Trying to Jump Over Your Own Knees

The spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff characterized his over-zealous students as people "trying with all their might to jump over their own knees". In the Alexander Technique this can happen whenever you place too much emphasis on improving and not enough on seeing what you are actually doing moment by moment. When you see what's happening right now, you free yourself up by allowing things to work as they were designed to. That seeing eliminates trying because instead of attempting to enact your preconceptions, you're watching yourself as your mechanisms adapt the movement of your body to the actual demands of the activity. It sometimes feels as if "someone else" is doing the movement. Once you get used to this experience of distance, you relax and movement flows through you allowing you to enjoy yourself doing things in wonderful new ways that come as a pleasant surprise to both you and your knees.