That's what most of us do - we like the changes that we observe in ourselves after a lesson, but we don't really expect to have it permanently. We've already bought into the view that this is something that we can have only when we're thinking exclusively about it, or when we're in a lesson. The idea,'This is the way I can be all the time', doesn't figure as a serious scenario - and in a way that's understandable.

Lots of things working here - one is of course the strength of habit, which keeps us expecting to go back into the old familiar state, sooner or later. The other is the thought that it's all too good to be true - is it really possible that we can rid themselves of our problems so easily? It seems to much to expect.

I tend to get caught up in that mindset too, and I've to be constantly on guard to make sure I don't unwittingly transmit that to someone working with me.

'Walking skywards' is something that we're all made for - age, race, sex, profession no bar. But we do need to accept that it's possible.

The Alexander Technique in Delhi

It's beautiful weather in Delhi now; a little chill in the air, but blue skies and warm sunshine, and it's still possible to walk to places you want to get to.
I'm working in a studio in an old building on the fourth floor; it's in Shahpurjat, in South Delhi. The rest of South Delhi, except maybe Hauz Khas nearby, seems to be wide roads and greenery, but Shahpurjat is a tangle of narrow twisting lanes with houses overhanging them - or so it seems as I make my way through these lanes morning and night - on my way in to work, and on the way home. Invariably there are occasions when I have to stop for cars winding through these crooked streets in apparent defiance of all the odds of meeting another vehicle coming head on. Sometimes there is indeed another one coming head on, and then I can seize the chance to make some quick progress while the two vehicles negotiate ways of inching past each other - starting with the tricky question of who is to back up first! Since they effectively block the road for anything else, I'm assured of some easy walking for a bit - that is, as easy as a choppy and uneven surface can get.
But I'm enjoying working here on the fourth floor - the studio is large and airy, there is a little kitchenette so I can bring a packed lunch and warm it up when I'm ready to eat. The shady-sunny terrace allows me to sun myself between lessons and gives a slow leisurely quality to the days, so I'm not really worrying about what the follow up to this week of lessons here in Delhi should be. It seems as it everything will work itself out as it should.