End-gaining

When it comes to a typical 'wrong-doing', end-gaining is the catch-all phrase in the Alexandrian world. 'The ends justify the means' is a commonly used adage and unfortunately often the attitude towards political and societal affairs. Luckily, at least while putting hands on other people, I learned a lot about my end gaining habits. I learned so much that I'm convinced that I can find more end-gaining habits of mine until the day I die.

When Marjorie Fern visited our school, she brought one of my favorite toys with her. It's balls made of hundred of rubbery strings, in bright colours, easy to catch and interesting to feel. I played many games illustrating some of Alexander's ideas, and I like the playful atmosphere created by simple games. When David told me about the workshop with 35 high school kids I immediately thought of using these funny balls.

I went on an internet search after coming home, and the some iterations in my search (from soft and fluffy via stringy to Koosh) I found some Australian online shops offering Koosh balls. Amazingly, these balls were sold as stress reliever, as toys and in a shop for camping gear. The adventure supply shop had the best offer, and so I thought: I want them, I order them. 75mm sounded a bit small to me, but still acceptable, so I typed an order round about $100 in and diligently supplied my credit card details.

I gained my end, the rush of the online shopping experience still exhilarating me a bit. I checked postage and shopping condition, whether encryption was used, but not the actual catalogue of the shop. I compromised already enough, I ignored a better prize offshore, or waiting for sold-out supplies to be restocked. Then I decided to browse the site where I ordered again, finding my way through the idiosyncracies in a mixed bag of online shop.

The choice of products of this camping/hiking/adventure supply outlet surprised me a lot. Only in juggling stores I might have come across the category of 'throwables', and I was stunned by the amount of items listed. Besides Koosh balls, they offer a lot fun things to throw and catch. I caught the item I ordered at the end of the first list, and checked the second page.

OMG, OMFG! Sets of 6! Okay, calm down, let's see what else they offer. 90mm Koosh balls. Oops. Sets of 6. A set of 20 in its own bag. Hmpf. Like in a lot of good shops, if the quantity goes up the prize goes down. A quick calculation makes it obvious to me that I would have ordered totally different if I had checked the range of merchandise first. Bloody end-gainer!

I worked in the computer industry, and know about the finality of electronic transactions. It'll take hours to write an email explaining that something went wrong, to sort out this situation with an better outcome for me by the means of the internet. I think Amazon let's you change orders before they ship them, yet smaller shops even let you order (and pay for) out-of-stock items. A 1-300 number prominently shows on top of the screen, so I inhibit my self-pity about my end-gaining and call their number.

So I explained my stuff-up to Damien, and asked him whether I could change my order. I guess that he pulled up my order on his computer while we were talking. He seemed relieved when I indicated that I happily still order for the same amount, and promised to take care of this within 15 minutes after our call. We chatted for about 10 minutes, and I realised that my end-gained order transformed into another encounter of random friendliness by strangers.

It didn't even take 15 minutes for the email with the changed order, and instead of two dozens Koosh balls I'll now get 30, and some bags to put them in as well. I still have no idea whether the delivery will arrive in time before the workshop, though I'm quite confident. Anyway, I enjoyed the great service this little call brought with it, and gained some interesting and fun insights.

Work in front of computer screens contributed a great deal to my patterns of mis-use, and I still need to remind myself often of my directions not to study my old habits. I researched for at least two hours on the web for this funny thing, interrupted by a unicycle ride to check local stores for something to pick up straight away. Like a hungry hunter I went for the first prey in sight. I fell for my end-gaining habit, but it didn't hurt. I noticed what I did, and so liberated myself from falling for my 'end-gaining has failed' habits as well.

Instead, I reevaluated the situation to improve the outcome. End-gaining often leads to undesirable results, but life goes on anyway. The sooner you detect an end-gaining stuff up, the more chance you've got do less and achieve more. In retrospect, the little unnoticed bits of forgetting my means made me try harder instead of acting smarter. Choosing a different reaction unveiled bits of my personal patterns, and probably made me one percent less end-gaining than before.

Surprise

I had a great turn with Jane, who gave me the opportunity to put hand on her. By doing less, I managed to get her easily in and out of the chair, although I had to inhibit my surprise over the ways we were moving. All that ease remains hard to grasp, yet I could clearly notice the change in thinking when working with her.

Before I had a chance to catch with the reading for today, David asked me to give Jeanine a table turn. She's looking for a school to become AT teacher, a graduated contact juggler and circus skill teacher expanding her toolkit. I managed to lengthen her a bit on the table, and her rotary cuffs released a bit, yet her use looks impressive already, and her observation skills stunned me as well.

I had little clue about her background while working with her, when she had a look at my CJing she came up straight away with real useful tips and observations.

So much I'd like to write more, my computer reacts currently much slower than a serially connected real VT100 terminal. So kann ich net arbeite! Time to order new hardware, before the wait drives me mad.

A restart alleviated the tardy behaviour, yet the order is out, in a day or two I have my new hardware. I hope the increased working speed will allow me to balance my screen work with building more tensegrity models. Rossi asked me whether she could buy one of the models from my workshop. I think I will raise the prize from today's offer to a coffee with company, it's still a fair deal.

Tensegrity

David offered me the opportunity to do my tensegrity workshop during our school's residential. This meant that my car was heavily loaded with plenty of light objects, sensory overload by having a variety of models was part of my plan.

I got so much used to have tensegrity models in my lounge that I nearly forgot the awe they inspire quite often on first sight. Martin hardly couldn't keep his hands off them while driving to Maitripa, and I knew that the strategy of using them as attention grabber would make the presentation part much easier.

I arranged plenty of the smaller and simpler models on the table next to the stage area, the tower and the larger sphere standing next to me. The mind map I made half a year ago laid on a table close by as well, yet I think I used it only a couple of times.



I wasn't tempted to rehearse the presentation, yet I took the chance to work in front of the group with Michael Shellshear on my nervousness about it. He helped me defining a clear goal, and suggested to have a clear beginning, middle part and end for the presentation. Finding a SMART goal wasn't easy, tensegrity offers so many ideas and connections to the work, and of course, eagerly end-gaining as I can be, I wanted to put a lot information into the workshop.

My idea was it to give the participants a more embodied understanding of tensegrity, and to learn more about the qualities of such systems in general. Yet Michael steered me into finding a single quality as focus - bounciness. I'm pretty sure he set some anchors when working with me, although I couldn't consciously describe them.



I started off with a short explanation of the origin of the term, letting my admiration for Buckminster Fuller shining through. I used the metaphor 'island of compression in a sea of tension' to describe the discontinuity of compression (we're no stack of bricks, although some people's thinking is sometimes as flexible as one).

I used to model with a similar structure, but with different tension material (rubber, ie very flexible and nylon ie very tense) to give the participants the first opportunity to play. The models nicely demonstrate expansion and contraction in all dimensions, and squeezing and pulling made the difference in mobility depending on the pretension level (golgi, I hear ya calling) obvious.

I felt quite calm and collected, the adrenaline didn't throw me off but kept me moving confidently. Before I could lose the interest of my audience by the technicalities of the minimal tensegrity system (tensul), making pauses in the verbal part allowed questions, so I could navigate along the mindmap in response to my audience.

The fun started for me when I explained the teamwork task, the 'middle' part of the workshop. I demonstrated the total collapse of a tensul from a box shape into a hodge podge of strings and sticks, and asked the participants to do the same with the models I handed them before.

I had no idea how long it would take the groups to get the models back together, I still consider even a tensul quite a challenging 3d puzzle. I could kick back a bit, observe the attempts of rebuilding with plenty of space to offer help and answer questions. The first team to succeed were Rossi and Jenny, proudly claiming to have won this friendly 'competition'. Yet, instead of simply bragging about this victory they continued to explore kinestically their little toys, while the other teams by and by caught up.

In the two presentations I held no team failed in the end, although some needed to start over a couple of times (you can connect the materials I gave them to a boxy shape which isn't a real tensul). The task kept the participants engaged and interested, and the success yielded many smiles of accomplishment.

This made it easy to get to end part of the workshop. Playing with the tensuls brought up some questions, and offered me the chance to relate the tensegrity idea to anatomy and AT work. Well, I might have stressed the similarities I suspect a bit more, but I guess I will do this workshop again. The questions were interesting, and especially the demonstrations with the shroom-tower model seems to work very well.

I took Carina's suggestion to ask everyone for a single bit they learned in that workshop, and noticed that I achieved my goal - transforming the term 'tensegrity' from a learned-sounding expression to a more lively concept.

However, in retrospect areas for improvement become more apparent. Bounciness, the initial goal, was left out a bit. I realised at home that some of models can be thrown around quite a bit without falling apart, I might use a sphere model for some contact juggling like acts, with some deliberate drops to show the bounce. Now I need to find a good backdrop to shoot some videos of models in movement (the hall I held the workshop with its beautiful Buddha statue would have been ace for that).

Luckily Ana took the photos you can see here, pictures can often tell so much more than words.

Back to school

The unicycling training paid out, I arrived quite relaxed at school. I enjoyed Margarets hands during my first turn, being happily wrong again yet more precise in my directions. I had about 10 minutes semi-supine before, just enough to get settled back into school again.

I'm going to experiment with Philip Pawley's idea for semi-supine quickies: Just a few minutes, yet with some extra awareness of the whole process and directing from getting down to the floor until standing again. I wanted to get my hands on again, so I skipped this good resolve today.

While working with Carina I noticed some of my bad habits flashing in front of my inner eye in moments of inhibition. Although my arms feel much better connected than ever, I still can easily forget my hands (not really a useful thing while putting hands-on).

I could pick up some of her movement habits, and helped her releasing some extra tension. Jack volunteered for the next session, and I got more confident with my hands. However, I need to order a bit more what I'm doing when putting hands on, I tend to forget about my left arm.

That's the good thing about the group classes. Jenny has an amazing way to work with us while putting hands on, very precisely pointing out the extra bits we don't need. And of course, directing us the same time.

Yoga

I had my first turn with David after the holidays, I experienced more of my asymmetric use, and some of my 'Alexander student' habits. I think I will dedicate this week to observe my habits at school, being banned from coffee during the Aurum experiment can certainly help.

Observing without glasses, however, still feels quite odd. I could pick up some patterns while we worked in Lailani's group on walking, but then, the average use certainly improved already a lot.

I can still get into my old yoga habits, I certainly often 'stare' when doing asanas. Layer by layer by layer. The shift from reaching a position to observe the movement doesn't come easy, yet becomes more and more enjoyable.

Special treatment

I had a turn with David, mostly to ask him about some legal aspects of being a 'travelling AT teacher'. In this highly restricted world it seem still advantageous to have multiple passports, but then, I still have some time before I'm probably forced to leave the country. I managed to keep directed while talking to him, and at the same time discovered new parts of my patterns while doing chair work.

I gave Alysha a table turn, and it seemed to work out quite well. It wasn't too easy to stay with myself, and the background noise in the downstairs area made it partly very difficult to combine verbal and tactile instructions.

We had a short debriefing of Jean Clark's visit, and then everyone besides the friday group went through the Dart procedures. Steven, Craig and me worked with Marigold, which turned out to intensive, informative and fun. After getting to know parts of myself better, I can now start to integrate these areas better into a whole, and Marigolds work especially around the pelvic floor offered plenty of new experiences.

I was quite amazed that her hands guided me through movements I deemed impossible, and I realised that letting go of my kneecaps involves a lot of different areas. Bending over and coming up through the front allowed me to sense my spine in new ways, and the work on the saddle helped me to redefine torso and legs.

Yoga

I started the week with a table turn with Margaret. I wonder whether the weekend or the trip to school in the car tensed me that much, it took me while to get grounded. I still react strongly on the weather.

In Jenny's group we continued with the idea to change the thinking while putting hands on. I guess the efficiency depends a lot on the stage a pupil is in, I still want to train my hands much more.

We debriefed Cathy's visit in the large group, looks like she left some confusion behind. Some complaint about the format, 3 days with 4 hours sessions, and therefor a limited amount of work that she spend working on individual people. I still cherish the memory of her presence in school, the way she used herself to demonstrate visibly what she explained set a real good example, .

Her art to point out 'tensional ideas' without making the student feeling bad about his 'wrong' idea needs a lot of practise. Especially when students notice these kind of thinking in teachers, which made her example of making and pointing out her own mistakes so valuable.

The yoga session tired me a bit, dog and warrior pose en masse. It seems to slowly get back in touch with my spine.

Performance

I had an amazing turn with Penny, working on contact juggling again. Now, as I recall the session, more ideas pop up how to play with the information I gathered today. Although my shoulder girdle has gone through various states of alignment, the process of freeing it up gets more and more refined. We experimented with just lifting the arm (to put the CJ ball on it). With Pennys hand on me I noticed a swing to the side initiated the movement, and going into a straight line seemed 'impossible' at first. It was fun to notice some impulse in my arm while it moved with much less interference than usual.

I even managed to enjoy working on the whispered aaah. Jenny asked us to observe a partner (first Jack, then Rossi) and experiment with changing the intent while whispering. It was great to see that some ideas worked well, and even without the use of hands change happened. Observing a pattern and changing it indirectly (just by adding a different intent to the primary control) felt exhilarating, and stressed again how important the student's intent is for the process.

The performance session with David brought a lot of valuable information as well. Although my observation was affected by the loss of one of my contact lenses, I noticed more the fluidity (or lack) of movement. I think I might have rather tried to observe something 'static' (posture?), instead of staying more with the observation of movement. It looks like an AT teacher just opens up a different direction for the student to move into.

Reciting my own poetry for the third time produced a sufficiently high stimuli to investigate some deep seated habits. I took a 'deep' breath before starting, probably just like FM, pulling my head back and tensing my torso. Going the process of 'exposing' myself in front of an audience again offered many insights, especially the loss of coordination after the performance.

OCD

I had a turn with David, after some interesting observations in semi-supine. I still tend to react a lot on enviromental stimuli, but it's getting easier get my focus back. I developed the habit of placing my feet in a position that tends to curve the lower back, when placed closer to the bum I can release much easier into the ground.

I wonder whether I managed to maintain my directions during the turn with David. Talking poses currently a big challenge to me, and I want to get back to work on this more. Kaz reminded me of this in the mini-group we did. I think it wasn't too bad during our book discussion, no sinking feeling this time, and hopefully some audible full stops.

I'm glad we're doing more hands-on, and my fingers seem to get more sensitive. I still want to learn to use the whole hands more, palms, fingers and intention working together. Too many memories and thoughts stray around when I put hands on, looks like I could do with less thought and clearer intention.

I worked for 10 minutes with Alisha in the second turn time. I get a better idea about the diversity of bodies and body pattern, but it's still hard to have an inspiration where to start to work. So I got back to a lot of talking, acutely aware how much I challenged Alisha with working and talking. The way talking is integrated in teaching came up when I was working with Andrea. I explained my experimental plan to her. She didn't understand me, and responded quite disencouraging. I realised that this happened to me some times before during lessons, I certainly have to take of how I verbally interact with students.

Jenny suggested in the final group thinking the brain forward from the skull, with some amazing results. How do I 'think' the brain away from the skull? It seems like (conscious) thoughts are either predominantly conceptual or predominantly visual, but our work seems to create a new class of perceptual engram. Or maybe, just brings us back to the state of playful exploration of physicality before speaking.

More Back

This time I changed my plans myself - when Marigold arrived and had no one to work with, I moved from David to her for my turn. We worked on maintaining the back and using the arms in an integrated way.

I spend most waiting time working with others, first Anne, then Jen and Cal. I like putting my hands on the upper part of the chest. Most 'older' students and teachers move a lot in this area, and tuning into the rhythm of another humans breath satisfy my end-gaining for 'sensation'. I still forget my ordering, however, moving my arms connected gets easier.

We didn't put hands on in the last group, instead we explored crawling. Taking it slow, maintaining an activated back and keeping the weight mainly on the lower limbs allowed nice animal like movement.

The end of the week

Only me had a turn with David, and he brought me up after thinking too much about yesterday's conflict. Stephen had an attempt to talk about this beforehand, and managed to turn this talk into something more productive after school.

Then David asked me for a talk, and unsurprisingly mentioned the lack of inhibition during the performance session. I hope I will notice this unproductive behaviour pattern earlier next time, David suggested that I could simply leave when I don't manage to inhibit.

I stayed pretty calm during the group work, where Matt experimented with two and three dimensional thinking. After a short warm-up, we revisited taking an arm during table work, while engaging spatial thinking. Of course, doing this for the first time didn't yield spectacular results, yet I realised how 'flat' I conceptualised the skin contact. The tendency to overuse my shoulder diminished a bit, and I manage better to stay present and more in my body.

Additive Thinking

The morning began with a lazy drive to school, and a good turn with Libby. I get more sensitive for the extra work I'm doing, sometimes it feels like the muscles activate, sometimes just like they want to.

The reading yielded, like often, quite mixed responses. And the topic, I have to admit, seems quite advanced to me. I experimented a little bit at Golden Beach with additive thinking, and although I have an idea about it I still need much more practise. I asked Jenny whether its possible to experience the effect of additive thinking with the help of a teacher. Funny enough, after something that sounded like agreement she insisted finally to disagree.

The groups, with Jenny and then with David, did a lot of hands-on work. We played again with listening hands, and I noticed how much more sensitive my hands become, if I manage to inhibit the overuse of my shoulders while putting hands on. I still have to figure out what I do with my wrists, currently much more gets activated when I think about them.

Speaking

I had the first turn with David after the break. My use has improved, although my habits during speaking still go strong. The waiting time passed pleasantly with a bit of hands-on with David, then in the groups with Bronwyn and Libby.

We put our hands on the lower side of the ribcage during chair work. I found it hard just to place my hands with opposing thumbs on, I have to improve the flexibility of my wrists a lot to confidently use my hands. And like so often, less turned to be more.

In Libby's group we played with moving a head around. I worked together with Anne, and enjoyed the experience.

David announced the alternative residential program, we will travel between a yoga school in Thornsbury and our school.

Performance

I still huff and puff after some unicycling, it feels like getting less though. I like Vivien's gentle ways while I had a turn with her, and felt significantly more up afterwards. We spend the remaining time with Vivien and performance work, an interesting thing to participate.

David asked Alysha to start, so she did some arabian drumming. Rossi improvised a story, vivid and funny. Will's guitar playing got enlivened by walking around, which gave him less chance to poke his hips forward. Tony recited a sonett, and looked like too exposed when he aborted the stage. Maria tried her introduction speech again, which led to some critiscism from my side. I don't know whether I went too far, yet Vivien confirmed my observations, and Maria went trhough an emotional roller coaster.

Finally, I dared to give the Galaxy Song a first go, much to the amusement of my fellow student, especially once I tried (yep) to do heaps of things at the same time.

Anatomy,

I discovered the connection between my shoulders and my knees during the turn with Ria. My attention slowly encompasses more and more of my body, yet I still need a lot of verbalized directions.

I did a bit of CJ, and happily joined a group during turn time working with David. I changed the way I put hands on, my arms move more freely and I tend less to fall into the body I'm touching.

Anatomy brought some surprising insights into group dynamics. We needed some time to agree what the task consisted of, yet got something together in the end. Rossi noticed my old pattern, although weaker than last year.

We described primary control, monkey and hands on the back of a chair in anatomical terms, revisiting our presentation the next week.

The stutterer

I had half a turn with David and a full one with Bronwyn, both quite informative. I got into a little conversation about using / not using language manifesting the body-mind diassociation. I did a bit of hands-on work with Christine, our visiting teacher for a week, and again noticed how important persistence and repetition are.

We discussed the chapter about the stutterer in our reading session, highlighting the ideas of faulty sensory perception, indirect procedure as well as specific directions.

Another bllnd day

I had another turn with David today, and I get the impression that I stay directed during chair work, at least to a certain degree. Inhibition works better, when you notice what you do additionally.

I played a bit hands-on with Rossi, with Margaret helping. The rest of the day went passed with counselling and communication, when I got reminded of two bits of homework I still have to deliver. Hmpf.

Jaw dropping

I continued my vision experiments today, I feel less intimidated by seeing less now than when I started. I had a turn with Jane, who worked Nili-style, which gave me good information. David's hands felt much more subtle, nevertheless with lots of direction.

We had a premature book session, so I had to master the challenge of doing my reading as well as proof reading Rossi's homework with pinhole glasses. We did the reading session in the large group, recapitulating the way Alexander discovered his method of re-learning.

We did bits of hands-on work in the group with Margaret, and I seem to have different habits with and without lenses - or rather, I fell back into my habit of falling into my students.

Final friday

I had a turn with David, and got a bit more aware of the subtle remainders of old pattern. During our group work we revisited some of Peter's ideas, with mixed enthusiasm. I spend nearly half, maybe even more of my waking hours without lenses, and get more and more used not to wear them at school. While Cal insists that we can't feel inside our brains, I notice the activation of a relatively distinct area inside my skull we I think about my thalamus, and directing my thalamus forward and up yields reliable results.

Luckily, we ended with some hands on after all the passiveness before. I get more confident in using directions and using the other body to get myself up. I took Bo's leg, but felt just little whether something happened with him. Probably our little conversation in the tea room before still stuck in my mind.

Ease

I did chair work with Margaret, I kind of got my limbs tight in my joint over the weekend again. Margaret gave me a good up, and I managed to get in and out the chair with ease. Andrea worked a bit in the saddle after that, a real interesting experience.

In David's group we observed walking, and was interesting to see my fellow first years doing this again after some months. After the short group we went through the student feedback.

We did more hands-on in Jenny's group, exploring ways to move an arm by directing. It seems to get easier to stay in myself while putting hands on, the additional sensitivity training pays out.