Washing my car

If Alexander Technique is in living - always and everywhere, then every thought or situation can be related to it. So today I am going to relate AT to washing the car.

I made a decision. “Enough is enough” I said. I pulled on my gumboots and went outside to wash the car. It’d been a while since it saw water, maybe a couple of months and one of the kids had recently scrawled “also comes in white” on the rear window. I get a bucket of soapy water and start to wash. I am interested to see green as well as brown water dribbling away as I rub. Moss is growing in the rubber seals around the windows and even in the scratches on the paintwork. My car is turning into an ecosystem. How cool is that! Here in the ecovillage where I live we are very concerned about caring for ecosystems, regenerating native bush and restoring natural habitats. I should be happy that my car is also becoming part of the natural process of decay which in turn supports the regeneration of life.

Biodegradable and machine are two concepts that don’t sit easily together. When we think of machine, we think of something that exists in order to function and in order to serve our needs. It is man-made, perhaps of shining steel and smooth plastic. We take for granted the fact that it works and we are annoyed and put out when a machine does not function according to our expectations. How often do we think of our bodies as machines or our brains as computers? Only when something goes wrong do we grudgingly take it to the mechanic to be fixed. Or perhaps we do regular maintenance, diligently taking it out the beach or the gym?

Take a moment to wonder…what might be different if you were to start thinking of your body and mind as an inexplicable miracle rather than a machine?

But coming back to the car which is now looking considerably whiter than half an hour ago…I wonder about getting older. As we age we don’t have the same shiny structure we had when we were new/young. There will be all sorts of bumps and scratches in the paintwork, idiosyncracies in the internal workings, not to mention the central locking remote control... Alexander Technique does not seek to restore us to to perfect form and function. We are not striving to be right but rather wondering where is easy and restful along the way. We are not machines. We biodegrade, becoming more and more part of our community just as moss grows in the accumulation of memories. The diversity of our experience paves the way for wisdom. I like being biodegradable, not resisting the nature of change but working along with it to make the best of what I have, whatever state my upholstery and paintwork may be in at this moment.

There is a new workshop in the pipeline for December. I’ll have more to say about it next time. Also the Walking Way 5 week course for comfort, vitality and inspiration has been postponed to late summer. Watch this space.

Thanks for reading x

Laure