Balancing Thoughts
How can we direct our thoughts if we are uncomfortable or experiencing pain?
The Best Laid Plans…
I was looking forward to my first ever Alexander Technique conference. I went to a nice small gathering before the official proceedings kicked off and met some new faces, but I woke up the next day with the world’s mildest cold. Things have only just cleared up, so hopefully I’ll be able to catch the next event.
For those of you that I didn’t get to meet, feel free to ping me here and chat!
To the Blogsss
One of the devilish tricks with Alexander’s technique is learning confidence with the system when faced with pain. Oftentimes my students start out their early lessons with the sensation of big gains and great ease. Balance feel restored, muscles feel enlivened, and a sense of overall calm seems to find them.
This is what we want, but in the absence of the helping hand of a teacher it can feel like results don’t come quick enough or intense enough to find the all relieving, “Ahhhh” of release. I tell my students that if they can achieve even 5% of the feelings on their own during a lie down, they should count that as a success. To me, this demonstrates that some degree of independence has been learned and that the mind/body relationship is slowly steering towards something new.
If this is your experience with the Alexander Technique, give yourself a big ol’ gold star! ⭐️
Balancing Thoughts
When we’re introduced to the technique, we could be given one of multiple beginning entry points. In my experience, the best lessons come with a healthy dose of quiet thinking and attention to the balance of the head, neck, and upper back. This is where I start with folks even if they complain of hip pain.
If you checked out last week’s post on lengthening and widening the back, you might have attempted to jump right into the images associated with the drawings. This would be a very understandable choice, but will likely have left you feeling oddly partially expanded. It may have been down to not knowing all of your directions, but I have a feeling that it’s more likely that there was not a strong sense of overall quiet and balance.
Typically, the first thing we want to think about when practicing the Alexander Technique is our overall self. A simple wish like,
“I’d like to feel all of my matter - muscles, bones, and guts - all at once.”
is the general vibe we want to start. We want this vibe to continuously be encouraged with a backup reminder that we don’t have to make any physical contractions to force the sense of feeling to work1. This should be a thought running in the background of our lives.
I say all of this because when we feel tension or think stuff like, “allow my spine to lengthen”, there’s a chance that we abandon this global general vibe2 and jump into the specifics of our technique. This “error” in thought is almost unavoidable in the presence of persistent tension, injury, or chronic pain. It takes some real mind over matter magical thinking to stick to the general vibe and let the slow glacial results unfold.
In my personal experience with chronic injury, it can sometimes take 1-3 hours for the thawing to hit that level where things go, “Ahhhh”. That time decreases with experience and practice and is why the hands of a teacher go a long way to helping you avoid the most frustrating sensations that you could have with this work. Basically, having a “spotter” can help give you positive reinforcement that the general vibe is actually generating a glacial thaw in a manner that will let an injured area feel better.
General Vibe Sensations
While you are sending out those good vibes into the universe (aka asking yourself to feel a little bit of everything, everywhere), you may notice some muscles are:
static
compacted
burning
pulsing/throbbing at a dull level
feel like a big ol’ BLANK.
Noticing any of these sensations is a GOOD thing. It means you are paying attention.
What you want to do in this moment is stay with the general vibe and spray quiet throughout the affected zone3. If a muscle is throbbing, stay HUGE in your thoughts and sensations, stay with a sense of your midline (spine + cleaving your face in half/helicopter over the neck), and don’t let your head try and bash the throbbing away4. If you only have done what I’ve asked of you in today’s post, you’ll certainly feel something beginning to shift in you, but you will likely want to remind yourself to include the feeling of the weight of the head for things to move onto the next level.
Balancing the head atop the neck (and by extension atop everything else) is the practical skill that allows tension to start releasing. When in doubt, go back to the general vibe and you might find more pockets of YOU5 that felt asleep or unresponsive. Stay general and see if these pockets wake up!
Does This Resonate With You?
These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.
Get In Touch
If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.
If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.
Kinesthesia is a sense that works independently of direct movement. Our movements can of course trigger the sense of kinesthesia, but our movements do not necessarily trigger new kinesthetic experiences. It is for this reason that I am generally against movement therapy as an entry point for dealing with complex injuries.
“I’d like to feel all of my matter - muscles, bones, and guts - all at once.”
Is this a direction or a wish for stopping? It could be BOTH AT ONCE?!?
AKA feel what you are.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes!