Keeping the Picture Big

My students are familiar with the instruction to "keep the picture big".  By this I mean: refuse to focus on being "right" in the activity, or upon any specific sensation, or on the end result of the activity.  Extend attention and intention beyond the sensed self, so that perception is both softened and enlarged.  See something outside yourself and beyond your current experience so that you are not fixing on how you are now, but allowing a new way to be. Quiet reaction to stimuli and sensation.

When I fell and fractured my patella, I went immediately into shock (dilated pupils, nausea, ashen demeanor and a fair degree of hysteria).  My entire experience of self became defined by waves of extreme pain.  No Alexander thinking even occurred to me at this point; I was in survival mode, as was necessary

However, once Marty brought me to the Emergency Room, I began to think again "keep the picture big".  This translated into noticing the photographs used as decor (a lovely photo of three black bears in an old, mossy forest calmed me especially), and learning the name of each doctor, physician assistant, nurse and technician, then greeting each by name.  The result was that I was perceived as a relatively calm person despite the urgency of the injury.  (It didn't hurt that my blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen levels were all as normal.)  The medical personnel became people to me, not just roles and tasks, and I became a person to them, not just a condition.  I give great credit to the humane and skilled people who assisted me, but I know that I felt better, and was most likely easier to treat, by "keeping the picture big".  Focusing further on the pain would have only increased my nausea and anxiety and complicated my interactions.

Another notable benefit of "keeping the picture big" while in a medical environment was that nearly every medical person was curious about my work and, with few exceptions, showed sincere interest when I described it.  The discussion, and attention, went beyond my "broken" condition to an interest in how I would apply Alexander skills to my recovery.

Pain management, and movement with pain, absolutely require "keeping the picture big".  If I focus on the sensations in my knee (and interpret those sensations), I pull my entire self down, panic further (my interpretations being consistently dire) and generally stiffen and collapse on every level of my self.  If I attempt to protect the knee (which usually requires stiffening) in any manner, the same result occurs:  I lose an overall elastic sense of possible response.

If, instead, I can extend my intention and attention, the result is far more productive.  For example, if I am standing, and my knee hurts, I can think something like the following: "my knee really aches, so a more elastic response would help me.  I'd like my heels to drop, my entire back to come back, and my head to go up".  Then, of course, I don't check if these requests happened, nor do I in any way make them happen.  I go on expanding the picture: noticing my brain state, seeing the room, watching light come through the windows, quieting myself.  The pain may take its time to diminish, but I am quieter, and the pain is only part of my picture rather than the entire picture.  An elastic overall response becomes possible even with pain.