Fundamentals Archives - Page 10 of 15

Bodies tell tales – how the way you move tells a tale about you (and how to start moving better)

Bodies tell tales. It’s true. The way you move tells others a tale – or at least gives them vital clues – as to how you are feeling about what you are doing, or how you are thinking. And if that’s true when you’re getting the groceries, it’s even more apparent when you’re doing something that you may find stressful, like speaking in public.

Have you ever been at a presentation or some other event where you had to watch someone else give a speech or perform? Were they nervous? How did you know?

Of course, you didn’t really know. Not with certainty (unless you asked them afterwards). But how they moved and spoke would have given you vital clues. Perhaps they had raised shoulders or a tight neck. Perhaps they were hesitant about eye contact, or spoke softly.

The simple fact of the matter is that how you move gives us clues as to what you think and how you feel. Sometimes we’ll read those clues badly. Sometimes we might get them downright wrong. But most people guess pretty well, and do so most of the time. Bodies tell tales. And we know this. That’s why it bothers us when we think we don’t ‘come across’ as well as we hope – we want to look good, but we just don’t know where or how to start moving better.

I was at a conference over the weekend, co-presenting a workshop with my wonderful colleague Jane Toms. I was giving a demonstration lesson to one of the participants, who told me she had been having problems with soreness in her neck. When I worked with her, her neck certainly didn’t move very freely.

What did this tell me? It suggested to me that she had an idea that wasn’t helping her – an idea about her neck and its function. So I asked her what her neck was for. And she said, “for holding my head on.” And this answer made perfect sense of what she was doing physically – she was using muscles in her neck to ‘hold her head on’.

This workshop participant had a belief about what necks are for, and that belief was written in her body. Bodies tell tales. So if you don’t like the tale your body is telling, what do you do? Where do you begin with how to start moving better?

Change the story. Change the belief. Yes, I know that sounds simplistic. But it works. Here are the key points to remember to start the process:

Behind every movement is an idea or story.
If you change the idea, you change the movement.
Don’t bother going hunting for the origin of the idea that led to the poor movement. It’s far easier just to decide on the details of the new idea, and then work on doing that instead of the old idea.
A good starting question for the creation of the new idea is, “What do I need to do to…[insert activity here]”

This is a positive act. We aren’t burying our heads in the sand. We aren’t hoping no one will notice. And we aren’t going on a hunt through the past to discover the roots of an idea that didn’t help us in the first place. We’re doing what will help us: finding a new idea. If we do this sincerely and consistently, we will know how to start moving better. We will change the way we move. We will change the way others read us. We will change our stories from the ‘same old’ into something better. And that’s got to be a worthwhile challenge.

Re-evaluate: what to do if you venture too far out of your comfort zone

This is the sixth part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Week 1 was about why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. In week 2 we explored how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it. Week 3 was all about starting from where you are instead of waiting for perfect timing or conditions. Week 4 was about finding and practicing all the elements that will make up your activity. And last week we learned about the Trust Gap.
This week? What to do if you discovered you’ve ventured too far out of your comfort zone.

I was never a brave person when I was young. Not physically brave. So there were lots of things that I have simply never tried. One of those was skating. My son had tried ice skating last year and really enjoyed it. So this winter, for my birthday, I decided that it would be fun for the family to go ice skating. My son would have a great time, and I would get to move out of my comfort zone and try something completely new.

But as the day approached, I began to realise that I was making a big mistake. I had a sense that I was moving a little too far outside of my comfort zone. I had a growing awareness that this activity was not one that felt comfortable for me.

One of my friends on Twitter, the lovely Paula White, had a similar thing happen to her recently. She had entered a triathlon, but discovered during the course of training that she had taken on a larger challenge than she was comfortable with. Training sessions, especially in the pool, were becoming anxiety-producing affairs. But Paula is intelligent, brave and resourceful. So she did the only sensible thing. She decided not to do the triathlon.

Sometimes we set ourselves goals, and decide to push our comfort zones. But sometimes we set those goals a little too ambitiously. Or once we start the process we’ve decided is best for achieving our goal, we discover that it involves many more steps than we thought at first. Or we may even discover that our desire to achieve our goal is eclipsed by other priorities.

In those instances, deciding to step away and re-evaluate is A Good Thing.

FM Alexander was very clear about what made for a successful pattern within education (and life):

Confidence is born of success, not of failure, and our processes in education and in the general art of living must be based upon principles which will enable us to make certain of the satisfactory means whereby an end may be secured, and thus to command a large percentage of those satisfactory experiences which develop confidence…*

In other words, when we are constructing a plan that takes us outside of our comfort zone, we should be aiming for a series of successful experiences that build confidence. If we are having a consistent series of unsuccessful experiences that leave us feeling anxious or unhappy, there’s something wrong. Either we need to change the way we’re going about the activity, or we need to re-adjust our expectations of what we want to achieve.

So if you’re feeling anxious about leaving your comfort zone, don’t be alarmed at first. But take note of the anxiety. If you are consistently finding that your experiences of the process to achieve your goals are filled with unhappiness and negativity, then maybe you need to re-evaluate.

Remember: there is no shame in quitting, just as there is positive benefit in being wrong and making mistakes. Knowing when to quit is just as important a skill as knowing when to continue. So if you feel as if you’re too far outside your comfort zone, stay “in communication with your reason,”** and make sure you re-evaluate. A little fear is good, but a whole lot? Maybe not so much.

* FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, IRDEAT edition, p. 425.
** FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, op.cit., p.159.
Image by renjith krishnan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Start where you are! Why waiting for perfect conditions or timing can keep you stuck

This is the third part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Week 1 was about why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. Last week we explored how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it. This week is all about starting from where you are instead of waiting for perfect conditions.

This is my kitchen timer. It has a magnet on the back, and lives on my fridge. It’s the timer I use when I make cakes or muffins so that I don’t walk away and burn the house down. It makes very loud beepy noises.

It’s also an essential part of my running training kit.

When I downloaded my training plan from the runbristol website, I very quickly noticed that it didn’t really expect me to do just long runs. The designers of the plan had cleverly included interval training, too. This, most weeks I was expected to do 10 minutes or so easy running, then 5 or more repetitions of, for example, 4 minutes fast running and 90 seconds recovery.*

There was no way I was going to be able to keep track of that with my wristwatch. But because I believed for so long that I was No Good at Sport, I didn’t own a stopwatch, and I didn’t have the spare cash to buy one. So how was I going to manage it?

The plan expected ownership of a stopwatch, but I didn’t live in that world. I did not have the perfect conditions. What was I going to do? What would you do?

I could have given up altogether: “This is just too hard. I was wrong to think I could run.”

I could have ignored the plan and not done the interval training. “I’ll be fine with just the long runs. I hope.”

But both these options are a kind of defeat. It would be allowing a lack of the perfect conditions to determine my actions. But conditions are so rarely perfect. Timing is so rarely perfect. Sometimes we just have to begin with what we have.

Hence the kitchen timer.

I would go out for my interval training with my little kitchen timer in my hand. It made very loud beepy noises. People did occasionally stare. But it worked for me, and I was content with that.

So often we hear ourselves or others using a lack of perfect timing or perfect conditions as a reason for not trying something new, or as an excuse to not follow through on a dream we have. We find ourselves stymied by the ‘received wisdom’ on the ‘right’ path to take to achieve a goal – if we don’t fit neatly on that one true path, we feel tempted to give up.** But with a little imagination we can so often find a way to overcome such obstacles.

There is no perfect time.

There are no perfect conditions.

There is only now.

So find your equivalent of my kitchen timer, and start inventing your route to your goals.

* This is seriously good for your fitness levels, by the way.
** FM Alexander believed that we are taught from childhood to believe in rigid rules and ‘correct’ mental outlooks, and that it was a major cause of later mental and physical difficulties. See Man’s Supreme Inheritance, IRDEAT complete edition, p.74.

No one will die – leaving a comfort zone and fear of the new

This is the second part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Last week we looked at why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. This week we’re exploring the relationship between leaving a comfort zone and fear of the new; how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it.

Last week I told you about how I decided to move past my belief that I was No Good at Sport, and chose to enter the Bristol 10k. I recognised that I had a belief that was limiting me and set myself a goal to help challenge it. But what happened next? Which of these two stories do you think is more true?

Story 1: Jen organised a training programme and stuck to it. She was at all times completely confident of achieving her goal because she was doing the necessary work. On the day of the race, she found it easy.

Story2: Jen didn’t know where to start. She did some research and found training plans and advice. She tried to follow them, but found it hard work, physically and emotionally. Many times she felt like quitting, and she was terrified of getting it wrong and making a fool of herself. Even on the day of the race, she wasn’t completely certain she’d make it.

Worked out which one is the truth yet? Yep, the second. I was leaving a comfort zone and fear of the new was a major problem for me. I felt scared almost every time I went out to train.

The truth of it is that people stay in their comfort zones because they are, well, comfortable. People like being comfortable. When you try to challenge a belief or behaviour in yourself that you don’t like, you pretty much need to expect it to feel uncomfortable. It may feel odd. It may even feel wrong.

We need to expect it not to feel good. Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself because it will, but more often than not you’re going to be dealing with levels of discomfort.

So we recognise that leaving a comfort zone and fear are very closely related. How do we deal with the discomfort? Here are my five big tips:

1. Make sure you’ve chosen a goal that is challenging but still realistic. I, for example, as a non-runner, did not choose to make the London Marathon my first ever race! I chose something that was not going to be easy, but that was still achievable.

2. Have a plan to follow. Do some research, find out how other people typically go about achieving the goal you’ve set, and then modify that to your own circumstances. I was lucky and found a ready-made training programme that I could adapt easily.

Sometimes planning is trickier, and you may not be sure of all the variables you need to consider. in those situations, sometimes it can help to talk to someone who specialises in planning and reasoning. If you need help with the planning aspect of your goal, contact me and I’ll see if I can help you out, or at least point you in the direction of someone else who can.

3. Have a good support network. I had a friend who was incredibly supportive, and who actually ran the race with me. I also had friends and family helping me find the time to train, and just generally cheering me on. Support isn’t essential, but it sure makes things easier.

4. Accountability. If you are worried you might quit or find excuses to dodge the discomfort of trying the new activity/behaviour, you may want to set some consequences to help you stay on track. For example, a friend may ring you each week to check on progress. Or you might try using Stickk, a new website that was created to help people stick with their goals.

5. Be kind to yourself. Recognise that sometimes your ‘lizard brain’ (limbic system) is going to catch up with you and cause you to feel panicked. Just keep breathing, remember that everything is fine and no one is in imminent danger of dying, and let it pass.

This week, if you haven’t yet chosen a goal for the activity or behaviour you want to try/change, set one! Start working out how you are going to achieve it. Do some research. Set some consequences for bailing out. And start. Setting up your support network. And be kind to yourself.

Image by John Kasawa, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Should you go out of your comfort zone?

Should you go out of your comfort zone and try new stuff? If so, how do you go about it? Today is the beginning of a four week series on why trying new things is good, and how to do it well.

May 5 was a big day for me. It was the day of the Bristol 10k – a 10km run/jog/stagger along the roads of some of the most picturesque bits of my home town.

10km may not seem like much to some of you. To me, it’s a big deal. I only started running seriously in February. I had never before taken part long-term in any sporting activity. I was not fit, not even close to it.

And yet I decided to take part. Why?

Well, it all comes back to the fundamental basis of the work which I teach, the life-changing discoveries made by FM Alexander. You see, Alexander’s work starts with one simple but all-important question:

“Could it be something I was doing… That caused my problem?”

When you start to take that question seriously, you are led to reconsider basic ideas you hold. For example, a plumber student of mine began to question whether he really needed to grip the wheel of his van as tightly as he did in order to keep it on the road.

But then, you see, you start to realise that there is a tremendous value in questioning ideas and mental attitudes that you believe to be true of yourself. You start to question all sorts of things.

I began to question my long-held view that I am No Good at Sport. I began to question my idea that Other People could run, but that I Could Not. These beliefs began to look like easy answers. They were a comfort zone that enabled me to stay away from activities that challenged my view of myself. I realised that the only way to know if my belief was true was to test it out.

And that’s the reason why I took a step outside of my comfort zone, and entered the Bristol 10k.

Your task for this week?

Simple. As you go about your week, keep a mental lookout for any ideas or mental attitudes you hold about yourself that you think may warrant closer examination. Like me, you might believe that you’re No Good at sport. Or maybe art. Or singing. Or speaking in public.

When you think you have found one or two (or more), decide which one you would most like to change, and begin to think about ways you could challenge it. Next week, I’ll give you some tips on how to go about it.

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

“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