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.

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.

Tone vs. Tightening

One big Alexander hurdle - how to have your muscles engaged and working well, but not use unnecessary effort and energy in the process.
All my pupils have had this problem, whether they were aware of it or not. I had it too when I started training.
You're standing, being worked on, and the teacher says, ' Ask your neck to release'.
You do, and don't feel any change. But she says, ' Great!' leaving you with the suspicion that she is just being nice, and that you're actually lousy at this.
Part of the problem is that we're not used to paying such close atention to our bodies. So many of the shifts and releases that happen simply slip through our awareness, like little fish that swim through the spaces of a net.
But another aspect of the problem is that we confuse tone with tightening, and think our muscles are tight, when in fact they're only using the appropriate effort required for the action being done. So if we're standing, and we ask our muscles to release, it doesn't mean that all our muscles go completely floppy. That would just make us end up in a heap on the floor.
No, it just means that the extra effort we're putting into that action melts away, leaving us using just the right amount of effort that's needed.
This melting away of the extra effort often goes unnoticed, especially if we're at the beginning stages. That's when we feel that our thoughts have had no effect. Naturally we feel confused when the teacher beams, 'Well done!' at us!
But as time goes by, and our kinaesthetic awareness sharpens, we learn to recognise when release has taken place, whether we're moving or standing still. We experience the pleasure of having our muscles working smoothly and freely, centred and purposefully engaged.
Best of all, we get that extraordinary feeling of effortlessness, the sheer pleasure of the action having done itself.

Physical Responses to Thought

We can think of thoughts and emotions - mental processes generally - as having a grip on our muscles. Or rather, if we consider the Alexander stand that mind and body are one, then the muscles patterns are the thoughts, and vice versa.
So it needn't only be the so called 'negative' emotions - fear, anger, hate and so on - that cause the neck to tighten. It could just as well be happiness, excitement, anticipation and so on. Add the fact that very often we have mixtures of 'positive' and 'negative' feelings in us, and we can see that the whole process of tightening and releasing is not as straightforward as we might have thought.
We hold on to these emotions, so that our muscles are continuously locked into one emotional pattern after another as we move mindlessly through our day. No wonder we feel ragged with exhaustion at the end of it!
Perhaps what happens when we direct and allow release is not that we stop feeling the emotion, but that we stop locking it into us. We stay released, allowing it to flow through. Just as our muscles have to engage to a certain extent in the effort of picking up something, in feeling an emotion, too, our muscles have to do the same. But if there is just the optimum effort involved, we can get back to our normal, released state when the emotion passes.
And perhaps, in some cases, we get the time to pause and realise that we don't really need to feel that emotion after all.

Investing Time

Someone who comes in for Alexander lessons comes prepared to invest a certain sum of money. But there is something else, something much more scarce that they have to be prepared to invest, if the lessons are to work, and that is Time.
That's what nobody has enough of these days.
Babies seem to be born with watches strapped to their wrists, and a cell phone in their hands. Children's lives are structured and timetabled down to the last nano second. Even having fun has to be productive, and train you to be confident, a better manager, improve your leadership skills, your risk taking capabilities, your decision making abilties...
Along with the shrinking of the open spaces, the spaces in our minds have shrunk as well.
In the middle of all this, along comes the Alexander teacher, who seems to be a relic of the past.
Stop, he says.
Take your time.
Be aware.
Give your directions, but don't push them.
Let them work.
Allow your body to adjust to the totally new situation you have just created.
Let the new balance happen in your body.
I can't tell you how and when it it going to respond.

To someone immersed in an atmosphere of schedules and deadlines, familiar with - 'by the end of 3 months, we would have achieved 1,2 and 3...' this kind of vagueness may sound unacceptably waffly.
It happens to be the truth.
You have to be prepared to invest, along with a definite sum of money, an indefinite amount of time to allow the Alexander Technique to work in you. It would help if you mentally prepare yourself to invest your entire life.
This doesn't mean that you resign yourself to a long hard slog for the rest of your life, and then see the results when you are on the point of departing from it.
You start seeing the effects very soon, but the process never stops. There never comes a point where you can say, 'That's it, I've got it now, I can move on to other things.'
No, it stays with you for the rest of your life, like a benevolent Old Man of the Sea.
This can seem very daunting too, because it seems like you're stuck with all this effort of sustaining thought, and direction, and letting go, and all the rest of it, and it looks like just one more bit of slog added to all the bits you've already got.
But the delightful thing about the Alexander Technique is that it's not about more effort, but less. Not about trying harder to achieve something, but about achieving it without trying.
And it gets easier as you become more attuned to yourself, quicker to catch yourself tightening, quicker to release - until one day you realise you've just gone through a very tense scene, but at the end of it you are still calm and collected...
It all seems so right and inevitable and simple that the only possible response is, 'But of course...!"

Beyond Awareness

In this work, we are working with habits built up over a lifetime, and so ingrained, that we identify ourselves totally with them. They are an integral part of our identity - of the way we experience ourselves every instant. As far as we are concerned, they are us. This experience is not intellectual or mental; it goes far deeper than that, and for that reason, is not available to our conscious mind.
The habits I'm talking about are not what we usually think of as habits - whether they be actions (such as drinking tea every morning) or mannerisms ( such as tapping our feet on the floor when we sit).
These are very deep, inner habits of the muscular system and are involved in the simplest actions of daily life - standing, sitting, reaching out for something, speaking, listening.
For instance, as you sit there reading this post, your muscular system is working in a particular way that is uniquely yours, to hold you balanced in your chair. It works in a different way to support you when you reach out for something, when you read or write, when you get out of the chair.
The fact is that in most people, the muscular system works by shortening and tightening, so that too much effort is expended for even the simplest non-action, like just sitting still.
We need to reach down this deep, to a level which we are not otherwise aware of, and cannot otherwise control, to access the working of our self, to allow it to unravel, and to let a different way of working to establish itself.

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 !

Against the Flow

There are two things - at least! - about the Alexander Technique which are completely at odds with the culture of the so called 'developed world'. By that I mean the 'developed' communities, wherever they are found.

One aspect is non end-gaining - the idea that in your AT practice, you do not worry about the results that you want to accomplish. You stay in the present, take care of the means, and let go all worry about the ends in the confidence that the means you are using will inevitably lead to the ends you want.

We're more accustomed to being told to 'go for it,' 'grab it!' to 'seize the day' and so on. The 'go-getter has much more status, never whether he is actually getting something in all his going. You are expected to have a clear goal, and work towards it, disregarding any other factors you may see around you.

And the second?

I think I will save that for my next post...

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...'