Hitting the wall

Everything we do changes the environment, with or without consciousness. Everything we think changes ourself, with or without consciousness. Change happens anyway, anytime, albeit our perception of life might ignore this simple truth. Every breath we take slightly shift the balance between oxygen and CO2 in our immediate proximity, simultaneously the same chemical balance within our organism changes.

Once we start observing life from the perspective of permanent change, we can develop a better sense for the quality and direction of change. And we can develop an understanding that 'stable' patterns in our life often indicate obstacles rather than solace.

The direction of change subscribed to by the application of Alexander's principle's has a definite, yet fuzzy direction: Forward and up. If our habit pointed into a different direction, experiencing forward and up literally shifts our perspective. We apply Alexander's principle when we organise activity of our organism in accordance with the evolutionary mechanisms we inherited.

We can find forward and up approximately here and now. When we stay present with what happens within us and around us while we interact with our environment, we move forward and up. Although we are born with the ability to go forward and up, we need to learn to widen our attention to unify intention and action, internal and external sensations.

Whether we like it or not, the relation between head and trunk reflects our embodied attitude in life. A tense neck interferes with incorporating the procedural intelligence embedded in our structure, which means our decision making process uses less information than the total amount the system provides.

When I began learning the Alexander Technique, my attitude in and towards life looked worst than I thought, or would have confessed to. My structure reflected the tension I produced by swinging between defensive and aggressive patterns. Like a slave to my habits and living memory of untransformed trauma of my past I stumbled through my life, skilled in many ways yet without any clear direction.

The observer influences the experiment, states Heisenberg, and once we start to observe our self, we inevitably change our perceptions and consequently our interactions. During my twens, when I innocently moved forward and up, conscious yet with limited knowledge, I experimented systematically with ideas to 'blow my mind'. I learned to use my self as laboratory, and enjoyed most results of serendipitous interactions with other people.

I understood somehow the pattern character of human behaviour and thinking, yet only in a disconnected, disembodied way. Scrutinising, analysing, dis- and reassembling, discarding, creating my own thinking patterns became for some months or even years a hobby of mine.

As I understand it now, this strategy helped me dealing with the unresolved trauma I carried with me. It didn't resolve it, nor did it prevent the inevitable side effects of an embodied flight, fight or freeze response. It made me a 'functional' member of society, financially relatively independent yet somehow unhappy.

I didn't care too much about the pattern of unhappiness that evolved over the years. I consider it as part of the up and downs in life, and stopped wondering about the weeks of my life I felt unable to do more than absolutely necessary, waiting to wake up again in anticipation instead of dread. Which so far, always happened.

At some point, I started observing this pattern more closely, and noticed its detrimental influence of my use. At its heart, the habits connected to my depressed states fulfil the desire to escape from the present moment, using my life energy to keep a trauma vortex active.

Knowing more about the nature of the depressive phases of my life doesn't make them go away yet. It became easier to step back to become observer, and to stop judging myself. I felt a bit shocked when I went through the self diagnosis for depression and anxiety some month ago for the second time, and noticed how my answer had changed. I don't take a self diagnosis too serious, mainly because these tests ignore mostly the wholeness of our existence and experience.

We have identified the enemy, and it is us. I gave up the fight, and accepted the current co-existence of self-destructive and self-healing patterns. Now I need to find a way to get the embodied pattern that harm me transformed. A small step for a quantum, a leap for the ego.

Walking down memory lane

People have a variety of reasons to 'go on holiday'. They go to relax from their often stressful jobs, to see areas they have an interest in, they might get dragged along by their partners or sometimes just travel to impress their neighbours, friends and acquaintances.

I decided to fly halfway around the globe when I heard that my niece gave birth to a new member of the family. However, as I don't go Germany too frequently, I included visits to other relatives and friends in my itinerary.

Now, at the end of my 'holiday', I realised how tired I feel after cruising around, catching up in person with a lot of people I haven't seen for at least two years. Even more, as I embarked on a path of change with my Alexander Technique teacher trainer, this five weeks abroad turned into a sometimes bewildering experience.

Our habits build up quite randomly unless we learn to become aware of them, so obviously family and friends that surrounded us for a long time have a big part in shaping the ways we react to our environment. Before I started learning the technique, I slowly extended my comfort zone by changing the places I worked and lived in, challenging myself to adapt to new environments and forging new friendships.

Even before the trip into my personal history, I realised how much of a pattern this moving from place to place looked like. I was searching for something, without knowing for what, and getting used to become quite unhappy in the process. Nevertheless, I always found glimpses of happiness where ever I went. I also carried some old habits with me around the world, and picked up new ones where ever I stayed for a longer period of time.

This time, I noticed some distinct periods of my personal development, linked to the people and places I spend my time with. I revisited my unhappiness with big business while staying with friends who gave me the strength and motivation to survive in the pool of sharks called Frankfurt. I became son again when staying with my mother, loving and caring uncle for my niece, desperate yet hopeful brother, nerd, anarchist, rebel, lunatic, ex-lover or friend for others.

I could see more clearly how I acted and behaved in my past, and how much this past shaped the ways I encountered friends and family when I saw them again. By reliving some past habits, I detected some of the patterns in it, and could let them go.

I got myself deliberately into the grip of my past, but with a lot more presence than before.

Besides enjoying seeing a fresh human being, my niece's baby, I wanted to find some more direction for my future. I had some vague ideas what I wanted to do after my training, and had the desire to gain clarity what I can and want to do. Amazingly, with little effort, I managed to find what I was looking for, although it still means to continue working a lot towards my next target.

If you have ever experienced wholeness, even a tiny glimpse of it, freedom of movement changes its meaning radically. Yes, muscle tension indicates the restriction we impose unto ourselves, and physiological and psychological knowledge hints at the places where these restriction hide. Yet, we move continuously, either on the trodden path of our habits or on new paths. What we have done or do often disguises how we do things, whether we move from dead end to dead end or choose a direction at another crossroad. At the end, every road leads to Rome, anyway.

When in Rome, act like Romans. While I spend my time on this journey into my past, I knew suddenly how many Romans I met already, and how few of them seem to inhabit this planet. Rome wasn't build in one day, which makes it easy to spot the looney, sorry, spot the Romans among us.

Enough of proverbial wizdom for now. Freedom in thought and action certainly fits better into narratives than into the dominating binary, black and white thinking, which seems overly popular in our times. In the past, when something or someone (mostly my ego) brought me down, I tried to get comfortable with it. Now, forward and up brings me back to the path, and opens perspectives I never imagined.

The unknown remains unknown. But without wanting to build my future, I can only get caught in the prisons others built for me. Golden cages failed to make my ego happy, while my self gained happiness even in failure. The simplicity of life amazes me more and more.

Nili time

The new term started with a surprise, at least for me. Nili Bassan, a regular guest teacher, came in, and I had an interesting term with her. I think I understand the 'up' part of forward and up better than the forward part, and she helped me identifying where I disconnect my torso.

Her group style favors hands-on, and I had a long session of chair work with Kaz. To my surprise, it didn't get boring, and I learned something new about the way I distribute my weight when getting out of a chair. Even doing the monkey for nearly an hour didn't tire too much, I wonder what the next two weeks will bring.

Trying hard

I had a turn with Julia, and although I still haven't understood her concept of forward and up, she manages to lengthen me a lot. I become more aware of the subtle complexity of pattern within the body, and thus more efficient in using directions.

My performance in the singing sessions fluctuates a lot. I improved in comparison to last week, but Jenny needed to do a lot to stop me from holding and other useless patterns. It helps me a lot to play a soundtrack in my mind while singing, I just need a better control of the volume level.

Common cold torso.

The weekend adventures left me with a cold, a new experience waited for me. Jane's table turn helped to start the week leisurely, and with new ideas about width in my torso.

Lailani showed a me bit more forward with the head, it still feels odd to organise my body below a head that's forward and up. I learned a lot about some of the holding pattern, but have yet to figure out what's left to release.

Yoga didn't feel to straining, probably I managed to use less effort just because of the cold (or the medication). I experimented with David's idea of releasing into an asana, and enjoyed the exercises.

We played with release of the ankles in Matt's mini group, just Will, Kaz and me. I liked revisiting an experiment after some time, and the information gained today felt more detailed.