This is a sentence from Jeremy Chance, a fellow Alexander teacher, and I like it, a lot. It’s real. It’s truthful. It shines a light on the reality of life. By sharing some of my own experiences of being in pain, the bit I’d like to shine the light closer to is the last bit in italics, the bit that I offer you...
“I often remind students: this work will not prevent injury or pain, because life happens. Stress happens. It’s natural. What you are gaining is an effective and reliable method to deal with your stress, pain and injuries that is based on sound principles.”
Maybe people think we say we cure, but surely (and wisely) also think we don’t, yet both those immediately set up quite a lot of wobbly thoughts and feelings... “What if it doesn’t work?”, “What if everyone else can do it, but I can’t?”, “What if she thinks I’m stupid?”, “What if I think she’s stupid?!!” And, you know what?... I feel that too! What if I can’t, what if I’m stupid...! You see, I’m human, life happens to me, too, but I’m a teacher of this work and so I’m never, ever meant to have pain, discomfort, stress, angst, or confusion....am I?! So, over the next day or so, I thought I’d share some of the experiences I have had in 30 years as a teacher, and how this method has been ‘effective and reliable’ for me. This is today’s...
When I’d been qualified as an Alexander teacher only a year or so, I moved my furniture around, and whilst dragging a heavy pine blanket chest from one room to another, the feet of it got caught on the metal strip holding the carpet down in the doorway... That and the chest were inflexible, my back was flexible, and the result was an injury to my lower back. I was stuck, and in great pain. I eased myself down onto the floor to ‘go within and let it be with my reassurance’, rather than panic and tense up massively. (Over the years I have used the lovely TV’s, “Don’t panic. Mr Mannering!” to myself and students many a time!) With simple paracetamol to assist the initial protective spasms to ease, I went on to discover for the first time how intensely connected were my legs to my back; my legs just wouldn’t work properly, and for the next week or so, they collapsed under me when I least expected it. I was intrigued to find that not only could I could not pull on something, but I couldn’t push either; using the jet spray in the manual car-wash being surprising agony... (I also remember the skill of changing channels on the TV with the tip of a wobbly 15 foot bamboo cane from my place on the sofa - the good ol’ days before ‘remote control’!) But I attended to the ongoing releasing of my neck and my back, intending them to lengthen, breathing into my back, and not giving in to the desire to pull down into a panicky ‘I’ve broken’ state. I experimented and found the pain to be no worse, and in fact easier, when walking, standing and lying ‘long’ than when I ‘shrank’ and shortened into the universal ‘my back’s gone’ shape..... (Where is it meant to go, by the way...?!)
I knew from the first lessons I had ever had that giving the body parts space through this intention of openness gave them more blood supply and more room to go back to their ‘default’ arrangement, so, by moving as if all was well, I gave my painful back and body the space, and indeed, all was well within a month. I was fine again, and importantly, not carrying any label suggesting I ‘had a bad back’. I didn’t; it had just suffered briefly at the hands of life. I had received many well-meaning 'assurances' from people that I had 'isms and itis' ' galore, and that I would ‘never again be able to do x, y, and z’, and that I ‘ought to’ and 'should'...., but I simply went on with the Alexander ‘effective and reliable method’ that had relieved me of my neck pain years before, and I came out of this ‘Annie vs The Pine Chest’ situation with a strong, able back, and no labels or restrictions for my future in my mind, and much new and useful information.
Over the years I have had intense ‘golfer’s elbow’, a painful hip/groin, stiff necks from ‘sleeping wrong’, a very sore right foot, a breakdown, and a thunderclap headache from coughing from which I surely would have panicked more than at any other time in my life had I not had this ‘effective and reliable’ tool in my pocket... I’ll share more on all these tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment