Sensory appreciation

Before I had a turn with Jenny, Carina worked for 10 minutes on the table with me. I noticed some holding in front of my hip joints, connected to my idea of 'free neck'. It might be part of the pattern to 'park' myself in positions. Jenny's hands helped a lot to find out about some aspects of my faulty sensory appreciation.

I wanted to do some chair work with Carsten, but after a few tries we ended up talking. I asked him to feel his weight and describe where it goes, and he insisted that FM didn't want us to feel. Of course, FM subscribes not to trust our sensory appreciation. Restoring reliable sensory appreciation as an end is certainly not FM's idea either, yet I think it's indispensable for a prospective teacher to overcome sensory amnesia to a large degree.

I wonder if I did this in a similar manner like Duncan in some of my private lessons. Carsten seemed to want the hands-on part, but I didn't to manage to prevent him from going internal. During our conversation his mind still engaged a lot, yet he seemed a bit more present.

In a way, I explored already the topic for the reading: the evolutionary influence of sensory appreciation. I think the of concept of 'sensory amnesia' (borrowed from somatics) offers a better accessable term to introduce the sad state of skewed perception. Alexander's language seems out of time, however, maybe the strange terminology encourages inquiry.

Briar, who just started this term, stumbled over the classic 'means-whereby'. I tried to explain the difference with the difference between 'what' and 'how'. AT doesn't care too much about the 'what', Chyna's as AT high heel guru exemplifies this convincingly. Inhibition allows us to choose the 'how', one of the core skills taught to bring more consciousness into our daily life.

We looked at writing in Matt's group. I was surprised how tense my wrists felt when writing. I have faint, kind of unpleasant memories of learning to write, and I never really had a 'nice' hand writing. Awesome area to explore some of the older habits I acquired.

In Jenny's group I became more aware of the influence of speaking while putting hands on. It became a less big stimulus for me to put hands on, now I can get back to organise my intent beforehand.