Expanding Possibilities
As students of the Alexander Technique, we continuously refine skills for intention and attention. We learn to notice our habitual reactions to internal and external stimuli, and to choose new, more potentially constructive responses. By saying no to the old, we welcome the new.
This new spectrum of choices may begin with refusing to tighten or collapse in daily, previously mindless, activities, such as sitting, standing, walking. Over time, and with the expert guidance of teachers more experienced than ourselves, we take our happy curiosity, and willingness to learn, into more complex activities. We attend to the possible, not just the previous.
Life is not stable or predictable. It has never been so and, hopefully, will never be so. We are designed to change and subtly adjust to the shifting conditions of life. We can begin to use the instrument of our selves with intelligence, and become more attuned to the planet on which we live. We may think far more creatively if we are using ourselves in a connected and expansive manner. The instrument by which we perceive changes, and thus perceptions and possibilities change.
As human animals on Earth, we can respond to the challenges of life mentally, emotionally, kinesthetically, physically, and all at once. “One at a time and all at once” is a quote attributed to F.M. Alexander. We are always in the continuum of thought/sensation/movement/emotion, and within the larger continuum of conditions. Waves within waves support and inform us.
We can allow habit to cling, expecting the world to remain stable and our habitual response to be effective (despite evidence to the contrary), or we can dynamically not interfere with the instrument of self, and enjoy a new experience of ourselves and of our world. We can be fluid and elastic. We can request an improved condition of self so that perception broadens and possibility expands because the instrument becomes more reliable. We can use our attention, through the precise mechanism of the body, to explore a happy curiosity about life and our response to life.
We can expand our possibilities.