Getting Out from Under My Shower of Lonliness

Every morning I when I got into the shower, it was then I remembered…

“Oh, my daughters are in Australia… I am here in Japan, without them.”

And a wave of loneliness and despair would fan out from my heart, crippling my enthusiasm for doing anything that day.

Angelica and Grace were both born in Japan, but when the eldest was 10, we decided to move them to school in Australia. Two of my sisters had their kids at a Steiner school in Mullumbimby and raved to me about how much the school inspired them. It sounded like a good move for our girls.

But of course, my ability to support the family was firmly anchored in Japan.

When I had recently returned to Japan from a trip home – day after day, I would fight this loneliness inside me, only to feel worse each time. I would do all sorts of things to cheer my Self up, but none of it really worked.

Then I remembered something I had seen in my students while teaching Alexander’s Discovery – the more a student tried to “sit up straight”, the worse their Posture got. Anyone who has spent a day slumping in front of their desk knows what I am talking about. The more you try to sit up, the more you want to collapse. It’s like the hamster in a spinning wheel – no matter how much energy you use, you stay in the same place.

Was I doing the same thing emotionally?

By pushing myself, by trying to “move past” my feelings and cheer my Self up - was I just like my Alexander student caught in the hamster wheel?

And if that was true – and it sure seemed to make sense – did Alexander’s Discovery offer any clues about how I could manage emotionally….

I started to think about what I explained to students caught in the hamster wheel…

I often said:

“You’re fine. Slump! That’s part of your flexibility. Don’t fight it, embrace it.”

I would go on to explain:

“Before any new moves can happen, you need to be where you are. But right now you are fabricating an image of yourself in a perfect posture, then making a huge effort to be there…”

“Oh,” I thought “Is that what I am doing? 

Are you fabricating a scene around your daughters?

And as I pondered, it hit me.

YES !!!

I was not under the shower getting ready for my day; I was travelling away to a fabricated scene of “being at home with my daughters” - then reacting to my lie with sadness.

There was no “home with my daughters” where I was right then. That was my lie.

What I had was me, having a shower. And as my mind came back to my present, I lost my loneliness. It was so sudden and immediate; I almost felt guilty not missing them both anymore!

I discovered that home as a concept doesn’t work well for me when it is anywhere other than where I am.

Home is here. Home is now. Home is me.

And Posture works like that too. 

Instead of imagining all the time how you want to be, start by investigating how you are. That’s where you start. Again, as my precious teacher Marj once declared of herself:

“When I find myself pushing, I have not taken the time to see where I am
before I start to move.”