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.

Bigger on the Inside Than the Outside

If the title sounds weird, well, there it is. That's the Alexander Technique for you. It's got just enough zaniness in it to keep you sane.
It's fine to speak of releasing and expanding when your outward posture matches the thought. So you're standing beautifully balanced, perhaps arms spread out, and you can allow yourself to breathe deeply and fully. You can let your muscles expand and release into open-ness.
But what if you're sitting at the computer, typing away?
What if you're an actor playing a hunchback?
Or a student who spends long hours reading, writing, typing?
A golfer standing bent over the ball, arms angled inwards, hands gripping the golf club?
Your outward posture is anything but expanded. So then do you let yourself go all crinkly inside, and hope like hell you'll remember to stretch every now and then?
Remembering to stretch every now and then is a good thing anyway. Well, most of the time, at least.
However, the actor playing the hunchback doesn't have the luxury of taking time out every 30 minutes to have a good stretch!
The fact is that you can be released and elastic, whatever your outward posture.
The Alexander Technique teaches you to stretch inwardly, while you're working, acting, reading or typing.
You can have your arms angled inwards, your shoulders and back rounded and hunched, your gaze directed downwards.
Through all of that, you can ask for inner release and expansion so that while your arms are focused inwards, your shoulders are imperceptibly releasing outwards. While you are walking, stooped and hunched, looking crooked and misshapen, inside you are free, so that your muscles have the best chance of protecting you from damage, and helping you do your job.
Outwardly, you appear constricted, tight. Actually you are released, free and open, with all the space in the world inside!

I Have the Time

This is the second half of the previous post - I was describing the aspects of the Alexander Technique that go against the beliefs of the 'developed world'.
The first is to let go of a preoccupation with the results that we want.
The second, is to take all the time that we need.
One of the first things that we have to accept when we start learning the Alexander Technique is that the process of release cannot be hurried. We can ask for freedom in the neck, the shoulders, the arms, hips or feet, but the minute we start urging a response from ourselves, the whole process stalls.
This principle is implacable, and you cannot cheat. Start pushing, thinking of how much you’d like things to happen immediately, or tomorrow, or in the next lesson, or by the end of 15 lessons, and you are lost.
The only way is to let go of a time frame completely – to affirm your readiness to let the process take its own time.
Paradoxically, this acceptance may speed things up.
On the other hand, it may not.
Not difficult to see how completely it goes against the grain in the ‘developed’ world, is it?
We live by dates and deadlines that are regarded as acts of God. Our days are numbered - in more ways than one! Everything is packaged into neat, time bound schedules that promise a certain result if a certain input is made.
Into this neat, pre-ordered universe, comes the Alexander teacher, with his, ‘ Well, just ask for release and get out of the way, and you will get it – or you may not just yet, but continue asking anyway.’
We can go nuts trying to squeeze the process of release into a timetable.
Or we could let go, and embark on a fascinating exploration of how our own selves work. And all without leaving our home –
Talk about environment friendly tourism !

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.