Stillness as growth

Sometimes getting still to shed a habit and let something new emerge seems fruitless.

We live in a time and space that emphasizes doing.

Waiting IS doing something.

When you plant a seed, many things happen that you don’t see before a shoot comes up from the soil.

You don’t see how the food you eat becomes fuel for your body and brain.

You don’t see how neurotransmitters create elegant, coordinated action.

Slowing down is under rated.

Give yourself some time and space.

Let the story you tell yourself fade into the background for a short time and find your breath.

Try being still with inner space and inner movement.

The Hidden Treasures I Found by Living The Alexander Technique

I was initially drawn to the Alexander Technique because of my hope of having a life in the performing arts. I wanted to be a performer, but I didn’t think I had a stand out level of talent, and I didn’t want to risk living my life forever unfulfilled. I knew the Alexander Technique was part of many performing arts curriculum. I didn’t know what it was, but my good fortune and my instincts guided me to experience it first hand. I expected to teach performing artists, who make up a portion of my practice, but what I enjoy most about teaching the Alexander Technique is the personal interactions I have with all kinds of people.

My focus in my early years as a teacher was on how my skills could help my students. My trainers, teachers and mentors all echoed Alexander’s own experience, that applying my Alexander tools on my own behalf was the mechanism to teaching well.

I taught, as many people, groups and as often as I could. I came to have a deeper capacity for observing and providing more essential, accessible and practical tools to my students; recognizing and providing more teachable moments; and knowing how much was enough. These were all things I aspired to and watched for.

But there are hidden treasures that come from living the Alexander Technique, and no one could have predicted how I would mine the gifts that I have gotten. Some of those treasure might never had come to me without living through things I never wanted and hoped would never happen.

I’ve written about my experiences with anxiety and depression, which coincided with my response to the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election here in the US.

What it’s been like for me since Covid-19 Lockdown and the 2020 Election

It’s coming up on a year since I began physically distancing, stopped teaching in person lessons - effectively shutting my practice - and watched a not unexpected pandemic and all its concomitant fallout play out.

I have had moments where I feared for my mental health over the course of the pandemic and the 2020 election. The Alexander Technique gave me the capacity to know I was experiencing trauma, and that I was in a precarious state, and it gave me a lifeline to get to the next safe harbor. I sought help, and returned to tools that helped me before. They helped me again.

For me, Alexander Technique isn’t about my alignment or physical posture, except to the degree that those are sign posts of how I am in myself. Being, not doing, is how I experience my life more with each passing year. F. M. Alexander’s understanding that one can’t separate mind from body from psyche - and my recognition that I wouldn’t want to if I could - is more of my lived experience with each passing day.

At various periods of my life, I have been drawn to the question: Would I be willing to give up everything in order to have everything? Getting nearer to that as my personal reality is more possible with the stillness I can reach for with my Alexander Technique tools. I can quiet the inner dialogue that revs my nervous system and generates dis-ease, emotional pain, fear, and discomfort.

I am learning to reach for inner or outer narratives that ease my suffering instead of compounding it. And I am keeping a close watch on how regret shows up for me. This pause or reset in how life shows up has placed me in the center of just how uncertain everything is. It can be overwhelming to be so present to that fact. And it can be thrilling.

I had no idea when I started lessons and then trained as an Alexander Teacher that I would discover AND build capacities for meeting life’s challenges as well as I have. So far I keep finding new reserves after waves of crushing realities rain down on me. It seems as though I keep waking up to the horror and the amazing beauty of humanity and life itself over and over again.

Some of the hidden treasures I found:

• Resilience

• Patience

• The ability to self-sooth

• Living my values more of the time

• Not feeling defensive

• Solving problems more easily and quickly

• Feeling more empathy for myself and others

• Leaving and avoiding unhealthy relationships

• Better listening skills

• Taking more pleasure in daily life

• Greater creativity

• Improved intellectual capacity

• Seeing the bigger picture

• Kinder self-talk

• Better self-esteem

• More satisfying and meaningful relationships with family, friends and others

• Joy in movement

• Appreciating what I have

Practical How To:

I go back to the step by step process I learned over 37 years ago. I pause, come to inner stillness, give myself time to find more inner space and wait for a shift inside. Sometimes the shift is significant, sometimes it’s barely noticeable, but something changes. I engage in this throughout my day, sometimes without such a systematic sequence, but just an awareness to expand.

Would I be willing to give up everything in order to have everything? More and less. How much of a choice do I have? It depends. When I have a choice, what do I choose?

From May 2006: The Alexander Technique is a vital tool for managing your stress

I wrote this post for National Stress Awareness Month in May of 2006. I imagine many of your are experiencing stress. The Alexander Technique is a vital tool in managing your stress.

Here are the top three physical symptoms of stress, cited from this website in May 2006:

• sleep disturbances

• back, shoulder or neck pain

• tension or migraine headaches

The Alexander Technique addresses stress and tension from a mental and a physical approach.

On the mental level, students learn to identify their unique stress triggers, and how to slow down the rate at which they react to those situations. For example, when facing an unpleasant event (dental visit, presentation at work, loaded family interactions), learning to recognize the anticipatory anxiety, in the form of self-talk, can allow the student to then notice the physical responses. This can include tightening the neck, tensing shoulder or jaw, and perhaps subtle breath-holding.

Observing inner dialogue, some of my students realize they are feeding their anxiety by expecting negative experiences, or recalling past events over and over. They are able to re-direct where they put their attention, and find they can minimize the affect of their worry.

On the physical level, students can learn to release degrees of tension and contraction in the neck, shoulders, jaw and elsewhere. Even when their thoughts wander to triggers, they can still release muscle tension, minimizing the impact of the stress.

Alexander jargon: using language in a non-habitual way

There are many folks who are critical of the jargon* we use in the Alexander Technique. I understand their point. Semantics (the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning) can muddy communication. Our terminology can be confusing, de-legitimizing, off putting and inaccessible.

However, consider the definition of jargon: * “special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand”. Alexander students gain skill from the process one goes through to understand the jargon. Alexander’s directions and concepts can invite someone to think in a new way. Language can be used to trigger novelty in perception, making it possible for someone to access change. Alexander Technique is about change. We are looking for ways to bring habituated, automatic responses to a level of awareness where we have more agency to choose how we respond.

I offer Alexander’s main instructions in many variations, in my self work and with my students:

• Neck free, head forward and up, back lengthening and widening, knees forward and away.

• Allow your neck to be free, to allow you head to move forward and up, to allow your back to lengthen and widen, to allow your knees to release forward and away.

• I allow my neck to be free, to allow my head to release forward and up, to allow my knees to release forward and away from each other, to allow my shoulder to widen, lengthening through my arms and out my fingers.

• I don’t have to tighten my neck, I don’t have to pull the base of my skull back and down towards my tail, I don’t need to shorten or narrow my back, I don’t need to pull my arms and legs in.

I find this keeps me from becoming habitual and automatic, reciting words by rote without perceiving their meaning. After all, I can recite the alphabet, count, repeat song lyrics and any other number of string of words without needing to let them register. This is very to the experience that I can drive a familiar route and have the sense that I don’t remember passing the previous three exits. That kind of automated behavior is what the Alexander Technique seeks to remedy.

Another benefit of having a glossary of jargon in the Alexander paradigm is that it brings an awakening to our auditory processing during lessons and in our self-work.

Try This:

• Imagine your head getting lighter and easing towards the ceiling. What do you notice?

• Say to yourself: “I don’t have to hold my breath” as you think of your head being light. What do you notice?

• What does it mean to let your head move forward and up? Does the image below illustrate what you would understand from those words?

The movement Alexander meant by “forward and up”