The Family Affair

My email yesterday was ill-advised.

Yes, I had my emotional adventure and got roasted good and proper. And I realized something important – we don't know. No-one does, and anyone who thinks they do is kidding themselves, including me.

I remember working with my treasured teacher Marj, and she would tell me something, and I would interpret it and say it back differently. Every time.

One day she looked at me and quizzed:

"I wonder why you say what I said differently every time?"

She wasn't scolding me, and there was a lesson there. 

Alexander taught it differently:

"Be careful of the printed matter: you may not read it as it is written down."

One thing you discover when you study Alexander's Discovery is how wrong you can be about the things you feel to be most right. It is shocking to find out that an idea, feeling or process you thought infallible proves to be the very cause of the problem you thought it was designed to solve.

This is one of the ways to work with your Self – be careful of what you believe. You can make a wonderful story out of what you feel, and it may be coherent and give you a strong sense of subjective confidence – but it can be missing important information. 

Information that would transform how you think and change your story.

This happens all the time when you study Posture.

The simplest example is the effort people make to sit up straight – they do it to prevent collapsing, yet that very effect is the cause of their collapsing. When you spend some much effort trying to stay up, you end up exaggerating the forces that are pulling you down.

This point about subjective confidence in wrong ideas is easy to see around the issue of Posture, not so easy to understand around the ideas you have about what needs to be done today. However, both are the same.

What's the way forward?

To gather information, and good quality information at that.

In times of emotional trauma, start with what is immediately around you. Actors – when they want to recreate a fictitious character – do precisely this. You can do it about your Self. He's an example – how would you answer the questions?

Who am I?
A father, an Alexander's Discovery teacher, a business owner

Where am I
In my studio in Osaka Japan on a Tuesday afternoon.

What are you doing?
Communicating how I am learning about me.

What is my obstacle?
Too much confidence in my subjective beliefs.

What just happened?
I sent an unedited email full of my subjective beliefs.

What do I want?
To develop and grow

Try it out for your Self. 

It can be a helpful process to bring you back to present time and place so you can figure out your most constructive next actions.

This is what Marj called "constructive thinking", and it is based on Alexander's Discovery that the only way you can restore natural coordination is by conscious oversight. 

It is a process that will save you again and again if you let it.

My offer on signing up BodyThinking Online course is still active this month. Read more on the link below. It includes live coaching.

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/store/oTZvjLy