The Liberating Wobble

It's been my experience, and that of several of my students, that when something frees up, there is actually a sense of uncertainty, of being off balance. This can be a very physical sensation when the release is in the weight bearing joints like the hips, knees and ankles, but it can also be a sudden disorientation in the mind.

I had a definite sense of wobbliness when I experienced release in my legs for the first time - it felt like I was standing with a great deal of freedom, but also as if falling was just a heartbeat away. As if, every instant, I was choosing balance instead of falling. It was a strange, heady feeling; perhaps because I had never imagined before that I had any options in the matter of standing.

We see that same choice being exercised when we watch toddlers take their first tottering steps. It's a delightful sight, but if we can watch with awareness, it's also a very educative one. We realise that the choice has never gone away - we are still making it every instant that we stand or walk. The only difference is that we're no longer aware that we're doing so. Once we had worked out the mechanics of balance we turned our attention to other things - there were so many things we needed to learn in order to function in the world!

But we paid - and are still paying - a price for our lack of awareness. We lost the sense of connection within ourselves, and with it, we also lost the ability to tell when we were doing things wrong, in a way that would damage us.

If now we want to regain that first delightful feeling of ease, of balance and grace, we have to work at it. We have to recapture it consciously, and practice it as a skill is practised, so that over time, it becomes more and more natural for us to use ourselves well rather than badly.

At any point, if we start falling back into the old unhelpful ways of using ourselves, we are able to tell; and we then have a choice. Continue with the bad use, or stop, and let ourselves release into good use again.

We might still, for our own reasons, choose to go with the bad use - but at least we will know we are doing it.

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.

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.

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!

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)