Beyond right and wrong

Deep body work when unconditionally accepting of the „what is“ leads to self-knowledge. Release „does itself“. Many thanks to Bruce Fertman for an enriching visit to his training school.

„You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free“ John 8:32

Effort

It it feels like an effort, it is not the Alexander Technique. In contact with the support of the ground I can experience energy and strength that involves physical work, yes, but not an effortful „trying“ and not resisting what and how I am. Trying to be something I am not, doesn’t work.

I can only receive what I am, and notice that I am not still, not fixed, not static. All organic forms are shifting, changing, growing. Notice and give space to what I am becoming. Not because what could be is better than what is, but because the changing is part of the who and what I am.

By the way, I am still trying to do it right. The practice is noticing that, and letting go.

not to lead

I don’t like „having“ to do anything. I don’t like having to get something right. I am therefore reluctant as a teacher to tell anyone what to do. So what is my job? Am I in the wrong job?

I like to play. With sensation, with awareness, with attention. With gravity, and the way ones system responds to it. My teaching is an invitation to play. Trusting that the „right“ thing will do itself…

Learning and growing wants to happen. I can get out of my own way and let it. Sometimes that means leading others… sometimes we like to be led…

„Going into support“

When I left the UK for Germany shortly after graduating as an Alexander Teacher, I expressed my fears about starting a business in a foreign language in a foreign country to my teacher Rosa Luisa Rossi. „just go into support!“ she said, as if this is the simplest thing in the world.

I can choose to take the time to notice that I am supported. How am I supported?

On many levels. On any level.

How do I want to move from this supported place?

Can I feel my appreciation for what is there without losing sight of where I want to go? Maybe where I want to go isn  t where I thought it was.

An invitation

Touch something ordinary – the wall,  your desk, your keyboard, your knee – as though you had never touched it before.

Actually, you (that is the you that you are today – here and  now) never have.

How does your body-mind respond?

creating spaces

Today I have a day off from family, parenting. I have a large house and garden all to myself.  I allow myself this space, and a part of me sighs with relief. Something in me begins to open up.  This a place I can just be. How rare that is. And how simple.

Listening to a concert recently I was struck by the sense that the music is a gift from the musicians. I would not want or be able to put a price on it. How do we value art, creativity, healing? Or the work of a parent or carer day in day out? The time of a teacher or therapist?

How can we create spaces that nurture and make possible the kind of work we don t want to put a price on? How should or could such spaces be funded?

 

 

„The right way“

The words of a trainer of an NLP Workshop I once attended (I had not yet started the Alexander training) still sometimes go through my head. „The problem I have with the Alexander technique, is that it presupposes that there is a „right“ way“.

i realised today, that the bit that bugs me is not so much the  „right“ in that sentence,  as the “ right way“.  I do  trust that there is an innate „rightness“ that will hold the pieces together if I let go of what I thought I knew was the „way“.  It will inform my movement if I let it.  It informs my choices if I let it.  This „rightness“  is that knowing that knows how to make my heart beat and my cells regenerate. It is beyond „right“ and therefore also „wrong“.

I  let go of my knowing how it feels to move freely, and discover new freedoms. I direct my pupil,  not knowing what a directed pupil looks and feels like, and my pupil moves differently than I expect, twists or curves. I inhibit my „knowing“ and continue to direct. Release happens.

Inhibition

How is it possible for the brain to get out of its own way? Reading Missy Vinyards thought experiments in „How you stand, how you move, how you live“, I feel as though I am mentally tying myself in knots. Sometimes I get a glimpse of a possible letting go,  in order to let some other aspect of me coordinate my movement.

She claims it is possible for the higher cortex do nothing except give the instruction and the direction. It feels like being out of control. Can I really trust this other part of me to move me safely?

It correlates with the idea of creative manifestation – use your conscious mind to be absolutely clear about what you want to happen, give up your ideas of how it will happen. Be open to all possibilities. This approach to life feels too simple and at the same time similarly  scary.

„non-doing“ – as a teacher

I am a facilitator rather than a teacher. Change wants to happen, all we need are the right conditions. What is my responsibility in this role? To provide the conditions, to offer space, to offer my presence. How can we value this, make spaces for this? How can we be learn to be facilitators for one another?