Keys of the Alexander Technique (part 1): Clearing up your THINKING

Two of the top benefits of the Alexander Technique are health and posture. These are, however, not exclusive to the Technique.

The objective of the Alexander Technique could be described as “lightness and freedom of movement with minimum effort.”  But here once again the Alexander Technique does not hold a monopoly.

What distinguishes the Alexander Technique from other mind-body disciplines isn’t so much what comes at the end of the process, but rather the emphasis it puts on how we get there. And the key is in the THINKING PROCESS involved.

During Alexander Technique lessons you get to learn some of the anatomical and physiological aspects of movement, but this is not where the true core of the work lies. When we think about the structures that we’ll be moving, we’re not as interested in the actual movement as we are in the clarity of the thought and intention behind the movement.

The learning process in the Alexander Technique centers on clarifying the thinking process that gets you into movement. Alexander called it “quickening the conscious mind.” It’s about working with the reasoning, discriminating, creative and decision making capabilities of our minds.

If our bodies are not responding to our conscious wishes perhaps it isn’t because they are structurally unable to do so, but rather because we’re having unconscious wishes that conflict with our conscious ones. These “unconscious wishes” are made manifest in our muscle tension patterns.

We fail to realize this because the unconscious wishes have been there for so long they have become part of our “self-definition.” To go in a new conscious direction, we must first become aware of what direction we’re already unconsciously heading in… and let go of the conflicting wish.

This is really what the Alexander Technique is about: If you wish to go left, you’ve got to first pause and remind yourself to stop your habit of always going right. Because if you rush left without thinking, that is, without “inhibiting” your tendency to go right, you’ll end up going nowhere fully or satisfactorily.

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If I already know WHAT I need to do… WHY am I not doing it?

Tell me the truth, how many times did you see an article that starts with “how to…,” you quickly scanned it, “liked” it on Facebook, shared it with your friends, mother, cousins and sister, recommended everyone try it out… and you… DID NOTHING with it?

You’re not alone. We all do that. We collect books and articles, we enroll in courses, workshops, and classes, and we clip out the recipes and exercise routines that appear in magazines… Ready! All set! Now we know what to do. So… Why is that we’re not doing it then?

What super-powers do I need, to finally do what I intended to do?

It turns out you need to use your 3 super-powers:

1. The Power of Knowing WHAT to do:

You need to know what to invest your energy on, and how to do so in the most efficient way, in order to achieve your purpose.

2. The Power of Knowing what NOT to do:

Once you’ve decided what to do, you need to find out how it is that you sabotage yourself from actually doing it. Surely there are things you do, of which you are currently unaware, but that interfere and hinder your journey towards your goal. Here is where self-observation will become your greatest ally.

Knowing what to do and what not to do are the first steps. However, for you to finally do what you set out to do, you’ll need to use a third power:

3. The Power to REMEMBER what it is you want to do, and what you don’t want to do, when it really matters:

All your self-observation and analysis will be pretty useless unless you remember to make use of the information you gained from your observations and conclusions. Most of the times we don’t do what we intended to do the problem can be traced back to our INABILITY TO REMEMBER OUR OBJECTIVE! You need to make it a priority. Your brain needs to know that this activity is important to you. If not, it won’t be on the lookout to remind you what your real purpose is, when another activity threatens to interfere with your original objective.

So, it’s all very nice with words but, for this information to be really usefeul…

DO SOMETHING CONCRETE WITH IT:

If your objective is to do more physical exercise, but you’re finding yourself unable to stick to your plans…you need to investigate what sort of challenge you’re facing:

1. KNOWING WHAT TO DO: If you don’t like exercising, perhaps you need do re-define your relationship to it. In this article I tell you a little about how you can do just that.

2. KNOWING WHAT NOT TO DO: If you like to exercise, but you’re finding it difficult to do it with any degree of constancy, you need to investigate what’s causing the interference in your flow. Are you too tired? Are you afraid of looking ridiculous? Is it pain? Are you lacking basic technical knowledge? Is it the group, the teacher, or the venue that is putting you off? The sooner you discover what the hurdle is, the sooner you’ll be able to find a solution to it.

3. REMEMBERING: If you have already re-defined your purpose to get moving, you’ve chosen form of exercise that motivates you, you’ve already fished out the obstacles that were stopping you and have taken steps to remove them, but you still find yourself doing something else when the time comes to go workout… you’ll need to help yourself REMEMBER your purpose.

You need to turn i tinto a priority: put reminders on your phone, fridge, computer, highlight and circle out the time slot in your daily planner, leave everything ready way in advance. Do anything and everything necessary to tell your brain that, “This is IMPORTANT to me, so PLEASE remind me about it when I’m about to fall into my old habits.”

This is all for today. Now you’re free to go “like” the blog on Facebook, share it with your friends, tweet these recommendations to the tweetosphere. But don’t forget that YOU also need to do something with this… and then tell me in the comments box below how it worked out.

See you next week.

Victoria

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Stress is contagious: how to inoculate yourself and spread the happy-germ.

Have you realized how contagious mindsets are?

Spend ten minutes with a friend who’s always stressed out of her mind and you end up in a frenzy yourself, running around like headless chicken. If you’re lucky, something will make you stop and realize “what am I all strung up about?” If you’re not, you’ll go through the rest of your day completely certain that this is one of those days when things just don’t work out for you.

Last week I wrote about how to deal with Life when it refuses to acknowledge (or even glanceat) your pretty-perfectly-laid-out-plans for it.

You keep calm and remember your direction.

I’ve been practicing what I preach all week (sometimes makes me think I should keep my trap shut). Life was pretty determined to test my mettle and my theory.

Conclusion: it ain’t easy baby; especially the “keeping calm” bit.

However, I got through the test, and was rewarded with a further clue to the Life-puzzle. It has to do with how to keep calm when everything and everyone is refusing to cooperate with your plans.

I’m giving you the cheat-sheet for free. But, rest assured, Life will test you on your comprehension of her lesson anyway… she’s one of those teachers that you can never hoodwink for long.

In a nutshell: You keep calm by seeing the wider picture.

Don’t worry, I’ll spell it out.

Everything hinges on the keep calm bit.

Why do you need to keep calm?

Because it’s the only way of really remembering your direction.

If you’re not calm, you may think you’re remembering your direction. But all you’re really doing is DOING the items on your To Do List, which you have determined will take you to your direction.

Now that means you’re really confused about what your direction is.

Your direction is NOT your destination or goal (i.e. it’s not something that will happen then, it is something that is happening now).

Your direction is NOT the road you’re traveling (i.e. it is not the items on your to-do list that will get you to your destination).

Your direction is your mindset (i.e. the how you’re getting to your destination, the way you’re facing every item on your to-do list).

Your direction is like a mission statement: I want to have and occupy all my available space, I want to do things with joyful ease, I want to be happy about life, I want to be giddy-in-love with what I do no matter what it is.

It is within that encompassing mindset that your to-do’s get done. You can do all the stuff in your to-do list anyway, in any way… but the how will make it a journey-you-love or a journey-you-hate.

So, I repeat, you need to keep calm in order to remember your direction.

What does “keep calm” mean in practical terms?

Keep calm means feel where you are.

Feel means open up your senses (i.e. soften your focus, widen your perspective, find the bright-spots, see things in context).

Learning to stop and find your direction within the fuller context takes time, patience, practice and a strong determination to live your life differently.

Other people’s stress is contagious. I know I easily absorb others’ mindsets. I may wake up feeling peachy but somehow pick up a floating waft of stress from my partner, the bus conductor, or the grumpy neighbor in the elevator. Suddenly I’m all caught up in the endlessness of my to-do list for the day, feeling already frazzled and tired before even having tackled the first item. My bed and my rest seem so far away… all these things to do between happy-sleepy-oblivion and me (work, phone calls, laundry, cooking, carpool, groceries, random interruptions, etc. etc. etc).

The point is, you can deal with most things. You do it every day and you’re still here. What is making you go bonkers is this extra stress-germ you picked up.

Well, you have to sneeze it out of your system.

Sneezing is a high-impact form of breathing that gets uninvited guests out of your system in a blast. Use it (metaphorically) with your picked-up stress-germ.

How to get rid of the stress germ and inoculate yourself from further contagion.

1. Notice you’re stressed.

This is the easy bit, you probably know what “stress” feels like for you.

2. Come back to your senses.

Feel your body, release the tension in your feet, your sitting-bones, your armpits, your hands, soften your eyes and your face and your jaw.

3. See the problem in the wider context.

This is like taking the fear-factor away from a scary-movie by opening your field of vision to include the frame of the screen, and the room where the screen is, and the people around you. Suddenly the scary-movie is just a movie… which doesn’t make it go away, it just puts it in its proper place within the wider picture.

I literally do this with people when they are arguing with me, so as not to get sucked into the argument and the tense energy and let the situation spiral out of control. You just cannot hate somebody whose hair is suddenly set alight by a stray ray of the setting sun on a summer’s eve, no matter how much they are shouting at you and ferociously gesticulating. And you can only notice the beauty of it if you’ve opened up your focus to include the setting sun.

4. Breathe calmly taking in the vastness of it all.

Realize you can’t control Life, you can’t even comprehend it fully or your place in it. Your to-do list means nothing and will get you nowhere really; but it still has to get done. All you can do is choose your direction, your mindset, how you want to do that which has to be done, and flow.

5. Make your mindset strong through practice.

You need to practice returning to your senses, until you can hold a steady note of peace within yourself even in the midst of frenzied activity. Then you’ll find others can’t suck you into their stressed-out mindsets. And what’s best, you’ll have become the happy contagion germ we all need.

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Image credits:

"Metallic Compass" by digitalart / freedigitalphotos.net

"Happy And Sad Smileys Showing Emotions" by Stuart Miles / freedigitalphotos.net

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