change Archives - Page 3 of 4

Big questions: who makes the positive changes happen?

Are positive changes teacher-driven?

For beginning students looking at an Alexander Technique lesson, it can look a lot like the teacher is doing all the work. The teacher does something with their hands, and apparently makes massive positive changes in the student. Even though there is very often a fair amount of talking going on, it can look a lot like most of the work is being done using hands-on techniques BY the teacher TO the student. The balance of power seems very much to be with the teacher.

But I really want to challenge you to reconsider this notion. I want you to consider the possibility that the positive changes that occur in the course of Alexander Technique lessons are in fact student-powered.

Positive changes are student-powered!

As I discussed last week, what I am doing with my hands during an Alexander Technique lesson is NOT sculpting the student according to my ideas of what is right and good. I don’t decide what would be good for my student, and then mould it! Rather, I am making it increasingly hard for the student to STOP sculpting themselves according to their ideas of what is good. My job is to help the student question whether their ideas are good and useful to them, or whether they would be better served by letting some of their ideas go.*

This means that the balance of power doesn’t lie with me as a teacher at all. If one of my students decides that they would rather hang on to their physical tension (and the ideas that lie behind it), then there is nothing that I can do to stop them. On more than one occasion I have worked with students who have found their reasons for their physical tension so compelling that they have refused to give them up, even though their justifications resulted in physical discomfort.

Happily, because most people don’t have such a life-or-death attachment to their ideas, they are happy – sooner or later – to make the shift in thinking that shifts its physical manifestation. The lure of the benefits of positive change is too inviting to ignore.

In addition, the fact that the student is the one with the power means that they can make positive changes without the teacher being involved. Just this past week one of my students failed to make it to class, but read the recap email that I sent to all the class participants. She thought so carefully about that email during the week that, by the time she came back to class, she had made definite positive changes and was experiencing less discomfort in her daily activities.

If the student is the one with the power, and if a student can make progress without the direct involvement of a teacher, then what is to stop you from improving right now? As an Alexander Technique teacher, one of my most important roles is to give my students a space and a framework for examining what they do and how they do it. But you don’t need me in the room with you!**

What is it that you’re doing, and how are you going about it? What one thing strikes you as something that you could do less, or even not at all? Will you take the challenge to drive your own positive changes?

* Alexander spoke of teaching as “placing facts, for and against, before the child, in such a way as to appeal to his reasoning faculties…” I am of the opinion that this sounds like a great teaching tool and applicable to other age groups too! See FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, Irdeat ed., p.88.
** Though, of course, I’d love to work with you in person, too. 🙂
Image by Kevin Leighton.

Will I change my personality? Alexander Technique and psychology

Occasionally I get asked questions by students that touch on the relationship between Alexander Technique, psychology, and the possibility of altering their essential selves. The questions can be summarised as follows:

Do we have an essential self?
Can we change that essential self through the work we do in Alexander Technique lessons?
If we can do this, will we all end up the same – perfectly functioning Alexandroids who think and move very similarly?
Or will we suffer mini personality crises and become different people altogether?

I can’t really speak to the first question: I have no idea if there is such a thing as an essential something that makes me ‘me’ and you ‘you’. But I do know that there is a very clear link between Alexander Technique, psychology, and physical movement.

Alexander Technique psychology? Try psycho-physical…

In the Interactive Teaching Method, where I trained to teach Alexander’s work, we define the Alexander Technique as the study of thinking in relation to movement. Broadly speaking, in lessons my students learn that what and how we think determines the way we move. This is true both in specific tasks and in more general movement patterns. And if we change what and how we think, the way we move cannot fail to change too. The Alexander Technique is a toolkit that can, to paraphrase FM Alexander, help us create/discover/reveal a good manner of use of ourselves that will exert a continuous influence for good upon our general functioning.*

Alexander also says that we think and act “in accordance with the peculiarities of our particular psycho-physical make-up.” ** When he says this, I don’t think he uses the word ‘peculiarities’ pejoratively. I think that some of our peculiarities might be beneficial, or at least neutral.

But some of our peculiarities are not benign, or will appear so but have consequences that are harmful to us. Alexander believed that our misdirected activities are the result of incorrect conceptions, and that the Alexander Technique teacher’s job is to convince a student to give up the erroneous conceptions and instead use something more useful to guide us.^ Nowhere that I know of does Alexander require us to give up beneficial peculiarities (though he does ask us to hold our ideas lightly and have open minds).^^

Alexander Technique psychology: Alexandroids, breakdowns, or something else?

That’s a whole lot of words, but how do they help us tease out our questions? Does the Alexander Technique have the power to change our personalities? Will we turn into drones or, worse, emotional wrecks?

I’m currently thinking of it like this. John is a circle. Marsha is a triangle.^^^ They both have peculiarities in their psycho-physical make-up: I mean, John is circular and Marsha is a triangle!

Alexander Technique psychology described using image of John and Marsha

But it goes a bit deeper than that. John has bits of him that aren’t completely circle-like. Marsha is troubled by the bits of her that are more round than triangular. These are peculiarities too, but they are ones that get in the way of their true nature. John can’t enjoy his full circleness until he loses the edges. Marsha can’t achieve her potential as a triangle until she has a pointy top. So they both come along to Alexander Technique lessons to learn how to make the changes that will help them fulfil their dreams.

In the course of lessons, Marsha might decide that she was wrong about her triangle-ness. She might realise she was actually meant to be a trapezium. This would be a bigger change to her psycho-physical make-up, to be sure.

Some changes to our psych-physical nature are big, like realising we are a trapezium and not a triangle after all. Some are smaller changes, like taking the bumps out of the circle. But the principal thing that the changes have in common is this: they are changes that work towards an improving manner of use of ourselves. The end goal of the Alexander Technique is not to make us all the same. Rather, it is to give us the tools to become most wholly and uniquely ourselves.

*FM Alexander, Universal Constant in Living in IRDEAT ed., p.524.
** FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, IRDEAT ed., p.304.
^ ibid., p.293.
^^ FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, IRDEAT ed., p. 57.
^^^ HT Stan Freberg.

First principles: why starting from the top is good

First principles – boring?

Working from first principles: you’ve been told to begin at the beginning, but especially if you already know a little bit about the subject area, is it really necessary? If you’re learning something new, or even if you’re doing a refresher in something you already know, it is really tempting to skip the early stuff. Often, first principles can feel like a bit of a waste of time.

I am currently doing a course written and presented by marketing guru and all-round amazing thinker Seth Godin. I’ve been freelancing for years, so after I paid for the course and I looked at the title of the first video, I must confess my heart sank a little. It said ‘Why be a freelancer’. I’ve been running my own teaching practice for years, so my first reaction was to assume I’d done that bit of thinking long ago, and didn’t need to go over it again.

But I listened, and I did the exercises, at first out of duty (I mean, I paid for this!), but very quickly out of excitement. Through going back to first principles, I was rediscovering the reasons why I started teaching and freelancing in the first place. I re-connected with the reasons why I do what I do. It was inspiring!

And that is the gift of going back to the beginning, and allowing yourself to start again from the first principles behind what you do. It gives you the chance to rediscover ideas that you’d forgotten, and hopefully to find again the passion that got you started in the first place.

First principles – different every time

And the beauty of it is that when you encounter ‘beginner’ principles as a non-beginner, they don’t look the same as when you first learned them. I remember when I went back to first principles as a recorder player, and asked myself what I needed to do to play so-called ‘pinch’ notes (higher register notes that require part of the left thumb hole to be uncovered). I discovered just how little of the thumb hole needs to be uncovered for the higher notes to sound. I discovered that I really didn’t need to do very much with my hands to achieve the notes. It was monumental.

This was the process that FM Alexander went through when he created what we now call the Alexander Technique. He was trying to solve vocal problems that caused him to lose his voice onstage. He took that fact – that the problem only occurred onstage and not off – made some hypotheses, and then set out to test them. Every time he ran into trouble, every time it seemed like he’d hit a brick wall, what did FM do? He went right back to the beginning, to those first hypotheses.* And he’d test them all again. Each time the act of going back was a spur to new thinking. He’d go back to first principles, but with the knowledge gained from the false starts.

So don’t be afraid of first principles. They will help you.

Getting the basics right helps you to move faster in the long run – you won’t have to go back and correct mistakes
If you do get stuck, going back to first principles means that you can experience them again on a different level – they’ll be different because you are
Going back to the beginning gives you the chance to make different choices.

And remember – there’s no such thing as wasted effort. You can learn from the false starts just as much as the successes. Have fun, and if you’ve got a question, just contact me and do my best to help.

* FM Alexander, Use of the Self, IRDEAT edition, p.417: “I saw that the whole situation would have to be reconsidered. I went back to the beginning again, to my original conclusion…”

Image by tungphoto, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Reducing muscle tension: the whys and wherefores

Reducing muscle tension (and mental commitment to that tension) is often a key component in Alexander Technique lessons. Frequently, a student will have a good experience related to reducing muscle tension, and they’ll ask: why am I doing this apparently pointless bit of muscular tension that actually hurts and gets in the way of me achieving what I want? If reducing muscle tension in this activity is good, then why don’t I do it? Why do I keep the old way?

It’s a great question, and deserves some thought. So… Let’s think about it like it’s an object in a house. Why do people keep physical things? They might keep an object because…

They think they need it. (My husband’s computer cable collection falls into this category)
They forget they’ve got it. (My son is a master at putting a toy in the bottom of a box, forgetting about it, and then rediscovering it the next time we do a major clean-out of his room)
They think it might come in useful. (Again, my husband’s computer cable collection springs to mind)
They’re afraid of what other people would say if they got rid of it. (Gifts from relations might fit here, or Great Aunt Edna’s hideous pottery pig collection)
They’re afraid they might need it at some point in the future. In other words, they’re afraid to get rid of it.
They like it.

There’s no right or wrong answer. If you like it and you want to keep it, who am I (or anyone else) to judge you? But if it gets in the way of your other stated goals (like having a clutter-free house) then we might reserve the right to question you about it. If you then decide that you like or want the object in question, then it isn’t anyone else’s business if you keep it.

The same goes with muscular tension. If you have an idea about the task at hand which leads you to move physically in a way that prevents you from achieving your goals, the Alexander Technique teacher’s job is to draw your attention to it. We will get in the way of the physical tension. We will present reasons why doing something else might be good. And then we will (or should) leave you to make up your own mind.*

Why? If what we are suggesting is better, if it will help you to achieve your goals more easily and more quickly, then why don’t we try to cajole you into doing something different? For the same reason that no one should make you get rid of your Great Aunt Edna’s pottery pig collection. It would be rude. It would be unkind, and none of our business.

And even more importantly – and this is where reducing muscle tension is different to pottery pigs – positive change (like reducing muscle tension) is nearly inevitable anyway. Alexander Technique teachers work from the principle that your body is geared towards health, wellness, and optimum performance. It takes time and energy to force your mind and body to do the unnecessary, harmful, unproductive stuff – you’ve really got to work hard to create it. So when you’re ready, you’ll stop.

And when you stop, we’ll be ready and waiting to cheer you on.

* FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, IRDEAT ed, p.88: “by teaching I understand the placing of facts, for and against, before the child, in such a way as to appeal to his reasoning faculties, and to his latent powers of originality. He should be allowed to think for himself, and should not be crammed with other people’s ideas .” FM wrote it about children, but it sounds good enough to apply to adults, too!

Image by Ambro from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Secret Weapon Powering Commitment to Change

Do you fear that you don’t have the commitment to change the things in your life that you feel are holding you back, whether physically (wellness), professionally, or in performance areas?

Do you ever look at people who’ve solved major difficulties in their lives or work and wonder how they did it? Do you ever feel as though they have some sort do secret special power that you just don’t have?

People sometimes feel that way when they look at FM Alexander. He was a (mostly) self-educated actor who solved the vocal problems that threatened his career, and in the process created a whole new form of body-mind work that has helped countless thousands of people all over the world. He did it by conducting a lot of observations of himself, and doing a lot of thinking and experimenting. He was, clearly, fuelled by a commitment to change.

One of my newer Alexander Technique students is a flautist who uncovered a major technical difficulty with her flute playing and spent eight months re-learning how to play her instrument. She looked at FM Alexander’s work and said, “wow, he was determined. I could never do something like that!”

But, of course, she had! She’d just spent eight months of her life doing daily training, disciplining her mind and her body so that she’d be able to overcome a technical flaw that she’d spotted in her playing. To my mind, she had shown exactly the same dedication and application that FM had done. Clearly, my student was also spurred on by a commitment to change.

The secret of FM Alexander’s work to cure his vocal problems wasn’t genius. The secret of my student’s successful relearning of her instrument wasn’t luck, nor was it good teaching (though I am sure her flute teacher is excellent). Luck will only get you so far, and it doesn’t matter how good the teacher is if the student doesn’t do the work.

The student has to do the work. To do the work, they need to have the motivation to do the work. This is what commitment to change and the process of change is all about. And what lies behind that commitment? They have the motivation because they love what they do.

Loving what you do changes everything.

My student loves playing the flute. She will try most things in order to play better.
FM Alexander loved acting. He was prepared to stand in front of a mirror watching himself for months to find a solution to his vocal problems.
I loved knitting and playing my recorder. I hated waking up with my arms hurting. I was prepared to change pretty much anything in order to play and knit with ease.

What about you? Maybe you’re wanting to solve physical issues, or move further towards wellness. Maybe you’re wanting to improve at the stuff you do. Maybe you just want to have more energy at the end of the day!
Whatever it is you want, I can guarantee this. If you truly love what you do, you can find the commitment to change whatever it is that is holding you back from enjoying it to the full. I won’t promise that the road will always be easy. But it will ultimately be truly rewarding, and well worth the travel.

Image by citricusss from Free Images

Decision making and the power of choice – why loss shouldn’t hold us back

Do you find decision making easy, or is your power to decide crippled by the knowledge of the loss of the alternatives once you’ve committed to one option?

A friend of mine told me the story recently of a student of hers, who had had the misfortune to lose all her university coursework in a house fire (she was lucky to have survived herself). With a supreme effort, the student was able to do extremely well in her final assignments, but narrowly missed getting a First.

The student asked my friend if she should appeal. My friend replied that she’d have a strong chance of having her degree lifted to a First, but that it would take time and mean her not graduating at the same time as her friends. Which was more important to her?

The student decided to graduate with her friends, and to give the higher grading a miss. When my friend saw the student at the graduation ceremony, the student was having a wonderful time with her friends. She was at peace with her decision.

Decision making as loss

I love this story because it gets to the essence of something I’ve been thinking about recently (thanks to a lovely post by my friend Susan T Blake). Decision making can be so very difficult sometimes, because every decision we make has with it an element of loss.

Sometimes that loss is small (flat white or latte?). But sometimes the choice is far more difficult, as each option has a significant joy, and its loss a significant cost. The student gave up a First – that is a loss. But to choose the First over graduating with friends would have entailed a different loss – the loss of fellowship and shared experience.

The fork in the road

One of the most important concepts in Alexander Technique is that of ‘the fork in the road’, where we find ourselves having a choice between two alternatives.* The most usual one in an Alexander Technique lesson is the choice between the old, familiar way of thinking/moving, and the new and unfamiliar way of thinking/moving. My job as a teacher is to stand at the fork in the road between these two alternatives, and point to the path of the new and unfamiliar, suggesting that it might be worth trying out!

There are, however, other kinds of choices, and other forks in the road. Sometimes someone will present you with a choice (a First or a peer group experience), and ask you to make up your mind which option you want to take. Sometimes you may even present yourself with the choice.

But these choices are sneakier than the one Mr Alexander paints for us. Unlike Alexander’s fork in the road, where the man knows the destination he wishes to reach, in the First/friends choice the destination is not defined. We are being asked (or asking ourselves) to make a choice when we don’t immediately know which one gets us closer to where we want to go.

Decision making and core values

These choices are difficult because the outcomes are not clear. We don’t know what will suit our needs best. And we may be placed (or place ourselves) under pressure to make a decision quickly, before we have had sufficient opportunity to decide which option aligns best with our core values.** And sometimes the difficulty of the choice stems from the fact that it highlights an area where we haven’t really considered what values are most important to us!

So what should we do?

Stop and breathe. No one should expect an instant answer!
Consider the options given. What core values or principles do they represent? For example, a First = academic excellence. Friends = value on social ties and affections.
Check these against your own core values. Which option fits best with your own value structure? Or is this a chance to decide what our core values are?
Decide if there might be any other, better, courses of action. Just because you are presented with two options doesn’t mean there aren’t more options possible…
Choose something and commit to the consequences.

And take note of that last step. Yes, whatever you choose will entail losing the benefits of the choice not taken. My friend’s student didn’t get quite the degree they merited, and that is a real and genuine loss. But what would have been far worse, and far more damaging, would have been to choose an option and then spend time regretting the loss of the other.

And there is one thing that is even worse. Yes, even worse than regret.

Just standing at the crossroads and not ever deciding. That is the most deadening option of all.

*Alexander, F.M., Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.299.
** ‘Core values’ is a term I borrow from life coach and all-round fab guy Tim Brownson. He writes a superb blog at http://www.adaringadventure.com/blog/
Image by Kittisak from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“You can do what I do”… 5 hints from FM Alexander about what it takes if you want to improve posture (or anything else).

Do you want to improve posture (or anything else, for that matter), but feel a bit stuck as to how to go about it? Today’s post may have some answers…

I’ve been a bit silent for the past few weeks on the blogging front. Apologies. I have been very busy researching and writing lectures for a new course I am teaching at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, this time to the music degree students. It is a course that is part experiential Alexander Technique, and part lecture-based presentation of FM Alexander’s ‘Evolution of a Technique.’
It has been a real learning curve for me, never mind my students. I have been studying Alexander’s text in a depth that I haven’t ever quite managed before. It has been revelatory.

What I have discovered is a whole new perspective on the journey that all students face on the road from threatened passion on to improvement and ease. Marjory Barlow, amongst others, recounts that FM often used to say, “You can do what I do, if you will do what I did.” But what exactly did FM Alexander do?

The points below are some of what I believe are the essential markers of FM’s journey from a threatened acting career to an improved voice and a whole new vocation. I think we could all benefit greatly if we took some of these points on board.

“I must try and find out for myself.”

FM suffered vocal problems, so he did the obvious thing and went to the doctor. He tried all that was available to sort out any medical problem that may have existed. This is really important. If there is a medical issue, you need to get it sorted out by a medical person. But FM suspected that the reason why the medical solutions didn’t help was because his troubles didn’t have a medical origin. He suspected he was doing something while speaking that caused his problem. So he decided to find out.

The learning point:

If you’ve got issues that you suspect aren’t medical, be thorough and check out the medical, but also think about finding out if you’re right. And no one can do this for you. An Alexander Technique teacher is trained to help and offer principles to help you on the path. But ultimately, you have to do the work yourself.

“I could do no harm by making an experiment.”

FM knew his problem occurred while reciting, so he watched himself in a mirror, first in ordinary speaking and then when reciting, in order to see what differences there may be between the two activities. And he didn’t just do it once. He did it many times.

This is classic scientific method: look at the evidence, make a guess about why things are the way they are, construct a way of testing if you’re right, and then run the test several times.

The learning point:

Think about your issue. Can you construct a way of testing its extent or causes?

“I found myself in a maze. For where was I to begin?”

There are many occasions, especially in the first half of Evolution of a Technique, where FM Alexander has made so many observations, has so many different things to test and try, so much on his plate, that it is almost overwhelming. So what does he do? He picks a place to start, and keeps experimenting.

The learning point:

When you’re bogged down and don’t know what to do first, sometimes the best thing to do is just pick a spot, and start there. You’ll soon find out if there was somewhere better!

“…all my efforts up till now to improve the use of myself in reciting had been misdirected.”

FM had vocal problems, and tried to trace backwards to find out what was causing them. He found some physical movement patterns of his head in relation with first his neck, then his whole body, which seemed to be the cause. So he tried to stop doing them, and even to do something else. And while he had some small degree of success, he found he wasn’t able to do all the things he wanted to do. FM found himself down a cul de sac.

The learning point:

That happens to all of us. We try something, and it doesn’t seem to work. Failure is normal and to be expected.

“Discouraged as I was, however, I refused to believe that the problem was hopeless.”

If there’s one quality (other than passion) that characterises FM Alexander, it is that he was tenacious. He experienced massive setbacks in his quest to solve his vocal issues, yet he didn’t allow his disappointment to get the better of him. Seth Godin recently wrote a blog about the difference between being tenacious and persistent. Telemarketers, says Seth, are persistent, because they keep pestering. Seth continues:

“Tenacity is using new data to make new decisions to find new pathways to find new ways to achieve a goal when the old ways didn’t work.”

This, for me, typifies FM Alexander. He kept looking for new data, made new decisions, tried new pathways, and discovered amazing things as a result.

The learning point:

What can you do today to be tenacious in pursuit of your goal?

These are just 5 things that I have discovered during my journey with FM Alexander in Evolution of a Technique, all from the first half of the chapter. There’s plenty more in the next half!

Which brings me to a question…

My RWCMD students have been getting enormous benefit out of studying FM’s journey in detail – even though the majority (contrary to what I’d been told to expect) had never even heard of Alexander Technique before entering my classroom. So I’m wondering… how many more people would really enjoy an in-depth class looking at Evolution of a Technique?

I’m thinking of making a class that does just that: a study of Evolution of a Technique. Course notes, discussion time, plenty of time for questions, and held both in person here in Bristol, and online via Skype.

Would you be interested in a course like that? If so, send me an email and let me know. I honestly have no idea if there’s any interest out there for a course like this, so PLEASE, if you’re interested, contact me and let me know.

Image by winnond from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Just One More…” – how the desire to do more can be harmful, and how to stop overworking.

Do you have problems with one of the holy grails of personal productivity: how to stop overworking? Do you find yourself exhausted by your drive to keep checking things off the To Do list?

I’ll answer just one more email…
I’ll write just one more paragraph…
I’ll play that phrase just once more – just to be certain of it…

At the recent Dance and Somatic Practices conference in Coventry, Jane Toms and I presented a workshop in which we discussed how Alexander Technique can be a great tool for circumventing the stories and beliefs we all hold that can prevent us from achieving our potential. I mentioned a couple of the self-limiting (and self-harming) beliefs that caused me to begin studying Alexander’s work.

My tendency to try to fit in ‘just one more thing’ wasn’t one of them. But I’ve realised that it should have been.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve grown up exposed to the belief that hard work is the key to success. I knew I had taken this belief to heart, but only recently have I begun to see how it affects my day-to-day life. I don’t like to cook only tonight’s dinner. I like to start tomorrow’s lunch, too.

I will try to fit in just one more email. Just one more dish on the rack. Just one more load of washing. Just one more student in the schedule.

Yes, this can be productive. But it can also land me in trouble. I can take on too many jobs, or end up doing too many things at once. It’s exhausting.

So I made the decision to stop overworking, and to start treating myself more kindly. But it’s hard. It is as though I have a ‘default setting’ that demands overwork, and any stimulus can set my default setting into overdrive.

But it is not for nothing that FM’s last major piece of writing was entitled ‘Knowing How to Stop’, because stopping is a major key in his work.* When trying to solve his career-threatening voice troubles, FM realised that he needed to “make the experience of receiving a stimulus to speak and of refusing to do anything immediately in response.” **

In other words, FM received a stimulus to speak but made the experience of refusing to respond in his usual way. This gave him time to choose not just how to respond, but whether to respond at all.

And this has been my challenge: to receive the stimulus – another email, another phonecall – and to refuse to spring instantly into action. This gives me time to choose what I actually want to do – stop overworking. It gives me time to think. And when I take this time, I have the chance to make the decision anew to choose the path that I have decided is best for my purpose, rather than relying on my default programming.

This is the way we change habitual behaviour – by receiving a stimulus, not instantly using our default programming, but instead making a decision to put into effect the process that we have decided is better.

For me, this is the key to how to stop overworking. It means pausing before fitting in ‘just one more’ of anything. What about you?

*Michael Bloch, FM: The Life of Frederick Matthias Alexander, Kindle ed., p.186.
** FM Alexander, The Use of the Self, Irdeat ed., p.424.
Image courtesy of stock images, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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