Habits of Thought and of Body

"I am too busy - I can't relax. How can I change that?"

She looked nervous, unsure. Her request* opened my morning session of ThinkingBody this weekend. Students love to generalize, and it's your job to be specific. FM used to say:

"If you apply the principle to the carrying out of one evolution, you have learned the lot."

What is the one evolution?

It is I, here, NOW. Doing what I am doing. It is a specific past, and a past that repeats itself like a hamster running in a wheel. Around and around forever - big energy, no change.

"Where are you busy?" I ask, looking for the "one evolution"…

Fast forward past a kind of Socratic dialogue, until finally arriving at…

"It's not about work. I am busy for my family, for my children, for my teenage daughter."

And she remembered - because I asked:

"Where were you when you had a moment of busy?"

She answered that she was with her daughter, watching how she played the piano, eager to show her how she should improve.

"Is that peaceful? Are you co-ordinating naturally when you do that?"

The answer is no. Because her intention is nuts. Her intention is to change her daughter, to make her play the piano the way she believes it should be played to protect her from injury. Her inner refrain… "She should listen, she should learn, she should do it the way I tell her."

I ask: "When you were a teenager, did you always do what your mother told you?"

"No"

Big laughter from the room, and the mother.

"The she's just like you isn't she?"

Silence.

"When you were that age, what did you want from your mother?"

"Respect. Freedom. Trust."

"Are you giving her that when you are tightening into 'busy'?"

Tears appear; softening, awakening to something deeper and truer.

***

Freedom in the head/spinal relationship is not always a movement of bones and muscles. Ideas are movements, concepts and beliefs are movements. Again, as FM pointed out:

You translate everything, whether physical, mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.

ThinkingBody aligns to FM first's book - Man's Supreme Inheritance - where FM was filled with the idea of "thinking habits". His second most wondrous piece of writing - after the Australian story - is the Chapter in Part One of MSI: "VI. Habits of Thought and of Body"

It's ThinkingBody - in the chapter title!

FM ploughs into explaining the orientation that ThinkingBody seeks to resurrect in our teaching of the work: showing how emotionally charged beliefs are generators of movements.

Beliefs are primary code: the real movers of your head and spine.

***

She cried. She was motivated by love: she wanted to give, but she was a little confused about how to give. My late nephew Kevin - who was mentally challenged due to oxygen deprivation at birth - taught all my family a wonderful lesson in how to give.

At Christmas, he would unwrap your present; then sometimes he asked:

"Who gave me this?"

A family member would raise their hand. Kevin would walk over to them, saying…

"Thank you. I don't want this."

 And hand it back to them.

We were of course flummoxed - and yet his wisdom was supreme. He was so was matter-of-fact about it, so clear.

When you want nothing from the person you are giving to - Bingo!

When this mother can let her daughter find her own way - Bingo!

Yes. With that, peace arrived. The recollection of love.

And natural co-ordination arising from natural giving.

I love teaching Alexander's discovery in this emotionally-centric way. You start with "Habits of Thought and of Body" and people, places and relationships. It all starts here.

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