The Momentum of the Past

One day I decided I didn't need sugar in my coffee.

BUT I LOVED SUGAR IN MY COFFEE.

Mine was a conscious decision built on my experiences of ill-feeling. My dizziness after drinking my coffee was hard to ignore. It wasn't hard to argue my way into giving up sugar. 

Except that my feelings did not agree.

And feelings, my dear friend, Feelings Rule.

How many times have you (sensibly) decided to do something and failed? The reason we have New Year Resolutions is:

1. because we can feel a little more conviction – and Feelings Rule!
2. because we most likely failed at it the year before (if you bothered).

As I wrote last week – even if our decision-making feels conscious, most of it isn’t.

Feelings rule.

Giving up sugar in coffee was a minor challenge in the order of my universe at the time. So I did it. I started creating a past full of occasions of drinking coffee without sugar.

I reasoned that feelings are adaptable. Humans often tolerate the most extreme conditions because your feelings are designed to calibrate to your past. When your present behaviour matches your past, you acquiesce. The longer your past, the more the same behaviour is projected into your future.

You can use this phenomenon to work for you - or it can work against you.

In my case, I distinctly remember enjoying my first cup of coffee without sugar - six months later. Finally the momentum of my past took over, and my new feeling of enjoyment was born.

Posture is the same.

You adapt to how you sat in the past. The more you slump, tighten or collapse – the more this becomes your norm. You can try to overcome it, but as everyone knows – eventually you fall back into the same old habits. The key is to feel new experiences until those they take over and become your normal.

This is why I use my touch to communicate new Postural experiences. Telling you is not as convincing as having you feel the difference.

Musicians come to play their instruments, and feel a new way to breath, use their arms or stand. Yoginis discover that back-bending can be a comfortable experience instead of a stressful one. 

In every case, a person is building up a new feeling because…

Feelings Rule.

Once I enjoyed coffee without sugar, I was never tempted to go back.

Dealing with habits that are not purely Postural by nature is simple when you apply the underlying mechanisms of change that Alexander exposed in his “Evolution of a Technique” story in his 3rd book. I have taken that story and mapped it onto an enneagram – making a compass to guide you in helping students change significant behaviour.

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