Stop! Before reading this blog...

You’ve arrived at the blog. Welcome.

Before we begin, let us take a minute to come to internal and external stillness.

Sit down as comfortably upright as you’re able. Relax your eyes and your jaw.

Become aware of your breathing. Allow the air to go in and out without trying to directly control it, allowing your breathing to be just the way it is right now.

Little by little we’re going to let go of what we were doing before arriving here: the previous webpage, what we were reading, what we were thinking.

Every action has a certain degree of inertia.

We are like a bucket full of water. We thrust our bodies and minds to and fro, and all our internal environment (physical, mental and emotional) becomes agitated, like waves in a storm.

Now we want to start something new, we’re going to read a new blog, it’s a new action, distinct from the one that preceded it.

Stopping before starting something new allows us to give the new action its due space (physical, mental and emotional)… or to simply realize that we don’t want to or don’t need to undertake it at all.

Do you really want to read this blog? You won’t know until you stop, allow the storm of residual activity inside of you to quiet down, and take a moment to listen to yourself.

That is why we bring out bodies to stillness for a moment, and we bring our senses to our inner environment for a check in. Even though we have brought the bucket to a standstill, the water inside it takes a tad longer to quiet down and pool.

Bring your attention to the sounds around you, those at no more than arms length, and then those a bit further. Take your attention to furthest sound you can perceive. Let go of that sound and bring your attention back to the space around you. Now take it into your inner space. Listen for the sounds of your heart, your breathing, your guts. 

Without losing that connection to your inner sounds, expand your attention up to where you find it adequate and comfortable in order to read the rest of this blog.

With this act of stopping and coming back to your senses, you are preparing yourself for receiving, opening up for perceiving, for taking note of how you are right now and how you feel about what you’re reading.

You are already reacting to the stimulus of these words.

If the water in your bucket is still, you’ll be able to notice what that reaction is.

What wave is stirring your water? Is it the response you want to give? Is your response appropriate for your desired objective, for achieving that which you came here to achieve?

No response is correct of incorrect. All are possible and valid. The question is not one of right or wrong, but one of useful or not for achieving your goal. Does your response help you or hinder you?

Perhaps your response is taking energy away from your objective, funneling it instead towards other needs. Perhaps those needs are valid and deserve to be listened to and heeded. Or maybe they are just part of an old habit, an automatic response whose expiration date has long passed.

If you are able to ‘see’ your response to the stimulus, you’re ready to let it go and give way to the next logical, organic action that is in line with your objective.

Working with the Alexander Technique is based on this premise. We cannot change what we cannot ‘see’. We cannot change what we don’t understand. And the first step to changing something isn’t doing something new. The first step is recognizing what we’re doing and choosing to not do it any longer, and thus give way for the next action.

Some day perhaps, we’ll be able to match the inside with the outside. Bucket and water will move in such harmony that there will be no separation, no storm. We won’t need to stop our bodies first in order to stop the water. Stillness will be part of our movement, and harmonious movement will be present in our stillness.

But we’re not there yet. Today we’re at step one. Today we quiet the external, to give a chance to the internal to come to stillness too. And that’s alright. That’s the first step. All journeys start here.

So go back to your breathing for a moment. Allow the air to come freely in and freely out.

You’re ready for your next action. You’ve prepared the ground, you’ve quieted the internal and external waters. You’ve given yourself time. You have given yourself time and space to decide.

What do you want to do? What do you need to stop doing to allow yourself to go in that direction?

See you next time.

Victoria

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Victoria Stanham, Alexander Technique teacher and Pilates instructor.

I study developmental movement, taking great inspiration from the organic and free movement of the animal kingdom.

My goal is to achieve comfort, efficiency, elegance and balance, both in movement and in stillness, according to our physical, mental and emotional design.

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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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