I thought I would write up a bilan after a month worth’s of training. I can never remember the English translation for un bilan so I had to look it up: appraisal, assessment, results, balance sheet are some of the equivalent words.
Emotionality…that is what’s happening. I’ve restarted Alexander Technique teacher training only a little over a month ago, and it feels so intense this time around. “Why?” I keep asking myself. Fourteen to fifteen hours of Alexander Technique per week. Okay. That’s a significant amount of time. And with this current training I feel that I am changing so rapidly both physically and mentally, I can hardly keep up with the changes. If I’m feeling physically so much better why am I feeling so out of control in the emotions department? Hmmm…because my body is being rearranged and body and mind are one? Because we hold our emotions in our physical selves as well as in our mental selves and rearrangement is going on in the entirety? Because I’m learning new ways of being…creating new habits? Because as I lengthen and widen my back and un-grip my shoulders is it that I’m becoming less and less defensive?
I place the mat in front of the heater to insure that I have a toasty/comfy lie down!
Well, whatever it is, it is certainly powerful stuff. I feel like I hardly know myself. My thoughts and my actions are foreign to me. I find that I have a funny dichotomy going on right now…I wish not to self-edit anymore and this throws me into a tizzy…and I am feeling a kind of soothing detachment from the bothersome stuff in life.
“For me, a person’s unconscious is nothing other than his/her biography, a life story that, although stored in the body in its entirely, is accessible to our consciousness only in a highly fragmented form.” So writes Alice Miller in the preface to her book The Body Never Lies: The lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting. So is this why the long-buried memories from childhood are creeping back into my consciousness? Aha! My life is coming back to me as I’m undoing. Okay…I’ll take it back…even if “painful.” After all I am now a different version of myself.
I keep having fantasies about running away from training but…
Trainer to student: “Think up when breathing in and out! We tend to come down when we exhale.” This makes a big impression on me. And sure enough he is oh so right! I pay attention to my breathing, and I successfully do not come down when I exhale. My breathing feels suddenly transformed; my shoulders seem to soften, to un-grip. I feel wonderful.
This is the kind of self knowledge that I find pretty addicting. So, I will just have to go with the flow!
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