Turnarounds

"Sensory appreciation conditions conception — you can't know a thing by an instrument that is wrong." — FM Alexander, Teaching Aphorism #106

Today is a personal Letter – and I'm going to get very personal – so skip it if you prefer reading the more technical side of PILANDES.

Today's aspect of PILANDES is relational and deeper in its meaning. It concerns the relationship you have with your Self.

How you treat your body tells us the story of how you treat your Self and others.

One central idea in Alexander's discoveries has been a running theme in my Letters series without being explicitly stated: we are designed to easily deceive ourselves. This deception is not dishonest or dishonourable – it merely reflects the way Nature built us to be.

"The Frog with the Rotated Eye" that I sent out earlier in this series is a scientific explanation of how this works. If you are not familiar with that Letter, you read here now.

Here is a simple summary reflecting Alexander's aphorism above:

– first, we build maps of the world;
– second, we use those maps to "appreciate" the world;
– third, this "appreciation" conditions how we react to the world.

In effect, we are weirdly reacting to what we created in the first place.

Over time, we slowly stop refining our maps and settle into a belief that our map reliably shows us how the world is: how we are, how others are, how life itself is. We then react to these conclusions as though they were true, when they are simply the maps we built for ourselves.

Maps can change, they are not the reality, they merely approximate it.

But this is too abstract. Let me give you a concrete example from my own life.

***

After ten years — and two daughters — my marriage fell apart. I don't intend to tell the story of what happened, except that my wife fell in love with another man and left me.

The map I built from that experience was: "My wife left me."

I had ample evidence for my belief – she even said that to me. However, whenever that thought "She left me" entered my mind, I became full of grief, anger, and confusion. I spent nearly a year crying most mornings, trying to accept what had happened.

It was during this time that I discovered what a "Turnaround" is.

A Turnaround is simple: you investigate the opposite belief.

In the example of the frog: for the frog to catch the insect, his Turnaround would be to take his tongue to the opposite area of space that his rotated eye map was telling him to go. Had he done this – the frog would have captured the insect!

Of course, frogs are incapable of effecting a Turnaround like this – but humans can.

How would this apply in my case?

As I thought about it, I realised my Turnaround would be: "I left my wife."

Then something extraordinary happened.

I realised that this was true!

I had only been focusing on the final year of our marriage, but as I reflected on this Turnaround, my mind started to consider the entire 10 years of our marriage. Slowly, I began to realise that I had left my wife a long time before she had left me.

I had let my work, my self-interest and my arrogance blind me to her situation. She needed my help and I didn't give it when she needed me most. So she found it with someone else.

Remarkably, instead of feeling rage and resentment, I experienced gratitude and love towards her. She had been wanting to leave me for 7 years, I realised, and she stayed because she cared about me and our children.

This was a very new map, and it caused me to behave in a very new way.

This is the power of the Turnaround.

***

Next I will get back to technical PILANDES to show you how the Turnaround works in Mini Swan. Put on your leggings and get ready to work!

NEXT: A Swan has 23+ Neck Vertebrae

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