Last friday's lesson was nice; it left me very slow for the rest of the day, like the moment just before you realise that you're waking up. We did quite a lot of talking about change, what it is, isn't, about physical habits as defence mechanisms. Work was nice too: my shoulder is much more ontfrummeld (that's out). Note to self: don't just think out at the superficial/skin level, but even more at the core of the shoulder, its essence; from the sitting bone out through the fingers.

So here it is, something that can't be planned, let alone scheduled, something outside my terms of reference, that cannot be captured in a story, something that needs lots of trust and patience. Go figure: trust, patience and me...

Spent the rest of the afternoon doing nothing in the sun and went to bed early.

I had a non-singing lesson yesterday. I explained to the teacher that I wanted to find back my pleasure in singing, and that I didn't want to learn how to sing, but how to express myself. She responded very positively; we started out with a very simple Irish folk tune, and I'm not supposed to sing it, only producing some sound and investigating what happens inside.

So I'm still not singing :-)

This week has been one big rollercoaster ride, and it felt pretty much sh#t. My shoulder started acting up again, up to a point where it really, nastily hurt. I switched to a pen tablet instead of a mouse, and that gave immediate relief, as did some lying down on the floor, but what annoys the hell out of me is that I cannot put my finger on the cause. I haven't been stressed at all, just returned from a three-week holiday, I'm not slouching more than usual, and still it happens.

On top of that, all kinds of mental stuff is blobbing up to the surface all of a sudden. I've already suspected for a while that some parts of me are changing to such an extent that I cannot leave other parts unchanged any longer. But so far, I've only been changing the relatively easy stuff, like the outside. Deeply ingrained mental habits are much harder to change, and I'm not sure whether that's something I'm ready for just yet.

Franis Engel sent this e-mail to the Alextech list:

No one person can be all of what the Alexander
Technique is; all of us are only where we are at the
time we are there. That's why a chronicle such as the
one you've created and maintain is so important - you
can see the progress in yourself by reading the
expression of your experiences over years of time. You
can remember where you were by re-experiencing
yourself as you did the writing that you are reading -
a wonderful paradox of perspective.

...And a valuable blog it is because it has 16 months
of entries, many months having multiple entries!

If you think about it, for most people, once a week or
two is gone it's difficult to remember what they did
in the past with any clarity - people mostly remember
what they thought, or the story of how they told it to
someone instead of the blow-by-blow origins of the
experience. Observation takes practice - and that's
what journaling does. In order to write something, you
practice at observing yourself and your experiences
and get to decide what you think about them.

AT and what happens as you learn is often quite
gradual and only sometimes dramatic; just as the
memory of pain will quickly disappear, the kinesthetic
memory of discoveries of the past that have become
integrated become also easily taken for granted.
That's why journaling your experience can only
contribute to the discovery of the people who happen
on your blog. In a blog such as yours, one person's
experience can represent a sample of the universal
experience of anyone who is learning via Alexander
lessons. That you are honest about your particular
situation of supposedly "being a slow learner" when it
comes to AT only serves others who come to read what
you have written.

I'd recommend to the list to further check out this
blog in detail. If you're an AT teacher, it's at least
practical to send your students to this blog to read
and comment on the entries and bring their comments
back to you.

I mean, wow, what can I say...I'll just stick to some more impressed silence :-)

Last week, my Chi Gong teacher returned from his summer holiday with his family in China, so we had a lesson again. When he returns from China, my teacher is always much more energetic; something we notice very much as students.

We started with a little meditation, and just ten seconds into the first exercise, I already felt a huge rush of energy from my hands to my feet. Amazing indeed. It's funny, the same thing that I disliked about Chi Gong, is now one of the things I'm learning to like most: the entire absence of 'having to', 'considering', 'right or wrong', or even 'up or down'. The entire purpose of the lesson is just 'to be', without judgement, without intellectual effort.

It took me a while to make this leap of faith, and I still wonder in the back of my mind whether I'm doing things right. I guess this comes close to what my AT teacher calls giving up: letting go not only of the fear what others may think of me, but also letting go of the fear what I may think of myself.

OK, the laundry did take a bit longer, but it's finished. Now I have to start on the dishes...

One of the first things I learnt by taking AT lessons is that my body is not a necessary evil, as I'd always considered it to be up to that point. Rather, it's something that deserves just as much of my attention, care and kindness as my mind and spirit. And something I'd been neglecting, not on purpose, but because I assumed that my body was just naturally 'limited'.

I've always had a talent for clumsiness, always stumbling over things, even walking into doorposts when I meant to pass through them. Movement was not my favorite thing, it felt awkward. My parents sent me to a physiotherapist because I couldn't skip rope, or even stand on one leg when I was small. Gym classes at school were nightmares- that's an understatement. And I cannot count the number of times people told me to open my eyes and straighten my shoulders.

So, in a way, I gave up on my body. Not that I wanted to harm it, but I just assumed that my talents lay elsewhere. And I lived happily ever after. Until I started AT, and later, Chi Gong. When I started out with AT, each lesson was a little surprise exercise in what my body was able to do (and how completely wrong it felt). I didn't recognize myself when I looked in the mirror, and it was then that I started to realize that:

a) it's not my fault, there's no question of blame here. I didn't miss balls at softball because I liked to, or walked into people on purpose. Even more, because I tried so hard, so hard, so immensely hard to walk straight and doing things right, I kept amplifying my habitual use to give even worse results.

b) changes in physical habits had an almost instant effect on my mental habits too. I've always been a dreamer and a worrier. When I look back, I don't think that I exaggerate when say that I spent 50% dreaming and 50% worrying so far. But I walked out of AT lessons with a head so clear and transparent that I didn't even notice it was there. This was such an incredible relief that it gave me the biggest motivation I've ever had for starting to re-include my body in my picture of me (and of course the biggest danger, because I wanted to do everything right once again...*sigh*).

I still wouldn't describe my movement as 'graceful', 'poised' or any of the other words that are usually associated with AT. But I start to care less and less about that. I have my moments when things are more free than they used to be, and that's what I want. Trends and tendencies. And little surprises each day. Like swimming and noticing that I cannot only keep up with the others all of a sudden, but sometimes even manage to get ahead of them. Discovering that trees consist of more than just a trunk; they've got leaves too. Or someone in church remarking how straight I stood when I was singing. Just when I couldn't care less, because at that exact point I discovered that religion was just an old habit of mine too.

I'll write a bit more later on. Even more? Yeah, loads more, I could easily write a book with all the things that AT made me discover.

Some lessons, I just kind of sail through. Other lessons are more of a bumpy ride. Tonight counts as one of those. I'd been feeling kind of sticky the entire day already, not really there. Getting some kind of upflow seemed to take ages, I just couldn't connect. And I had a nice meeting with 'it'. Not.

I don't know how to describe what happens, but sometimes I get to a point in a lesson where it's just too much, too confusing, too scary and too close. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. To say the least.

But over time, I've started to learn that this is a kind of small door to big change. Because usually, after such a lesson, some really substantial changes happen all at once. And I suspect, no, I know, that if I manage to push through this horrible feeling, this little eye of a very small needle, there's something there for me that I hold very dear.

In hindsight, I always wonder what I'm so afraid of. And how come that, even when I tell myself "right, this time, I'm letting go, and I won't stop", at that specific point where I meet 'it', I still bolt. I guess that change, apart from not always being as well defined as we'd wish, is not always a very nice process either.

Definitely one of those lessons to remember.

(Some practical notes: chairs were not designed for sitting in. They're just things that you meet on the way. Try not to sit down, rather sit up. Not by using muscle force, but by sending and renewing an upflow along the spine).

Just returned from a wonderful holiday in the Yorkshire Moors, and look, there's a question by Julio in the comments: "I would like to ask you then, whether you have experienced any improvement so far?"

Speaking about cans of worms...I think I'm gonna need several posts to answer that one, not in the least because it's actually a really tough question. The simple answer would obviously be 'yes', since I benefit from AT on a daily basis, in lots of different ways.

But, looking closer, I start to wonder about the word improvement. That is a tricky word, it may perhaps imply that I started AT to solve a specific problem, which I didn't really. Before I started AT, my life was happy and easy enough, no major health problems, great job, great friends. I started AT as a preliminary before moving on to a singing teacher, and I can still remember some annoyed notes in my diary, because my AT teacher couldn't tell me how long it took to learn AT; I was more or less counting on the 30 lessons doing the trick :-)

More to follow after I've finished my holiday laundry.