Today I was pondering the name of this blogspot - Self-kindness - and how it relates to my teaching of the Alexander Technique. I had a new student this morning and was again gratefully reminded of the power and depth of our work; this was a delightful lady who came in with arguably the longest list yet of “I can’t”s, and “They say I will never again”s. And yet she skipped out with a smile from ear to ear saying, “Look! I can!”, and “I can’t believe it; it straightens!”, and “Look what I just did!” as she put her coat on and went to her car. And the reason, I believe, was not so much the hour of work from both ‘hands and voice’, but from the hour of inviting her to enter into self-kindness, even though I never used those words. It wasn’t that she was being self-brutal (common enough on this planet), but that she dropped the ‘instructions and beliefs’ of the things she had been hearing for 7 years and allowed her body To Be Just As It Is Right Now. To be present in those places of pain and restriction with no expectation, no judgement, no comparisons. And delightfully she herself noticed and welcomed the unexpected softenings and releases that ‘just happened’.
I remember the ‘success’ of my early days’ lessons in 1980, but I remember, with a great deal more depth and joy, the ‘success’ that came about when I simply met my body - and later my whole self - just where it was right then and didn’t judge it any more. And by that I also mean not even saying ‘Thank goodness I now do that right’, or ‘At last I have stopped doing this or that when I move’ ; that too is a judgement, perhaps even a secret pleasure at having ‘beaten into submission’ that un-liked part of ourselves. But that is the same as the glorious part of ourselves that just knows (gnows) and can function beautifully when we get out of its way - when I get out of my own way. (Yes, what is the ‘I’ ? But that’s for another time!) The first, early days’ ‘success’ in my lessons was probably 100% the suppression method - my interpretation of the AT. My later discoveries carried ever growing amounts of self-kindness - the saying “What we resist, persists” finally experienced consciously. Only when I allowed the shortenings, the pull-downs, the tightenings, and narrowings to be there, did they truly soften and melt away. (And I didn’t even use the word ‘success’ in the later example!)
What an exciting thing it is to invite a student to look for, see, and accept with inner kindness, those previously dreaded things in themselves, and to sense the results of those ‘softenings’. Despite our being a psycho-physical unity, I believe it is worth seeing how our bodies are so kind to us, so willing to ‘be our earth suits’, ever loving and trusting in their ‘inhabitants’ - like a loving parent that just knows their child is wonderful and capable and watches for the moments that they ‘show up and shine’.
Pushing causes rebelliousness. Demanding causes resistance. Pulling causes stubbornness. Pressure causes doubt. Invitation creates possibility. Acceptance creates ease. Trust creates confidence. Companionship creates self-belief. Working from only ‘where we/they are at’ creates the possibility for self-kindness, and, as you know, I am all for that. My question to myself in teaching? Is this action, or this word, creating or causing? Is even my 'direction' creating or causing? If they're not the former, it’s time for a pause...
