Feeling Patience

That Patient Feeling

Welcome to a new addition of the blogs! As you can tell by the banner above, I’m experimenting with my drawing pad and brainstorming a new name for the blogs. I’m not particularly sold on the name in the image above, but I am having fun learning these tools.

I figured I’d share the latest doodle just to brighten up your screen for a moment.

One day I’ll have landed on a for realsies newest in new name for this THING that I’m writing. If I have my way, it will involve heavy metal artwork. I just don’t draw that awesome at this moment in time.

To The BLOGGSSS!!!

Over the last few weeks I’ve written pretty extensively about the head, the neck, and how these guys function when lifting the head. If I had to give myself a grade, I’d say it’s incomplete. So if you tried to lift your head and everything felt tight/wrong, be patient and explore!

Part of why things may not feel right is that you have an issue happening in the back or the foot or the wherever that is distracting you. Maybe you find yourself concentrating on the neck so much that it’s beginning to lock up. There’s a balance of stopping, feeling, and allowing that takes a while to find.

My advise is to be patient and keep exploring. Dare to mix things up!

What Does Patience Feel Like?

To answer this question, I’ve attempted to do something…rather odd.

I’ve decided to illustrate what I sense when I sit or lie down and ask myself the question, “What is this?”.

When I wake up in the morning, I typically feel stiff/dead. I’ve written in previous articles that I begin my practice of the Alexander Technique from the moment I wake (the time when I’m hitting snooze DOES NOT COUNT).¹ Typically, these initial feelings are extremely vague/groggy. In my video, I drawing this as a BLACK zone.

I’m using BLACK to mark the total lack of feeling. It’s not that I’m paralyzed or anything like that. It’s more like all of the information that may be coming from my body doesn’t actually work it’s way to my Inner Sherlock. The clues are there - they MUST be - but I’m not able to register them.

I’ve seen basically every traditional exercise you could look at. None of them can force the black zones away. Even if I slowly use movement to ask a question, the black hole of feeling will persist.

To date, STOPPING and learning to be PATIENT have been my only reliable tools for getting my Inner Sherlock to wake up.

The following weird art-house experimental film is my clunky attempt to show how my sense of feeling slowly changes over time while I simply sit in a chair, stand, or lie down. I DO NOT get these sensations through traditional physical exercises.

The closest I get to these sensations while moving is when I walk slowly.

Take a look!

Dude… WTF Was That?!?

When I feel muscles in a state of extreme tension/stiff weight, I feel that like a RED zone. The PURPLE zone is an equally not good sensation - it’s like this dull place of extreme compression that is difficult to feel.

When I first began to ask myself “What Do I Feel?” in the way that I’m drawing for you now (something I’ve only been doing for a few weeks in all honesty), I absolutely could not feel any purple. I could feel compression and I could ‘direct’ away from it, but I wasn’t so intimate with the sensation that I could give it any other name.

It’s almost as if the RED zone was so dominant in my thinking that I couldn’t register the PURPLE zone.

In my animation, you’ll see that the red and purple zones grew and filled out the black zone. This is what happens for me as I quietly fly my helicopter and quietly wait for my sense of feeling to register the major landmarks of the torso, arms, and legs. I will share more on those major landmarks in upcoming articles, but I’m hoping that this animation will give you the idea that our sensations can change and grow slowly by simply sitting and wondering about the muscles and bones that you’re feeling.

What’s Up With the GREEN Grid?!?

There are times when I sense general red/purple/blue/black zones of feeling and then there are times when I can feel a whole host of muscle fibers locked in a state like I’ve drawn. When I have this sense, I absolutely DO NOT try and move all of my muscle fibers into what I think is a “good” shape. Instead, I show PATIENCE.

Typically it takes about a minute of patience and some small imperceptible shift will happen in the green grid. This is AGAIN not the moment to move into a “good” shape. Instead, it is an invitation to begin exploring movement. This shift is what Alexander referred to as giving consent.

Patience and curiosity are very much akin to giving consent. It is absolutely what you see happening non-stop in Ted McNamara’s video.

Hopefully this acid trip of a video makes a bit of sense to you! I think I very much could draw this with more clarity, but I absolutely have no idea how to demonstrate this with pictures of people. It’s not something that is easy to see, but I promise that you CAN train yourself to feel something like what I’m describing.

Find your own language in this endeavor! I think I could make a similar description using sonic analogies. Maybe taste resonates with you?

Ultimately if you are patient and listening, you will begin to feel something new.

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.

1. This is absolutely what anyone can do if they choose, but please don’t go about it with a military like attitude towards being perfect.