Skydiving and the Alexander Technique
Hello my friends, thanks so much for stopping by :).
Tonight I’ve been questioning the nearest person around; myself.
I wonder; why is it so hard to talk about what I do?
Maybe that’s not the right question; I talk about it all the time. Drilling down…
Why is it so hard to transfer the sense of what it is? What IS the Alexander Technique, and why does it matter?
This is the frustration of the Alexander Teacher; no one knows what it is and it can feel like the best thing on earth…a glass of cool water on the hottest day…a wonderful sense of aliveness…
Yes, you say, and skydiving also gives an amazing sense of aliveness and I love it, it is like that?
Well…maybe it is, in the sense of jumping into the unknown, but here you have the bonus of a safety line; your Alexander teacher. Except Alexander Technique can be strangely familiar when you feel it, like something different but very, very right.
I know this because I have gone skydiving and I also dove into the Alexander Technique. For me at least, it was not at all familiar. It did wake up my awareness!
What if we take a smaller step today, and say the Alexander Technique is like water?
I can speak of the results, but that’s like trying to explain water by saying, it’s useful for washing dishes and your hands will feel wet. Sure, it works that way but that isn’t what it IS. Soap also cleans dishes and feels wet…now we have to say it isn’t like soap…
Water has the lovely quality of wetness and also the power to wear away rocks and create the Grand Canyon. Does that say what it IS?
The Alexander Technique likewise has the quality of peace and renewal as well as the power to eat away at a lifetime of unconscious tension so you can feel at home in your own body. It chips away at the knowledge within ourselves that we are “right” because it feels right when we are standing or moving “this way,” the “normal” way.
It brings us to new possibilities in movement; something unknown, but wonderful and good. Or… maybe it was once known in a lifetime long ago when we were children and life flowed like water.
It’s about consciousness, which is ultimate and endless. It’s not something you can buy in a box at Costco, super-sized. It’s not red like ketchup and not blue like the gorgeous orchids just inside the door at Costco, today.
It really is more like water; it’s what is IN the river that feels so cool in its wetness and invites us to swim.
It’s awareness both within the body – the swimmer –
And without – of the water that is around us.
How do you describe water?
Maybe the best feeling there is.
In life.
In movement.
With JOY.
Namaste,
Dana
P.S. Thank you for visiting; thank you even more for your thoughts!
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