"Here's Lookin' at Me, Kid."

Just for fun, when you use your eyes, instead of looking "at" something, let the light that bounces off of that object breeze into your eyes. Instead of thinking that the seeing is happening out there, think of the seeing as happening within you, which is, of course, where it does happen. Stop painting things with your gaze. Let the visual energy flow towards you as if the object was doing the seeing and you were the thing being seen.

Scared of the Lightness

"I would say that the tendency to move out of silence is a reflex because up to now you know yourself only in perception, in connection to events and feelings. As long as you don’t really know what silence is you feel insecure in silence, because there is no place for an ego. The ego can exist only in connection to situations and so it is always eager to look for a hold. But if you are acquainted with letting go, if you stop producing and just let things come you will become completely free."

Jean Klein
The Ease of Being

A Great Cauliflower

Don’t put Noticing on a pedestal. Don’t make it precious and try to keep it. Begin with it but then just watch what happens to it. It is the watching not the wanting that allows it to continue. Don’t be surprised if it seems to disappear right before your eyes. It didn’t, really, you just dozed off for a second. It's easy to do. As long as you do it. And, as A.R. Alexander once said: "Be patient, stick to principle, and it will all open up like a great cauliflower."

Flow

For a long time despite how much Noticing helped me in my activities, I often had the feeling that it was slowing me down. It seemed like an extra thing I had to take care of before I could get going with whatever I was trying to do. Then one day, as I was finishing up washing the dishes, I went to throw something in the garbage and an interesting thing happened: the two activities merged into a flow across time. What I mean is, because I was Noticing while doing the dishes, when the thought to throw something into the garbage occurred to me, it happened within the "envelope" of my Noticing. The two activities were not separate things each requiring its own distinct preparation. I didn't have to stop washing and then start throwing. The washing became the perfect easy preparation for the throwing because I was Noticing. Putting it into words it sounds a bit silly but the experience was very pleasant, simple and calm; there was the washing and then there was the throwing out occurring as a single easy flow with me as the common ground.

Is Noticing an Action?

Q:
Is Noticing an action? Does it require effort? Can you think about Noticing and not do it or does the problem always stem from doing too much?

A:
Noticing is an action that does require some effort but not that much because it is just thinking. Marjorie Barstow coined the phrase "constructive thinking" to describe the help you give yourself when you apply Alexander's discoveries. It is very possible to think about Noticing without actually doing it. Whenever you think things like "I should be Noticing more often" or "When I Noticed yesterday I felt great." you are thinking ABOUT Noticing. This is Noticing as a concept or an abstraction and it's different from Noticing as an action, the act of Noticing, which is a simple act of attention. It's similar to certain kinds of meditation. How much physical effort does it take to be aware of your breath? Not much. But the restlessness of your mind keeps taking you down other paths that lead away from attending to the simply fact of your breathing {or a mantra or a visualization etc.} Noticing, like meditating, is a thinking simplifier but one that works best in the thick of daily activity.

Most people do tend to work a little too hard sometimes. I think this is because we're so often looking for results. We Notice for the purpose of improving , which in itself is not a bad thing but a problem arises when we have a pre-conceived idea of what that improvement should feel like and then we create that feeling to confirm to ourselves that we are getting better. Unfortunately, the feeling created is just a mirage and one that's generated by the same habits of perception and movement that caused the problem in the first place so it's a case of the blind leading the blind.

The way out is to change the way you monitor your progress. Instead of asking yourself "do I feel like I'm improving?", ask yourself: "Am I Noticing right now?" If you do that over a period of time you will begin to realize that knowing you are Noticing is synonymous with knowing you are improving. You'll be developing a "sense" of how you're doing that is much more refined and immediate than a feeling. Kinesthetic feelings are not bad. They are an essential part of the way we experience things. It's only when we push them up to the front and try to use them as guides that they get in the way.

The Art of Moving

"There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention."

Flannery O'Connor

Grace and Anatomy

I'm not sure how useful it is to study anatomy. If anatomical knowledge was directly connected to moving well anatomists would be the best movers. Great athletes and performers clearly "know" something about moving effectively but I'm not convinced that you can find that knowledge in an anatomy text. Good use certainly involves good mechanics but, in the final analysis, I think that ease, power and grace happen as the result of allowing your deep intelligence to respond in it's own way to the capricious spirit of the movement of this moment.

Opinion, Barking and the Truth

"Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just opinion. Like a dog barking. American dogs say:"Woof woof". Korean dogs say: "mung mung". Polish dogs say: "How how". So which dog barking is correct? That is human beings barking, not barking...Take away your opinion, then what. What is left? That is the point. Take away your opinion,your condition, situation. Then your mind is clear like space. Clear like space means clear like a mirror. A mirror reflects everything...If your mind is clear like space then you see clearly, hear clearly, smell clearly everything is clear...that is truth."

Zen Master Sung San

Ease is Movement and Movement is Ease

Ease is movement and movement is ease. As long as you notice how it comes and goes like breathing, and you don't try to keep it, you can never lose it.

Seeing is Relieving (Just Notice)

"Seeing our moment to moment conditioned reactions is crucial. Without that we will continue the mess we're creating. Simple awareness of what's arising makes it possible to let go. Awareness of this moment reveals what needs to be done or left alone."

Paul Baker
Zen Teacher

Kowabunga, Dude!!!!!

One of the most challenging aspects of applying Alexander's discoveries is being able to let go. In order for this stuff to work, you have to be able to do what has to be done and then allow the rest to happen. For me, it's the allowing that's the hardest. After all, I am doing this to make a change, which means I have an investment in the outcome. Either I want to improve the way I'm doing something, alleviate a pain, use less effort etc., and it is this desire that can become the biggest obstacle to improving my condition.

Although the need to make a change is essential to getting me started, right off the bat that specific need has to morph into the more open-ended desire of seeing the truth of what is happening. It is this act of seeing which frees my mind and body to be better coordinated. I let go of preconceptions and simply ride the waves of what is actually happening in me as I am moving. I observe the "means whereby" instead of trying to gain an "end". I become a surfer and stop being a jet skier.

Some Antics

It is impossible to KNOW anything that's new because knowing is, in truth, only KNEWING.

Now

Watch how beautifully a tree moves in a breeze. It can't predict the wind so it doesn't try.

Jalma

The Easy Way Out

The more I do only what needs to be done, the more doing resembles undoing and getting dissolves into letting.

Jalma

Suspended Animation

Alexander chose his words with the utmost of care, so it is significant that the verb he used in his first direction was "to allow". Allowing your neck to be free presupposes that your neck's natural tendency is to be free. It follows that if you have the power to allow your neck to be free you must be the agent of it's restraint. As soon as you stop preventing the natural freedom of your neck, your head can move forward and up and your back can lengthen and widen. This is classic inhibition because the action you take is to stop doing something. You stop interfering. However, not interfering{allowing} only works because the upward release of your head and whole body is, in a sense, already happening. You don't make your neck free you simply let go into the flow of easy movement that is ready and waiting to be expressed.

When Right is Wrong

If you initiate an activity by Noticing and then see what happens to your Noticing as you begin to move, you free yourself from moving according to your habit. Each habitual movement has a kind of “rule book” where "rightness" is determined by the familiarity of the feeling associated with the movement. By Noticing first and then asking yourself: "Am I Noticing right now?" you avoid falling into the trap of habit because the only way you can find your way back to your old habit is by first recreating the habitual feeling. "Am I Noticing right now?" short circuits that process. It is a completely different question than: "Does this feel right?" Asking it prevents your old habit from jumping in because it allows the brand new movement to generate it's own brand new feeling.

"You want to feel out whether you are right or not. I am giving you a conception to eradicate that. I don’t want you to care a damn if you’re right or not. Directly, you don’t care if you’re right or not, the impeding obstacle is gone."

F.M. Alexander

False Sense of Security

In an unpredictable world, the familiarity of our habitual way of doing things tricks us into believing that we have some control over what is essentially uncontrollable.

End-Gaining

"The{Alexander}work is hard for many people to accept because it is very indirect. You can't go for it. And we all want to go for it---to 'endgain', really. This is what F.M.{Alexander}meant by endgaining: that you go for the end without considering or taking time to allow the means to work out to the end. Which they will inevitably do if the means are right. You're bound to get there. It may take a long time, but you're bound to get there in the end."


Marjory Barlow
An Examined Life

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

"You say that it's really hard for you to change? Nonsense! Change comes easy to you. Too easy, in fact. You're constantly changing all the time. The problem is not that it's hard to change, the problem is that you keep changing into exactly the same thing over and over and over again."

Jalma

Just Watch What Happens

Has it ever happened to you that despite your best intentions, very soon after you begin to Notice the ease, somehow the ease has disappeared? Does it seem as if you can either Notice the ease or do the activity but not both at the same time; that the two are mutually exclusive.

The trick is to stop trying to hold on to the ease and simply see what happens to it. Doing this opens things up because once you stop trying so hard to keep the ease and simply see what happens to it, the ease continues. You can even say to yourself: "Let me watch how the ease disappears as I move." The fact is that ease, which seems to be so elusive, is only elusive when you're trying to catch it.