The Futility of Striving

"When we understand the futility of striving, our mind is brought to a stop and all the energy used in projecting and attaining is no longer directed and we are in openness, waiting without wanting."

Jean Klein
Open to the Unknown

One-Liners

Your habits are what you believe is necessary in order to do an activity.

Let go of knowing. Simply find out.

In working on yourself, "success" is usually a much bigger problem than "failure".

If you Notice before, during, and after you move the you won't get a "habit hangover".

There is only so much you can know before-hand.

When you Notice there is a shift of focus from the "what" of an activity to the "how".

Noticing allows movement to stimulate more aliveness and less resistance.

Notice gently and perhaps with a smile.

The only thing you can do is right now.

Ah, Kinesthesia!

Q: What do you think F.M.{Alexander} meant, by not trusting your feelings?

A: What he said was, "You can't help having them." So don't try and not have the feeling, just don't use them as a guide.


Marjory Barlow
An Examined Life

Patience

Over the years, perhaps the most important thing I have learned from Alexander's discoveries is the value of patience. If "end-gaining" is the quintessential dis-ease then patience is an important part of the perfect cure. Alexander's concept of inhibition is totally dependent upon your being patient as you begin your exploration of new ways of moving. Patience is also the keystone for a wide range of other disciplines from professional athletics to spiritual practices.


"Patience is a wonderful and supportive, even magical practice. It's the way to develop courage, the way to find out what life is really about...We don't have to criticize ourselves when we fail, even for a moment, because we're just completely typical human beings; the only thing that is unique about us is that we're brave enough to go into these things more deeply and explore beneath our surface reaction of trying to get solid ground under our feet."

Pema Chodron

"To hit a ball really well you have to be patient. You just have to wait and if it's fastball you have to wait very quickly.

Alex Rodriguez
Future Hall of Fame Baseball Player

Tension is a Verb

Excess tension is not a noun, a thing. Excess tension is a verb, an action. Excess tension is often thought of as a blockage, like a clog in a pipe but in reality it is more like clenching a fist and holding it. Excess tens-ION is actually excess tens-ING. It's an activity that is happening in the present; an isometric exercising that can over-develop the muscles involved and cause imbalances and a loss of flexibility.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that as an ongoing physical process, tension is supported by an ongoing mental process. Those muscles etc. aren't acting on their own; they are receiving instructions that are generated by the way we use our brain. Therefore, the source of excess tension is excess thinking and the solution is to change the habitual patterns of over-thinking that lead to that over-tensing.

It's Alright To be Wrong

"This work is absolutely truthful. If you think you're wrong, then do it and you will discover. We are afraid to be wrong, but by being wrong we know what to do. Accept that being wrong is your friend, not your enemy."

Marjory Barlow
An Examined Life

Alone At Last

I used to think that by applying Alexander's discoveries I was getting rid of my bad habits by learning how to do things right. More and more I've come to understand that when I begin an activity by becoming a little easier and then notice how that quality of ease changes in me as I do different things, "right and wrong" never enters my head. Instead, I am engaged with how things are unfolding as I move and that engagement creates a condition where my old habits tend to forget who they belong to and leave me alone for a while.

Lost in Translation

Re-establishing our capacity to move with ease is a process of letting go of the interference that obscures the underlying grace that is the foundation of all movement. Rediscovering our natural flexibility is not a process of building up but a distilling out those things we habitually create that complicate the way our intentions are translated into our actions.

Contact Improvisation

Whenever we are doing something it's useful to remember that any movement we make, any activity we engage in is a collaboration between us and the environment. If we move a chair, we too are being "moved". The chair has as least as much of an affect on us as we have on it. It's not unlike a dance where one partner leads while the other follows.

What's interesting is that although we initiate this little pas de deux, the more we can let go and allow our "partner" to shape our response, the more efficient the interaction becomes.

Our objectives and the world of objects meet in a kind of contact improvisation where the beauty and effectiveness of the moving is determined by the quality of our awareness and the quality of our awareness is determined by our willingness to pay attention to what happens to ease in us as we dance.

Float and Sink

The next time you think Notice or Forward and Up, experiment with the idea of gently allowing the back of your head to float while the front sinks slightly. Use just a whisper of a suggestion, ease and delicacy being the key. After playing with that for a while experiment in a similar way with your rib area always exploring with as much ease as possible. Float and Sink can also be applied to your hips but you have to reverse it
by allowing the top of your hips sink back and the bottom to float up and under. As always, these thoughts should be easy and not pushy.

Learning To Teach, Teaching To Learn

"We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves."

Pema Chodron

On Effort

In the following, although Master Suzuki is talking about Zen, if you substitute the word Noticing for "breathing", he could be talking about the Alexander Technique.

"We should try to continue our effort forever, but we should not expect to reach some stage when we will forget all about it. We should just try to keep our mind on our breathing. That is our actual practice. The effort will be more and more refined while you are sitting. At first the effort you make is quite rough and impure, but by the power of practice the effort will become purer and purer. When your effort becomes pure your mind and body become pure. This is the way we practice."

Shunru Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginners Mind

Noticing(Paying Attention)

Noticing is a way to quiet the part of you that interferes; the part that tries too hard, makes decisions according to habit; gets ahead of itself; the part that "end-gains". If you pay attention {Notice}, then your mind and body can undergo a transformation. When you watch what happens to your Noticing as you begin a movement, that movement unfolds in your awareness. Energy that was invested in fixed habits is freed up and re-orchestrated. Marjorie Barstow called this process a "redirection of energy". Each new circumstance is unique and so calls for unique re-direction of energy. The act of Noticing simply prevents you from interfering with what is a natural process.

For Teachers and Those Who Touch

The next time you use your hands to touch something{or someone}, instead of just focusing on the affect you are having on the object or person, also notice the changes that occur within you. We tend to evaluate our efforts in terms of how successfully we are able to manipulate the external world. Our focus is outward and so we have little awareness of how that interaction is changing us.

Remember that anything you touch is touching you back. Every action you take comes back to you in the form of energy and information that can either help you or hurt you depending upon what you are paying attention to. If before beginning an activity you start by Noticing the ease in yourself, you can use the increase or lessening of that ease to determine the overall quality of that activity. That way you can see both the external and internal changes in the same frame and you'll have a better chance of finding out what your doing is actually doing to you.

Thinking Ahead

"You have to look down the road but don't forget that your wheels are only underneath you."

Jalma

Effective Moving

Effective movement requires you to perpetually re-invent the wheel. You must know and not know how to do it simultaneously. There is no time for satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The only thing you can do is right now.

Jazz: The Refinement of Effort

"I think it is terribly important that Jazz was primarily dance music so you move when you hear it. And it always moves in the direction of elegance which is the most civilized thing a human being can do. The ultra-extension, elaboration and refinement of effort is elegance. Where just doing it gives pleasure of itself. That's about as far as we can get with life."

Albert Murray

If It Ain't Broke...

Noticing is not a technique for fixing what you think is wrong with you but rather a way of approaching things that allows for something fresh to happen.

“If we look at life as an opportunity to embrace and heal all that has
happened to us, our attention moves away from trying to fix things and figure everything out, and towards being with ourselves as we live our everyday lives”

Watch What Happens

Noticing is a way of making tangible the way we interfere with our natural coordination. The act of Noticing engages the "part" of our mind that complicates activities by shifting the focus from the present moment to a past sensation or a projection of the future. The key to Noticing is always the act of letting go of preconceptions and seeing what is actually happening, not to the body, but to your thinking. You don't have to wait to interpret your body's response if you simply ask yourself "Am I Noticing right now." If you know, at this moment, whether or not you are Noticing, then you can proceed and simply watch what happens to your Noticing, not to your body.

Take It Easy, But Take It

"This is too serious to get serious about."

Marjory Barstow

Balancing Act

"Expansion never happens through greediness or pushing or striving. It happens through some combination of learning how to relax where you already are and, at the same time, keeping the possibility open that your capacity, my capacity, the capacity of all beings is limitless."

Pema Chodron
Comfortable With Uncertainty

The Bigger Picture

The Alexander Technique can be thought of as a way of learning how see the bigger picture. Alexander's inhibition immediately shifts your perspective by asking you to begin by stopping. Before launching into what you're going to do, you expand your attention and include what you are not doing. It against this background of momentary stillness that we can begin to see objectively the quality of the choices we make giving us the chance to make a change that transcends expectation.

What Have I Done For Me Lately

One of the great things about the Alexander Technique is that no matter how badly you're messing up or how long you've been messing up, by Noticing how easy your neck is right now, you get to start with a clean slate. The bad news is that no matter how great you've been doing or how long you've been doing great, right now, you have to start from scratch.

Always, Then and Now

Noticing{Inhibition} allows you to be guided by what you've always known but have forgotten and by what you can never know because it's always new.

Instant Gratification

Any time you are impatient with how much "Alexander" progress you're making, Noticing right at that moment is the best medicine because the instant you stop thinking ahead, you stop having to wait.

Pushing "C"(Inhibition)

"Between each thought there is a resting place. If you studied an electro-encephalograph you'd see that the mind has resting places. In order for us to perceive something clearly, it is important to return to our resting place; not to carry over an idea from the past or an idea about the future. It's somewhat like a calculator. You put in one plus two and you get three. Then you put in two plus two and you'll get seven unless you push "C" for clear, between the two calculations. So it's very important to push "C" or you're going to carry over the last calculation into the present one. So let go of any ideas; just push "C". The point is to return to your center and listen, trust, have faith, have courage. Push C."

Barbara Rhodes
Zen Teacher

Can't Get There From Here

When you are looking for a new way to get somewhere, unless you're lost, you're going the wrong way.

Welcoming the Unknown

"The attempt to bring about change involving growth development and progressive improvement in the use and functioning of the human organism, calls necessarily for the acceptance, yes, the welcoming of the unknown in sensory experience, and this 'unknown' cannot be associated with the sensory experiences that have hitherto 'felt right'."

F.M. Alexander

Just Taking Note

“What is essential here is to become more acquainted with your intimate nature, your sensations, your body tensions, feelings and desires, without making any judgement. In innocent looking we are completely outside what we observe. In other words we just take note, and just taking note has it’s own taste.”

Jean Klein
The Ease of Being

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Let The Sun Shine In

Instead of touching
Be touched
Instead of hearing a bell
Be rung
Instead of breathing
Be breathed
Seeing is not believing
It's receiving

Jalma