on peeling onions and self-compassionate oranges

I’ve been away in Wellington for a weekend of CPD (continued professional development). We were a dozen Alexander teachers from around the country, there are not that many of us down here (“ah, niche”, said my neighbour on the plane).

I am reminded again of the depth of this Work. And it really is work to sustain a focussed yet expanded awareness of my mental and physical processes as I move through my days. Of course I am not enlightened so I manage this for mere fractions of my conscious hours.

Like the proverbial onion, we peel off layer after layer of patterning. During the intensive peeling work at the weekend, I exposed a deep layer in which I recognised my inclination to scoliosis (pun not intended). Though the AT work over 3 years of training has left no obvious trace of the lop-sided lean I carried into my 30’s, still I have a tendency to twist my lumber spine, especially in times of stress. Now I was challenged to release tensions that were somehow bound up with my feeling of who I am. In the words of Joseph Rowntree, English industrialist and pupil of F.M. Alexander 100 years ago, this work means to

I felt alien. The feeling of my self without the familiar pattern was not recognisable as ‘myself’. Some time ago, I was working with a person to let go of deep layers of muscle tension in the pelvis and thigh. When they did, it was with an exclamation: “But that’s not my leg!” It sounds absurd but will be familiar to AT teachers. And this is where I find the Work gets really fascinating. You need to be brave to go there - into the unknown.

As well as courage, you need self-compassion.

It was easy for me to feel like a failure (“all these years and still a mess!”) It’s easy to see in terms of right/wrong and as a consequence of being ‘wrong’, wanting/needing to fix it. With an application of self-compassion, I was able to see my habit of pulling in and twisting my lower back not as a ‘bad habit’ but rather as a strategy. Ah..a strategy.

That word changes my view of things. A habit is nothing but a strategy devised by my self at a certain point to ensure my survival. It may well be that the strategy no longer serves me, still the intentions of my body-mind at the time of making were entirely well-intentioned. I have Roger Kidd (https://www.rkidd.com/) to thank for the tools to help me work with my strategies :

1. ACKNOWLEDGE

2. ACCEPT

3. APPRECIATE

There is much more to be said on the subject but I realise this post is longer than most. So what of the orange? With thanks due to Mariela Valdez for the idea (https://www.sensoryawareness.org/) I like to think of the brain as an orange; the conscious mind being the peel; the unconscious the pulp; and the pith the porous membrane which regulates the flow between the two. Research by the Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research at Stanford (https://ccare.stanford.edu/) has shown that kindness makes that membrane more porous, or in other words helps our whole mind-body to function optimally (https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/compassion-kindness-improved-brain-function-stress-reduction-stanford-berkeley-james-doty.html)

So what did I learn?

Peel no onions without oranges, draw no courage without compassion.