On Being a Student (once again): 5 reminders for psychophysical survival and enjoyment

Nearly 10 years after finishing my university degree in theatre in the USA, I am putting myself once again through the 4-year-plus ordeal of acquiring a second degree, in a completely unrelated field, here in Uruguay (physiotherapy).

In that 10 year span I wasn’t idle either. From 2009 to 2011 I put myself through three years of Alexander Technique teacher training and got certified in Pilates Method.

Hence, I know a thing or two about being a student… and what it does to you. I am also prone to forget what I know if I don’t remind myself about it.

With that in mind, I am putting those nuggets of wisdom in writing. These are my 5 key reminders for psychophysical survival and enjoyment as a student. They have carried me through 15 years of studying in different countries and settings (both public and private), through different approaches to learning, in different group sizes and with widely varying resources. They count for both long training courses to short one-hour lessons, and everything in between.

1. Find your “deep why” to channel your energy and drive you on.

Your “deep why” is your dharma, your calling, that thing that sets your soul on fire. Being a student is tough, especially when you also juggle a working-life and family-life. When the going gets really hard it’s tempting to just call it quits. Your “deep why” will carry you through those rough patches.

2. Make peace with how things are to husband your energy and keep you sane.

Learning situations are never ideal; one or several factors are usually not up to standard. Be clear about what you want to get out of this learning situation, why you chose the institution, teacher, venue (or whatever), and use that clarity to separate the chaff from the straw. Once in the learning situation don’t waste energy in pursuits that don’t fulfill your deep why (like complaining that things are not ideal).

3. Know your habitual patterns to avoid wasting energy and losing track of your true goal.

We all have student-personas. Different learning scenarios (study groups, exams, one-on-ones, etc.) will trigger full psychophysical reactions and you might find yourself acting like a high-school adolescent all over again. Know yourself and be prepared to inhibit your desire to “be cool”, or "be perfect", (or whatever) and direct your energy towards actions that truly fulfill your deep why.

4. Empty your glass that you might taste your teacher’s wine.

If you’ve been around for a while you’re probably already full of your own ideas about how things are (or should be). But if you’re so full of your own wine, you’ll never get a taste of your neighbour’s. So, regardless of how much you think you know about the subject, don’t fight the teacher (unless, of course, they are directly attacking you). After all, it’s you who chose to learn from them. So be humble and listen to their point of view. Try to understand what frame of thought they come from, why and how it works when it works, and how it relates to your way of thinking about it.

5. Involve yourself psychophysically that you might make your own synthesis.

Learning is simultaneously a sensual, emotional, social and mental pursuit. To get the most out of your learning bring your whole self into the matter, immerse yourself psychophysically and socially. And after full immersion take time to create your own synthesis, force yourself to elaborate your map of the subject matter. Only then will it become an integral part of you.

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The Fabric we are Made Of and the Garment we Become

For the most part we are unaware of what a brilliant balancing act it was and still is for our species to achieve the upright stance.

In non-existent “ideal” conditions the normal situation would be to be light, free, and unaware that we are, in fact, living, moving, breathing, 24/7 balancing acts whose stability is constantly being threatened, lost and efficiently, eutonically recovered. In ideal conditions all response option would be open to us always, so we’d be free to choose according to circumstances.

But life falls short of ideal. Although we all come with the same basic fabric design, we are born neither perfectly symmetrical, nor perfectly balanced, nor perfectly ambidextrous. 

As we choose, like and prefer some options over others, using what works and gets results fast, we pull and twist the threads of our basic design slightly askew to accommodate our tastes. This makes choosing the same option easier the next time around, till we don’t have to “consciously choose” anymore: we can reset to relative “neutral” while the fabric is still young and elastic, but our favourite choice has becomes “preset”.

The more we choose the same paths over and over, the more they become a part of who we believe we are, who we “feel” we are. Eventually the choice becomes “us”, it gets recorded in the very grain of our fabric. All the habitual twists, the stretches and pulls, the contractions and rigidities become fixed. As our fabric ages and elasticity is lost, it becomes harder and harder to reset to “neutral” and to choose and hold a different set of twists and stretches on the fabric.

As we become convinced that the twisted and stretched fabric is in effect our “neutral” and “natural” basic design, all “other” possible options fade from our awareness. As they fade from our awareness they become temporarily “lost” in that ineffable place that has become for us the “unknown”. There they will lie dormant until we choose to set out on the quest to re-awaken our potential, to map-out the unknown.

The “unknowable” will remain forever hidden from our human senses. But the “unknown” will be forever there, waiting for us to map it and thus reclaim our supreme inheritance.

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Allowing Time to Make Space for Change

Beginnings are tough for me. I’m all about order, but beginnings tend to be for me all about chaos.

Most of the chaos stems from the fact that I haven’t fully closed the previous actions. I’m dragging the dregs of yesterday into today and tomorrow, and getting them all jumbled up with the new stuff that wants to emerge.

What to do about it?

If I followed my own advice, I would quit doing stuff about it. I would find a bit of space on the floor to lie down on my back, with my head supported on a few books and my knees up. If I did this every day, morning and evening, I’d be making space for change to happen.

It’s hard to believe that just lying down like that and doing nothing will make space for things to sort themselves out. But it does. It’s a cascade of space creation: I make space in my day to stop doing; that leads to making space to lie down; lying down makes space in my body to release accumulated tension; as body tension releases, mind tension lets go too and voilá!  I have created space in my mind.

It’s all about space: time-space, environmental-space, body-space, mind-space.

There’s absolutely nothing else required but to take the time to rest in that space. Time itself will take care of the rest.

When I ask myself to start a new action, I have to allow time before saying or doing anything more. Why? Because as soon as I ask myself to do something, I start up my habitual response to any order (in my case too many frantic thoughts and thoughtless actions) and it takes a little time for me to realize this and to stop.

And it’s only when I have remembered and stopped, created space and given myself time, it’s only when the dust of the previous actions has settled and the waves have quieted in the mind-pool, that the next phase can operate.

What’s the next phase? Listening, with my whole being, for a clear and true direction.

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CHANGING HABITS FOR BEGINNERS (part 1): The 3 tools

It’s difficult to change what we don’t know exists. To change we need to know “what” to change, and for that we need to have an experience that contrasts with our habit: the experience of another possibility.

But once we have that new experience, how to we make it into a new habit? In general, the sole experience of a new possibility does not establish the change. It is necessary to record in your brain the new option as a stronger neurological connection than your old habit.

For that we need three tools: desire, inhibition, and memory.

The tool of desire moves us to recreate the new experience, even when it would be “easier and more comfortable” to indulge in our habit. Change is destabilizing. Therefore we need to become familiar with this power of “I want”: What do I want? Why do I want it? How do I achieve what I want? What consequences would come with getting what I want?

The tool of inhibition allows us to choose which actions to allow manifestation and which to deny said permission. Inhibition is intrinsically linked to desire, for it implies “saying no to” that which we don’t wish for anymore, and being able to “say yes to” to the new wish. You need to know “what things” to inhibit. Therefore we need to know: What elements make up my habit?

The tool of memory allows us to remember what we want and what we don’t want when it really matters. The ability to recruit your desire and your power of inhibition to change your habits rests on your ability to remember. F.M. Alexander once said that our greatest problem when it comes to changing habits is that “we forget to remember.”

Remembering what we want depends, above all, on 2 factors: the strength of our wish and external conditions that help us to remember our wish. How can I be more mindful of my wish throughout the day? How can I make it easier for me to satisfy my wish instead of my habit?

To sum up, the first step to being successful in changing habits is to become familiar with your three basic tools: Desire, Inhibition and Memory.

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Keys of the Alexander Technique (part 3): Powering up your THINKING

To “think ourselves into movement” we first need to clarify our thinking.

This means first stopping to give ourselves the chance to “say no” (inhibit) to our habitual way of moving and reacting. This habitual way is made up of our ongoing and ingrained tension patterns which make for an inefficient “starting place” or “set point”. 

So, after recognizing the stimulus to action, you give yourself a little pause, some space to stop your habitual reaction and really consider “how” you want to respond.

What you want is a better starting place; so you get your “primary movement” going. This “primary movement”, which concerns itself with the dynamic relationship between head & spine, leaves you in the best possible conditions for any action: a dynamic sense of poise and balance.

Still, you haven’t yet gone anywhere. And it’s the getting going, and the continuing to go, in the manner you decided that is the issue at stake here.

You’ve got to get the primary movement going first. But then you need to keep it going as you go into movement, when your brain recognizes what you’re up to and wants to insert the old habit of tension.

So how do you keep the primary movement going during all subsequent movements? You need to use your mind: mindfulness of movement and awareness of the body as a whole throughout all movements. In Alexander jargon this is called: “keeping your primary directions going”. F.M. Alexander himself once said, “You think that the Alexander Technique is a physical thing; I tell you it’s the most mental thing that’s ever been discovered.”

It’s a persistent, continuous state of monitoring progress, of mindfulness of movement and awareness of yourself and your relationship to inner and outer space. You want to catch yourself when the habit pricks up its ears, so you can let it go before it completely takes over your system. Your persistent, continuous monitoring gives the drive, the force, the energy to the new way.

This is how you build a new “habit”.

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Keys of the Alexander Technique (part 2): THINKING yourself into Movement.

The Alexander Technique deals first with clearing your thinking so that you are able to move in the direction that you wish to move, and not where your unconscious habit would take you.

So, before setting out, you pause to remind yourself to let go of your habitual tension patterns. And then, after the pause, it is a matter of committing to your new direction.

Ultimately, direction is a movement from point A to point B. But, in the Alexander Technique, we’re much more concerned with how we travel that distance.

In bodily terms this “how” is determined by a “primary movement” that comes before any actual step we take in the direction of point B. This “primary movement”, which has its definite physical manifestation in the dynamic relationship between head-spine-ribs-girdles-limbs, is governed by two “mind” aspects.

The first “mind” aspect is body awareness (body map). During lessons we strive to raise our sensory appreciation of our body parts, and their relationships to each other and to the whole.

The second, and most important “mind” aspect, is perhaps unique to the Alexander Technique.

Having determined "how" we want to travel from A to B, the Alexander Technique concerns itself with making sure we start and keep moving in said direction in the manner that we decided. What we don’t want is our habitual tension patterns to sneak in on us the moment we spring into action and undo our “primary movement”.

There are infinite ways of getting from A to B. The “primary movement” ensures that we do so in such a way that we’re not interfering with our natural postural reflexes. Alexander called it “lengthening (and widening) in stature” which is akin to “decompressing your joints for movement” or “creating space for movement to occur.”

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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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