Onward and Upward (but slowly)

A continuing theme for the teacher training course which I direct is:  "increased demand requires an increased elastic response".  As a trainee learns to take the weight of a pupil's leg, for instance, the trainee is guided in refusing to stiffen or collapse, and in dynamically allowing a whole elastic response in themselves as they accept the weight.  There are limits, of course, to the demands we can impose and still have an elastic response.

I am currently redefining my limits in terms of demands to which I can respond elastically, discovering new skills in coordination, and facing deeply set habits that have been masked by my typically hyper-active self.  In fact, the restless way of being that is my habit and my coping mechanism is currently unavailable to me.  Since I can't utilize well hewn pathways, new neural connections and unfamiliar modes of response may have some chance of developing.  I am in a large scale Alexander lesson, in which the unfamiliar is atmospheric, and new experience is the only choice available, even if it is not the choice that feels "right, familiar or even preferable.

Demands increased significantly yesterday when I actually left the apartment, went down (and later, up) 3 flights of stairs, got in the car (a major project requiring split-second timing on Marty's part in lifting the stiff leg and swinging it into the car), and went to my office building.  All of this required allowing a coordination of self that was new and challenging.  My pace, for example, was glacial.  Paint dries faster than I climb a flight of stairs.  Lots of time to consider my use.  Slow is not a familiar or comfortable state to me, and feels completely wrong, of course.

While at my office building, I had an excellent acupuncture treatment from Yoshiro, which calmed me, relieved pain, lowered inflammation, and brightened my spirits.  Afterward, Marty kindly served as a guinea pig for chair and table turns, so I could get a sense of the organization of self required for me to put hands on and move people.

Teaching is an activity that always requires my best use of self (which is why I like it!).  The new demands of a fully extended leg and the potential for pain amplified the need for inner quiet, a big picture, and thinking with the whole self.  The challenge, as teaching carries on, is to continue to remain quite and lively, and for me now, to refuse to react to the potential of pain, and to enlarge the picture further with the student included.  The cycle of inhibition and direction goes ever onward.

I was overjoyed to be quite capable of sitting and standing Marty with ease, as well as giving him a table turn without any pain or problems.  The solutions for coordination seemed to "do themselves", thus demonstrating the Alexander instruction to "let the thing do itself".

Three legged stair races anyone?  I am off pain meds, using a lovely maple cane and willing to climb.