Expectation & Ecstasy

I am 23, in Paris and unexpectedly with the one true love of my short life.

I sit in a café with her. Expectation and ecstasy fire off a flood of hormones that cascade through my bloodstream. Soon I am going to discover how my emotional tumult is a lethal cocktail of hormones that spiral me down into depression and addiction.

But I will have none of that now.

I am with Diane again.

Then reality strikes and my fabrications fall apart…

I meet her boyfriend - I feel their pity and scorn - and plummet into despair. I end my dalliance with Paris and head back to live in London. Soon I give up London too, and seek a new life as a teacher of Alexander’s Discovery in my hometown Sydney.

Sydney is full of hope and possibility.

I am only one of three teachers in all of Australia. Tired of the old model of giving private lessons at home, I form a Centre: Sydney Alexander Technique Associates, or SATA as we became known…

***

Looking back, I can see my career to this point as a reaction to my failure with Diane.

The motivations that drive us are mostly hidden.

Even small things. Like a lesson I gave on ZOOM the other day to a musician playing the Marimba. She told me how at one end of the Marimba, she kept tightening every time. I watched, and it was true – she did.

We explored many of the reasons why this might be happening.

As we worked through different ideas, I noticed a bunch of bags and papers on the floor near the end of the Marimba where she tightened. Hmmm, I wondered. Can her tightening be an unconscious response to the lack of space around her?

I asked her to move the bags away and play again.

We laughed, because her tightening stopped.

Alexander’s Discovery is not a method to improve posture; it is a method to use posture as a clue to open a door into an unconscious world that is causing you pain and suffering. Seeing is the beginning of the remedy.

During the next three years in Sydney, I drive SATA into success upon success - while simultaneously being reckless in my behaviour. I use alcohol as a way to hide emotionally.

Slowly, I see this happening.

But how could I stop it?