Welcoming uncertainty
Our current human experience overturns any notion of normalcy or certainty. For most of us, the structure of life has evaporated. Our typical means of coping with stress are likely unavailable. We are spending far more time with our families or roommates than usual, or we are far more alone than we would prefer. We may be anxious, bored, restless, lonely or needing more time alone. We seem to be in a free fall of recalibration and invention at the blurred pace of a slow moving tsunami. Where is our choice, our dynamic non-interference when the landmarks of daily routines crumble?
We always have our intention and attention as tools, and our instrument of self as both data-gathering and response system. We can notice what is outside ourselves and our own response to what is outside ourselves. We can refuse to fix, narrow or shorten, so that our entire instrument of self allows new solutions, both for ourselves and for our communities.
Fear can easily harden us into habitual and non productive reaction. We can’t pretend that we aren’t afraid, nor push fear down, but we can begin to choose a constructive response. It’s an evolving skill that we can pursue with happy curiosity, even in fearful times.
I know I am afraid because I pull my legs in, tighten through my upper arms, narrow my attention, and grip my jaw. There is no productive outcome in investigating why I am afraid, nor in questioning the validity of fear. My physiology has registered fear. Fear is happening. My response to these signals can also happen.
I would prefer to allow my entire back to breath, my limbs to undo out of my back, and my attention to broaden (notice I am not asking to “relax” anything. I want to remain dynamic, not asleep). I can ask the beautiful planetarium of my conscious brain to quiet, empty a bit, undo. I can ask my quieter brain to enliven and quiet all of me. I don’t run around myself “fixing” bits and pieces, I ask the planetarium to deliver instructions. Fear may well continue, but I can develop my own vocabulary of self in response. The world may be topsy turvy, but I can respond by increasingly elastic skills. It’s a circus of crisis-tunity, and we are in bootcamp response school.
Just think how much we can refine in this most demanding of times!
Lively Quiet in Uncertain Times
An essential beginning of rising to the many demands of our currently uncertain times is to quite simply want to remain effective, dynamic, engaged and elastic in our entire instrument of self. Most current events are out of our hands (except washing our hands to our favorite song du jour). Choice in response remains an endless exploration, as long as we are alive.
If we want to remain effective, dynamic, engaged and elastic, we begin from quieting. This does not mean freezing or retreating, but to request quiet throughout our entire self. A dynamic pause of even a few moments can shift mental chatter, calm muscular tensions, slow a racing heart and loosen a tight jaw. This request for quiet works best in conjunction with seeing and hearing the world outside yourself. Our brains, diaphragms, vestibular systems rely upon sensory information to calibrate response.
Here are some examples of how I gather data and make decisions in the interest of best outcome for remaining effective:
I notice my jaw is tight, as though I am holding the world and my life together with my teeth. I don’t want a tight jaw, and I know better than to change the jaw directly (direct change of a part never works), so I ask for overall quiet and connection to the ground, which is always there to support me. After some moments of cheerful requests for quiet, I am more keenly aware of birdsongs and tree blossoms and the faces of dear ones 6 feet away. My entire response has eased and expanded. A choice was made.
Sleepless worry disrupts much needed rest. Whispered ah and the thought that breath moves through my entire spinal system of curves, nourishing all of my systems, rocking me gently on a wave from within and without….the mental/emotional chatter retreats, my overall bracing undoes and sleep embraces me.
A furrowed brow and mental spin indicate information overload. I turn off the radio, leave the news unread, and dance around the apartment like a wild maniac. Laughter and vigor dispel the gloom, at least for now. Easy enough to repeat the wild dancing!
Creative solutions elude me. I notice I am all up in my forehead as though my facial muscles can find the answers. A dynamic pause allows me to notice gravity coming through my feet and sitting bones, eliciting internal, invisible support through my torso, allowing my limbs to undo out of my entire breathing back. A sense of global connection for this time in which we are living moves through me.
Solutions for each of us and all of us depend on our own refinement in response. We are integrated beings, inseparable in our own emotional, mental and physical systems. Now is the time to make our best integration possible, for the sake of the wider community beyond us.
New era, new skills
Rising to demand as an intention and skill is essential in our present moment. Our dynamic area of effective choice is in our use of the entire instrument of self, and how we refine that instrument in response to an unrolling set of challenges.
If we can calm ourselves, even in distress, we can dynamically contribute to solutions. The following questions may give each of us the experiential data and insight to best proceed.
- Where is the ground? (No matter where the ground meets me, I spring easily from the ground)
- Where is my attention? (Is that where I want my attention to be?)
- How much less can I do/fix/be right? (Can I allow new solutions by not being right?)
Examples in application of above:
- Reaching for last item on a high grocery shelf: the ground receives my entire weight through my feet and sends my arm up. My attention includes the space around me and the ground coming up through me. I can try less to reach the thing, and allow more of an entire response. I have time to reach the thing on the shelf.
- Unstructured time: Walking: gravity (the ground) is always and everywhere available to send me up even if time is unstructured. I can walk and allow the ground to send me into motion. While walking my attention is easily external. I welcome the sound and light waves of the world. I forget about doing/fixing/being right and let the world walk me
Gravity/attention/undoing becomes a means of remaining dynamically effective, so that we can best care for ourselves and our communities.
Jury Duty as Crisis-tunity
“It’s always something” Roseanna Roseanna Dana
Life brings us endless opportunities to learn from delays, disruptions, surprises and unexpected shifts. Since we bring our entire instrument of self to every experience, we can also bring our constructive response, and view a challenge as an opportunity for refinement of our skills.
Like many people, I have dreaded the disruption of life that a jury duty summons implies. Loss of income, removal from preferred routines, and the weighty responsibility seemed daunting at best and overwhelming at worst. My dread had no influence on the court system, however. I was called, selected and I served, with a jury of my peers, on a civil trial of several weeks duration.
No amount of complaining in my brain could change circumstances. I knew from many previous crisis-tunities that there is always something to learn, a new experience to welcome, and a new application of dynamic non-interference. Thus, I began asking myself: how can I bring my best instrument of self to jury duty? This shift in emphasis from anxious resentment to possible learning increased curiosity about constructive solutions. Here is what worked best for me in creating conditions so that I could rise to this new demand.
1.Notice bias/habitual thinking
The presiding judge at our trial instructed us to remain keenly aware of our own biases, to pay close attention to testimony of witnesses, and to make our decision based on reason. I recast “bias” as “habitual thinking”. Being removed from familiar and usual conditions heightened awareness of bias/habitual thinking. Unusual circumstances revealed my usual reactions. Recognizing bias/habit is the first step to dynamically allowing a new response.
2. Walking, walking, walking
Jury duty is exhaustingly sedentary. As an Alexander teacher, I can sit well, but I rarely sit more than briefly during my work day. Thus, during lunch break, I walked miles for refreshment, motion, views and overall renewal. I rediscovered serene urban parks and discovered quiet urban spaces new to me. Walking quieted my entire self, as I welcomed the rhythm of the streets. My habitual thinking lowered in noise level and intensity. I found the steep hills in downtown Seattle to be particularly constructive in lowering my internal chatter volume.
3. Fun and connection
Jury duty is an odd social experience. The common thread that draws the thirteen jurors together (the case) is the experience the jury cannot discuss until deliberations begin. (Jurors cannot discuss the case with anyone until the case is complete). The jury, comprised of citizens from many walks of life and points of view, has an opportunity to find means of trust and communication other than the daily intensity of the trial, or the familiarity of “normal” life.
What gave us connection in the daily tedium was humor in the jury room. We had several themes of amusement that gave us a shared vocabulary. Laughing lightened us even on heavy testimony days. Once we reached deliberations, we could proceed with mutual trust toward our decision. This is not the same as agreement, but trust is necessary for discussion and shared decision making. Sharing jokes helped us be at ease with each other.
I was enormously relieved to return to the work I love and the life I have created. Being removed from work highlighted how deeply I enjoy the complexities and challenges of teaching the Alexander Technique. Relief was also enhanced by gratitude for all I learned as a juror: the necessary formality of the courtroom, the language of the law, and the potential for strangers, confined in an experience, to work together in a reasonable manner. I also learned, yet again, that a disruption can inspire new skills in rising to demand
Response to living
In Alexander lessons, we learn to respond to increasing demands with reduced interference, a lively quiet, and greater elasticity. This ongoing exploration informs the entire integrated, inseparable system of self. We refine our tools of attention and intention during ordinary activities (sitting and standing) so that we can bring our refined tools to further adventures.
We potentially learn, via Alexander lessons, to, for example, easily rise from a chair, use our voices, walk up stairs, play a musical instrument, problem solve. We become skilled in dynamic non-interference. We can refine our instruments of self by means that are constantly new. We relinquish the notion of a right answer. Learning becomes much less predictable and far more interesting. Increasing demands seem intriguing. We can respond to the inevitable challenges of life with confidence in our means, rather than anxiety about results. We have become more elastic, and can respond to life more resiliently.
Life, of course, includes surprise demands and sudden challenges. Illness, accidents, mortality, glitches, quandaries and questions can halt us in our habitual tracks or become opportunities to learn further elastic and dynamic responses. Through the experience of Alexander lessons, we can relinquish guaranteed outcomes, refuse to even define the activity, and explore the means of response. The means are learned, deepened and extended by experience. We strengthen our means by using our means in increasingly demanding activities.
The outcome is not our concern. Who cares if you stand from the chair? The means are valuable because they apply to everything.
Post surgical recalibration
Recovery from major surgery challenges the entire continuum of self. After-effects of general anesthesia, restrictions in activity due to incision protection or other considerations, and shifting signals from all interior systems are just a few of required post surgical adjustments.
Any change in the integrated instrument of self necessitates overall recalibration. We are mobiles of interconnected systems, in ongoing balance as the winds of life shift.
As teachers and students of the Alexander Technique, we have choices and tools, no matter our condition of self.
Allow Time
Healing requires time, and is unlikely to proceed in a linear or predictable manner. The continuum of emotion-thinking-sensation-movement (which may be sequenced differently, depending on stimuli) has been shifted in axis by surgery prep, anesthesia, surgery, hospitalization and drugs. All systems have to recover at their ideal rhythms, in relationship to each other.
“Allowing time” as an attitude gives a general signal that the integrated self can be trusted. Much as in a hands-on Alexander lesson, we allow the time to have a new experience. We allow the time for a new means of proceeding.
Happy Curiosity
Surgery is traumatic. The essence of identity is shaken, tossed, thrown into turmoil. Allowing time is essential so that a happy curiosity can resume.
We can start small: “if I can’t do this familiar activity in a familiar way, how do I allow an unrecognizable way?”. Then proceed to bigger questions: “what am I learning in this upheaval?”. We can build confidence in our dynamic non interference, in allowing new and surprising solutions. We can allow unfamiliar experience as a means of learning.
Welcome Demands
Demands provide opportunities to learn new responses. We can ask, as demands increase:
Where is the ground? (Ah, there it is, meeting me where I am)
Where is my attention? Can I allow it to broaden beyond previous experience?
How much less can I fix, do, interfere, make everything like it was?
Continue the Adventure
Rising to higher demands
Of the many possible experiences in ongoing Alexander Technique lessons is that of rising to a demand with an elastic and curious response. We begin with the familiar activity of sitting and standing, and in that activity refine intention and attention, learn to interfere less, allow more. Then we proceed to more demanding activities.
All aspects of self are inseparable and integrated. If we can allow an easier means of moving from sitting to standing, we can allow a new means of learning. We learn to dynamically allow new solutions, and to welcome support beyond our own habitual response.
Life, of course, has bigger ideas than sitting and standing. Challenges sneak or spring upon us. The plot shifts without our prior approval.
Our outcomes are not guaranteed. None of us are invincible, and we all eventually sleep the endless sleep. In the interim, we can allow time, welcome new demands, spring to the challenge and rise from a chair with surprising ease.
the demands of living: crisis-tunity
Life is unpredictable. All aspects of living shift constantly in patterns frequently beyond our perception. Our only effective skill is in making choices where we can, and relinquishing control where our choice is not an option.
Our instrument of response for the whirls and lurches of life can be refined, polished, shifted and explored. Since the instrument of self integrates all aspects of being (physiological, emotional, sensory, psychological) in a continuum of signals and responses, a change in any part of the system is a change to the entire. We can rise to the challenge of increased demand with a more elastic response. We can use challenge to become ever more refined in our tools of intention and attention. We can welcome challenge as reason to learn and grow.
Essential to effective response to crisis is a happy curiosity: what new skills in elastic response can I learn in this difficult situation? Can I broaden my attention, allow the ground to support me as I spring up, quiet my mental chatter, see the lovely and endlessly complex world outside myself? Can I allow the micro-moment of a new response, over and over again?
Hands-on Alexander lessons can provide a supported experience of happy curiosity as a means of change. It’s not about “getting it right”. It’s about allowing, repeatedly, something new.
The adventure continues
Indirection not correction
There is an entire language of the unified self that we learn as we study the Alexander Technique. During Alexander lessons, we set aside what may seem “wrong” or “right”, and even what “wrong or right” might mean. We learn to minimize stability when availability provides a more effective and satisfying response. We become more comfortable with not knowing, assessing less, experiencing more. This education requires time, curiosity and an ongoing refusal to “make something happen”.
Typically, there is an identified problem that compels us to investigate the Alexander Technique: a sore neck or back; performance issues for dancers, musicians, actors; a longing for deeper comfort and awareness. And, once we begin lessons, the constructive unraveling begins. We may not know what caused the “problem”, and we do not need to know specifics in order to allow a solution. The tools we refine via in person, hands-on Alexander lessons are intention and attention. We don’t become “problem solvers”, we become “solution allowers”.
A nearly universal temptation is to identify the “problem”, then correct by direct means: pull down shoulders that are perceived to be lifted, straighten backs and necks, push into width and length, muscle ourselves into shape. This becomes an endless and fruitless battle, as the elastic and entire instrument of self cannot be pummeled into a cooperative and responsive condition. The corrective battle also requires perception based on a flawed instrument, a belief in what is “right”, and an urgency that undermines curiosity and process. Curiosity is a lot more fun than correction. We are designed to be curious, and we learn more when we are having fun.
The principles of indirection, intention and attention learned in Alexander lessons can be applied to any activity, as the instrument by which you learn and act is improved in refining both instrument and means. You can learn a new language, solve a software problem, engage in political activism, develop an effective business plan, or learn a new, complex piece of music with an instrument of self that allows a solution rather than fixing for a result.
Fix less, allow more, and welcome curiosity.
Non-mechanical problem solving: injury recovery
Experiment: your dominant hand is now unable to take weight or pressure, and your dominant thumb is partially immobilized. Pain allows a much reduced range of movement. Attempt, within limits of safety and pain, the following activities: cut with scissors, write a check, brush your teeth, prepare dinner, open a pain medicine bottle with child proof cap.
The above, with the addition of teaching my full schedule of hands-on Alexander lessons since the day after injury, are some of the challenges that are guiding me to recover, renew, relearn. How can I move from undoing to doing without doing too much within the context of injury?
The tools of the Alexander Technique are intention and attention. These are not static tools, but constantly refined and changing means of thinking with the entire integrated self.
My primary intentions as I proceed in activities are: to not hurt myself further, to allow pain to be a friendly signal, and to attend to my unified self in the wider world. I don’t want to push through pain in order to, say, open the pain med bottle. If it hurts to open the bottle, I can: attempt the activity in a new way, give myself the time for a different means, or ask for help from more fully able others. Or, I can decide I don’t need the pain meds at all! I also remind myself that what hurt yesterday or even an hour ago may not hurt now. New means may have occurred to me, and injured ligaments, tendons and muscles may have changed. They are alive and responsive after all. The injured tissues do not function in isolation, but in the larger complexity of my entire thinking self.
A happy curiosity works best for problem solving. This quality of curiosity relies upon a wide attention span, and trust in the abilities of my entire self, rather than a narrowed focus on the area of injury. When my attention zooms to my wrist and what I can’t do, my entire self pulls in and down. I become discouraged and despondent. If, instead, I allow the time to see and hear the world outside myself, to notice how the ground supports me, that my breath can move through my entire spine, and that my instrument of self changes constantly, the solutions seem to do themselves. I am hopeful again.
Injury has also given me the opportunity to notice habits that were previously invisible to me. Writing with pen and paper, which remains challenging, is an example. As I attempt to form letters and proceed from thought through arm to fingers to paper, I notice unnecessary tightening throughout myself. This is not merely bracing against pain (I have some of that too, of course), but most likely what I typically do while writing. I can ask bracing to cease, even if writing then seems impossible. The moment of seeming impossibility is when friendly curiosity comes in handy. I don’t have to figure out the means; I do have to allow the time and curiosity to let the means flow from brain to hand to paper.
Injury, and the full recovery I intend to experience, may thus give me new problem solving skills, and improve my overall use in the process. Within limits of safety and pain, I continue the exploration.