How to Use the Sense of Feeling (Part 2)
Add to the analogy
This week has been a pretty big deal for me. I caught a mild cold on Monday evening and had to cancel my classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. This turned out to be a very good excuse to start watching more One Piece and ultimately resulted in my purchase of a Crunchyroll subscription.
This is both a good and bad thing.
To the Bloggsss!!!
In last week’s article, I wrote an analogy between the sense of hearing and the sense of kinesthesia. I was attempting to give an example of how you can feel both generally and specifically. Learning to balance between the general and the specific is a dastardly skill for anyone, but particularly for someone trying to make an improvement in a specific area (e.g. alleviate jaw pain).
The main crux of my article ended with a guide through FM Alexander’s directions1. I think the analogy works quite well and I’ll expand upon it today. So we’re going back to the cafe for a coffee!
Café Nouveau
As we return to our cafe, we see that it is filled with people. Some are chattering away at tables. Others are working on their blogs and clacking at their keyboards. And while all of these general sounds seem totally fine, we notice that there’s some drama happening at the counter.
Further listening reveals what we all have feared. Some little prince has decided that they are too good to wait in line for a drink. They are speaking quite loudly and have decided that making derisive comments towards the barista will get them what they want. They have chosen to deal with the situation by becoming an OBSTINATE ASSH*LE.
And can’t unhear this sh*t.
I hate these guys.
The Skill of Inhibition
If we do nothing, there’s a chance that this assh*le will get their drink - leave - and NEVER COME BACK to the cafe. Oftentimes, this is a very effective strategy. This would be the type of strategy that works best when you stub your toe.
Unfortunately, there are many times in life when the jerk gets their drink and proceeds to SIT at a TABLE with a bunch of OTHER JERKS and make a ruckus. In these moments, our sense of hearing is going to almost surely focus on the table of jerks and we won’t be able to hear anyone else. Very quickly, we will enter a state of rage.
In these cases, it’s better to have a strategy for dealing with the loud table. You may feel like getting up and kicking them out of the cafe, but for this analogy to work you have to realize that this table is your right knee. You probably are going to need that later…
There are effectively two types of strategies that have been effective for me when dealing with a TABLE of ASSH*LES: staying general and saying no, and sitting down at the table and transcribing the conversation of crap. I will give you examples of how these strategies work with the sense of hearing.
Staying General and Saying No
As you sit in the cafe, you absolutely will hear the table of jerk-faced jerks prattling on. Take your time and choose to hear the general sound of the cafe. In order to pull this off, you will have to say no to the urge to focus on the table of jerks. It will be impossible for you to suppress the noise so don’t worry about that; simply hearing generally while lightly ignoring the noisy bad actors can oftentimes create a sense of quiet at the noisy table.
To return to the sense of kinesthesia, this strategy is mostly effective when you have a damn good idea of what your pain is and how the muscles, bones, and fascia are acting up. The level of knowledge here should be, "my neck feels kinda twisted to the right and my chest feels tight and my right shoulder feels like it’s crunching down and in towards my mid back.”. If you have this type of sense, then as you think “{Allow the neck to be free…}” you will add the thought “{Not THAT crunching}”.
This is an extraordinarily effective tool.
If you don’t have this type of sense, then you should…
Sit Down at the Table with the Assh*les and MAKE THINGS LOUDER
Sometimes when we’re sitting in the cafe, we can hear that there’s a lot of noise going on, but we can’t make out EXACTLY what they’re saying. This is likely because we’ve been driven to madness and are looking for the nearest exit. While this is understandable, it is in our long term best interest to stop and figure out what these assh*les are talking about.
If we can reasonably figure out what these jerks are yammering on about, we can probably figure out how to make them happy.
Learning to listen while we’re in a state of agitation is quite tricky. You kind of have to tell yourself, “Well, I’m not dying and this problem isn’t going away. I wonder if I can really get to know what is happening right now.”. It takes a damn bit of honesty to wait and authentically be in this kind of attitude.
Sometimes you might feel a chunk or pattern of muscle pulling. This can be a clear enough signal that you can simply begin to feel the avenue of the muscle pull and slowly make it tighter. After you’ve made the pull tighter, you can then slowly release the pull. It probably will not fully release on the 1st, 2nd, or even the 3rd attempt, but it will give you a clear image of what THAT PULL is. This will allow you to return to your general sense of feeling and add that thought {“NOT THAT PULL”}.
At other times, you just feel a bit poo and you have NO IDEA what is pulling. You’ve walked into the cafe and you can sense total chaos but there’s no table for you to focus on; you simply sense that things are off generally. These moments are the trickiest.
Sometimes it’s best to just stay general and try to give yourself as much quiet and grace as you can because today is just not the day that clarity finds you. Sometimes that is enough and the total chaos of the cafe quiets down. But if you are in a genuine place of patient curiosity, you can sometimes go from table to table and start to get an idea of what the noise is all about. This can slowly let you arrive at what THAT PULL is2.
Tying Things Together
If we return to training our sense of kinesthesia, we can write an example of guided thoughts:
Allow yourself to feel generally.
Recognize a general squeeze/compression.
Imagine a general thawing.
Let the feeling of the neck arrive.
Noticing some bracing in the neck, begin to include the entire head and give the whole lot permission to release.
Noticing that something vague is happening remember to allow the general sensation.
Allow the neck to be free.
Recognize the bracing in the neck. See how it ties into the head.
Gently make that brace infinitesimally worse.
Release THAT brace in whatever slow and small way possible.
Gently make that brace infinitesimally worse.
Release THAT brace in whatever slow and small way possible.
Gently make that brace infinitesimally worse and recognize how it relates to the torso.
Release THAT NEW brace in whatever slow and small way possible.
etc…
Hopefully this sequence of thoughts adds clarity to what direction and inhibition mean in the Alexander Technique (at least how I understand it today). I want to stress that I do not really say words to myself as I go through this sequence. I’m attempting to let all of my todo list self chatter STOP so that my mind is open to all of the kinesthetic sensations available without placing ANY stress on myself to BE GOOD or GET A RESULT from my self.
You will also note that I have stopped writing this sequence after I mentioned the torso. You must take your time to traverse each and every fiber of your being when you make this journey. Elbows, wrists, fingers, knees, ankles, and toes can carry as much tension as anything else. Sometimes feeling a wrist and hand release tension can trickle all the way up into the neck. I’m only leaving these bits and bobs out from my example above because it would take a looong time to write it all out.
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.
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The variant I wrote last week - “allow the head to balance forward, back, and up.” - was taught to me by Beret Arcaya. This is referencing the sensation of the whole “helicopter” flying on top of the neck as opposed to the more classic direction “allow the center of the weight of the head to balance forward and up”. If this is confusing, stop, think, and feel for yourself. Forget the words altogether and wonder.