Notice Now

"It's not the skill, it's the will."

Herman Edwards
Head Coach New York Jets

Knowing Vs. Learning

There is nothing wrong with knowing stuff as long as it doesn't stop you from observing change; as long as knowing doesn't freeze you into an assumption; as long as you realize that the actual value of what you know can only be determined by how useful that knowledge is to you in the ever-changing present. Figuring that out requires openness and openness always precedes and accompanies learning.

"A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that; every hour every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing that everything is new."

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Half-Power Thinking

Here's a little trick I learned a while back from one of my students. Whenever you are having difficulty using Noticing as a tool, take the amount of effort you are using to Notice and cut it in half and see what happens. Then cut it in half again and then again until what you are doing is just a whisper of the effort you were using when you started.

The student who came up with this idea was blessed with more than her share of excess tension and this technique, which she dubbed Half-Power Thinking, was a useful way for her to trick herself out of trying too hard. Experiment with it whenever you are having trouble with any activity. Just keep cutting the effort you're using in half and see what happens. Experiment with it whenever an activity is going great. Just keep cutting the effort you're using in half and see what happens.

Play Ball

"So it's one of those things you still have to understand that these players have to go out and trust their ability and that's pretty much what we're trying to focus on right now as opposed to controlling the outcome."

Joe Torre
Hall of Fame Manager
N.Y. Yankees

The Queasy Bits

I had an English Alexander teacher who often talked about perservering through what she called the "queasy bits”. The "queasy bits" are those moments when you feel shaky because things are changing and you don’t really understand what's happening to you; you've done your best to apply some aspect of Alexander's discoveries but you are not sure about the results. At those moments we tend to panic and run back to our old ways of doing and feeling things because then at least we know what to expect.

The next time you apply one of Alexander's discoveries and don’t try to escape from the state of not knowing; don’t try to come up with an answer that will explain things so that everything makes comfortable sense. Instead, stick with that anxious energy and allow it to relax and soften you. Softness leads to openness and openness is the ground from which new experiences can sprout. Those uncertain "queasy bits" are usually an indication that things are changing for the better. So, when you feel a little unsure about what's going on, let the newness of that moment blossom and then see what what happens.