Internal noise and the Alexander Technique

In this current life circumstance in which physical activity has come to a near halt, I have the opportunity to hear my own internal noise, the rumble of emotion, in an entirely new way, and to observe my response to that rumble.

Typically, I am a very active person.  I run every morning, walk to work, teach lessons all day 5 days a week, run a training course 4 days a week, and walk home again.  I also pursue the joyous, ongoing learning that the Gyrotonic method of exercise offers.  Although none of these activities are intended to in any way suppress emotional content, they do serve to balance and ease emotional impact.  None of these activities are available for me now. (Although, I will happily return to teaching later this week!!)

The Alexander Technique is not psychology, nor does the Technique intend to suppress emotional expression.  F.M. Alexander wrote  about the self as a unified condition, not a series of parts.  Nor did he have a "one size fits all" prescription.  His writings emphasize repeatedly the concept of the individual in conscious response.  The Technique offers a skill, learned over time, of using intention and attention in response to any stimulus, whether internal or external.  (In fact, I am seeing that internal and external perceptions aren't all that separate either, but I will pursue that notion at another time!)

In the tools offered by the Technique, the big picture takes precedence over the details.  Sensory information, whether emotional or physical, can be seen as a step in the continuing cycle of overall awareness of self.

Here are examples of what I am noticing, and how I am applying AT principles to the rumble of emotional content:

As I go out for my snail walk, I notice a deep restlessness and frustration with my glacial pace.  Instead of diving into the restlessness, or investigating frustration, I also notice that that I have narrowed and shortened.  Contraction is not useful for my overall elastic response.  Fighting these feelings only narrows me further.  Instead, I make a choice:  my priority is to send my head up, my back into length and width, my legs out of my back.  Suddenly, restlessness is forgotten, and I am noticing the world and me moving through it again.  My view has broadened.  Restlessness returns, but is no longer very important.

Sitting at my desk to write or read emails, I find a deep sadness looming.  I also see that I have collapsed through the front of my torso, and that my respiration has become limited.  I don't really need to know why I am sad.  I am sure I could come up with reasons galore.  I also can't "make" the sadness go away, nor do I wish to.  But, I do prefer to experience the front length of my torso, and to breathe.  A choice has been made.  The sadness may return, and probably will, but it is not the dominant experience.  My choice in response, my preference for elastic balance is the priority.

Emotions are a constant and necessary aspect of being an animal.  They are richly informative, and if we allow their flow, a potential stimulus for continued choice in response.  The Alexander Technique is always indirect in application.  We don't seek to change a shape, a mental process or an emotional tenderness directly, but to widen intention and awareness for an overall balanced response, for the best use of the self in the moment.  I am finding that if I quiet myself, keep the picture big, continue to widen and lengthen, choose elasticity, and dynamically refuse to react with a fixed notion, emotions become like the weather in Chicago: give it a moment, it will change.

The textures and richness of experience thus deepen, and I am in charge by, strangely, not being in charge in my same old way.

This offered from a rumbling snail, with best wishes.