It’s really happening!

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Wow it’s almost February!

It’s really wild…but as my Alexander Technique teacher training gets smoother, and I am enjoying each and every class more and more, I have less and less desire to blog! But however…here is a post…during this mega-snowstorm weekend in NYC…such a good moment to write. And cook up a storm. And play Bach. And knit. And hang out with Doucette the cat all day long! Maybe I’m just facing another turning point in this journal.

Here’s a wonderful quote…from La femme rompue by Simone de Beauvoir. In her book she quotes the Romantic writer François René de Chateaubriand: “Le désert du passé,” a dit Chateaubriand. “The desert of the past, said Chateaubriand.” Thus…as my training processes I feel I’m moving out of the desert of my past. And I feel quite rooted in my present and I feel like I’m floating through my present. Feeling grateful and joyful. How is it that practicing the Alexander Technique engenders all that?

Big step in my training journey: the massage table I ordered arrived! And I have started to give practice lessons! Wow. It’s really happening! I’m a beginning teacher of the Alexander Technique giving practice lessons!

We have just finished reading FM Alexander’s Universal Constant in Living in training. So much to digest in this book! Here’s another great quote…FM writing about inhibition: “Inhibition is a human potentiality of the utmost value in any attempt to make changes in the human self, and my experience has convinced me that it is the potentiality most in need of development. I have found that if a pupil can inhibit his habitual reactions even moderately well when faced with unfamiliar procedures, remarkable changes in his use and functioning can be made in a very short time, changes which judged by ordinary results would seem impossible.”

I think of my own Alex Tech journey and trajectory when reading this quote, and I know I must convey this hyper-important concept to my students.

Here is Doucette the cat, demonstrating her excellent use during one of her many cat lie downs, keeping me company during the storm. I am assuming she will get to love my new table.

IMG_0001

 

November of 2015…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

As I walk to Alexander Technique teacher training now in this November, a soupçon of melancholy hovers around me, as I am thinking about what has transpired in my second city. Paris. Last time I was there was in January. All this awful stuff happening…in France and in our world. Of course the current situation brings me back to 9/11. And it brings me back to times when I’ve been in Paris and terrorist attacks have occurred. Alas…there is a list on Wikipedia…

But the fall foliage I see for sale on West 28th Street makes me smile…the lovely sights and smells. I must say that walking down that street to training is an aesthetic treat. Very healing and uplifting…

 

November foliage on display on West 28th Street...

 

As for what’s happening for me in training, among other things, well, it’s about “re-learning” how to walk.

I had a seminal training class recently. It started right before class with an quick observation by Ann Rodiger, my trainer. She corrected the position of my hips. And bang, all of a sudden, I understood kinesthetically my faulty habit of jutting out my hips, thereby making my head to jut out too. Finally I could feel the difference and make the correction. This after two years of previous training…wow. I was blown away! I went to the mirror to look. I kept moving from my old, faulty habit to the new, more correct position on purpose to see what I had been doing. What a change! And then we had a floor class and I managed to lengthen my spine so much that I got all teary…happy teary. Quite an emotional release for me…on all fronts.

So now when I walk I am trying to hold my hips back in the better position. It’s a start. I think about the crease above my hips, and how my hips and knees should move. I think about that my heels should hit the ground first before my toes do.That I should take smaller steps (especially if I am wearing heels omg)… I think about the top of my head going up, lengthening and widening at the very top of my spine.

I think about walking around my beloved Paris…hopefully sooner than later. Meanwhile, I’ll walk around my beloved NYC…with better use of self!

IMG_3799Practicing walking with good use, chez moi…

After a hiatus…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

You know, dear readers, that I am a die hard New York Mets fan. Even though the New York Yankees aren’t much on my radar, I am extremely fond of the old, iconic Yankee, Yogi Berra. Really, who could not love Yogi Berra? I adore his zany, philosophical sayings. His most famous one just might be “It’s dejà vu all over again.” This comment was made, as he duly noted in the little and hilarious book of his collective witticisms, The Yogi Book  “…after Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back-to-back home runs for the umpteenth time.”

In a way, I find that I am in a déjà vu all over again moment, restarting this blog. I am recuperating from yet another surgery on my left leg…this one an emergency surgery…while starting training on yet a different Alexander Technique teacher training course.The same scenario has already played out: two years ago I had a surgery on my left knee and I had to take a semester off of training, and that is when I started this blog/journal about my Alexander Technique teacher training. At that time, I was obliged to take the semester off from training, and over two months off from work. When I eventually went back to training I switched to a brand new training, a very small one.

Now all that seems like ancient history. I was obliged to change teacher training courses again this past July.

I have gone from attending the smallest training in NYC, to the largest training in NYC. And as I see it, my new training is the most haimishe, empathetic and energizing training in NYC. My old training consisted of one trainer and three trainees. In the old training there was always movement…people came and went…but we were never more than three trainees at a time. I was the second year trainee and there were two first year trainees. Now I have an embarrassment of riches: plenty of company. I have many co-trainee pals at all levels of training. There is, of course, my trainer, and her staff of assistant trainers. It feels like heaven.

I did manage to attend one week of summer training before the medical emergency happened. My new training is right on the main drag of the flower district here in Manhattan, so walking to training is a sheer delight…plants, flowers, trees galore. It’s visually gorgeous. Intoxicating perfumes fill the air.

La troisième c’est la bonne. The third time is the charm, no? That’s how I’m feeling right now about my present training course. The really cool thing about this particular recovery period is that since I have two years of Alex Tech training under my belt, I’m in a much more secure place to get better really, really quickly! Well, it’s an interesting way to start my third year of Alex Tech training…but hey, that’s life. Rolling with the punches here!

Among the plants and flowers in August...

While walking down West 28th Street in August…

In Boston…

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I cannot stop thinking about my trip to Boston, a place I have not visited for years and years and years. I have been holding special memories of Boston for a long time. Travel, even if only a short train ride away to a different city, provides a pause that enables one to meditate on one’s life, and come back to it refreshed and deepened.  “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust. This time in Boston was a special trip for I went to my first ACGM, the Annual Conference and General Meeting for the Alexander Technique, and I wondered if I should write it up for this Alexander Technique teacher training blog of mine and I thought “why not?” It was my baptism by fire to the greater American Alexander Technique community. It was stepping out from the hothouse environment of my teacher training back in NYC. It was so intense. So much Alex Tech and hanging out crammed into four days. Boston! So much easier for me to hop over to Paris than to go to Boston! My trip started out tentatively and ended up by being totally fabulous.

First things first. I thought, if I am to go to Boston, I must visit Fenway Park. I had never been there. And so I did. So me, a fanatic New York Mets fan, well…I was a Red Sox fan for a game. Alas…the Sox lost…after blowing an 8-run lead. As a Mets fan, well I am so used to this kind of sorry thing. Sigh. I felt right at home.

Alex Tech baseball fans...

Michelle and Rena, Alex Tech baseball fans, at Fenway Park

It was so wonderful to meet up with all my Alex Tech pals! And to meet new folks…teachers and trainees alike. I enjoyed fine lessons and workshops galore. The conference allowed me to expand upon the scope of my Alex Tech experience in that I could learn from folks from different methodologies than I have been used to…from teachers who studied with Patrick Macdonald, Frank Ottiwell, at ACAT, and who were influenced by Marge Barstow. You, dear readers, know that my training has been Carrington based.  In Boston, I experienced the larger picture. My training has now been enhanced.

Hey! Shout out time! I want to do some special thank you stuff. So here’s a mille fois merci list for some folks up in Boston… To everyone I met and hung out with. To the great teachers I had lessons, small groups and workshops with. To all I talked with/texted/e-mailed to about going to the ballgame. To everyone I photographed especially to the Board who posed with such panache! To the impeccable Admin staff who made me feel at home. To my work colleagues, both in NYC and in Boston, who kept me on terra firma the whole time with texts, phone calls and in person. To the dude at Fenway who insisted on buying me a beer as it was my first trip to Fenway and because I am a Mets fan not a Yankees fan! To my trainer for especially the impromptu, revelatory touch base that was the game changer for me. The stars were aligned. A thousand thanks to everyone!

ACGM 2015

Being guided off table by Giora Pinkas, after a turn…

To the exquisiteness of the paintings at Monet and Renoir, and to the peaceful Japanese Garden at the lovely Museum of Fine Arts! To looking down at the field at Fenway, and feeling a different kind of exquisiteness and delight. Another type of dreamy green!

ACGM 2015

At Japanese Garden, Museum of Fine Arts

Meanwhile, now, back at training, I am being guided in giving ten minute turns, to my co-trainees and to my trainer. Intense, intense concentration! I feel I am bringing all that I experienced and learned to my ongoing training. I am feeling grounded and more secure in knowing how I have to proceed. I am going forward in a more sure way…

Heels…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

Lulie Westfeldt is in my thoughts these days. A funny thing is happening when my trainer guides me in and out of the chair. By the way, I have to use the shortest chair of the three heights of chairs we have in Alexander Technique teacher training. When I sit down, often my heels do not touch the ground. It is harder to get up from the chair without pulling down when my heels are not touching the floor. But he wants me to continue to do this. He thinks that as I continue to inhibit and direct, and undo in this position, I will make further progress as my muscles stretch. Perhaps our reading of Lulie Westfeldt’s book has prompted him to work with me in this fashion. Remember…Lulie, who had suffered from polio as a child, and who was on FM Alexander’s first training course, found that with lessons from FM, her heel finally rested on the ground and her calf muscles developed just from FM’s working on her primary control.

Here is what Lulie wrote: “The high point in the training course for me was the change in my own individual condition . . . . I remember a cold spring morning in my rooms on Cromwell Road. My breakfast tray had just come up, and I was in my dressing gown and bedroom slippers, walking across the room to the table where the tray had been placed. Suddenly I felt a very strange sensation, not pleasant or unpleasant, but overwhelmingly strange. For a moment I did not know what had happened. Then I realized that my right heel was touching the floor. It was no longer up in the air but flat on the floor like the left one. It had not touched the floor for upwards of twenty years; shortly after the operation [at age 13] that had immobilized the right ankle, my right heel had drawn up and been unable to touch the floor. The sensation became more and more delightful. Almost at once, my balance became much more secure.” (F. Matthias Alexander: The Man and His Work, 1998 Mouritz edition, pp. 86- 87.)

As my heel story is going on, sometimes my left heel reaches the floor but my right one does not (my pattern), and sometimes it is vice versa, but sometimes both my heels do hit the floor and then I realize that I am feeling big stretches in my calf muscles. And this is happening more and more frequently! I find that my legs are very sore indeed these days. I don’t care at all. My trainer tells me that he is finding that subtle shifts are going on in me and my balance. So I’ll take it. My primary control is getting more secure.

One night after class I was so sore that I wanted to soak in a hot bubble bath. But I was too tired…I didn’t want to fall asleep in there!

one heel off the floor

One heel coming off the floor…

Red tulips…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

As my second year of Alexander Technique teacher training is winding down, I’ve entered a tranquil period…though I am pretty tired. I’m going through another step-up in sensory awareness appreciation, so I am exhausted and often sore…as formerly underused postural support muscles are getting a work out. I am concentrating hard. I am exhilarated! I am feeling better and better. I realize that only those who have gone through this process can fully understand the intense changes I am experiencing. It can be a solitary journey. But I hope that this journal of mine might be able to provide some insights as to what a trainee might experience along the way.

Recently one of my co-trainees decided to take ten days off. Therefore training was for only two of us…and it was so very intense. My trainer guided me through giving chair turns as I worked on my co-trainee. And…when I was working on him on the table I managed to take his head out really really well. He told me that his whole spine was lengthened. This is a big deal for me. I am so pleased with my progress. And I know I will regress at times. It doesn’t matter. It’s the end result that matters.

We are studying anatomy at the moment. One day we looked at the hips. And I was fascinated, thinking again about the fact that I was born with my hip bones totally out of the sockets. If my mother hadn’t insisted that something was wrong with me as she noticed that I was misaligned, I wouldn’t be able to walk today. Many doctors dismissed her worries but she kept insisting, and finally one doctor verified her thoughts by finding out that indeed something was very wrong with me. And so it was that I had to wear a big, black brace for the first two years of my life. I only have one photo of little me in that brace. I’ll have to go find it.

After the class my trainer asked me again about being born with my hips out of the sockets. So I told him the story again, and my co-trainee stayed to listen. You know, the body never forgets the traumas that it has undergone. I have been advised to be gentle to myself. I tend to “forget” my own story. And before I left that class my trainer said to me “well you are doing great.” Shy smile here…it’s kind of wonderful to hear something like this.

After that class I went to Trader Joe’s to stock up and happened to find some red tulips there.  I remembered how, when I was five, my mother gave one red tulip to my grandmother to bring back to me in Brooklyn. I had been staying with my grandparents while my mother was in the hospital giving birth to my youngest sister. I remember being thrilled by the beauty of that flower. Since that moment I have always loved red tulips. Needless to say I bought myself a bunch. And once again I realized that everything is intertwined and that the psycho-physical unity is an astounding one.

Red tulips...

“…a comedy to those who think…”

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“Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.”

Molière

Since Alexander Technique teacher training is often Sturm und Drang for me I think it best that I should really try lighten up there more often. My usual leitmotif… I do so more easily in other walks of my life. So what if Alex Tech training brings up so much stuff from one’s past…eh…whatever… I should think of training as a comedic play. Molière anyone? I think it would be great if I could make a major effort to be as light and fluffy as much as possible in training, even if I feel like being silent with seriousness. I have been accused of being too serious often enough in my life. Well, I can act the part, right? Better I should think Molière rather than Racine, right?

We finished reading FM’s Man’s Supreme Inheritance in training, and then had an impromptu discussion on the fate of the Alex Tech and if it can possibly change the world. It is so rarified…unlike yoga, for example, which is so mainstream these days. We went way over time what with talking about it all… An interesting discussion for me…as I plod along on my particular journey of this learning process. Well I am undergoing the training for me alone…I figure that I owe it to myself. Even if I were never to teach one lesson. I got to thinking…well…there are 4000-ish teachers of the AT worldwide and 200 concentrated in NYC. Will there be a market for me? I do hope that some students will find me! But…after all…as I say…I am undergoing this painstaking process because I owe it to myself to do so.

Our next up reading is Lulie Westfeldt’s F. Matthias Alexander: the Man and his Work. It’s kind of timely for my re-read of this. I have a different take on it this time around. It’s proving to be a real eye-opener. It is a very, very personal read to me. And, it does seem like she is describing the Alex Tech world of today…and not FM’s first training course. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Sad but true. As I read more of her book, I understand my training more and more.

So the latest training news is that for the rest of my second year I’m to work in giving 10-minute turns, both table and chair, to my co-trainees, while figuring out what they need from/with my hands-on. This is a nice thought. I guess it means that my sensory perception is getting more reliable.

“Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”

Molière

reading Molière and Lulie Westfeldt

Reading Molière and Westfeldt…

On trusting the process…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

To balance out the challenge of reading FM Alexander’s Man’s Supreme Inheritance for Alexander Technique teacher training, I have started reading, along with it, some guilty pleasure fluffy stuff. The novel starts out with a citation, unattributed: “Un jour, j’irai vivre en théorie, parce qu’en théorie tout se passe bien…” “One day, I will live in theory, because in theory, everything goes well.” This citation really got me to thinking…that maybe one day, in theory, everything in Alexander Technique teacher training will go smoothly and well. And then I got to thinking that I can choose to decide to live in theory now.

Why is training such a roller coaster ride? Rhetorical question right? One week I feel that everything is going great, and then bang I am slammed by feeling so disheartened. A friend, who has recently certified as an Alex Tech teacher, provided me with a touchstone phrase that I believe will help me through…”you have to trust in the process.” So true! Since I do trust in the process I am deciding to live in theory immediately…not in the future. I will consider that training is always going smoothly and well…because it is working!

I just started re-reading Mallarmé as well…counterbalance to fluff? Hey, it was just the anniversary of his birth in Paris…18 March 1842. Good moment to dip in again. Will reading some symbolist poetry affect how I view my training? For sure I’m going to re-read Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard — A role of the dice will never abolish chance. 

Portrait_of_Stéphane_Mallarmé_(Manet)

Édouard Manet, Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé, 1876

 

 

 

March break update…springing forward…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

We just had a March week-long break in Alexander Technique teacher training. And I had a few days off from work. Phew. Me, personally, I was zonked and I needed this break big-time. The weather was still pretty bad…really, really cold…snowy, icy and slushy. Tiring weather.

Well anyway, some important stuff has been transpiring in training…

Tom, my trainer, is having me to put hands-on my two other co-trainees for awhile now, in both table turns and now chair turns. They started the training together in September. Me, I’m more than half-way through my training. I work on them. They are not at the level yet to work on me. But me working on them…well this could possibly forge bonds among us. We are a tiny group…so…I don’t have many options for putting hands-on. I am so grateful for this opportunity to work on them, in other words, to work on myself, concentrate on my use of self… For me it is an exercise in concentration. I am delighted when they feel benefits from my hands-on.

From time to time, Tom is also having me put hands-on the others as he works on them, so I can get a feel what is happening with them as their turns are progressing. This is fabulous for me!

The other important thing is that I am now starting to lengthen spines by taking heads out. I practice both on my co-trainees and on Tom. You Alex Tech teachers know the drill for this: link hands under occiput, moving the hands incrementally, the hands need to come from “the outside” of the arms, from the back, from the feet, I have to concentrate on my own use of self…staying up up up, no tension in the inner arms, my back has to be back and away from my hands…while I am keeping contact with my hands on the other person’s occiput. I have to be vigilant of my own use. That is the most important thing, especially for this, well especially always! I must put hands-on with great sensitivity and care for this very important aspect of table work.

During the week off I had one of my semester lessons with Tom…and it turned out to be a two-hour session. It hit me the next day that this lesson was just wonderful…a lesson like all my other lessons yet a distinctive lesson…a lesson apart. A stellar lesson. It was a validation…a yardstick measuring the continuing reliability of my sensory perception. We worked hard. I had my lesson proper. Then I put hands-on him. For the hands-on Tom, I took his head to lengthen his spine. I do have moments when things are really going well in doing this. I have my moments of really get it, and Tom says that these moments are coming more and more often. To hear this…well…it is beyond gratifying. Then, while he was sitting in the chair, I worked on his shoulders…just like “hands on back of chair.” And then we just wound up having an impromptu talk about training, the Alex Tech, et al.

Afterwards I went a bit uptown to the Museum of Modern Art, had a wonderfully long lunch with a dear friend, and saw Rodin’s Balzac in the snow! I have always loved this statue in this space, the sculpture garden of MoMA. It seems that I have been visiting him all my life. He is such a dear friend to me! I thought that the snow became him!

Balzac in the snow

And now we are back in training…and I am on to new stuff. And it is warmer! Heat wave! Yay! Just the other day, while walking to training, well, I was pretty tired, but I did realize: “hey! it isn’t cold. What a relief!” And there was light! Daylight Savings Time had arrived. When I entered the big studio the light pouring in was exquisite.

In the cold…

Posted by & filed under Alexander Technique, Alexander Technique Teacher Training.

It’s been freezing lately in NYC. I hear that this February is one of the coldest Februaries on record. It makes the top ten most awful list. I feel that we New Yorkers have been recently lucky in our winters…well that is…up until last winter and now. Eh. We had gotten a little spoiled. But real NYC winter stuff is back with a vengeance.

Here is what my frozen and barren little fire escape garden looked like recently:

frozen and barren garden

In the cold, I used to scurry around with my shoulders hunched and rounded over, to try to protect myself from the cold. My faulty habit. Somehow I thought that if I made myself smaller in this way I would stay warmer. Not so. Here I am, smack in the middle of my Alexander Technique teacher training, and said training has straightened me out, both literally and figuratively, in this regard. Now when I walk in the frigidness, I do not round my shoulders in. I find that if I widen my back and my shoulders, and lengthen my spine, I’m not any colder than when I’m hunching in. And, I feel a whole lot better to boot. I’m walking with more elasticity, with less pulling down of course, with more fluidity, with more up. This is all revolutionary for me.

I brought this stuff up in training, and Tom my trainer said that when we hunch in, we try to stop ourselves from feeling…either the cold…or whatever…hmmm…this statement sure is thought provoking!

You know, widening like this across the shoulders was almost scary for me, as I felt vulnerable not “protecting” my chest et al. Now, not so scary. Now this new and better habit is feeling normal-ish while my old faulty, habitual habits are feeling uncomfortable, even in the extreme cold. Too uncomfortable to do anymore. And remember, moi, je suis frileuse…me, I’m susceptible to the cold. So, I just rely on bundling up. Wearing layers: warm undershirt, thermal long shirt, long wool sweater, down vest with hood, long (hey but pretty) underwear under my jeans, wool socks, toasty boots, long down coat with hood, wool hat under the two hoods, wool gloves, wool long scarf wrapped around me. If you see this bundle of clothes, in other words, me, walking down the street, you might not be able to see it, but rest assured…I am not hunching in…well…to the best of my ability at this moment!  🙂