Recently a colleague posted a Facebook comment about the idea of describing ‘my happy place’ when I am working. I liked that - a lot - and thank her - a lot. My reply was this: When I am teaching I feel (a) like I'm playing, (b) that my heart is singing, and (c) I am absolutely 'on purpose'. It never feels like 'hard work', even though I am 'working hard'. I am definitely in 'my happy place'.
Yes, when teaching, the world goes away, and yet I am more present than ever. My focus finds a steadiness, intention clarifying in each moment as we go along. I have a sense of trust as we connect through that part of us that ‘gnows’ * - not a head sort of ‘knowing’, but something far more powerful and efficacious - and you connect to that part of you, too. Part of my job is to keep my head out of the way, and that’s probably the hardest work of all! My head thinks it knows, but it can only ever know things that have gone before, and in my teaching we are looking for the new, the way not being used, the way that in its freshness and flow isn’t plagued by pain and stiffness, lack of flow or self-doubt.
I have learned the anatomy and physiology, worked out many ideas and taken on many philosophies, but in the moment with a student, it is important I don’t let any of that crowd the decks and simply ‘move the furniture around on the Titanic’. That just looks like something is happening, but nothing really is. We are after dropping the old way and allowing a new, creative, fresh, appropriate, working, conscious way of being, and none of that resides in the repetition of our past responses to life. If it did, all would be well, we would have no pain, no discomfort, no dissatisfaction with our life, and not be looking for any answers. If we’re looking for something to ‘improve’ (aka, change) about our life, then the old isn’t where to look. The thing is, the old is familiar, ‘the devil we better know’, and anything different feels wrong. Oh the muddles we get into in life just because we interpret ‘different’ as ‘wrong’....!
So, when I work I am aware, awake, alert, open to as many possibilities as I can be in that moment. Open to sense what you, as my student, is doing and present enough to reveal it to you immediately in order for you to see it, sense it, and make a new choice in that moment. I use anything that comes to me - analogy, imagery, anatomy, science, philosophy, psychology, mimicry, acting, three-D models, children’s toys, pen and paper, photos, everyday items, stories, and touch to enable the new to be experienced along with the change in the thinking required to have the method become yours.
If I can keep my ‘proper mind’ out of it - you probably know the one, the one that Has to Be Clever, academic, professorial, successful, confident, in touch with that elusive Rightest Right that ever was Right (!!*) - I can be truly There For You, present to what is, and not bogged down in what I expect, or assuming how things will be regarding your concerns. Then I can serve you. If my head in in charge, it’s become all about me, my stuff, my expectations of you, my assumption of What is Right. But a lesson is all about You. What you bring, how you bring it, how you think, work, see and sense life. For that I need my antennae switched right on high to whatever it takes to assist you to reach the place in which you want to be - pain free, flexible, co-ordinated, confident. In this way my teaching mostly feels like ‘play’ in its creativity and freshness, in it’s communication with you - an utter delight for which I am so, so grateful.
And when something comes, something connects with you and a penny drops, release happens, and the how becomes clear; oh my, my heart leaps - singing its way round the room. There is a ‘rightness’ in that moment that has nothing to do with being ‘right’.....it’s a rightness that comes from the absence of anything at all; just a huge ‘That’s It!’ The absence of ‘wrong’ - of discomfort, of struggle, of confusion, of pushing, of expecting, of trying, of dis-integration, of stuckness.... There’s a light that comes on in your eyes at this point, and that light is one of the most beautiful things to witness on this planet; the light of realisation, of awakening to your own inner strength and power, to your self and your total and beautiful ok-ness. In those moments I often feel I might have to hold back tears of respect, humility, awe, and delight for you... Oh yes, my heart sings so when I teach.
I have learned the anatomy and physiology, worked out many ideas and taken on many philosophies, but in the moment with a student, it is important I don’t let any of that crowd the decks and simply ‘move the furniture around on the Titanic’. That just looks like something is happening, but nothing really is. We are after dropping the old way and allowing a new, creative, fresh, appropriate, working, conscious way of being, and none of that resides in the repetition of our past responses to life. If it did, all would be well, we would have no pain, no discomfort, no dissatisfaction with our life, and not be looking for any answers. If we’re looking for something to ‘improve’ (aka, change) about our life, then the old isn’t where to look. The thing is, the old is familiar, ‘the devil we better know’, and anything different feels wrong. Oh the muddles we get into in life just because we interpret ‘different’ as ‘wrong’....!
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| Alert, poised, awake, ready, open..... |
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| Toys that clarify.... |
And when something comes, something connects with you and a penny drops, release happens, and the how becomes clear; oh my, my heart leaps - singing its way round the room. There is a ‘rightness’ in that moment that has nothing to do with being ‘right’.....it’s a rightness that comes from the absence of anything at all; just a huge ‘That’s It!’ The absence of ‘wrong’ - of discomfort, of struggle, of confusion, of pushing, of expecting, of trying, of dis-integration, of stuckness.... There’s a light that comes on in your eyes at this point, and that light is one of the most beautiful things to witness on this planet; the light of realisation, of awakening to your own inner strength and power, to your self and your total and beautiful ok-ness. In those moments I often feel I might have to hold back tears of respect, humility, awe, and delight for you... Oh yes, my heart sings so when I teach.
And during these moments there is a flow, an unstoppable happening, as if something else is powering them... Something far bigger than me...Something that just ‘gnows’.... And I just ‘gnow’ deeply inside at that moment that I Am On Purpose - I am living my truth, I am doing what I came here to do. No resistance, no doubt, no confusion, no fatigue..... Clarity, delight, energy, stillness, gratitude and love.
In my teaching is My Happy Place - my play, my singing heart, and my purpose. How lucky I am. Together with you my students we discover more and more what it is to be human, to be here on Planet Earth in our earth-suits, to re-member how they work for us so delightfully willingly when we let them, and how we can allow ourselves to allow this with so much more ease and joy.
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| The Joy of Purpose.... |
(*!! - NB, Just in case you wondered, this isn’t where we think it is! You can stop looking now! It’s in the absence of anything - the absence of that which resists our very essence.)
* By ‘gnowing’ I mean that inner surety, ‘gut feeling’, an embodied understanding. Not necessarily any Christian Gnostics who claimed to have superior spiritual knowledge. They did however understand this ‘gnowing’ sense.
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