Blog - Page 15 of 23 - Activate You

Warning! The Alexander Technique is not for everyone.

It’s true: the Alexander Technique is not for everyone. Though I and probably most of my colleagues believe that anyone could benefit from this work, the truth of it is that it simply won’t suit everyone. And I think it’s really important that I don’t waste your time by trying to interest you in something that may not suit you. So before you pick up the phone or send that email and make an appointment, read through this checklist to make sure you’re doing the right thing.

Don’t come if:

You’re happy with things just as they are. Stay being happy, and don’t bother listening to someone like me. You may hear something that would cause you to change your thinking, and I would hate to be the cause of new-found discontentment. Although, my students often find that if they settle too long for something that is good, they risk missing out on something even better. Your choice.
You’re not prepared to take ownership of your difficulties. The idea of self-responsibility lies at the heart of the Alexander Technique. FM started his journey by wondering if he was doing something in the way he spoke that was the cause of his vocal problems. If you’re absolutely convinced that your mother / society / the evil school furniture did it to you, then I’m not sure I can help you.
You don’t want to think, you just want someone to do nice things to you. An Alexander Technique lesson involves hands-on work that often leaves the student feeling good, but that isn’t the point of the lesson. FM said that the centre and backbone of his theory and practice was that our (reasoning) conscious minds should be made more alive.* That means doing some thinking. If you just want to feel good, you’re in the wrong place.
You’re convinced that you’re right about most things, if not everything. A large part of my job is helping people re-examine their ideas and beliefs about what they need to do to go about their daily activities. If you’re not prepared for that, then don’t book a lesson!
You firmly believe that life is a process of constant, gradual deterioration. FM believed that it is possible to keep growing, changing and improving through life. In fact, that was his idea of happiness!** If you’re not interested in that sort of happiness, then save your money.

The Alexander Technique is a wonderful vehicle for making lasting, dramatic changes to your life. It has helped me personally in ways I could never have thought possible. I have seen my students transform their lives for the better. But you do have to be prepared to do a little thinking. You have to be prepared to work. And you have to be prepared to at least think about change.

Are you up for it?

* FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.39.
** FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.382, 389.
Image by Idea go from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Progress: what does it look like?

Progress is a funny beast. It typically comes up in my classes when one of my students feels a degree of despair over their apparent lack of improvement. They feel as though they aren’t improving as fast as they’d like, and are getting frustrated.

So I ask my student, “What does progress look like?” I start off by asking them to draw a graph of how they’d like progress over time to look. They draw one of these two graphs:

Then I ask them to draw something they think is more realistic. They draw this:

But is it more realistic?

Just recently I agreed, after some pestering by friends, to sign myself up for my first ever running event, the Bristol 10k. It’s my first ever experience of long distance running, and the first time I’ve trained for any kind of sporting event.

The first couple of weeks were fantastic. I mean, the training wasn’t exactly easy, but I felt I was making clear progress. Each time I went out to run, I was noticeably fitter than the last run, and could go further. So in week 4 I went out for the first training run of the week full of expectation, nay, certainty, that this trend would continue.

It didn’t. Every run that week was torture. My legs felt heavier. The fast run/slow jog splits were impossible. It was all I could do to drag myself around my circuit. Each time I’s set off thinking, this time it’ll be different. And it wasn’t. My Facebook contacts will remember seeing me post a status update full of pessimism at about this time.

So what happened in week 5? Things were suddenly easier again. Much easier. I had made a (smallish but) significant quantum leap in my fitness.

And that’s one of the secrets of progress. It isn’t linear at all. It goes something like this:

We experience a period of improvement, and think it’s great. But then it tails off. It feels like we’ve stalled. It can even feel like we’ve gone backwards! But what is really happening is that we are mentally and physically putting the final pieces in place so that we can enjoy the quantum leap to a new level of improvement.

The plateau period feels bad, there’s no doubt about it, and we can have no idea of how long it will last. But we can be certain of one thing. If we are doing the right things in the right way, we WILL improve. FM Alexander put it like this:

Only time and experience in the working out of the technique will convince him that where the “means-whereby” are right for the purpose, desired ends will come. They are inevitable. Why then be concerned as to the manner or speed of their coming? We should reserve all thought, energy and concern for the means whereby we may command the manner of their coming.*

Oh, by the way… Do you know what progress feels like? It feels like this:

* FM Alexander, Universal Constant in Living in the IRDEAT Complete Edition, p.587.

Doing the work: a swimmer’s perspective on (not listening to) other peoples’ opinions

For the past couple of posts I’ve written about Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe, whose autobiography is full of insight about the challenges of achieving and maintaining mastery of his sport.

First I looked at how Thorpe describes how he stays in the present moment by not viewing the water or pool as a constant. Then I wrote about how he is able to maintain constant attention on the feedback he receives from the water, because of the type and quantity of practice he has done over his career.

Today I want to look at a hidden benefit of Thorpe’s ability to stay in the present moment as he swims: the freedom it gives him from the tyranny of other people’s opinions.

Straight after talking about he ‘listens’ to how the way flows around him as he swims, Thorpe says:

“It’s really rewarding because I receive constant feedback without stopping. I don’t need someone to tell me that my stroke looks great or that it looks terrible because I have an inner sense of the water and the environment is already communicating with me.” *

Because he has trained for many years with top coaches, because he has practiced and analysed his technique, because (in short) he has worked incredibly hard, Ian Thorpe has reached a very high standard. He is able to analyse the conditions present in the water, design a stroke pattern to suit, and then carry out pretty much exactly e stroke pattern he designed.
And the result of this hard work? Freedom from the need to listen to other people’s opinions. He doesn’t need someone else to tell him he is doing well. If he has done a good job of matching his stroke to the prevailing conditions, he’ll make his way through the water faster and more effectively.

He will know that he has done well, because he will have met his own criteria for success. He won’t need to listen to see if he has met anyone else’s idea of what is good.

So often in my work with actors and musicians, they suffer from nerves tying themselves in knots worrying about what the audience is going to think about them. Or worse, the critics. They sometimes get so worried, it stops them from performing what they’ve designed at all. And worse, they then torment themselves by wondering how the great professionals often seem to be able to perform without fear of audience reception.

But here Ian Thorpe gives us the secret. His detachment from what other people think is a result of his complete commitment to his sporting process. His commitment to the water frees him from having to care about other people’s opinions. This gift of detachment comes from a lifetime of hard work and dedication to the goal of being better. This is Sebastian Coe put it:

“Throughout my athletics career, the overall goal was always to be a better athlete than I was at that moment— whether next week, next month or next year. The improvement was the goal. The medal was simply the ultimate reward for achieving that goal.”**

So how do we attain even a degree of the detachment from results and outside feedback that Ian Thorpe and Seb Coe achieved? By setting to work. This is what FM Alexander said a teacher should do:

“He asks his pupil not to make any attempt to gain the “end”at all, but instead to learn gradually to remember the guiding orders or directions, which are the forerunners of the means whereby the end may one day be achieved. This may not be today, tomorrow or the next day, but it will be…” ***

So set to work. Do a little bit of practice each day on the techniques and protocols that you’ve designed that will get you towards your end goal. Don’t worry about the end goal: if you work on the basics, slowly and consistently, the end goal will take care of itself.

* Ian Thorpe and Robert Wainwright, This is Me, Simon and Schuster 2012, p. xii.
** Sebastian Coe quoted in Daniel H. Pink, Drive, Kindle edition, p.114.
*** FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.339.
Image by Neil Gould, stock.xchng

A swimmer’s perspective on deliberate practice

Last week I wrote about how the Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe’s approach to swimming can teach us a lot about the power of staying in the present moment. What Thorpe described was a clear decision to treat every swim as a new experience, and to ‘listen’ to the water to find out how the present conditions would affect the way he would swim.

We left Mr Thorpe diving into the pool, and then gliding in the water, prior to beginning a stroke. This week we are going to look at what he does next, because I think it has a major lesson for how we can all stay in the present moment more.

Thorpe continues:

“As I begin to swim I allow myself to feel where the water is moving around me, how it flows off my body. I listen for any erratic movement which means I’m not relating to the water and I have to modify my stroke…”*

Thorpe doesn’t listen to the water once and then stop. He keeps doing it. As he swims, he is constantly receiving feedback from the water, and he uses that feedback to help him choose how to swim even better.

But how does he do that? How does Ian Thorpe have the time and the brain space to keep that sort of contact with the feedback he receives from the water, even when racing?

The answer is surprisingly simple.

Practice.

Ian Thorpe loves swimming. And not just the racing and winning. He loves the practice. His autobiography is full of descriptions of the technical changes he is making to his strokes as he returns to competitive swimming. And towards the end of the book he says “I enjoy aspects of training that most people would think as drudgery; for me, it’s an exploration of what I can achieve.”**

Thorpe has a fascination with the technical aspects of his sport. This is no different to my musician students: the trombonist playing ‘the opens’, or the flautist playing long notes. By working on the most basic elements of their technique many times, they seek to attain a mastery that will inform and enhance the way they play more complex material.

This type of practice is a long way from ‘performance’. Even James Galway would stretch an audience’s goodwill by coming onstage and playing long notes at them! But it is an essential component of end-of-goal performance readiness.

FM Alexander talks about this too. When he was trying to solve his voice problems initially, he realised that he needed to practice the plan he had created to help him achieve his goal of speaking, but separate it from any sense of end-of-goal performance. And he needed to practice it a lot.

“I would give the new directions in front of the mirror for long periods together, for successive days and weeks and sometimes even months, without attempting to “do” them, and the experience I gained in giving these directions proved of great value when the time came for me to consider how to put them into practice.” ***

Because Ian Thorpe has spent countless hours in the pool (and out of it) working on his technique, because he has thought, analysed and planned his swimming stroke – because, in short, he has spent his preparation time carefully – he has the space to ‘listen’ to the water consistently and make changes as he swims.

So if there is an activity that is troubling you, can you do this?

Can you break the activity down into some basic key elements, like the flautist’s long notes? (Eg for moving from sitting to standing, moving at the hip joint might be a key component)
Can you practice the key components by themselves, just for their own sake?
Can you find a fascination in attaining mastery of the key components?
And when you’ve done this and brought that knowledge back to the activity at hand, does it make a difference?

Email me and let me know. 🙂

* Ian Thorpe and Robert Wainwright, This is Me, Simon and Schuster, 2012, p. xii.
** ibid., p.283.
*** FM Alexander, The Use of the Self in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.424.
Image by franky242 from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Water is not water: a swimmer’s view of staying in the present

swimming

When you swim, do you assume the water is always the same? Or when performing, is the audience just another audience?

Today might be the day you begin to re-evaluate!

I’ve just finished reading one of my Christmas presents – the autobiography of Australian swimming legend Ian Thorpe. He’s famous for his world record swims from the age of 14, his very large feet, and his decision to quit competitive swimming at age 24, at the height of his career.

The opening paragraphs of the book were a revelation to me, a non-swimmer who had never thought about water before. Here’s what Thorpe says:

“When I first dive into the pool I try to work out how the water wants to hold me. If I let it, the water will naturally guide me into a position; a place for my body to settle… This is the starting point for me, not just floating but lying flat on top of the water. Then I begin to initiate movement…”*

For Thorpe, water isn’t just Water, and a pool isn’t just A Pool. They aren’t constants. The water changes, and is different day by day. His first act when diving in isn’t to thrust forward and begin his swimming stroke. Rather, he waits for feedback from the water. He waits to find out what this water is like, today. How can he best swim in this water, on this day?

I was really struck by this because it reminded me of FM Alexander’s emphasis on analysing the conditions present as part of the development of what we now call the Alexander Technique. Alexander wanted us to take notice of what was happening around us, and then design a custom-built response. An off-the-shelf once size fits all solution wouldn’t be good enough, because Alexander said that in modern life “conditions change so constantly that they cannot be adequately met by any external standard or fixed code as to what is right or wrong.”**

So external conditions change. Water isn’t a constant, according to Ian Thorpe. At this point I began to think about other objects and places I or my students sometimes treat as unchanging constants. The thing is, the more I think about it, the fewer constants I can find.

An audience isn’t the same day to day.
A road isn’t the same day to day.
A musical instrument isn’t the same day to day.
A person isn’t the same day to day.

My challenge to you this week is a simple one: take a look at your daily activities. Are there any places/objects/people that you treat as being unchanging? Would it benefit you to try considering them changeable, and alter the way you react based on how they appear each day?

Oh, and if you want to read a wonderfully poetic musician’s take on the challenge of staying with present circumstances, read Patrick Smith’s blog.

* Ian Thorpe and Robert Wainwright, This is Me, Simon and Schuster, 2012, p. xi.
** FM Alexander, The Use of the Self in the IRDEAT complete edition, p. 472.
Image by Salvatore Vuono from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Just tell me what to do!” – Why direct instructions won’t help you

The Gopher’s Creed – “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it!” – pops up in my classes quite often. People come to me for coaching because there is something about the way they are going about their daily activities that is unsatisfactory. And often they want me to tell them exactly what is not satisfactory, and then give them a set of instructions on how to fix it.

But I won’t do that.

I refuse to be drawn, not because I’m mean (though that may be true!) or because I have ulterior motives. I’m not giving my students what they think they want because… It won’t help them.

Here’s why.

1. Too big/too detailed. My student sees the problem as specific and only involving a small number of factors. Usually I look at the student and see the specific problem as part of a larger, more general pattern of misuse. If I gave them a recipe, it would be so big and have so many parts that they’d be swamped.

2. Too unfamiliar. Students think that, because they can do what they “will to do” in familiar acts with familiar sensory feedback, they’ll be able to do what they plan in acts that are unfamiliar. This is like me thinking that I’ll be able to make my arms function completely correctly the first time I attempt a serve in tennis, just because I can use them to play a recorder!

3. Feelings aren’t fact. FM Alexander got told by his acting teacher to ‘take hold of the floor with his feet’. It took him years to realise the tension in his legs might not have been what his teacher had in mind.

As FM says, “The belief is very generally held that if only we are to,d what to do in order to correct a wrong way of doing something, we can do it, and that if we FEEL we are doing it, all is well. Al my experience, however, goes to show that this belief is a delusion.” *

4. Doing too much. Most students run into troubles in the first place because they are using too much muscular tension, and often in muscles that can’t possible do the job the student is trying to use them for. And then they want me to give them something to DO to fix this?!

So if I’m not going to give my students a recipe to do, what DO I give them?

The chance to experience doing less – less effort, better directed effort.
An opportunity to think through with clarity what they actually need to do when they carry out their chosen activity. This doesn’t take long, but I find people need encouragement to allow themselves the time to carry out this step. They are too busy making haste to do what it takes to really speed ahead.
Knowledge about what moves where and how. A bit of knowledge about the body is priceless.
The challenge to keep thinking – even when it seems hard, even when the results feel odd, even if it seems wrong.

So ditch the desire for a set of instructions to do, and take the challenge of choosing to do less and think more.

* FM Alexander, The Use of the Self in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.418.
Image by Stuart Miles, FreeDigitalphotos.net

Feeling right, or having success… Which will you choose?

I have been having a real battle in my tennis lessons lately. My struggle is with my backhand. My teacher has given me very clear instructions on the technique of how to hit a good backhand stroke. When I follow her instructions, I have success.

But do I always follow her instructions?

Nup.

Because, you see, sometimes I decide that I know better. The technique that she has taught me works… but it doesn’t feel right. It feels, well, odd, and new, and… Wrong, frankly. And because it doesn’t feel right, more often than not I decide to go my own way, and do what feels right to me.

And the resulting shot stinks.

But it isn’t just me that has this experience. One of my students recently had a very clear choice between walking in the way that she had decided was most efficient and anatomically correct (but which made her feel like she was sticking her rear end out like a duck), or walking in her usual way and putting up with her lower back aching.

According to FM Alexander, it all comes down to a simple choice.* When I play tennis, I can either go about things in my old usual way and get the same crummy results that I always have, or I can actually listen to my teacher and wholeheartedly follow her instructions. My student can walk in the old achey way, or put her trust in the new way she has decided is best for her purpose.

Even when it feels odd, or wrong.
Even when it feels uncomfortable.
Even when I think I probably look like an idiot.
Even if she feels like a duck.

So last week I challenged you to pick an activity and think about what you would actually need to do to complete the activity. This week my challenge to you is to keep refining your plan in odd moments through the day, but to go one step further. Every so often, maybe once a day, put your plan into action. It may feel great. It may feel odd. It might not feel of anything at all. Just give it a go, and let me know how you get on.

* FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, IRDEAT complete edition, p.299f.
Image by Tina Phillips www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Do you dare play the thinking game?

How much, and how often, do you think about the things that you’re doing?

Do you, for example, think about the act of walking as you go to work or to the shops? Or are you resolutely thinking about something else, and plugged into an iPod into the bargain?

Modern life seems to encourage us to keep motoring on to the next thing. And if, as FM Alexander notes you and I are like the vast majority of people, doing pretty much the same things each day, and thinking pretty much the same thoughts, it is very tempting to believe that we don’t need to think.* I mean, we know how to walk – don’t we?

But part of the reason why we have troubles with overdoing muscular effort, or just using the wrong muscles, in so many activities is that we’ve never really sat down and thought about what that activity actually requires.

What do you actually need to do to type on a keyboard? Use a mouse? Play a piano? Raise a teacup to your lips? Do you know?

For the next week, I want you to play and experiment. Pick an activity – something simple.

Spend a little bit of time each day thinking about that activity.

What do you actually need to do to carry out that activity?
Do you know what muscles or joints might be involved?
Does what you need to do change depending n external circumstances (different keyboard, different mug, etc)?

Spend just five minutes a day thinking about the activity you’ve chosen. By the end of the week, I’m hoping that you’ll have formed a clear idea of what that activity actually involves. You may even have started checking that against the reality of what you actually do.

Give it a go. Play. Experiment. If you have time, email and let me know the results, or ask me a question if you need to. Because if you give it a go, and if FM is right, you’ll have just begun the first step in creating a new kind of versatility and control over your mind and body. And that sounds like a pretty good thing to have.

* FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.65.
Image by Master isolated images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Back problems? Why spending money on STUFF may not help.

The latest big thing in back care in the workplace appears to be the sit-stand workstation. Again, it’s been in the news both here and in the USA that sitting – not just slouching, but sitting in any form – for long periods is unnatural and dangerous. To avoid the evils of our chairs, what we apparently need to do (this month) is to spend loads of cash on a super-adjustable desk that we can use both sitting and standing. There are even versions available with a treadmill attachment.*

At this point I want to quote my American colleague, Lynn Brice Rosen: aaaaaargh…

When we start having problems with discomfort at our desks, it is SO tempting to look for the magic bullet: the one perfect product that will solve all our problems. I know this, because I’ve experienced it. When I was a postgrad student and my arms started hurting while I worked, I bought a fancy chair. I bought an ergonomic keyboard. I bought a fancy mouse.

I slouched on the fancy chair. I was smarter than it was.

I thumped away on the fancy keyboard.

I held the mouse in a death grip and crashed down on it whenever I clicked.

The stuff didn’t help. It just didn’t help.

The problem wasn’t the poor design of my equipment. The problem was me.

The problem wasn’t what I was doing. The problem was how I was doing it.

That’s why I despair every time I see a new report telling people to go out and spend money on stuff to fix their problems. Because I know that if most of them just stopped and really thought about HOW they were going about what they were doing, they could make substantial improvements to their wellbeing.

So if you’re suffering at your desk, this is my suggested plan of attack:

Go to the GP and have it checked out. There may be a medical condition that needs attention.
Set reminders so that you get up and move around. The Pomodoro Technique suggests 25 minute work periods.
Have you left your pelvis behind? Experiment with rotating your pelvis forwards.
Try the 50% less game. Can you type or click using half as much force?

And when you’ve tried these ideas, send me a message and let me know how you’re getting on. We really don’t need to spend money on more STUFF to make improvements to our wellbeing!

* You, like my husband, may feel that you’ve been on a treadmill at work, metaphorically speaking, for a while and have no wish to make it literal!

5 Easy Ways to Tank Your New Year’s Resolutions

optinoptout

Psst! Want to give yourself a failsafe way of getting out of keeping those resolutions you signed up for on new Year’s Eve? Follow these five easy steps.

1. Don’t analyse the conditions present. Of course you don’t need an idea of exactly where you’re starting from. And you certainly don’t need to know what’s around that will help or hinder you. *

2. Make your goals as vague and non-specific as possible. “To be a better person” or “to move freely at all times” is a totally acceptable and achievable goal to have. **

3. Don’t give yourself an end-point or time limit. I mean, you wouldn’t want to give yourself a suitable timeframe for analysing whether you’d made any progress. Then you might realise that you were going about things the wrong way. or, more interestingly, you might see that your goal was too ambitious, or just wasn’t right for you, and then you’d have to go to the trouble of thinking out a new one. How tedious.***

4. Don’t bother thinking about how to reward yourself when you’re finished. Rewards are for kids.

5. Don’t bother thinking about the nuts and bolts of how you’re going to achieve your goals. Who needs steps and planning anyway? If they’re meant to be, then they should just magically manifest themselves without you having to do any work at all. Shouldn’t they? ****

If you follow these steps faithfully, you will successfully avoid even coming close to achieving your resolutions again this year, and you can carry on muddling along through life in the same old ways as before.

Cool.

* FM Alexander, Use of the Self in the Irdeat edition, p. 423.
** These are genuine goals that students have come up with in my classes. Sad but true.
*** in Evolution of a Technique FM may not give specific time frames that he used for evaluating what he was doing, but it is pretty clear from the text that he did. See p.423.
**** See Use of the Self , p. 423 .

Image by Stuart Miles from FreeDigitalPhotos.net