Friday, September 11, 2009

Releasing into Tightening

Most people feel a heady sense of lightness and ease after their lesson - even a first lesson. So did I.

I had my first ever Alexander lesson at the hands of a visiting teacher because there were no Alexander teachers in India at the time. I had to drive across the city through traffic choked roads to get there. During the lesson I didn't have any epiphanies; perhaps I was too preoccupied with trying to make sense of all the new information I was getting. But I drove back across the same traffic choked roads with a blissful feeling of effortlessness, as if I was being carried along by the current of a river. In words familiar to all Alexander students, 'I wasn't doing anything - it was all just happening.'

An experience like this can be a powerful motivator to pursue this strange discipline. Understandably, we want to experience this again and again. Make it our default state if possible.

So it can come as a rude shock when the initial phase of releases is followed by what seems to be relentless tightening in the muscles. We know our shoulders are tight, we direct for release, and frustratingly, nothing happens. It begins to feel as if learning the Alexander Technique is a never ending process of getting our noses jammed against the next level of tightening.

It's helpful to remember that we are usually holding several layers of tensions, and letting go of the outermost can bring the inner ones to the surface. Also that the new information we're asking ourselves to process is, more often than not, directly contradictory to the way we've been doing things up until then.

I remind my pupils, when they complain of feeling tighter than ever, that they have been carrying this tightness around for the whole of their lives. The only difference is that they didn't know they were carrying it - and now that they do, they don't like it. Naturally.

The best response to this is to give ourselves an encouraging pat on the back for being able to register the tension, then continue to direct and inhibit without worrying about when a release is actually going to happen.

Monday, September 7, 2009

It's Different!

It's very exciting to be starting out on a new venture, but one of the downsides is that there are so many factors to balance that some of them tend to fall by the wayside occasionally - as happened with my posts.
What helped me get back is a comment from one of my pupils:
'My only suggestion is keep directing into the blogs, it will work at some point!'
An apt suggestion, indeed.
So here I am, directing away -
and again, inevitably, I got back to the question of why the Alexander Technique constantly fascinates, frustrates, but refuses to let go of me.
Well, it's a nice middle point between 'Just go for it', and 'Everything is illusion, give it all up.'
It doesn't stop me from wanting things, but it shows me a different way of getting them without damaging myself in the process.
It doesn't encourage me to run blindly after them, to grab, hold, grip.
In fact, it encourages me, after making it clear to myself what exactly I want, to drop it and pay attention to something else instead. Strangely enough, I often end up getting not only what I asked for, but also an indefinable quality of ease and effortessness.
But the Alexander Technique doesn't work to a time table.
Deadlines are something I am learning to drop - very difficult!
I have to learn to ask, and get out of the way.
It may happen -
now
at some other time.
Or
something else may happen
nothing may happen for quite a long time
a whole lot of things may happen all at once.
It doesn't need a special time, or a special place.
The best time to use it is now, and the best place is here. Wherever I am, and whatever I happen to be doing at the moment, the Alexander Technique slips right into it, and infuses a whole new quality into it.
After some time you don't do the Alexander Technique, it does you, and you go along for the ride.