October 9th
We live our lives so positionally in everything we do, whether in thinking about our body use or in our ideas and judgments of others and ourselves. Because we think so positionally, we do not allow our lives to flow as one continuous movement. We stop movement and we escape from seeing that fact.
We tend to see everything in terms of likes and dislikes, right and wrong, which is to have positional thinking. To have any beliefs at all is to maintain and hold onto our positions, thinking we know what right is. When we think we know what right is about anything, that thinking will be reflected in rigid and held body use, no matter how many years we think we work on ourselves or try to change. Since we are a whole psycho-physical-spiritual being there is no way it can be otherwise.
Can we learn to observe ourselves, see that we think in terms of position, in terms of being right? Can we see that we think ourselves special enough to know what right is? If we are honest we will observe all that in ourselves, and we will see the results of that thinking in our body use. In that moment of observation, change happens easily and naturally without our help.
When we hold positions in our thinking, which is thinking we are right or trying to be right, our breathing is very shallow. We are so good at escape and denial that we often don't know that we are constricting our breathing along with our thinking and body use. We don't know that we are pushing our breath out with every exhalation.
When we observe and acknowledge how very positional our thinking is in every aspect of our lives, we can give up that way of thinking. And it is in those moments of awareness of limitations in our thinking that we experience our whole lives as one flowing movement. In such moments we leave the past, the known, and all there is, is the freedom we have been seeking.
All through our training in the Alexander Technique we hear it is about movement and yet when we watch ourselves and others, it is obvious we mostly think in terms of position, which means we use effort in trying to be right. We cannot be using excess effort and moving easily at the same time, either one or the other. We bring all that we have known from the past, all our ideas and beliefs, into learning this work, as in everything else we do. It is when there is awareness of the interference of our ideas, that we learn the true possibility of movement available to us.