If you treat your kettle gently, you probably treat yourself with similar kindness. In fact, by handling things with ease, you are being easy with yourself. But if you bang your fist against a tap that isn’t working, whose fist are you banging? Whose kettle are you breaking? Just noticing the light switch for a moment, you are acknowledging yourself, that you are here.

We evolved in interaction with our environment, subject to the laws of physics, gravity for example, and with the textures of the earth and the food it produces, all in relation to the pressure of the air around us. We are beings inseparable from the life around us. Imagine living under the sea, how different we would be shaped, how strange our movements, how alien our breathing. So, when we forget this connection, and try to live inviolably, impervious to the rooms and things around us, we are effectively trying to avoid that relationship between us and all the things that we interact with every day. Perhaps no-one actually “tries” to do this, but it is the inevitable consequence of switching off from the day-to-day life around us.

When we live “in our heads”, daydream, narrow with single-pointed focus to the things that we are doing, rush, or impatiently pay attention only to achieving our goals. When we never look around us, never look up, forget the view, or roughly handle the things around us, we are fighting with ourselves, acting contrary to our nature, as if to deny our present reality by cutting ourselves off, and living that unreal existence that denial involves, literally holding ourselves away from interaction. Of course, there is no getting away, we are still in relation to the world around us, because our state is interaction, it’s just not a very nice relationship, not kind, not helpful to us.

Alexander taught the value of consciously directing ourselves against those harmful habits of which we are unaware. And for me the best directions are those that help bring us back into relationship with our world – yes, a world that includes ourselves – to acknowledge and live in the reality of our interactions.

A simple direction could be to ask yourself “where am I?”, while looking around to acknowledge where you are, the space and things around you. We can use our surroundings to re-establish a benevolent connection with ourselves. When we do, life gets easier, simpler, and more efficient.

In fact, if you practice noticing how you are with the things and people in your life, you will learn a lot about how you are with yourself. So, practice noticing your responses. Notice if you are angry, rough, rushed, or impatient with things or people. This is the essence of living with Alexander: making such experiments of being aware. Just notice how you are and be open to change, without the effort of directly making the change – this for me is Alexander on steroids.

The world is a mirror – it reflects us back at ourselves! If we can just remember to be in relationship, to be open to the conversation of being that life entails, we will live a richer, kinder, more responsive, and happy life.

Bringing our use into focus

Alexander directions help make us more aware of ourselves in our environment, enabling a break in reactions, and offering us a way out of the rut of our habitual way of being.

Directions enable change by bringing our use into focus.

This original idea is that we have some control over the us that we are. Directions make us sentient in a particularly useful way. We are not prisoners to who we think we are but have a practical way to approach ourselves. We can be subject and object of our experiments – not rats blindly treading the same mill because we have always done so.

So just as we can use a pencil well or stupidly, we can use ourselves well or stupidly, and direction gives us the possibility to change both.

The point is to stop and direct! And give it a moment to work.

Living with direction is a great way to monitor and guide our own use according to a blueprint that is more appropriate and constructive for us. This makes us better people, helps us perform better, and we are happier.

The problem with goals and philosophies, resolutions and targets, is that they are not related to how we are using ourselves in this moment, which after all is the only time we can have any effect on ourselves at all. Direction, by contrast, gives us a compass, helping us adjust ourselves constantly … with beneficial results that we very soon discover.

The number of directions is infinite, limited only to our imaginations. Experiment will lead us to those that are most helpful, though these can change over time.

Here are some directions I find consistently useful

• Where am I now?
• A Universal Field of Awareness
• I have time
• Think up!
• Be conversational or relational, in ongoing interaction

How to apply them?

Prior to any possibility for thinking a direction we must pause, giving space and time for the direction to work. Note that these directions are all real, in the sense that they should be remembered and allowed in us in the here and now, just as we can know where home is without looking there. It is no good just saying them without a sense of their meaning. Also, we must think but not do them.

They all have the effect of connecting us to ourselves and ourselves to this moment. They are a reminder that we exist. What a great way to counter end-gaining! And absent-mindedness! And mindless self-harming. And agitation. And negativity, it turns out.

I recently asked a pupil to write briefly what Alexander means to me. She responded by saying that it means:

comfort
connection
relaxed ability to be with people
beauty around me
the world
command of my responses
lovely birds and clouds
acceptance
pleasure
ease
real relationships
loving myself
challenge and growth

I couldn’t put it better myself!

Are those neck muscles actually helping?

Maybe you are running, and find yourself pushing against the clock. Or maybe you are taking strain pushing against the world, work, relationships. Pushing feels uncomfortable, at the very least, and you may be hurting yourself in the process.

Spare a moment to ask “what is the one thing I can do that is loving towards myself right now?” This is an ideal way to pause and check in with yourself, and to step back from unwarranted effort—perhaps in that pause you will find release, even fresh legs. You can apply this to all aspects of your life, anywhere and anytime. It’s a question of self-respect.

Maybe you will find fresh eyes on a problem you are battling with.

Regain the joy of running

© 2020 Barry Kantor

Think about your ego footprint

I recently got new neighbours. They live in the house adjoining mine. I can’t hear them talking unless they are very loud, but I can hear if they knock things over, walk in high heels, play loud music, or reorganise their bookshelf up against our common wall.

The last neighbours, Fabian and his girlfriend, were very quiet; one hardly new if they were home. They moved away without saying goodbye, which is a shame, but the point is I never realised they had gone until I spoke to the movers who were hauling their things onto a removal truck. Fabian had moves “several days ago” they said.

Now I have new neighbours, and I know when they are there, from the time they unlock the door with a grunt, a sigh and a tumble inside. They are especially noisy on the weekends. They park on the pavement, leave their door open while they smoke out in the yard, continue chatting from outside to anyone still inside, and play music that gets louder as the Sunday afternoon wears on. They seem to knock and damage things quite a bit, and generally stomp about.

We speak of “footprint” to describe the impact that our way of life has on the environment; and the difference in my two neighbours led me to think about whether we each have our own individual “ego footprint”. Am I a bull in a china shop, or am I quiet as a mouse? Sometimes, it is true, I can be like the former, and other times I am more quiet, but generally I am somewhere in between, shifting dynamically as to my mood or the occasion – or how much I’ve had to drink.

Consider reducing your ego footprint

We each have our unique ego footprint, which determines the range within which we normally operate. Some people are filled with bombast and others show great humility. Some have little and often no awareness of themselves, while others show care, understanding and restraint, thinking before they do something and sensitive to how they are doing them. They are in touch with what is appropriate to the place and occasion and do not assume that everyone around them wants to know they are there. Some people bump into things, hoot and jump lanes, generally irritating those around them – if not causing actual damage. Others have a softer impact, glide through life announced, and use their energies more effectively.

Not that I want to spoil anyone’s fun. And because I don’t, I aspire to ‘taking up less space’. The Alexander Technique is my route to getting there.

© 2019 Barry Kantor

I overheard the late Marjorie Barlowe, an Alexander teacher who trained many teachers of the Technique, and who happens to have been Alexander’s niece, say to a young guy she was working with on the table, “yes I know we have other things to do in five minutes but let’s remember that in a certain sense we have an infinity of time”. This was back in 1991 and I have often recalled those words when I find a pupil rushing or getting anxious.

Nowadays I often say to my pupils “we have infinite time” and one questioned me today by asking what I mean. So I tried it on my next pupil. But he correcting me by saying: “well, perhaps we can have an experience of infinity”. No doubt he is right, but time is but a construct and we can imagine living without past and future, without a word for “when”, and without being ruled by the might of time.

And it occurs to me that since we can only be alive in the present, only live right now, there really is no such thing as time, and we experience infinity if we stay in the present. And so, in a certain sense, we too are infinite. And in a very practical sense, if we remember this we can relax more, feel more expansive, and enjoy more freedom then if we are governed by the pressure of time.

Now sorry to be difficult, and to honour a Buddhist teacher I once had the great privilege of meeting, named Arnaud Maitland, I am going to be paradoxical and say that without a sense of time we will never get anything done. And indeed, by aligning ourselves in time, as Arnaud taught, we can accomplish a great deal. The trick is to stay in time, with time, but not forgetting that we ourselves are infinite, with infinite time, and that to stay in the present in that sense of infinity can help us be efficient rather than spiral out of control like the Road Runner, or Speedy Gonzales. Then time opens up and we can move more freely, think more creatively, and meet our deadlines with great efficiency.

Life is all about doing, manifesting, creating. Even relaxing on a Sunday afternoon under a tree with good friends, when we are especially able to enjoy the freedom of a sense of the infinite, as if free of time, we are up to something, whether it only be lying down, talking, eating grapes, having a snooze.

We can harness ease by having spacious awareness of where we are. At the same time, we can have an awareness of when we are, with a clear sense of the time we have, no more and no less, yet without being harassed and contracted by rushing. Yes, we can be clear about what we are up to, clear about our intentions to accomplish something or to simply arrive somewhere. And so we can live full and fruitful lives, get to our appointments in time, and do so with easy grace.

© 2018 Barry Kantor

“Wow, look at the size of that tree!” said Brian. “Come on, let’s climb it,” said Julia. It was one of those rare summer days, perfect in every way, when you are with friends in the country, with time to do nothing. And you feel like you are 10 again.

We’d had lunch, toured some wine estates, and were now exploring a public garden, filled with indigenous fynbos, and that one giant Ficus tree. Within moments, Julia had climbed the enormous trunk and was making her way up a side branch. Responsive as usual to Julia’s enthusiasm, I spied a branch that looked just right. It curved off another making a gentle angle, a back-rest against which to lie. I climbed up and settled myself down along the branch, only to find it was anything but comfortable. It had nobbles all over that stuck into my back, the angle of the branches was wrong, it was too narrow. Nothing about the branch was fit for my purpose. And it had looked so wonderful from below.

The others had by now climbed up and were sitting in various spots around the tree, some more precariously than others. I was too lazy to move myself and chatted with the others until we all fell silent. Within about five minutes of having climbed up I found myself falling asleep. I realised with surprise that my branch was in fact after all the most comfortable spot in the world. It fitted me perfectly, was smooth as can be, and the angle was faultless, just like a beach recliner.

How often do we rant against the difficulties of life, the peculiarities of others, the discomforts of our living arrangements?

That tree taught me something so valuable: if you relax and don’t fight against the world, it becomes exactly what you want it to be. We can be amazingly flexible and adaptable but instead find ourselves chafing against the world by tightening, holding ourselves stiff, taking up an attitude, sticking to our opinions, expecting things to be different … all to suit us!

The Alexander Technique teaches us how to be responsive rather than reactive, to allow rather than push. The result is that we become easier, in fact more human, as I did after those few minutes of letting go in that tree.  Normally I would have jumped down in protest, but because of the day, my friends around me, my laziness, I stuck it out and found myself giving in to the shapes of the tree. How easy life can be if we remember this.

© 2018 Barry Kantor