From the moment you arise in the morning until you rest your head on the pillow at night, you probably do quite a lot. We do so much that we have to consciously choose "down time” to give ourselves rest.
But what about the time in between those daily tasks? The transitions from Point A to Point B go by unnoticed, because we are busy getting to whatever is next.
Are you the owner of your body?
This is a fundamental question that reveals perspectives on the body and how yourelate to it. And depending on how you relate to your body, you will inevitably move according to the nature of that relationship. Along with your mind, this is your most intimate relationship. Yet attitudes about the physical self go largely unnoticed.
A 3-minute video about the 3 most common reasons people come for Alexander Technique lessons.
I learned a long time ago that I don't have to be afraid of fear. It's an energy, and a rather unpleasant one -- unless you're choosing a scary book or film as entertainment. It can be mild and continuous or sudden and strong, but as emotions go, it's one of the easiest to recognize. And one of the hardest to bear.
Over the years I have heard statements that rang true and woke me up to reality. These are truths that seem obvious upon hearing, but also feel familiar because they are easily verifiable by direct investigation or experience. It leaves you wondering, “how could I have forgotten this?” or amazed that you’ve never thought of it in that way before. The truths that blow your mind.
If the past year is an old man, and the new year is a baby, how do you relate to babies? As a new year begins, is it possible to approach our lives and relationships like they are a baby? That stuff you went through in the past year that makes you feel like you really need to get your act together? That's your teacher, your friend, a gift.
I was 30 years old before I realized that I was disembodied. Like so many people, I walked around thinking I was living a life, and of course I was, but most of my existence played out in my head. I had almost no present moment awareness of my body.
In taking Alexander lessons, I found something better than the short-term safety provided by shutting down or numbing out. I literally learned how to feel my body once again.
I used to think I was rather damaged or deficient in this area, that normal people didn’t have to remember to be embodied.
I was wrong.
Have you ever wondered how you know you’re sitting and not, for instance, standing or lying down?
A key feature of the AT is its ability to activate kinesthetic awareness, which functions like a superpower, helping you know how you are doing anything that you might be doing. It is how you know what you’re sensing and how you sense what you’re knowing.
Includes a Bodymind Experiment
Success and failure are both teachers. Whether the journey is supremely successful or fails to launch at all, the learning happens in the evaluation phase. One teaching I’ve gleaned over the years is that the willingness to sit with “I don’t know” is bound to increase a sense of wonder, curiosity, authentic interest. And that’s a good attitude to bring to all phases of creative endeavor.
To truly test a practice and its effects on your life, you must actively engage with the practice. But it may be easier to give something a try if you know its proven track-record. Here are multiple links to evidence for the effectiveness and the health benefits of the things I practice and teach: Alexander Technique, Qigong, and Mindfulness Meditation.
It has been my experience over 25 years of teaching somatics and mindfulness that most people are in a state of senselessness. Almost no one is fully inhabiting their body all the time.
Learning to Pause, Sense, Repeat is an easy, practical way to more fully embody your life.
Includes a Bodymind Experiment.
Through continual practice of insight meditation and 30-plus years of Alexander awareness and teaching, I’ve become familiar with how major shifts in habitual thinking and being happen. Sometimes the experience of change feels big and nearly instantaneous, like a chunk of an iceberg breaking off and tumbling to the sea. Letting go occasionally feels like an avalanche.
Mostly though, change happens incrementally, bit by bit. Can you sense the gradual growth and changes in yourself?
I waved away notions of self-love as indulgent navel-gazing, an attempt to escape from the "realities" of the world and its troubles. Then I had an experience on retreat that changed all that. I began to realize how harsh I was with myself, and once recognized, this insight led to a huge transformation.
Turns out that Charlie Chaplin had a similar experience, and his On Loving Myself can be a roadmap to move from self-loathing to self- love.
Life is fluid, dynamic, and always shifting. Ultimately, this is good news, but we have been conditioned to expect reality to be solid, fixed, and predictable. The essential groundlessness of our existence frightens us, or at best, takes us by surprise, and when that happens, we react by resisting. Habitual, unconscious resistance shows up in the body-mind as contraction. It is such a basic and common response to living as a human that we don’t even notice it. Yet the moment we do, we are liberated and can transform contraction into expansion.
Includes a Bodymind Experiment.
One of the key components of mindfulness and somatic processes like the Alexander Technique is practicing the Pause, learning how to wait before taking action. There is a moment between stimulus and response, and in that gap is the possibility of making a fresh, perhaps different choice. When we don't do that, we often increase our own suffering.
Includes a Bodymind Experiment
Daily meditation has been described as mental hygiene, and that’s true. Just as we brush our teeth, feed and clothe ourselves each day, sitting meditation can be part of your routine. It isn’t a matter of “finding the time” (a frequent complaint), it’s finding the best time each day. Every time we meditate we are training our minds and hearts to incline toward unity, balance, and steady calm. Even the least “successful” sit (whatever that means) trains the attention in this way. This is self-care for the soul.
It takes practice to discern wisely about what to buy, or how to meet our needs in general. We have a scarcity mentality that sometimes leads to FOMO. As modern consumers we have been programmed to react from a "Black Friday" mentality -- get it before it's gone. A lot of times we buy on impulse because of this, not from a sense of true need. So I find that a 3-step process can assist in helping to discern whether I'm following an authentic urge or a conditioned, habitual reaction: Pause, Check In, and Sense.
Major life choices seem both inevitable – how could it have been any other way? – and random – that decision led to an outcome I could never have chosen.
We imagine that the plans we dream up and the actions we intend will bear the fruit we hope for. We can see the steps we need to take and we think by taking them we know our destination clearly.
But now the road is really foggy. The territory ahead is not what we expected it to be and the route has changed to one we’ve never travelled before.
This is not a problem — read on.
Are you waiting for things to improve so you can feel better again?
Is your jaw tight, your knuckles white, your breath held? Do your thoughts run out of control? Is your mind fuzzy and your attention worse than ever? And do you believe this will change just as soon as the pandemic is over?
This is what is known as Destination Addiction, the belief that once I arrive at some future point or state of being, then I will be okay, then I can be happy and at peace. This is what AA calls stinkin' thinkin' and it stinks because it is a lie.
The truth is, you don’t have to be dependent upon certain conditions in order to know happiness and inner peace.
