Had a very nice lesson yesterday; it's cool to hear someone say first of all that I'm actually not doing that bad, and second to have the things that went bad pointed out to me. This teacher works with singers a lot, and when I told her about my throat problems, she gave me some advice on how to work on this.

And then there's The Matter Of The Number Of Books. I've had lessons with about six AT teachers, and they all handle it differently (not that I particularly care about the books, but it's very interesting to observe). So far, I've seen teachers who:
- shove some books under my head, walk around, look at me sidwards, adjust the number and repeat this procedure until they seem satisfied.
- just shove a number of books under my head, without paying to much attention to it.
- shove a number of books under my head and ask me how it feels (which I find tricky to answer, because how do I know if I can't trust my own feeling?).

This teacher took the first approach, and after that let me measure the size of the book against my own hand, so I could find something similar back home (around 2 cms thick, because if I use anything smaller, my head tilts backwards too much, which results in my lower back coming up from the table).

Notes:
- Widening of the torso should not lead to narrowing of the back. When widening, try to do it 'like you're hugging a 900-year-old tree' (cf. D's keeping a tendency of staying backwards).
- Directions are small pulses, not something you do and then return to your old state. Try to think of them as 'little indians firing arrows upwards from your neck, outwards from your spine, downwards from your sitting bone, outwards from your knees etc. After each arrow, stop, and do it again').
- Lie down on the table and pronounce a sentence from something you sing. Instead of using your mouth, let the sound escape through two holes at the top of your head.
- good use is also a matter of good attitude. When you sing in front of an audience, you'll have to give them a convincing performance, directing your music outwards and upwards to them.
- Don't try too hard.

Begin by connecting to the space between your thoughts. The space between your feelings. The space at the end of your inbreath, at the end of your outbreath. Each of these places houses a gateway to a higher energy, a deeper connection to your spirit, a 'mysterious pass'. A place where your ego has nothing to say, no substance and where it cannot interfere with the flow of energy from the universe into your mind and body.

Make the connection with the universe, its resources and its challenges. Do so and it will make a connection with you to help you with your challenges by giving you the resources to deal with them as well as giving you resources to prepare you to deal with challenges you have yet to face.

This is a Chi Qong exercise that I found on the internet. I started Chi Qong about a year ago, when my AT teacher stopped teaching, and after some getting used to it (which I'll describe sometime later), I found that AT resembles Chi Qong quite a lot. The exercise goes on a little bit more (click on More to see the rest).
As a start try the following journey...

Begin by taking a piece of paper and creating two columns.
1) In the left write "Who am I?".
2) In the right, write your answer. It could just be "I am Brian" or "I am a computer Engineer", "I am someone who is seeking the truth behind my pain".
Write what ever comes straight to mind, heart,spirit or body. Set an alarm to ensure you answer within two minutes. Write one, one sentence answer only and then reset the alarm. Do not say what other people say. Do not describe yourself based on something you read in a book or a quote and most of all do not repeat what you have already said. No plagiarism of any kind please.
3)Repeat from 1)

At first answers will be easy to come by but later when you have written down all your "ego masks" you might find it more difficult. Capture the experience of being stuck for something to say about who you are. This is the experience of your ego fading and having nothing to say, your ego being silent and silenced. When your ego falls into the shadows of your soul, Light energy will begin to enter you. You may begin to feel uneasy. Sit with it, deal with it. Emotions will shift as will perspectives as will your world view. You will become open to the energy of the Universe and the Universe will become open to who you are and your needs. Continue doing the exercise until you find this uneasy place. When you do, continue asking
"Who am I?", even if you cannot answer. Keep asking as long as you can.

After a while you may find yourself becoming incredibly relaxed and at ease as you let go of your ego and let it find its true place, a place of humility and peace, a place of stillness and calm. This place is where all Medical Qigong practitioners go to when they commence any energy work. Find this place in Medical Qigong and Medical Qigong will find you.

After doing the exercise a few days you might like to change the way you do the exercise. Instead of answering "I am someone who has pain" or "Someone like me is sad" answer without reference to yourself or anyone else. Answer something like "There is pain", or "There is sadness". Indicate the experience rather than who or what is having the experience. Soon after this time, your Ego will be under the command of a nobler and humbler force rather than Ego commanding aggression and defensiveness and fueling insecurity. Become under the influence of the noble, humble force. Go this way and integrity will be in alignment with the spirit of Medical Qigong and your spirit will be in alignment with the spirit of your true nature and its abundant energy. When you can connect, control and have access to the
abundant energy within you and begin work with the forces of Light, you
will be ready to begin training in Medical Qigong.

*tomtidomtidomtidom* Just returned from choir practice without even a trace of hoarseness *tomtidomtidomtidom*

I rediscovered my jaw tonight: I can direct until I grow a beard (for those readers who wonder: I am of the female persuasion, thanks), but it's not going to help if I keep my jaw locked as tight as a Dutch mussel, is it? So instead of singing, I played around with my jaw for a while, dropping it, then letting it drop on its own accord, finally trying to integrate it with sending directions.

Some things I noted:
- as in every activity, it's quite hard to stay with the important things; I had to put in a lot of effort to keep from singing, or I guess I should call it the habit of singing: concentrating on the music, the people that sing next to me, becoming annoyed because the men don't know their part *again*. (Un)fortunately, I had one very marked reminder to get me back to the important stuff: as soon as I felt even the slightest pressure on my larynx, I stopped, waited, directed and let my jaw lower/soften.
- every time I managed to do so, I got a lot of extra space in my mouth and throat, which made it a lot easier to produce sound.
- it helped to project my voice inwards, rather than sending it outwards.
- oh, and did I mention that my throat wasn't hoarse? :-)

I got some complaints that Blogger's comment feature did not always work properly. I've replaced it with a Haloscan comment tool, so things should work fine now. But there's only one way to be sure: leave a comment :-)

One more week to go until I finally start lessons again, can't wait!

Funny, AT even seems to help me overcome my fear of flying. I'm not scared of aircraft; in fact, I'm fascinated by them, I know how they work, and I can even tell some of them apart when they fly by. But the physical sensation of flying has always made me sick, especially during take-off, when at the end of the climb, the plane moves back to level flight and during turbulence, when you sometimes all of a sudden fall down a couple of metres.

I think that one part of the problem is that I'm an uber-control freak, so I hate giving up control. Apart from that, I don't know where my body is in relation to the plane, and even more, to the horizon. When I don't have any visual reference, I think I fix my body into one relative position and expect this to stay so. Then, when an unexpected movement occurs, my body sticks to this fixed position, and I loose all orientation; for a moment, I feel this sinking sensation and I can't tell up from down.

When I try AT during flying, this first of all gives me something to do, so I don't pay to much attention to flying :-) But it also enables me to give up my own control and let the movement of the plane guide me, instead of me imposing my rigid position on the plane (which, let's face it, is not going to work anyway...). In a way, it doesn't really matter if I don't know where up is in the plane, as long as I know where up is in me.

The reading guides at www.performanceschool.org rock! I converted the HTML format to nice little booklets with friendly fonts and a a nice page layout, even included the occasional picture here and there, and now I'm completely hooked to them. I take them with me on the train, put them on my bedside table; I almost prefer them to the latest Terry Pratchett.

I started out with chapter 1 of the use of the self. I've read this book a few times already, but answering the 150 something (!) questions made me aware of two things:
- I read way to fast to really remember anything, I really had to re-read the whole chapter once again to be able to answer the questions.
- I recognise lots of the problems that made Alexander start his explorations into the use of the self (why does this not surprise me...)

This morning I had to sing a solo piece, and I was determined to try something different this time. Even though I'm a trained choir singer, solo pieces scare the **** out of me, with the result that I do all kinds of things that I know I shouldn't, like (tadaaah) depressing my larynx when I have to sing high notes and pulling back my head when, well, basically all the time.

So, this morning, when I started singing...I wish I could tell a success story here, but alas...I pulled my head the other way round, with my chin towards my chest. This temporarily solved my larynx problem, and at least I could finish the piece and the rest of mass with my voice still present, but I still felt my throat the rest of the day.

This is so frustrating! When I sing in the choir, I'm fine. When I sing under the shower, I'm fine. When I sing in the rehearsal room, I'm fine. But as soon as I enter this big church, with no feedback, fear literally grabs me by the throat and I allow it to take hold of me, collapse me and depress me.

What makes it worse, is that I sometimes get the feeling that it wasn't this bad before I started taking Alexander lessons. Of course, I know this is not true; it's just that I tend to notice more than I used to. My use was bad and definitely has improved. But I still need to bridge this gap between improving my use and being able to maintain it.

Patience, patience, patience and not being too harsh or judgemental. This reminds me of another 'crisis' of mine; I was so sick of this stupid neck that I told Cypher "I give up, I quit, I'm not doing this anymore". Guess what happened next: my head kind of rocketed into the air :-)

I just returned from church. I go there mainly because I sing in a church choir, and I find that music is a direct way of experiencing faith. Although I do believe in God, I don't really believe in the church as an institution, especially not with their attitude towards women. And to be honest, I don't subscribe to most of the dogmas of the Catholic church either.

Some people may accuse me of being complacent, just taking what I want and leaving the rest, and they're right: if I had been raised a muslim, I'd probably still frequent a mosque, and if I'd been Jewish, I'd still go to the synagogue, as long as I'de be able to sing and experience faith (faith that is, not religion).

Even though I don't like "The Church" very much, when you strip away lots of what's done and said there, you are faced with some things that, to me at least, can be considered as universal truths. Today, we touched one of these subjects: praying.

As a child, I was taught all kinds of prayers, little texts that you said before dinner, before going to bed, before starting school. And I didn't understand how, when my grandmother died, these should be able to soothe me. I said hundreds of them, waiting for this big man with the grey beard to intervene and tell me everything would be allright. But he never came.

Later on, when I said prayers, I noted that I found it extremely difficult to focus, to quiet myself enough, to stop my heart racing and my thoughts going back to things I'd done, or forwards to things I still had to do. The prayers remained words and words only, which I sent into the big unknown, hoping that there was someone out there, although I almost certainly knew that there wasn't.

After having had some Alexander lessons, I struck me how similar directing and praying could be; directing starts out with words, which later turn into something deeper altogether. It requires me to stop, to be in the here and now, to give up, and when I manage to do so, I am sometimes overwhelmed by a sense of truth, of an uncomprimising confrontation with myself. Could I perhaps apply this to praying too? But that would mean that I have to direct my prayer inwards, not to an idea of a God outside of me. Does this then also mean that if I stop and inhibit in prayer, if I manage to be still, and feel the energy flowing upward, I am experiencing God?

Today, the priest held a wonderful talk about just this; I hope he'll send the text, because there was so much in it that I can't remember it all. Some of the things that I do remember:
- Prayer should not be isolated from the real world; you should keep your praying attitude in everything you do, in every interaction with other people.
- Praying is not easy, but if you're willing to give up and confront yourself, if you're willing to give your heart room to express its emotions and problems to God, he'll lift you up and you'll experience truth.

Even the songs we sang today were very Alexander-like:
There is no god on our side
who says: this is right
There is one who says:
Search on, things will become better.

I just noted that this site attracted some visitors other than me checking whether everything looks alright :-) Nice to have you here! If you like, you can leave a note by clicking on the comments hyperlink.

Almost forgot to tell: yesterday I called an Alexander teacher; she called back today, and I'm off to my first proper lesson in one year next friday! I'm very much looking forward to it, much less anxious than the last time I tried a new teacher. I'm more prepared now, I know that there are different styles in teaching. I also know quite well what I'm looking for, although this, of course, is tricky, because what I already know doesn't tell me anything about what I don't. No expectations, no hopes, no fears, no nothing. That's how I'll try to go there. After all, I'm only just beginning :-)

The Performance School offers online study guides for Alexander's books. This is good news, because Alexander's texts are not very accessible. Well, they are, but they require some good study, almost like translating an Old English text, or solving a complex Latin sentence structure; each phrase offers something to think about, something to interpret. This is what's easy to forget; it's not all about backs and posture, it's about philosophy to. Of course it is, because there is no difference between mental and physical parts of the organism.

I don't mind ploughing through complex texts, I mean, that's what I was trained to do in college, but it's nice to have a bit of a companion in the form of this guide. For each chapter, it lists a large number of study questions (basically, checks to see if you understood the writing) and thought questions, things to ponder, to sit and wonder about.

In a way, it feels like going back to college; I even consider setting up a schedule, so that I really commit to studying these texts at least a few hours a week. But what a different subject have I got now...it's me!

This sounds interesting: a website for self study of the Alexander Technique. Of course, it's no substitute for real lessons, but the exercises look useful and fun.

Went out for a walk today and had ended up with a stiff neck and strained shoulders. Cypher told me that I walked with my head down, and that I perhaps concentrated on my shoulder joint too much, instead of my whole shoulder (which basically runs from the bottom of the spine all the way up to my neck, kinda like a big wing). I tried consciously directing while walking, and in doing so also noted that my lower back was not free, wide, whatever you want to call it. After a while, it improved a bit, but not very much.

I'd really like to have some lessons again, perhaps I'll try and call another teacher tomorrow.

Last night, when I switched off the light and wanted to go to sleep, I decided to stop worrying about AT and just do it for a while. I started out by trying to find my sitting bone. It took me quite some time to locate it, it's always so much lower than I think. I started looking for it somewhere at navel height, which meant that I first had to go down before I could even think of going up. During this search, I constantly had to remind myself to not start giving directions straight away, but first make sure that I'd stopped (in this case, found my sitting bone).

Once I found my sitting bone, I thought out some directions. And again, I had to immediately remind myself to *think* them, not to *do* anything, because even while I thought I was just thinking, I could feel my neck stiffen immediately. So I kept directing and reminding, and after a while, I felt a tingling sensation near my sitting bone. Of course, as soon as I noticed this, I started doing stuff, so it disappeared, but after trying a few times, I could more or less direct the tingling feeling upwards a little.

After directing this little flow for a while, something very exciting happened; it's hard to explain in words, but I'll give it a try. First of all, it felt like some kind of thick layer was peeled off, almost like taking off a thick set of winter clothes. Usually I hear all kinds of stuff inside, like music, me talking to myself, that kind of thing. But now, that all went completely quiet, and I could hear everything around me with great clarity. I also felt very aware of my spine, I could perceive it from bottom to top.

I tried sending some more directions, and then I discovered that "when you stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing will do itself" is *not* a figure of speech, because my body started opening up on its own accord, without me doing anything other than sending directions. At that moment, I had no doubt at all about where forward and up was, because I was taken there by my head :-) Stupid words, they don't even convey half of what I want to say. It was like having a blueprint body inside, with my outside body simply folding around it. Once I reached that state, it was easy to get rid of the tension in my back and shoulders; just by sending directions to the sore spots, I could open and release them.

No need to say that I'm quite happy...

Decided to take floating literally today: tried AT in the swimming pool, floating on my back. One good thing about this, is that it keeps me from worrying about my head. Hmm..the last couple of weeks, I spent more time worrying about AT than doing it. Come on miss, it's not that difficult! Just stop doing the wrong thing...yeah right.

So, how are you supposed to do this on your own? I guess you need a certain basic level of mastering AT to be able to maintain the quality of your directions, and let's face it: I'm not there yet. Still a long, long way removed of something that comes even slightly close to proper directions. And it feels sh*t.

The more I try, the less I succeed, I've come that far, so I've left that strategy. But completey neglecting AT doesn't work either. So here I am, more or less caught in the middle. But hey, should't I be able to do this without a teacher? I mean, I can't depend on a teacher for a lifetime of direction and inhibition, can I?

How should I 'work on myself'? The way I do it now, I only end up with a stiff neck, so that's not it. So, I should try something else. Not doing something else, because that's just the same approach- still doing something. But stopping and trying something else completely. But what?