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Diving for Light, Day 20 - Doing Something While Doing Nothing

4/17/2020

If love is truly a verb,
if help is a verb,
if forgiveness is a verb,
if kindness is a verb,
then you can do something about it.
- Betty Eadie

“I’m so tired of doing nothing.” I’ve heard quite a number of people say this over the last few weeks. That’s not been my experience, though. I’m still teaching 10 piano lessons a week, and that feels like something. Add in several hours in the garden on nice days plus cooking 3 meals a day and, to me that seems like plenty. It takes me a couple of hours a day to write these blogs, edit and set them up for publishing. I still have Alexander Technique students online. In fact, I’m having a hard time figuring out where my days are going without the regular structure and rhythm I’ve created for my life. I have the feeling I’ll just about figure out a new structure that I like and then we’ll be headed back out of the house.

I am ready to put the writing down again for a little while. I have said what I feel I have to offer to you around surviving COVID-19. I hope that I have persuaded you that doing some inner work during this quiet time will help us all create a new outer world when it is over. We’re going to need every ounce of positive light, energy, and creativity to rebuild our lives around this virus and move forward. We’re going to experience frequent pauses until a vaccine is created. And that’s good. We can watch the earth recover. We can make a new commitment to taking care of her as well as of ourselves, if we choose to speak up and do so.

Constructive rest on the belly helps to open up the lungs.

By using the tools of Alexander Technique, we can help our bodies stay grounded, focused and open to whatever comes our way. We can allow ourselves to have freedom in our necks and heads that spreads quietly through the entire body. We can free ourselves from the physical collapse that trauma brings.

Alexander Teachers can help doctors and nurses to heal when the crisis is past. We can help recovering COVID-19 patients learn to breathe fully again. Coming back into our body changes everything for the better.

The four key verbs in today’s quote are love, help, forgiveness, and kindness. We’re going to need all of them going forward. Which one is your superpower? Which one are you going to “do something about?” Can you start that now?

I have given you tastes of what the Alexander Technique work is like through the exercises attached to each of these blogs. Today I’ve indexed them by type so you can find them all in one, quick place. Each has a link back to the original blog post where it appears at the end.

Oddly enough, I saw this on the internet after I wrote the blog post yesterday!

If you’re interested in exploring more about the Alexander Technique, I am available for online lessons. The great thing about those is that it doesn’t matter where you live. You don’t have to commute to my office in Atlanta traffic, either. Send me an email and let me know if you’re interested so we can talk about your needs and set something up on Zoom.

If you’ve enjoyed this series, I’d love to hear from you. It’s an odd feeling sending your thoughts out into the ether without knowing what people’s reactions to it are. I greatly appreciate comments on my website, likes on the posts, and those of you who send me personal notes of thanks. And if you disagree with me, it's good to hear that, too.

When there’s something new to add, I’ll write a post. In the meanwhile, enjoy the spring. Above all, be well.

Robbin

Exercise recap:
Now that we are at the end of the series, here’s an index of all the Alexander Technique inspired exercises we covered over the last 20 weekdays. I’ve put them into categories by type of activity, and each one has a hyperlink to the blog where it originally appeared.

Classic Alexander Technique Non-Activities:
Constructive Rest
Free Your Neck
“Do Less”

Awareness
Early Morning Awareness
Staying with your Feelings
Circuit of Support
Finding Ground
Awareness in Activity
Allowing Vulnerability, listen to your heartbeat
The CyCle

Pause (Inhibition):
Practice the Pause
Ball Games

Direction:
Choose Your Response
Think UP!
From Seed to Plant

Grounding
Finding Ground
Constructive Rest
Allowing Vulnerability, listen to your heartbeat

Self-Care
The CyCle
Letter to Yourself
Radical Self Care
“Do Less”
Brushing Your Aura

Emotional Support
Make a gratitude list
Radical Self Care
Brushing Your Aura
From Seed to Plant
Staying with your Feelings
Letter to Yourself

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The Power of Grief and Gratitude

4/16/2020

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Grief and gratitude are kindred souls,
each pointing to the beauty
of what is transient and given to us by grace. - Patricia Campbell Carlson

My mother died when I was 25, plunging me into profound grief. I was not ready to receive that kind of blow, even though I’d had several years while she suffered through ovarian cancer to get ready. I had no idea what the severing of that primary connection was going to feel like, or how much it was going to affect me for the rest of my life. The sadness is always there, but it has changed over the decades from unbearable grief to something different, something gentler and wistful for time missed together. The lessons learned from this loss, the eventual shift from grief to gratitude, have changed my life in ways I would never have expected. I learned at a very early age to treasure each day as if it were my last on earth. It took me years, but I also learned to listen to people as if each conversation with them were the last. To treat those I love with kindness and a from place of abundance whenever possible. These are the greatest lessons my mother taught me, learned more completely in her absence than in her presence.

There were several books that profoundly shaped me in the early years after my mother’s death, all having to do with the power of myth and story. First, I read Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I followed that quickly with Iron John by Robert Bly. These two books are parallel twins for women and men, analyzing the power of the fundamental journey “into the woods” of crisis and then back, changed, to everyday living. These led me to Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth and the work of Carl Jung for further understanding of the power of archetypal myth in our psyches. I deeply believe that these stories, even the fairy stories we read as children, have power to help us process the events and crises of living. They resonate so deeply in our collective soul that they have rested there for hundreds of years. The books I read helped me heal and to recognize that we go back into the wilderness over and over in our lifetime, sometimes alone, sometimes as a culture.

At rest in the dark woods. Illustration, Kay Neilson. Image courtesy of Brainpickings, Maria Popova.

Right now, our collective fears and grief feel overwhelming. We are being led to face our shadows as both individuals and a culture. We must learn to grieve together for our pain and for the pain of the planet. There is no way out of this path other than to go through the wilderness it opens for us. We find ourselves in the middle of the woods, without a clear path to get out. We are living in the middle of a classic hero’s tale.

How will we get out of the woods?
What magic will we take back with us upon our return?
What lessons will we learn?

I cannot say, but I know that even in the middle of the woods, we can start finding our way out by practicing gratitude. We can be thankful for our homes, for food, for our loved ones. When we get out, we will all have so much gratitude for fresh air, for hugging, for dinner at a crowded restaurant. If we start being intentional about gratitude right now, making it a practice in our lives, we’ll be ready to see it in the every day. We’ll be less likely to go back to sleep. We won’t take things for granted.

Right now, start by being grateful for your lungs. How many breaths have you taken over your lifetime? Have you thanked your lungs today?

If you’re interested in making gratitude part of your daily practice, I’d point you in the direction of Brother David Steindl-Rast’s work at gratefulness.org. To quote from David Steindl-Rast’s TED Talk: “If you’re grateful, you’re not fearful. If you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you are not fearful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity. You’re willing to share.”

Gratitude tempers grief into something positive and useful. Gratitude allows us to see beauty despite fear. Gratitude opens our hearts to grace.

Exercise to Try
Gratitude List

What are you grateful for today?

Make a list of at least 10 things you find yourself grateful for right now.
Read your list aloud, slowly, pausing after each item.
Take in the gratefulness you feel before moving on to the next.

When you finish, look around and see the world you’re living in.
Allow yourself to feel surrounded by grace.

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Diving for Light, Day 18 - Accepting Gladness

4/15/2020

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We must risk delight...
We must have the stubbornness
to accept gladness
in the ruthless furnace of this world…
We must admit that there will be music
despite everything.
- Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense.”

The other day I found myself laughing uproariously over some absurd thing that was going on in the news. That’s not unusual for me. My reaction, however, was. A month into shelter-in-place orders, with so many people fighting for their lives, I felt a little guilty for finding something funny. Is it still ok to laugh at the world? For that matter, is it still ok to enjoy the pleasures of life - food, sex, the beauty of spring outdoors?

Is there anything more comforting than chicken soup?

Resoundingly, “yes.”

There are certain fundamental things that make us human, that keep us going, that provide joy and gladness even in the darkest of times. Everyone has the right to be delighted. All is right with our souls, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, when these elements are present.

Music is one of the most important of these. I say this not because I am a musician, but because it is simply true. There are so many historical examples of the power of the music keeping us human in the darkest of times. I think back to Christmas in the Trenches in WW1, where German and English soldiers put down their guns on Christmas Eve to sing together across enemy lines, and then to celebrate Christmas together before resuming the horrors of trench war. I think of the beautiful music and compositions that came out of the Nazi death camps from condemned Jewish composers. And just recently, so many musicians from every kind of musical genre have come into our homes virtually live - providing a balm for our souls in troubled times yet again. Music speaks where words cannot.

I’m noticing this every day in the teaching of piano lessons to my students online. The connection that we have as humans - adult to child, adult to adult, teacher to student, teacher to parent, even, is amplified by the music making. I can tell, simply by watching my student’s body language, that they feel better at the end of their lessons. It’s interesting to see them arrive all wiggly at the bench, then physically calm as the lesson progresses.

Much has been written lately, in far better words than I can provide, about allowing ourselves to grieve, to love, to laugh, to experience life in all its dimensions even while looking death clearly in the face. We must let go of guilt around wanting to be human. Offer thanks for being alive. Send your love out into the world. If you can, make music. But above all, live every day as a fully human being.

Exercise to Try:
Brushing your Aura

This exercise is about waking up your felt sense, or, in other words, about experiencing yourself as a unified being, mind and body.

Standing, shake out your body from head to toe.
Using a cupped or flat hand, pat yourself all over - front, back, arms, legs, head, feet.
Massage a bit where you know your muscles get tight.
Feel your feet on the floor and notice the sensations in your body.
Now, from the ground up, take both your hands and “fluff up your aura” - bring your hands up through the air a few inches away from your body as if you were fluffing up your hair. Work up your body, front and back, legs and arms, until you get to your head.
Do the same thing on the way down, “brushing” any tension you find into the ground.
Stand quietly and notice how you feel.

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Diving for Light, Day 17 - Cycles of Life

4/14/2020

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Nothing beautiful in the end comes without a measure of some pain, some frustration, some suffering. This is the nature of things. This is how our universe has been made up.
- Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy

In addition to all the medical craziness going on right now, on Easter Sunday night in the Southern US we were treated to severe thunderstorms and the threat of tornadoes. It’s Passover week, and seriously, what’s next? Frogs? Locusts? Fortunately, at my house we were spared the worst. We had some heavy winds and a good soaking rain, and periodic loud thunder overnight. An hour or so northwest of here, the Chattanooga area was not so lucky. My heart goes out to the people who lost their homes, businesses or loved ones, especially in a time of social distancing.

Staff Photo by Robin Rudd, Chattanooga Times Free Press / The Chattanooga area was hit by severe storms on at the night of April 12, 2020.

There is so much pain and suffering all around us. So much loss. I count my blessings every day that I am here, that I am well, that I have Dave by my side. What’s interesting to me is the sheer amount of time I have to really feel all the feelings as tragedy unspools around me. Normally, I’m preoccupied. A crisis happens somewhere in Africa, or COVID-19 begins in Wuhan, and I think “Oh, that’s awful. Those poor people.” Then I continue on my daily business without stopping to process, really feel what is happening. It’s “over there.” Now, it’s a whole new world. I can't hide in my work. I have time to think about what COVID-19 is like and how it’s affecting people, some of whom I know and love, right here. There are so many places I want to be, so many people I want to support in person. I can’t do any of that. All I can do is pray, send love and light, pick up the phone occasionally.

Sitting with the sadness is something I talk about a lot to my Alexander students. Allowing ourselves to feel sad, to have compassion for ourselves and to acknowledge all our feelings is very important in self-healing. I’ve learned to be pretty good at it on a personal crisis basis. Sitting with the tragedy of the entire world, however, is something new. Something overwhelming.

It helps me to think about this pain, suffering and loss as part of the greater cycle of life. Time and time again, tragedy leads to new awakening, to a greater appreciation of beauty. All around us, spring is happening. It’s no accident that Easter coincides with the resurrection of the earth each year.

The spring season may be the single event that is keeping me uplifted, a place to find joy in the madness. The rains that soaked the earth last night worked their magic on my garden. I looked out the window as the sun came up this morning, and I swear that my plants are twice the size they were when I went to bed last night. The birds are singing joyfully at the idea of being alive in the spring. We have survived the latest storm. Today, right now, that’s enough.

Blue Eyed Grass in my garden, along the path. Photo credit, Robbin Marcus

Exercise to try:
Staying with your feelings

Set up: Find a comfortable chair to sit in where you can place your feet in contact with the floor, sit in meditation pose if that’s comfortable for you, or lie on the floor in constructive rest position. You want to be in a place where you feel grounded, at ease, and where your body is able to rest comfortably for 15-20 minutes.

Breathe in and out, noticing your breath. Don’t change it, just notice it. Notice your heartbeat. Feel your physical connection with the ground. Allow yourself to become physically present to yourself.

Tune into your feelings. What is going on now? Notice any sadness, frustration, anger or pain that may arise. Don’t do anything to change them, just witness your feelings. Thank your inner judge for showing up, and then tell him/her that you don’t need them right now. Sit with your feelings without judgement. Have compassion for yourself as you would for a dear friend. Stay with yourself, mind and body, until you feel the sense of urgency around these feelings diminish. Send them love. Give yourself a hug.

Slowly, when you are ready, open your eyes and return to the outer world. Take your feelings with you - it’s alright.

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Diving for Light, Day 16 - Collective Vulnerability

4/13/2020

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Let go or be dragged. - Zen proverb

I read a story on Friday from the LA Times about the US spread of coronavirus from our coasts into the interior states. Even after weeks of knowing what is coming to them and hearing reports from New York and Seattle, people in Ohio and the legislature in Kansas are angrily protesting against government restrictions on non-essential businesses and church gatherings. I find this fascinating as it would never be my choice to react with anger against medical advice in a pandemic. When I read articles like this, I feel a deep sense of disbelief and my own anger arises in reaction. If, however, I pause and look with compassion towards these people I can see that above all they are deeply afraid.

All of us are afraid. There’s no denying our national, in fact worldwide, state of fear. Fear of death, fear of this unknown virus and how it might affect us individually. Fear of transmission to and from our pets. Fear of going to the grocery store. Fear of eating fresh vegetables and fruit. Fear is everywhere.

Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash

Our responses to fear as humans vary greatly. On a continuum, I perceive it going from vulnerability on one end to righteous and scary anger on the other. The anger side of this continuum is what we see demonstrated in these internal states, where people have been told to downplay the effects of the virus for several months. Now, the truth and the moment of reckoning are here. That would be a big shift for many who were deluding themselves as to the seriousness of this pandemic. When the bottom is pulled out and our government wants to control us, we may become even more afraid. The response these folks have chosen to protect themselves is anger.

What would it be like to choose vulnerability instead? Vulnerability brings honesty, and awkwardness because we freely admit we don’t know what to do in a situation. Vulnerability allows us to experience grief. The other day when I wrote about losing my high school teacher to this illness, I allowed you (and myself) to see my own vulnerability. It wasn’t easy to put that out into the world in writing. I gave myself permission to cry, to feel sad, to do nothing the rest of the day. Vulnerability is a generous gift we can give ourselves.

Sooner or later, we’re all going to have to make a choice to recognize that this virus is here, that it will touch each and every one of us in some way, that life will never be exactly the same. We’re going to have to let go of the idea of “normal.” Some of us will have to be dragged into letting go of self-protection. I think Brene Brown says it best:

Exercise to try:
Allowing Vulnerability
There is little that allows us to be more vulnerable than listening to our own heartbeat. Our heartbeat and our breath are life itself pulsing through our bodies. We don’t “do” anything to breathe, or to help our hearts beat. They simply continue within us until we are no longer alive.

Listening to your heartbeat is a deceptively simple exercise that comes from Kyogen, a classical form of theater in Japan. The Kyogen master, Kaoru Matsumoto, taught this to Philip Shepherd. The exercise is paraphrased from Shepherd’s book, New Self, New World.

Lie on your back in and relax until you can hear or feel your heartbeat. Count up to sixty heartbeats, and then gently sit up.

How long did it take before you could hear or feel your heartbeat?
What did you have to give up to allow yourself pay attention to only your heart?

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Diving for Light, Day 15 - Creative Solitude

4/10/2020

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One of the secrets of happiness is having a host of activities that we can enjoy when we are alone…
When we use our skills for self-nourishment and to foster deeper connections with people…loneliness transforms into solitude.
- Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North

I’ve been a crafter of one kind or another as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I was always making something - from potholders on a little metal loom to yarn art, knitting, crocheting, needlepoint and even petit point. My mother was my example - when her day was done, her hands were always busy. She was an expert knitter and I still have and use some of her sweaters and blankets.

This skirt I'm wearing in this photo was one of the last things my mother made for me.

My mother also sewed, a lot - both practical things for the house like curtains and placemats, but also dressmaker-level apparel for all of us. Her favorite saying was “There’s a difference between homemade and handmade.” If my mother made it, it was handmade. I learned a lot about sewing from her, mostly by osmosis, as it didn’t interest me very much while she was still living.

After my mom’s death, sewing became one of the ways I felt most in contact with her, and I learned just how much I had absorbed from watching her all those years.

I sewed a lot, especially when my daughter was young and I could make her clothes. My mother’s wonderful machine, so much better than mine, made sewing easier and faster. I could still smell my mother’s scent in her fabric boxes. As I worked, I heard my mother’s voice inside my head, guiding my next steps and giving me the shortcuts she’d worked for years to learn.

My machine is mostly idle now unless I’m sewing for the house - I haven’t really made the time to sew for myself for a very long time. I’m excited to pull out all those dress patterns I cut out and never put together. I also brought home some beautiful cottons and silk blends from India that I want to put to good use. Voila! There is time. Lots of time.

Like many people all over the US, I started back into it this week by making masks for my extended family. It’s been a real treat to see all the beautiful variety of cloth that people are sewing so generously for others on social media. I know there are a lot of frustrated first-time sewers out there, but I’d encourage you to stick with it. It’s very self-nourishing to produce something tangibly beautiful, and then to share that with others. I hope we see the start of a home-sewing revival.

Whatever your method of creative expression, take the time now to nourish yourself by doing it.

Modeling my latest creation

If it produces a tangible result you can share with others, do that. Be the light for someone else today. It can make your own solitude much less lonely.

Exercise to Try
Awareness in Activity
Working on a craft, playing music, even working on a computer or your phone can be a powerful stimulus. We find ourselves drawn to what we are immersed in - both mentally and physically. Our heads go down to meet our work. Later, we discover we have a stiff neck, sore shoulders, or eye strain, and we wonder why.

In Alexander Technique, we learn to bring our awareness to our work by observing in the moment what we are doing. For an example - I’m sewing my face masks. My machine runs out of thread, and I have to rethread my needle. I have a couple of choices here:

I can scrunch my face down as close as I can get to the needle and still have room for my fingers to put the thread through, tightening my neck and my back in the process.
I can remain upright and allow myself to see the needle without going towards it. I envision the thread going easily into the needle as I see the whole space around where I am working with my hands. It threads quickly and easily.
I can do what my mother did and use a magnifying glass to see the needle more clearly from a distance, then follow choice 2.

Whatever my choice, if I allow myself to become aware of it, I can either change it or do it differently in order to do it with ease and grace.

When you are doing your favorite activity this week, take some time to pause and be aware of how you’re doing what you’re doing. See what happens.

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Diving for Light, Day 14 - Hope on a Dark Day

4/9/2020

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Hope where we had ceased to hope.
Hope amidst what threatens hope.
Hope with those who feed our hope.
Hope beyond what we had hoped.
- Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace

I promised to stay positive in writing this blog, but this morning that’s harder than usual.

Today is a particularly difficult morning. I’ve just received the news that one of my beloved high school mentors, a teacher everyone adored, a towering presence in his community, has died of COVID-19. In addition, the amazing singer/songwriter John Prine lost his battle with the virus. In my musical circles we all feel like we knew him personally.

I have one friend in hospital, one headed to rehab, and three others who are toughing out the virus at home. It’s cloudy and threatening rain, which helps my mood not one bit. I have a headache thanks to the barometric change.

In short, I’m sad, I feel awful, I want this to be over, I want all my friends and loved ones to stay healthy and/or make it through this thing. Digging deeper, I want to make it through this pandemic. As an asthmatic, I fear catching the virus and not making it through to the other side. There are simply no guarantees for any of us.

What I do have, even in this darkest of times, is hope. I do have 2 other friends who are well on their way in recovery, with negative COVID test results at this point. This is wonderful news, especially for one with already compromised lung health who was very close to death a week ago. Doctors and nurses are working around the clock to help people like this friend. I am so grateful. I have hope that scientists working on vaccines will create one - the sooner the better.

I have hope that the world post-COVID-19 will not be the world we were in pre-COVID-19.
I have hope that we’ll recognize the value of slowing down, that we’ll want to continue to spend more time with our loved ones, that we’ll appreciate the clean air the earth has provided for us when we don’t pollute it. I have hope that we’ll be more welcoming to one another, that we can move forward out of nationalism using this different kind of “war” we’re experiencing to bring us all together.

I wanted to write this blog series as a positive way of expressing hope in a dark time. I want to reach out and “hope with those who feed our hope.” I want to be one of those people for anyone reading this. I can’t be in integrity with myself as a writer or a human, however, if I don’t share with you that bad days happen to me. I hope my honesty helps you to understand me a bit better.

Exercise to Try
“Do Less”
The phrase “do less” comes from my dear friend and superb Alexander teacher Anne Waxman. The idea for the exercise comes from my teacher Bruce Fertman.

On days where it seems like everything is an effort, it’s a good time to remind ourselves to “do less.”
Today I invite you to take a careful look at each of the common activities you do around the house. Things like brushing your teeth, or chopping vegetables, or writing - anything you do where you are holding a tool in your hand.
How much effort does is really take to hold that tool? Are you gripping your toothbrush for dear life? Can you “do less” and still get the job done without dropping the tool?
Play with this idea each time you pick up a tool today. Make it easier on your hands and yourself. See what that’s like.
Let me know what you find out!

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Diving for Light, Day 13 - Relationship in Isolation

4/8/2020

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Wellness is found not in isolation but in relationship. - Phillip Newell, A New Harmony

I’ve been home, sheltering in place, for just over four weeks. I began early, deciding to self-quarantine after returning from a large music teacher’s conference in Portland, Oregon the first weekend in March. Being less than 100 miles from Seattle, the hotbed of Coronavirus at that time, and having spent several days with six-hundred other music teachers and children, it seemed the prudent thing to do. By the time my fourteen days were over, we were all staying home.

The weekend before I started this blog series, I began collecting quotes to use as themes for my posts. I found this one particularly challenging, so I decided it needed to be included. Today, almost two weeks in, is the day to write a blog about it.

At this point I feel like I’ve had some experience with being away from dear friends and family, and I miss my life. I’m grateful for the resources that give me a garden to go out in. I’m very thankful for being here with my husband. I watch out and worry for friends who are home by themselves. It’s clear both mental and physical wellness could be adversely affected by living all alone, cooped up inside, with no one to touch or see face-to-face in reality.

Photo by 胡卓亨 on Unsplash

The size of the boat we’re sailing through this experience matters. I am well aware that any of my current problems belong squarely in the privileged first world. If I couldn’t pay my monthly rent or have enough money to buy food or be worried that I wouldn’t have a job to go back to, my stress level would be far higher. I’ve lived in serious financial stress before and I can’t imagine how that would be coupled with the pandemic. I can’t pretend to know that experience. I do know, though, that there is a strong correlation between levels of repeated stress, isolation, and mental and physical wellness.

Whatever our circumstance, the tools of Alexander Technique can be very useful in combating the stress of isolation, the depression of listening to the daily reports on COVID-19. Like it or not, our bodies react physically to bad news and stress. We “pull down” - our heads sink forward, our torsos collapse a little, it becomes harder to breathe, and we set up a circle of non-support that makes how we feel even worse. Using the ideas of letting go of tension in the neck so that our heads can float up on top of our spines releases the entire body from this pattern. We can breathe again. Suddenly we are reconnected to our bodies, we become our full selves. Mind, body and spirit unite to help us stay present in the face of adversity.

We can make choices about how we react to stress, both mentally and physically. We can discover that we are in solitude with ourselves, rather than in isolation. Developing a relationship with one’s whole self is conducive to wellness. And ultimately, remaining well is what all this staying home alone is all about. Might as well start making friends with ourselves.

Robbin giving hands on in a group session

Exercise to try:
Free Your Neck
FM Alexander said, “Allow your neck to be free, to let the head go forward and up.”
This experience, under a teacher’s hands, is why most people come to Alexander Technique lessons. Alexander himself said that if words alone had sufficed to explain this experience, he never would have started teaching with his hands. What I can give you here is a taste of what this might be like. It can be done online, it’s much harder in writing.

Let your neck be free:  Sit in a comfortable, upright chair. Touch your neck and sense any tension you feel in the muscles that surround it, then put your hands in your lap. Take a breath. Think about releasing tension in your neck muscles, then let that go on the exhale. Do this several times, allowing tension to flow through you down into the floor on each exhale. Breathe in support and freedom on the inhale. Use your hands to check your neck muscles. Is there more freedom than you had a minute ago? If not, keep breathing and asking for release. Don’t “do” anything to make this happen, just think and allow.

To let the head go forward and up:  This one is harder to explain. What Alexander is asking us to do is to allow our head to rest gently on top of our spines, like one of those bobble-head dolls. If my neck is free, my head can gently return to neutral, and that lovely feeling of freedom allows my head to move easily in all directions on top of the atlas, the highest vertebrae of the spine. Thinking up through the crown of the head and then gently exploring the movement of the head on top of the spine can help you find this place of neutral, of freedom.

When you find it, get up and take a walk. Move your head around - don’t try to hold it in one place. Take your new-found freedom out into your space. See the art on your walls, as if for the first time. Look out the window. Walk some more.

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Diving for Light, Day 12 - Controlling the Uncontrollable

4/7/2020

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You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them. -Atul Gawande, Being Mortal

I spent much of my younger adult life thinking I could control many things - myself, other people, my job. I believed that if I tried hard enough, I could single-handedly fix everything and everyone. If what I wanted was obviously the right thing, why couldn’t others just see that for themselves?

A long trip down the road of life later, I have finally learned that I can’t really control anything. Yup, nothing. Not what happens to me and, definitely not other people in any way, shape or form. I can put suggestions out there into the Universe, but I can’t fix anyone. I can work towards a goal, but nine times out of ten that goal is not going to look like what I thought it would when I started. All I can control is my own behavior in response to a situation.

Being an Alexander Technique teacher has made me a student of human nature, as well as human physicality. It’s been really interested to watch people’s control responses (including my own) to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first one, as we are all acutely aware, was the great toilet paper run. The 1920s stock market crash caused a run on the banks, COVID-19 cleared the shelves of TP at the supermarket. Social Distancing rules have been varied in success throughout the US. Now, wearing masks (or not) is entering the picture. People’s responses to attempted government control are fascinating. I’ve been observing my own reaction to people not following rules that I believe are “right.” I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t control or fix other people, no matter how much I may want to convince them to do their part to flatten the curve.

The paths around the vegetable garden. Photo credit, Robbin Marcus

Dave and I are a fairly aware couple; we already know that trying to control each other is a bad idea. When that happens, someone is really hurting. The empathic response is to ask questions and find out why. We’ve both been acutely aware of being present to each other’s needs so we don’t kill one another in 24-hour confinement. Thankfully, we are finding the need to control can be positively expressed in creativity.

Dave has been building paths out in our wooded lot. This started last year with building steps down a steep hillside behind my vegetable garden, and then continued with re-outlining some existing paths down in the woods with some newly downed trees and branches.

This spring it has turned into a full-fledged pandemic project, involving removing a half-acre of vinca, regrading an oval area, turning that into a new woodland garden, adding landscaping fabric, pine straw, etc. I know this has given Dave a sense of control over our property, and more importantly, it provides us both with beauty and something to do.

Dave's new woodland garden and paths. Photo credit, Robbin Marcus

When I feel the need for comfort and control, I bake. I love the measuring of ingredients, making sure it’s just so, being in control of everything I can up until the final outcome in the oven. The comfort of eating something fresh-baked can’t be beat. It takes me back to my mother’s kitchen in NY. I feel loved. The only problem with this is when I’m baking for only 2 people, one of whom has just successfully lost over 40 pounds. This is not productive, so I try to find other ways to express my creativity. I’m gardening. I’m sewing masks.

We are all trying to muddle through this mess. Just like the mud down in the woods, it’s thick, we can’t see through it, and we don’t know what’s under there yet. No one can fix this.

All we can do is stay at home, follow the rules as best we can, and remember that we love each other.

Exercise to try:
Ball Games
(This exercise is best done with another person, but if you are living alone right now, you can toss the ball in the air and then follow the directions.)

Find a soft, lightweight ball or soft object that fits in your hand. A dog toy or a beanbag will do if you can’t find a tennis ball. Use your creativity!

With a partner (if possible,) play catch for a bit. Notice your response to the ball coming towards you. Do you tense up? Do you find yourself reaching for the ball? Are you only seeing the ball and nothing else?

Now, make a conscious decision not to catch the ball. Just let it land on the ground as it goes past your hand. How easy or hard is that for you? Let go of the need to catch the ball. See it go by you.

Imagine that the ball is a situation you can’t control. You don’t have to catch it. Just let it go.
Then, imagine that the ball IS something you can manage. On this toss, bring your hand up, and let the ball land in your hand. How is that different from your original catch?

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Diving for Light, Day 11 - An Awareness of Death

4/6/2020

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We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us to discover what matters most.
-Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations

I live with an abundance of squirrels. A group of squirrels is actually called a ‘scurry.’ Kind of perfect, really. My neighborhood scurry is an abundance and an occasional nuisance.

Each day I sit and watch them out the windows, whether I want to or not. In fact, one just leapt from an impossibly small branch to an even smaller one, at least 30 feet off the ground, outside my office window. How do they do it? How do they manage to move so gracefully, these tree rats? How do they not end up dead a lot more often? How do they outsmart every bird feeder we’ve ever owned?

This little guy likes sitting on the birdhouse. Photo credit, Dave Marcus

Living in the woods, I have ample opportunity to observe all kinds of wildlife. The birds bring beauty, the squirrels bring comedy, the coyotes bring tragedy. The vultures are God’s cleaning crew. All of these creatures work in synergy together to keep the ecosystem balanced. It’s me, with my trash cans and my compost pile and my bird feeders that upsets the system and brings potential disharmony. The sheer number of squirrel nests around my yard, where there is always a source of bird food, attests to that. Apparently, the squirrel condo association likes the amenities here.

Yesterday, at the end of a long day of online piano teaching in the windowless basement, I felt a strong need to go out and be in the yard. I walked around and admired the garden. I checked on the seedlings that might need water, and finally, I walked up to the deck to sit amongst the trees. Something in the corner of the deck caught my eye. Something I couldn’t place in my familiar environment. It was dark red, and very small, and - oh no, was that a tiny placenta? What I’d found was a wizened, aborted squirrel. It looked like mama had given birth and then pushed it out of the nest before cleaning it up, where it landed on my deck. I didn’t really know what to do, other than leave it there for the ants, flies and buzzards to find today. Maybe the owl found it last night.

The truth is, death is everywhere. Without death, there is no life. There’s no garden, no humus in the woods, without death. No seeds. No room for new squirrels in the condos. We as humans have so sanitized death - so pushed it out of our lives, that it terrifies us. We are about to come face to face with death in a very large, very obvious, very important way. Like it or not, it’s wake-up time, and we’ll need all the skills we can muster to be with that. We’re mighty out of practice.

I sat on the deck yesterday, a few yards from the unfortunate baby squirrel, and thought about this for a while. The sun was moving lower in the sky. I looked up, and the beauty of the golden sun on the brand-new leaves at the tops of the highest trees made me catch my breath. I watched until the sun disappeared, awed.

Photo credit, Robbin Marcus

Exercise to try:
Think UP! (adapted from the work of Alexander Teacher Peter Nobes)

Go outside and find a place where you can see the sky, and some distance in at least one direction.
Notice how you are in your body, but don’t try to change it. (Are you slumpy? Are you trying hard to stand up straight? Don’t know? Check in and see.)
If you’re trying hard, let go of that.
Notice you have both a front and a back, and also sides.
Now, look around you. Notice the sky, the trees or tall buildings. Consider that you could allow yourself to float effortlessly up to meet them.
Take a breath and “think up”.
Now, notice distance all around you.
Take another breath and “think big”, allowing yourself to widen into the space in all directions.
Take your expanded self for a walk.

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Robbin Marcus

A new 21 weekday blog series on Slow Forward - gentleness with myself - will begin on Monday, February 5, 2023
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An occasional post from me, about stuff that interests me.

2023 blog series:
Slow Forward

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

Robbin Marcus

2019 blog series: Exploring the Power of Habit

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2019 blog series:
Exploring the Power of Habit