Complex habits

Thinking in movement does not come easy, it takes quite some work to undo old habits. Our (western) culture promotes many ideas that seem to contradict FM's ideas - for example, being 'right'.

Everyone wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right.

I want to start with a little criticism of the master himself, setting a dubious example in using universal quantifiers like 'everybody' and 'no one'. Let's develop this statement, even if this process might take away the ease and poignancy of FM's words.
'People wanting to be right (which there are many of) rarely stop to consider if their idea of right is right.'

For me, this is just another quote warning about end gaining. If we just 'do it right', victory is ours as well, that's one of the promises of the training to be an endgainer (also known as education system). Wanting to be right produces in social interaction quite typical strategies, mainly based on violence, aggression and emotional game play. The twin sister, not wanting to be wrong, deploys more passive strategies like defense and withdrawal. Their father, Aristotelian logic, has died long ago, yet its ghost still haunts many. Thinking about right and wrong often leads to the fallacy of categorizing nearly everything into this mutual exclusive terms, ignoring anything that fails to fit definetely into one of those boxes.

The opposite of wrong is in many cases just as wrong. We certainly gain new experiences when we push our shoulders forward instead of pulling them back, our overall use most likely doesn't improve. Too easy, one might think, AT is all about changing habits, I relocated my discomfort from one area to another. Strike!

Maybe it helps to assume that we never do it right. If we stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing can happen. Doing one thing to 'counteract' another produces a change of habit, and if we stay clear from thinking that this was the 'right' change, we slowly improve our use as well. As long as we view the world through the black and white filter of right and wrong the view of details remains obstructed.

But isn't there something 'right' to 'do' in life? The mystical answers to this question founded religions, I wouldn't yet dare to answer this for anyone else but myself. Life is self-propagating and self-aware (at least in the human form). The 'right' thing as such is survival of the individual and the species. From this evolutionary perspective we did nothing gravely wrong - otherwise I couldn't carve these words with electronic ink into the global memepool.

Although I spend quite some time finding the right way to get in and out of a chair, when I undid this tense idea I gained much more information out of it. Once the inner judge became more quiet, I had a better chance to integrate the somatic knowledge I received. Good judgement is a desirable skill, but many situations in life work out easier without it.

Especially when observing oneself the right-wrong filter prevents (or delays) accepting undesirable habits. Just accepting that right and wrong have no relevance for the here and now seems to contradict the tenets of our culture. The skill for life changes oneself radically, unless one clings too much on specific symbol sets.

Observations

Self-awareness includes self-observation, a very complex and interesting process. Not every 'voice in your head' belongs to an impartial observer, most of the time other parts of yourself play conductor of re-activity. I started reintegrating my reptilian 'voice', listening more closely especially to the need of food. Low blood sugar levels activate a lot of unwanted 'emergency circuits', and give the pre-frontal cortex not too much energy to be heard in the chatterbox brain.

It's not too healthy to spend much time in the 4f domains of the reptilian brain. Fight, flight, food and fornication can integrate with our behaviour without allowing them to be the 'decider'. A friend of mine compared his collection of inner voices with the parliament, commited to follow the Prime Minister's decisions. He shared with me his way of organising his inner struggle between his wants, needs and social norms, an insight into his private decision making process, based on an advanced form of self-reflection and inner dialogue. Thanks, Dave.

I prefer other mapping models to improve the quality of my self-observation. The triune brain models offers a good start, or Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness. The map is not the territory. With one of my maps I can name the reptile, monkey, man and sentinel in myself.

Monkey oversimplifies the mammalian brain, mammals developed emotions to organise their communities. Nevertheless, even in 21st century successful emotional game strategies, found in many other mammals as well, still dominate the political arena of humanity.

The 'reasonable' or 'rational' or 'conceptualising' part of our being happens mainly from the cortical areas of the brain. We might ruminate here why something appears beautiful to us, and find the labels to verbalise our experience. It's easy to place the 'observer' here, as we might already have the habit to conceptualise and contextualise our experience, listening to the 'voice of reason' in our head.

In as much we can mistakingly feel torn apart between body and mind, we can mistakingly feel an inner fight of reason and emotion. The 'voice of reason' happily claims to be impartial observer, which leaves the 'voice of the heart' quite sulky, being left out of the game. But the voice of reason is not the sentinel.

Our emotions allow us to connect to other people, and our reason helps us to find meaningful ways to share this connection. Okay, that's prophecy or even gibberish. Or just an example for the challenge. As soon as we phrase observations in a way that assumes some objective reality we have 'diagnosed'. The perception of isness leads to a host of undesirable side effects, and prevents acceptance and the potential for change.

No matter how many voices talk to you, which map or concept you use, don't fight yourself. The voices get so much easier to understand when they communicate non-violently. The trying ends with the fighting, surrendering allows the sentinel to observe, direct, act and re-act.

Of course, I dare to be totally wrong here.

Bucky

Fulleresque

Don't you think that body and mind
are really two of a kind.
With some body-mind connection
you can expand in any direction.

One and one adds up to four,
don't let that knock you to the floor,
Up, wide, forward and now
let's you ride the holy cow.

The path is long, it never ends,
it has so many twists and bends.
You stumble and you fall,
So do we all.

Don't look ahead, don't look back,
just be here and you're on track.

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.

Middle of a short week

My turn with Penny gave me an amazing amount of information. I felt a lot of pattern reverbarating through myself (or aspects of a single patterns in different stages), a release starting with the thumb, affecting the scapula, hips, legs and feet in tiny yet noticable ways. I still want to integrate my arms better, when Penny moved one around I could feel some parts 'wanting' to get involved. Following the movement with my eyes helped keeping them connected, albeit lots of inhibition was required to go through this unfamiliar sensations.

Feeling quite elated I offered Craig a table turn, and managed quite well to stay calm and with myself while talking him through the idea of spatial thinking. It's still not easy to 'stand aside' while using my hands, but intending his release as invitation liberated me from end-gaining, and I could curiously observe the changes that happened. Margaret joined this session after a while, and helped me with gentle touch to continue a nice session. Although I think I used myself quite okay, I felt a bit exhausted after a while, and stopped before I got into too much doing.

Jenny introduced us to some experiments she picked up on the conference, using different ideas for breathing, like 'abdominal breathing', breathing in the back, breathing to the sides, breathing from the feet up. The changes I noticed in myself and in my partner seemed very obvious, yet I noticed to my dismay how some ideas dramatically restricted the flow of breath. It seems like most ideas about 'proper breathing' just produce interference.

The next task for partner work addressed locked knees, using hands and words to get a student out of this. I got quite doey when working with Cal, and didn't notice too much happening. I realised that although we work in an 'indirect' way, asking the student for release in specific areas is sometimes very necessary. Nothing but my own intention to unlock my knees worked when I acted oblivious to Cal's verbal and tactile suggestions, an interesting experience.

I like the performance part more and more, instead of seeing it as an embarassing moment I rather try to embody the text than to just recapitulate it. Sarah's feedback helped a lot to set up an intention that allowed the text speaking through me, instead of me speaking it. I still have a lot of room for improvement, using more 'empty space' and staying lively, though it's getting more enjoyable than I thought possible.

Brainbox

I managed to turn up early enough to have a turn with Jean, which provided me with lots of new information. Jean spotted a misconception in my body map for my head, and helped me getting more aware of the real dimensions of my 'brainbox'. Although she works (as a student of Walter Carrington) quite traditional (chair and table) she stressed the teaching part of the technique - changing the thinking with new ideas and information.

I especially like the idea for swivelling back and forth on a chair: a sphere rotating along its central axis uphill (or downhill on the way back). The motion in this mental image prevents a bit the giving directions and feeling them out part that happens easily while doing chair work. I feel my ankles freeing up more, yet they still seem quite stiff.

When Jean demonstrated one of Dart's flipper exercises with me (laying sideways on the table), I became aware of the lack of ideas about the mobility of my feet. Again, being taken out of the habit (table work in semi supine) offered an interesting new perspective about the location of my joints, forward and up in a different orientation of the forward and up relative to gravity.

Four directions

Although Jean Clark visits the school this week, the turn times in the morning make it seem like a 'regular' week in school. I had turn with Libby, which felt more like a debrief. I realised that I had some kind of idea what to work on when coming to school, I should take my time to inhibit more my preconceived ideas and have a go at simply tuning in.

I worked a bit with Sharon before the group started, going through a variation of hoboc (hands on the back of a chair). Jean wants to through Alexanders four directions, we started with 'freeing the neck'. Instead of moving the head on top of the top, we kept the head (with the help of a partner) still, and moved the body underneath. It doesn't sound too different, but it allowed for interesting observations.

Jean demonstrated hoboc with Cal, and I was surprised how slowly she took it. I like the idea of this radical slowdown, it's so much against the habit that it allows students to observe themselves in a new way.