in transit

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A bizarre evening. Transferring at MacArthur back to SF a tall red headed woman and I looked a few beats too long at each other. Something about her caught my eye. She looked like someone I knew but had since misplaced all identifying details.

Later, I went to sit at SF Insight, something I rarely do. As I sat, the quiet put me in touch with my anger. I tend to be more depressive than angry, but here I was, along with the entire country, brimming with rage. I was irritated at the people near me clearing their throats, angry at the people who had brought their support dogs, disgusted by the terrible smell of socks – until I realized that was coming from my own guilty feet. Perfect metaphor, no? I sat in my anger, with no attempt to change it, and a commitment to feel. This is how it is. This is how it is. 

At break, I looked over and there was MacArthur Bart woman ahead of me in the tea line. “I think I saw you on Bart today,” I said.

“It’s you?” she said. “You were on my train.”.

“I almost said something because I thought I knew you,” we both said. 

“Exactly.” 

“And here we are.”

And here we are.

anticipation and forward head posture

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Meerkats exhibit beautiful head poise. Photo by Jeroen Wehkamp
https://unsplash.com/photos/B6vE_mHhaUc

Here’s a nice study* showing that anxious anticipation is associated with forward head posture, and that the ability to prevent this habit is related to a person’s scores on measures of mindful awareness. The more aware you are, the more easily you can prevent dysfunctional postural habits. Thank you science!

Try Alexander Technique to become mindful in 3-D**!

*Neck posture is influenced by anticipation of stepping, J. L. Baera,  A. Vasavadab , R. G. Cohen, Human Movement Science, vol 64 (2019)

**Mindfulness in 3D is a phrase coined by British Alexander Technique teacher Peter Nobes

Letting go of the grip

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Where thought is the Active Ingredient, by Elyse Shafarman

Today, a student asked me if the Alexander Technique was a spiritual practice, if in effect, it was preparing us for death. My immediate response was that the Alexander Technique prepares us for life. But I also get where she was going. The technique boils down to letting go of the anticipatory gripping that we all do, to a trust in the open-endedness of things. There’s very little that we can know for certain despite history, statistics and planning. If we have the trust, we can leave ourselves free to flow. But so often, and for so many rational reasons, we don’t have the trust. It seems more sensible to prepare for the worst by tensing.

Studies in attachment theory point to the ways that early life experiences set the script for how we respond in present time. Pain, injury and trauma etch changes in the brain leaving us reactive, hyper-sensitive and vigilant. Our past experiences combine with the inherent error in human perception, and lead us to habitually over-estimate the tension required for moving. On a day-to-day basis, we are locked into the loop of habit, which saves time, reduces decision fatigue and makes life manageable. But how much are those habits limiting our freedom? How much bracing do we need to do?

I don’t trust in anything like a god, but I do have a certain trust in the energy that makes things grow, in life, and in our capacity for resilience. I think about the brain and the nervous system, or the network of roots and fungi in a forrest that communicate. I think about things things that are both mysterious and measurable.

My student mentioned that it was a lot less energy to live without the grip, but that it took quite a lot of focus to get off clock time and land in the present. I added that it’s easy to get seduced by posture and body mechanics, but it’s remarkable how well the body works on it’s own when we stop hanging on.

 

Rushing

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BodyProject Blog ~ where thought is the Active Ingredient, by Elyse Shafarman

Like a bird, I walked into a glass door this morning, right before my first class of the year at American Conservatory Theater, where I teach Alexander Technique to MFA actors. My aim was to arrive early, but events *conspired* against me. The outfit was wrong. I needed to bring lunch. I couldn’t find my keys. By the time I arrived downtown, my heart was beating rapidly, a staccato accompaniement to the inner monologue featuring my pet fears. I dashed into Peet’s to grab the coffee I hadn’t had time to make. The line was long and the clock was ticking. “Let’s skip the coffee,” I thought, and spun towards the exit, promptly bashing my nose against the newly washed glass door.

I heard the crowd gasp. Stars and stinging pain, but no time to stop. My class was in 15-minutes. When I got inside the building, I noticed that my nose was bleeding and turning purple. Luckily, emergency ice packs are never in short supply at A.C.T. It’s easy to injure yourself while conjuring the energies of the unconscious.

It did made a good opening story, illustrating two key principles of the Alexander Technique:

1)  Awareness – of self and environment

2) Taking time.

Clutching my ice-pack, I taught for the next five hours. I felt my neck stiffening, a predictable result of the impact and nerves. But as you teach Alexander Technique, you also apply the principles to yourself. I taught my students to imagine warm coconut oil lubricating the joint that connects the neck to the head. We found ways of moving where tight muscles unraveled and space opened between joints. We paid attention to our bodies, but also our minds and our emotions. We dwelt in that space, which so few of us ever give ourselves, where we take time to notice impulses and chose our course of action. By the afternoon, my neck tension was gone. I felt good enough to take a dance class (first checking with the advice nurse at Kaiser. Head Trauma is nothing to joke around with).

My colleague, Monika Gross, shared the following story about Frank Pierce Jones, a renowned American Alexander Technique teacher and Classics professor, who conducted the first scientific studies on the Alexander Technique at Tufts University in the 1960’s and 70’s.

I heard a great AT anecdote involving Frank Pierce Jones. He was in London during one of the trips he made to take lessons from FM Alexander. One day following a lesson, he went back to his hotel room and he raised up the window to let in some air. He didn’t realize the frame didn’t have a mechanism to stay up by itself, and it landed right on his hand. A massive wooden old London hotel windowframe. Yes, very much pain was felt. He said later, he didn’t know exactly why but because he had just come from a lesson he thought, “Oh well, I’ll just stop and direct myself for awhile.” (After extricating his hand first, I assume… That would have been unusually skilled levels of inhibition otherwise!:) He said that the next day, he didn’t even have a bruise on his hand, and he was quite impressed with the result of his “Quick on the Pause” response to a trauma.

Like Jones, I had minimal bruising and no neck pain on the following day, perhaps due to the Alexander Technique.

And although there was nothing overtly dangerous about my lateness, the panicky thoughts created a situation where I was accident prone. We learn (or, in my case learn again) in the Alexander Technique that we have a choice about our reactions. Headlong rushing rarely delivers the calm, cool and on-time result one might hope for.

For all of us, it’s helpful to remember to take more time. More than anything we do, it’s often the empty space we leave – between – where life/body/mind resolves and organizes.

Beating Anxiety With Self-Talk: A Cheat-Sheet, Guest Blog by Caitlin Margaret

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Think back to the last time you were anxious.

Do you remember the conversation you were having with yourself before the anxiety hit?

Probably not. Most likely, you can only remember how you felt. The fear. The panic. The worry.

And that’s normal. We can get so overwhelmed by the feelings that anxiety brings on that we don’t pay any attention to what we’re saying to ourselves in the moment.

In an earlier post, we talked about the importance of tackling anxiety from every angle. And how we talk to ourselves is a big factor in that equation.

In this post, I want to help you identify your negative self-talk patterns and offer a proven way to help you flip that internal script around and lower your anxiety as a result. When you’re done reading, download your self-talk cheat sheet to beat anxiety and write your own personalized script.

Dealing with Anxiety: What were you thinking?

One of the biggest challenges for a lot of my clients is identifying the negative thoughts that race through their minds when they’re anxious.

Many of them are so used to their own self-abusive chatter—“What’s wrong with you?” “How are you going to screw this one up?”—that they’re not even aware of it or how it’s fueling their anxiety, making it next to impossible to manage.

Ask yourself this: In most situations, but especially stressful ones, do you tend to turn on yourself? Do you find yourself saying things like, “Ugh, What’s my problem?” or start making a mental list of  all the ways that you could fail?

That, my friends, is negative self-talk.

It’s the damaging thoughts to ourselves about ourselves. And these anti-pep talks feed anxiety.

But there are proven practices for overcoming these thought patterns, most notably, those derived from cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology

The primary principle of these practices is that our thoughts lead to our feelings. And those feelings lead to our behaviors.

Try this … close your eyes and say to yourself “I am stupid and ugly.”

How do you feel physically? Do you feel tightness in your chest? Or sick to your stomach? Do you feel small? Drained?

How about emotionally?

Do you feel a little beat up? Hopeless? Depressed?

What actions would you take if you were faced with a stressful situation right now? Would how you feel make you more likely to retreat or react defensively?

Now, close your eyes, and this time tell yourself, “I am beautiful on the inside and outside.”

Now how do you feel? Does your body feel lighter and more energized? Are you happier and less anxious? How would you handle that stressful situation now?

Thoughts drive feelings and actions … and anxiety

With the exception of some basic reflexes, our thoughts precede our feelings and actions, and influence both.

The thoughts we have are based on how we’re taught perceive our world. In any given situation, what we’re thinking about what’s happening is determined by the conclusions we’ve drawn from our experiences over the years.

These conclusions have been drawn mostly in our subconscious mind, so many times we’re not even aware of them. As a matter of fact, throughout the day our brain is acting on hundreds of unconscious thoughts before our conscious mind even catches on.

For example, an abused or neglected child will have significantly different thoughts about family life from a child raised with love and respect.

And his negative thoughts about his family—that he’s not loved or valued—will likely lead to feelings of anxiety or depression when he thinks about starting a family of his own.

But the person raised in a loving home will probably feel connected and appreciated when thoughts about family come up.

Constructive Self-talk Decreases Anxiety

So how do you fight back against your own negative thoughts when they’re often so deeply ingrained? Well, here’s the good news: Negative self-talk is just a habit. All thinking patterns are, really. And all habits can be broken.

You can start training your mind to overcome these thoughts by identifying each one and transforming it into a constructive, uplifting statement. This constructive self-talk becomes your new habit, replacing that old, broken record of your damaging inner dialog.

Now, keep in mind we’re using the word “constructive” here, and not “positive.” It can be hard to truly buy into “positivity” when you’re feeling down. This should be an authentic experience that rings true to you. You can’t fool yourself, after all.

Constructive self-talk isn’t about being constantly cheerful and ignoring reality. It just means that you actively choose to quiet that inner critic and replace it with empowering thoughts that are more based in reality.

So, how does it work? It’s all about neuroplasticity.

Each time you have a repeated experience, like your daily drive to work, you deepen the neural grooves in your brain that help you remember it. Eventually, you don’t even think about the ride anymore, you just automatically know how to get there.

Let’s say one day you start taking a new route. Now you’re creating new neural pathways to embed those directions in your brain. And the more those neurons fire and communicate, the stronger that neural pathway becomes. Pretty soon, driving that route is second nature.

Breaking negative thought patterns works the same way. If, instead of telling yourself you’re going to bomb before a presentation, you remind yourself that you’re qualified to speak on the topic and providing value to your audience, you’ll soon be more inclined to approach the podium with more confidence.

This neuroplasticity allows for the reprogramming of our brains  to naturally gravitate to more compassionate self-talk over time.

And research shows constructive self-talk can boost your confidence and greatly reduce your stress levels and anxiety.

And the benefits don’t end there. Change your negative thought patterns and you’ll also see:

  • A longer, healthier life
  • Lower rates of depression
  • Lower levels of distress
  • Less colds
  • Increased psychological and physical well-being
  • Improved cardiovascular health

It takes three to four weeks of daily practice to form a new habit to get your brain to make the switch over to more constructive thought patterns. I want to help you take the first step.

The cheat sheet I’ve shared here takes you through the exact process that has helped hundreds of my clients turn their negative thoughts on their head to create loving and constructive self-talk and overcoming their anxiety once and for all.

Once you’ve created your personalized script, habit-ize it baby! Ingrain that sucker. Keep it with you throughout the day. Put a copy in your wallet. Write it on a post-it and stick it on your mirror. Record it on your phone.

Then read it at least three times a day. Listen to it on your way to work. Let it be your support when you’re faced with a stressful situation.

The more you repeat it, the more you’ll deepen those shiny new neural grooves in your brain. Until one day your brain is teaming with constructive statements, and there’s no room left for anxiety—which will lead to a big boost in confidence.

Download your cheatsheet now!

About the author:
Caitlin Margaret is a Holistic Life Coach, empowering men and women around the world to naturally heal their anxiety, turn their professional dreams into reality, and design vibrant and meaningful lives

Neck Tension and Decisions

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We know that the Central Nervous System (CNS) is the body’s gatekeeper. It determines how far you can bend, what movements you can do, and whether you feel stiff or fluid. This is not to say that there are no other important variables such as sleep, diet, bone morphology, age, exercise…the list goes on. But at the root, if you want a free neck, your CNS has to believe that you are safe, or at least effective – able to handle the challenges thrown in your path.

A friend of mine is facing some pretty challenging decisions about career, location, artistic aspirations. Big Life Stuff. His body is rebelling with aches and pains, and he is having a hard time choosing his next step.

I suggested that he pay attention to the situations and conditions that make him feel safe. To notice where “the soft animal body*” is intuitively drawn.

Obviously, as adults we have to negotiate fear and do things our animal body does not like. On the other hand, it is important to notice where and when we feel safe, and to wonder if the fear is reflexive normal fear of change, or if there is something deeper going on.

But is it always a good idea to rely on felt sensation? One of F.M. Alexander’s key principals is that body feelings are set by habit. In the same way we can have emotional reactions that don’t fit current situations, we can have muscle sensations based on our expectation, not on incoming data. We might instinctively clutch in fear, but how much of those sensations are based on something that is really dangerous? In these cases, F.M. Alexander’s solution was to use his conscious reasoning processes. I think this is a good idea, if we intelligently blend reasoning with attention to sensation.

Happiness might be the opposite of fear. Happiness is a moving towards something – an expansion. Fear is about moving away from something – retraction, contraction. Sure, it is possible to be both fearful and happy at the same time, and this creates an interesting push-pull within the body. But, what if you let happiness, not fear, be your directional guide? Would your neck then relax? And how can you know what will truly make you happy? Something else to worry about. Is this all too Woody Allen**?

Humans tend to have a baseline level of happiness***. Even after catastrophic events, barring lingering trauma, we return, more or less, to our usual levels of happiness. This seems hard to believe, and perhaps simplistic, but it’s also good news. Maybe the stuff that happens to us doesn’t matter as much as we think it will. And maybe our choices are less important than we believe them to be

Moreover, studies about happiness show that humans are terrible predictors of what will make them happy****. Our best data points are not ourselves, but other people who have already made the decision we are considering. Newsflash, you are more like everyone else than our individualizing culture would have you believe. So, do you know other people who have made one or all of the scary choices you are considering? Do you know someone who has: Picked a College, Changed Careers, Moved to another Country, or any other of the more trivial decision (Purchased an Instant Pot, Called Him Back, Gotten rid of those Clothes) that might be blocking your flow and causing unconscious tension? I strongly encourage you to talk to those people, and listen to your own body feelings as you do. Perhaps then, your CNS will determine that you are safe, your neck will relax, your heart rate will regulate and you will move and live with more ease.

*Quote taken from Mary Oliver’s Gorgeous, Poem Wild Geese.

**from the Annie Hall era

***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

****This is from Daniel Gilbert’s excellent book, Stumbling on Happiness.

Bodyproject Blog ~ Where Thought is the Active Ingredient, By Elyse Shafarman, MA, Certified Alexander Technique Teacher

rest. do less. rest. play. do less. rest.

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How do you handle the need to rest when ill, injured or mentally burnt out?

Try out the idea of allowing rest and play time, but not making it bigger than that. You don’t need to create a story about why you got sick or injured and how you could have done better. I like the phrase, “No need to make it bigger than it is.” You can say this to yourself when you start to freak out about not feeling up to par. Yes, your body needs rest to heal. This doesn’t have to to mean anything more than that.

Illness can be metaphorical, and often is, but sometimes we hang on to the illusion that if we did everything perfectly, between nutrition and mental ecology, we would never get sick. This is untrue, and creates so much pressure. What does it cost you to accept that part of living in a body is not having total control?

Take care of yourself with kindness. No need to over indulge in binge like behaviors that mask as self-care. No need to make it into a big story. Just rest and move on when you are done.

Body Project Blog ~ Where thought is the active ingredient, by Elyse Shafarman

Response to NYT article “Alternatives to Drugs for Treating Pain”, by Jane Brody

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Body Project Blog ~
Where Thought is the Active Ingredient

Regarding the Sept 11, 2017 NYT Well article: Alternatives to Drugs for Treating Pain

I applaud Jane Brody for presenting a great list of non invasive treatments for back pain – missing from this list is the Alexander Technique, one of the few methods that has been subjected to a large  (n = 579) randomized controlled trial. Alexander Technique was effective for mitigating low back pain, both after treatment and at a 1-year follow up, as compared to both massage therapy and a no treatment educational control condition, See: Randomised controlled trial of Alexander technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain for details. More recently Alexander Technique has been shown to lower neck pain, and mitigate pain in knee osteoarthritis possibly due to improved gait mechanics, although admittedly the latter study has a small sample size, limiting the reliability of results.

Alexander Technique, in my opinion, is a superior intervention because it teaches mindful awareness AND a way of moving that is arguably far more efficient, that will prevent and heal the wear and tear on your body from poor movement habits, and encourage you to move more, because the act of moving has suddenly become pleasurable. To the extent that pain and muscle tension is caused by moving in an inefficient manner, Alexander Technique provides a solution. To the extent that pain and muscle tension results from mental stress, Alexander Technique also provides a solution.

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We all live in a body. It pays to be aware of this.

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Body Project Blog, Where Thought is the Active Ingredient, by Elyse Shafarman

Body Project Blog, Where Thought is the Active Ingredient, by Elyse Shafarman

Reading the first round of student homework from the University Somatics Course I am co-teaching, was a great example of the multiple positive results from simply being aware of living in a body.

Students chose to practice a body scan meditation, a walking meditation, or a Feldenkrais exercise five days in a row. After a week, student comments included feeling as if they had given their whole body a massage with the mind, noticing less joint cracking while walking, walking taller and lighter, becoming aware of a habit of walking with the head down (smart phone), becoming aware of how many sounds they unconsciously blocked out, linking pain to body use or emotions, gaining some control over mind wandering, feeling more in touch with nature if they practiced outside, feeling an increase in heat and blood flow to injured body areas, and feeling grateful for the opportunity to get in touch with their bodies on a daily basis. It’s worth noting that not every practice session ran smoothly, but they did practice every day — or so they reported ;).

Also a good reminder to me not to complicate experience with theory. There’s so much to light up the mind – from neuroscience to the latest theories of trauma, from a century of Western somatics to 5,00 years of Eastern practices – but the most important element, regardless of modality, is awareness.

The key ingredients seem to be setting aside time to be aware, and then reflecting.

 

“Releasing tensions is like swatting flies, there are always more.” – Barbara Conable

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IMG_0330

Body Project Blog – Where thought is the Active Ingredient – by Elyse Shafarman

What do you do when you notice that you have tense shoulders? “I try to relax,” would be a respectable answer. Too bad that works so poorly. First, relaxation is a skilled activity. Trying to relax for all but the practiced yogi, usually invokes more tension. Second, muscles can’t let go until the body is supported. This applies to both mechanical and emotional situations.

If you lean very far backwards, you won’t be able to let go of the muscles in the front of your body until you choose to fall backwards. Try it. With skill, you might be able to release accessory muscles in the jaw and face that are working overtime. You might be able to lean riskily off center – imagine a dance or acrobatic move – with a certain degree of grace, but this will require all kinds of skilled muscle engagements. What if leaning backwards (or forwards) is your daily postural habit? You might try every strategy in the book to let go of the muscles that are secretly preventing falling, but nothing will work until you bring your bones back into mechanical balance. Then you might have the surprising sensation of effortless movement that so many Alexander students experience.

FM Alexander called this balance “mechanical advantage”. Mechanical advantage is not a position. It’s better understood as a series of counterbalances between all the parts of the body. The head goes a little forward and up, as the neck and spine go a little back and up, and so on, as our bits balance in perpetual motion around our vertical axis.

How do you get into mechanical advantage, especially if you notice you are crunching forward at your desk?

First, stop what you are doing and make observations. Where is your head in relationship to your shoulders, back, neck, pelvis, the ceiling and the floor? Where would you like it to be? Make a gesture with your hand showing where you’d like your different parts to go. Was it in an up-and-out sort of gesture? Before moving out of the crunch, use the Alexander Technique Directions: Let your neck be free, direct your head forward and up. Direct your back to lengthen and widen. Direct your shoulders apart and your knees away.

If those Directions didn’t make sense, you would not be alone. Unfortunately, the Directions don’t specify the oppositions necessary to come into mechanical balance. It may be a good idea to change the wording of Alexander’s canonical Directions, but that’s a subject for a different essay. For here, it’s important to say that most people need an Alexander Technique teacher’s touch to give meaning to the Directions. Trickily, Directional movement comes from non-doing versus doing. This reverse perspective takes practice and objective feedback, and is usually learned intuitively in response to the gentle guidance of an Alexander teacher’s hands.

But what if your tension is not just a problem of mechanical balance? What if you hold because you are frustrated or anxious? It might be futile to physically balance your body without addressing the causal conditions. Or, it might work! There is a bi-directional link between emotions and body state. Sometimes students experience a lightening of mood after lessons even though emotions were never discussed. Still, if our goal is a higher level of conscious choice and control, working only through the body is not enough.

Many of my M.F.A. acting students ask, “How do I play anger without tensing my throat?” Is the emotion of anger physiologically hard wired to a tight throat in the way that happiness, upturned lips and sparkling eyes are linked? Or is the tight throat a strategy to hold back expressing anger? I think the latter. What’s it like to feel anger without blocking the feelings with muscle tension? Does the anger pass more freely, or as we fear, does it escalate into behaviors that we later regret? Learning to feel freely, but still make choices about behavior can broaden your inner emotional palette and guide you into emotionally intelligent behavior. For actors, this gives rise to richer performances that don’t break the physical body.

Here’s a short activity to help you correlate the connection between muscle tension and emotion.

If your shoulders (or jaw and neck, etc.) are always tight, observe which situations trigger even more tension. Then, spend one minute tracking sensations throughout your whole body. What other parts are working overtime? How’s your breath and heart rate? Then spend a minute tracking emotions. Can you simply name the emotion you feel, (e.g. “I’m anxious and frustrated…”) without going into a story about why you feel that emotion? Or, is the emotion muffled by physical tension? Spend some time sorting yourself out. Finally, spend a minute listening to the stories that go along with the emotions. Don’t change the thoughts, but notice them. Are they always true? Then take a minute to look around, (e.g. “I’m gazing at the wall in front of me, the light from the window reflects against the yellow wall in a dappled pattern, I notice a dust bunny caught in the corner…”) Does seeing with detail and alertness take you out of routine thoughts, feelings and reactions?

Usually this mindfulness activity will bring muscle and mind into harmony and cause spontaneous release. But it may not. At that point, a little rational thinking can go a long way. You might ask yourself, “Will clenching my shoulders really speed up my commute time? Who is benefiting from my tense jaw? But don’t try to relax the jaw muscles. Remember, it doesn’t usually work. Do think about doing less of what you are doing. Here, giving Alexander Directions to restore mechanical balance comes into good use. And, maybe next time you’ll choose public transportation and read a book.

Don’t waste time trying to relax tight muscles. Consider the conditions that cause tension. Make changes at the source.