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Day 4 - Creativity in the "Box" of Habit

1/31/2019

“Your pelvis is a bowl. And it’s filled with the most wondrous liquid of light. Glide that bowl over your legs without spilling a drop.” Try as I might, my “bowl” kept getting stuck over my right hip. Up I would hitch, just slightly, never quite getting that smooth, firm glide. My Tai Chi and Alexander Technique teacher, Rob Gepner-Mueller, walked over to me and put his hands on my hips. “Like this” he said, and something I was gripping magically let go so that my pelvis gently glided across my legs.

Rob was a bit of a peripheral character in my Alexander Training at the Alliance School in Philadelphia. Tall, handsome, an ever-present twinkle in his blue eyes, Rob’s job was to teach us Tai Chi and shake up our habitual thinking. Rob is married to Zoanna, our first year Alexander home group teacher, and the synergy of their long-standing union is a beautiful and shining example of a good and happy marriage. Rob is a carpenter, and watching him fold his tall frame with ease to fit into small spaces, or speak with shorter people, is like watching a graceful giraffe fold itself to the ground. His freedom of movement and easy manner make him a striking figure. We never really know what Rob plans to teach us in his occasional workshop evening, but it’s guaranteed to be interesting, thought provoking and fun.

Consider what Rob was asked to do with us in our first year. Tai Chi, if nothing else, is all about flow. How do you get flow? Practice. But first, you learn and learn until each micro movement becomes habitual. Only after practice can you be in the flow and yet still fully present to the moment – no longer worrying about where to put a hand or foot. This is the very definition of creating habit, and yet, the magic of tai chi is that you can move habitually while still being present to whatever happens.

We studied the Cheng-Man Ching Yang style short form, concentrating on the first third. It’s a lovely form, simple and flowing. By the end of our second year, we all knew it intimately. Back came Rob to teach us again in our third year. What now? What could we possibly discover about this form that we hadn’t already experienced? Here is where Rob’s real genius and mischievous ability to stir up habits turned into a tour-de-force.

We did the form quickly. We did the form slowly. We chanted while doing the form. We imitated animals doing the form. We did the form as a group with our eyes closed, ending at precisely the same moment. Our little school of Tai Chi fishes swam along, day after day, never knowing quite what new way Rob might think of next. It was inspired teaching and a lot like making music together.

When a group of musicians come together, take a well-known piece of music, and then improvise on it together – magic happens. Together, listening, sensing, present in the flow – it’s the experience of community we all seek. It’s our common humanity. It’s unconditional love. Most of all, it’s fun.

Tai Chi with Rob was like that.

Rob’s teachings have stayed with me for many years, constantly encouraging me to be creative within my self-imposed “box” of habitual behavior. No matter the situation, this choice is always possible.

Have you thought about how to improvise over your own habits?
What “boxes” do you create for yourself?
Where is your creativity within your box?

For a short video about Cheng-Man Ching, click here http://taichivideos.org/what-is-tai-chi/

Rob Gepner-Mueller and I playing with Tensegrity.

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Day 3 – Freedom and Choices in Practice Habits

1/30/2019

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The chipped black kitchen timer ticked loudly, mechanically, incessantly from it’s perch on top of the piano. Playing a few desultory notes, I looked up at it balefully. God, I hated that thing. We’d been through a lot together – all the way from “If you don’t finish your dinner by the time that goes off you’ll go to bed hungry!” to… this - the dreaded daily piano practice.

It was clear I was ready to quit piano lessons. At ten, I was already in love with making music and the freedom of it flowing from my fingers. What I hated were these awful stretches of time, staring at the music, trying to figure out how to make it come to life. I looked back at the timer. “It’s a good thing you can’t talk,” I muttered. In response, a disembodied voice floated down the stairs. “Robbin, what are you doing down there?” Startled, I guiltily replied “Nothing Mom, just getting out my next piece.” With that, I reached a furtive hand up and turned the timer back one minute. Ah, blessed relief from torture. And no one would ever know….

I might as well admit here and now that good regular practice habits have never been easy for me as a musician. Getting myself to the piano is half the battle. My husband rushes home from work, and the first thing he does is grab his concertina and start joyfully woodshedding some piece of music. My response, inevitably, is “You’ve got to be kidding.” This may have something to do with working professionally in music for over 30 years. It’s taken a while for the joy of it to return to my life, although that seems to get better every year since I’ve been out of the classroom.

Obviously, I’ve spent countless hours at the piano. For many years, as a student, I practiced 3 hours a day. It took me until adulthood and my journey into Alexander Technique to learn how to practice “smart” instead of “long.”

Those of you who know me as a musician and a teacher know that I’m a theory and analysis geek. So I have spent plenty of time reading and analyzing articles on good practice, and learning techniques that I now pass on to my piano students for efficient, effective practice. I finally understand that sitting for long periods of time making the same mistakes over and over again will never make me a better musician. Instead, I have to make some choices that let me shake up my playing - working transitions, starting a piece at the end instead of the beginning, playing scales down first instead of up – that help me break out of my habitual rut. Thinking through this is actually fun for me. My playing has freed up now that I have set myself free from the same old practice routines, and the idea that I need to be at the piano for a certain length of time each day.

Looking back at that early time, I realize now that there were two problems at play – first, I hadn’t really been taught how to practice, and second, nothing had come along yet that made me want to keep going musically. Happily for me, the second problem resolved itself the following year, when we got a school music teacher who couldn’t play the piano. I started accompanying choirs and fell in love all over again with that challenge. I had to add lots of practice time to keep up with learning those pieces in addition to my own. The positive feedback at school started me down the path to becoming a professional musician.

Years later, my mom and I were talking about that difficult time period. I asked her if she ever knew that I was turning back the timer, or if I’d really gotten away with it. She burst out laughing. “Of course I knew! You were supposed to be down there for 20 minutes, and you were back upstairs in 5. I didn’t know what to do about it, so I called your piano teacher. She said that if I forced you to practice, you’d quit. If I were just patient with you, sooner or later you’d move past this phase and want to keep going. It was really hard for me not to get mad at you, but she was right.” Another childhood illusion shattered!

I share the timer story often with my despairing piano parents. As a teacher, I always know when students hit a plateau – suddenly what was easy is hard, it’s “not fun” anymore, and practicing regularly loses its allure. At this point, forcing kids to practice won’t help. I hope that in their lessons I’m giving my students techniques, choices and practice ideas that will make it fun again for them. There really is nothing like the freedom of music, flowing out of our fingertips.

Do you make choices available to yourself when you hit a plateau?
What habits of a lifetime do you have to see you through the difficult times?

Robbin at the piano with her band, Reelplay.
Photo credit Doug Plummer, all rights reserved.

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Day 2 - Habits that Soothe

1/29/2019

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I grew up in a 1950’s split-level tract house. It had a staircase up and another staircase down in the center of the house, leading to the bedrooms and the “Rec” room respectively. Today we’d call it a Starter House, but I just called it “home.”

My parents were cash poor newlyweds when they bought that house, so they bought the cheapest model (one full bath, 3 bedrooms) and my father elected to finish out the Rec Room – adding a full bath with a shower stall - as well as doing his best with the woefully inadequate closet space in the entire house. My dad ended his career as an electrical engineer and started it as a carpenter’s assistant, so he was well up to the task of finishing his house. In fact, my dad was renowned for how much stuff he could pack into a small space. My closet, in particular, was a work of art. The door opened on the long wall of a small rectangular space, so that the sides of the closet extended behind the wall. Dad installed 2 short bars in one wing of the closet, and one bar for slightly longer clothes in the other wing. Under that were shelves where I kept my constantly rotating collection of art and craft supplies. Way up high, above my reach, were 2 shelves where my mom stashed who-knew-what. By the time I was nine or so, this closet was packed. The hooks on the long back wall were filled with belts and purses. The shoe rack on the door was overstuffed. By the time I was 12, it was a crisis of major proportions when the granny dresses of the day were too long to hang in the closet. Mom and I were assigned the task of cleaning out the closet so Dad could remodel.

Mom and I pulled box after box off the dusty high shelves. (One of them, a large box labeled Intercourse Mall in Pennsylvania, embarrassed the crap out of me. I’m pretty sure Mom had kept that as a joke that I wasn’t supposed to find.) Finally, way in the back was a small box. It was filled with all the sentimental baby things parents keep – an envelope of hair locks, some baby teeth, a shoe, and – oh- ick – what were those disgusting, stuck together yellowed plastic things in that little box? “Oooh…. “ said Mom, with all the love in her voice a parent could muster, “those were your fahvees.”

Now, I knew that “fahvee” was the nickname I’d given my pacifier, but I really couldn’t believe she’d kept these totally disgusting relics. I remembered how attached I’d been to them, though, and I asked Mom if she knew why. She explained that the pediatrician felt it was important for babies to develop self-soothing behaviors, and that a pacifier kept kids from sucking their thumbs and ruining their teeth, so that’s what they did to teach me to comfort myself.

Later on, as an elementary educator and a young parent, I learned that the debate on self-soothing techniques rages on. Everyone agrees it’s important, as long as the babies are not forced, demanded or abandoned to gain this skill. Self-soothing is healthy and productive, and leads to well-adjusted children. Some of my most difficult students were those from orphanages who had been abandoned without early coping skills. The debate arises when the socially acceptable time for the behavior has passed. How and when do we wean children from infant behavior seems to be the biggest area of ongoing discussion, and since babies can’t really tell us themselves, it’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

Now I want to be clear here – this story is not about destructive self-soothing behaviors (like drinking, drugs or smoking) that can lead to addiction. I’m talking about the countless little habits we all have to calm ourselves down – starting with that thumb, or pacifier.

For example, I remember countless car rides in the back seat, watching my mom’s arm resting on the top of the passenger side. She gently rubbed her thumb back and forth across the fabric of the back of the seat. One day I asked her why she did that. Her eyes grew thoughtful, and she said, “I don’t really know. I guess it calms me down.” Years later, I now catch my thumb in the same behavior on the back of the couch when I’m feeling stressed.

Gentle habits that soothe us are important. When they turn into things that we wish we didn’t do (like biting our nails), we often choose to stop them and find something else to do instead. If you’ve ever tried to break a habit like this, you know just how hard that can be.

This is where Alexander Technique can help you learn to be aware of the habits you want to change, and make conscious choices about them. From the small habits to the large ones, remembering to pause, to let go of a behavior, and then choose a different direction are what it’s all about.

What positive self-soothing habits do you notice in yourself? When do you do them? Why?

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Mom, the Fahvee, and Me in the living room of our split level house.

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Day 1 – Habituated Behavior Starts Early

1/28/2019

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It was a cool, crisp fall day in New York. My classmates and I eagerly gathered around our kindergarten teacher, Miss Coleman, in the story corner of our classroom. It was clear she had something really exciting to tell us. With a twinkle in her eye, she held up a carefully crafted shoe picture made out of construction paper. “Does everyone know what this is?” “A shoe!” we cried. “Well, one of the big things we want you to learn in kindergarten is how to tie your shoes. So I’ve made a special shoe like this one for each of you, with your name on it. When you can show me you know how to tie your shoes, we’ll put your shoe picture up on the wall over the alphabet rail. Who already knows how to tie their shoes?” I looked around, embarrassed and crestfallen, as about a third of the class raised their hands proudly. This might be the first thing I’d fail at school. My mom had been trying to teach me, but I really had a hard time with that kind of motor coordination at 5 – I was just five right before school began, making me one of the youngest in the class. I couldn’t get that “cross, loop and under” thing into my fingers. But oh, I wanted that shoe with my name on it.

It took me until February to get it. It was such a big day when Miss Coleman put my shoe up there, near the end of the line of shoes marching around the classroom wall. I was so proud of myself for achieving that goal! I still remember this, more than 50 years later, like it was yesterday.

Flash forward to the end of that school year. We were going out for recess after nap time, and I realized that I had put my shoes on, tied them, and run outside without thinking about it. Wow! My first conscious encounter with habit. And what a good one. Thankfully, I can still habitually tie my shoes today and, I bet you can, too.

I bring this story up because as we launch into thinking about habits, it’s important to remember that not all habits are “bad.” In fact, if you had to remember all the parts of driving your car every day, like you did when you got your learner’s permit, you’d be unable to concentrate on that story on the radio, or make that hands-free phone call. Habituated behavior is how we get through life.

So today, take time to be aware of the habits that you need to get through your day smoothly, and thank those behaviors for showing up.

Can you find one habit (like tying your shoes) that you could focus in on, just for today? Can you take yourself consciously and with full presence and attention through that activity you don’t normally think about doing? What’s that like?

Shoot me a comment and let me know. And see if you can find me in my kindergarten photo!

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Exploring Habits – The Power of Habitual Behavior

1/25/2019

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It’s early in the morning, and I’m standing in front of the bathroom sink. I’m surrounded by the various pills, crèmes, powders and miscellaneous things that sometime in my life I decided were necessary to start my day. I apply the final layer of moisturizer, and I look in the mirror and wonder “Did I use my asthma inhaler yet?”

Most people think of me as an incredibly organized peron. I put up a good front. Really, the only things that keep me on track are obsessive list making, and organizing my drawers and items in a way that I can habitually do things in a row – first, the inhaler, then the vitamins, then the crèmes. Oh, and brushing my teeth. That’s last. So what happens when those things on my daily to-do list become so habitual that I’m not even aware whether or not I’ve done them?

For the month of January, I’ve been participating in the NY Times Mindfulness Challenge. It’s brought me back to thinking about the power of habitual behavior. Why does it matter? Why do we need it to function? How do habits contain and shape us? What happens when we want to change them?

In working on creating some new healthy work habits for myself, I’ve decided to give myself a 21 day writing challenge. Each day I’ll talk a bit about habits and the safety and containment they provide. I’ll give you some tidbits on how the Alexander Technique can help you change them, if you want to. For me, this is going out on a bit of limb. As you know, it’s my habit to to post things no more than once a month or so. Working daily is going to be a challenge.

If you want to read along with me, you’ll have to follow along in one of 3 places:
My Website blog section - https://www.robbinlmarcus.com/blog/ (you're here right now)
My Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/AlexanderTDecatur/

OR, you can sign up to be on a special list to receive these blasts in your email daily.

I’ll leave you with a brief exercise I’ve borrowed from the NY Times Challenge.
Instead of habitually brushing your teeth, try doing it standing on one leg. Then close your eyes, and focus all your attention on the actions of balancing and brushing.
Good luck!

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Robbin Marcus

An occasional post from me, about stuff that interests me.

2025 blog series:
Cleaning Out the Old

2024 blog selections: Resistance

2023 blog series:
Slow Forward

2020 blog series:
1) Processing - Experience, Thought, Action
2) Diving for Light - Shedding light on a dark time

Day 4 - Creativity in the "Box" of Habit

Day 3 – Freedom and Choices in Practice Habits

Day 2 - Habits that Soothe

Day 1 – Habituated Behavior Starts Early

Exploring Habits – The Power of Habitual Behavior

Robbin Marcus

2019 blog series: Exploring the Power of Habit

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2019 blog series:
Exploring the Power of Habit