Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
« We become what we think | Main | Spliffs and Alexander Technique »
Forgetting and remembering
People often tell me they keep on forgetting to remember. Using the Alexander Technique to enhance our poise involves remembering to 'use' the technique. From a postural point of view, to over-come lower back pain, reduce stress, free our necks etc etc involves us taking more control over our body which tends to 'run' on automatic. Everything we do tends to be automatic such as walking, bending, sitting, reaching or whatever is our activity. Our muscles have 'got into the way' of doing things in a certain manner (muscle memory). If we have postural habits associated with the way we hold ourselves or move (as most of us do), then these will characterise our posture and every movement we make.
If we're going to over-come our habits, we need to take more conscious control and that's where the Alexander Technique really helps. It gives us a proven method that we can rely on and with a short course of lessons we can become relatively self sufficient at maintaining better poise. However......
Taking control over our habits involves us thinking about 'how' we are doing things. This involves us being more aware and thinking to avoid unnecessary strain or effort, and also to think of lengthening and widening at the same time. It involves us remembering to think as we do things. It's only when we think about what or how we're doing things can we have any control. Otherwise our habits have a free reign and become more pronounced and ingrained so in future years our tendencies and stiffnesses will be even more pronounced than they are now.
But people often say that they keep on forgetting to remember to think before they move. Sometimes I've asked them how often is it that they forget and they reply that it's several times a day. But hang on a wee minute. The moment when we realise that we've forgotten is precisely when we have remembered! If you realise you keep on forgetting, you're actually often remembering! None of us remember ALL the time because there are a million things to do each day and our posture and 'use' cannot be a focus of our attention all the time. When we realise we've forgotten it's then that we have the opportunity to do something about it. Realising that we've forgotten is when we have remembered and we should use the chance to make a change for the better.
Every time we realise we've forgotten to free our neck before moving or answering the phone or walking, or keeping our weight back over our ankles so we're in better balance or any other such consideration, is when we CAN do something to improve. And every time we think to make a small change for ourselves, we are reinforcing the new way. Bear in mind that the poise we want is a natural poise and we have an instinct for it from birth. It's in us and we don't need to be clever to regain it. Healthy poise is our birthright. And as our body is generally self healing, it will 'love' the chance to return to good healthy poise we enjoyed as young children. Our body only needs half a chance to start to heal. No matter how ingrained our habits are, they are not as fundamentally part of us or intrinsic to our 'being' as our instinct for good poise that we've inherited through the evolution of our species.
So if you keep on forgetting and realise this, don't beat yourself up over it. Be grateful to yourself and congratulate yourself on remembering! Then you can do something about it.
Keep up the good work.
