To all my friends…so many of whom come to me lately, stressed out.

We get stressed out and need a way to survive, sometimes even a way to survive success.

Today a student came in, all stressed out from a deadline in a high tech company.
I said, that we all need a way to survive stress. We need tools to deal with it. Otherwise, even if the project comes in under deadline, if there’s nothing left of yourself, after, what’s the point?

I thought about what I would do for myself and shared with him.

What I do is take a walk with my dogs for five minutes
I walk them and feel the sunshine on my back. I feel the air on the skin of my face and I look at my dogs trotting along. They plop down and sit in the grass and look around and it reminds me that there is more going on in life than just what’s inside my own head.

Observing something in nature just for a moment really to LOOK
and in that moment of looking, we are pausing….just for a moment
Take just a moment to LOOK. Just notice the twitching that’s going on in his body and see it happening from inside himself.
Take just a moment to LOOK at it and let it be, notice it’s happening and just WATCH it.

and that LOOKING,
is not reacting but just LOOKING
and in that not reacting we Pause and have a moment to BE
We are just observing something out in the world – a tree – a bug on the grass – ourselves – just noticing that we have twitches. It’s a message from our body that we’re over doing it. The nervous system can’t keep up and is reacting.

We just observe it and notice we’re not reacting to the reaction
and at some point, we can notice that we are feeling it and also observing it and we are the one observing ourselves and that is Consciousness being the observer and also being inside ourselves and noticing that we are in both places
and in that moment is a place of peace it is a place of just being-ness
from that place we grow quiet
and in that quiet we can choose our response
that is the essence of the Alexander Technique
Observing and being the observed and noticing both
And then we can let ourselves Be

send a thought in the body, down the legs into the floor and up along the back out the head into the sky With opposing directions and space in-between
Space to breathe Space to unwind Space to be free.