There are times in life when we are called upon to do something which seems terrifying and impossible.
On the outside, we may not always have a choice about what happens to us, but on the inside we always have a choice about how we respond.
The Alexander Technique gives us a way to stop and choose how to react to the stimuli we are presented with; we can choose the habitual and familiar, or we can choose to move forward and up into the Unknown. From this place of freedom of choice, we can learn to choose whether to let Principle or feelings be our guide, and we can learn how to move forward in a new, more positive way.
As a performing musician, I am quite familiar with the feelings of dread and anxiety that can accompany the prospect of exposing my innermost Self in front of an audience, facing unknown and unpredictable outcomes. Thankfully, I have been able to overcome those horribly uncomfortable feelings many times, turning them into positive excitement and successful performances, and the more I practice facing and accepting the fears, the better I get at doing this. The Alexander Technique has helped me immensely with this, and it has brought me great joy – both during and after performances. (See my blogpost on performance anxiety here: http://balanceandharmonyat.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-manage-performance-anxiety-with.html)
When I was a beginning Alexander Teacher with very little experience, I was presented with multiple opportunities which elicited a similar fear response, and I was also able to overcome them to good advantage. Some of those moments felt like being thrown off of a cliff and being asked to fly with wings I was unaware that I had. Or being thrown into a pool of water at the deep end, unaware that something in me already knew how to swim.
I sometimes look at life and see it as a school for learning how to accomplish or manifest into reality what seems to be utterly impossible. I see the Alexander Technique as a tool for learning this extremely valuable skill in a very conscious way. It is a tool for bravery – for helping us move through the inevitable hellish moments of life with greater ease and grace.
I am so grateful when I look back and see that every single time life has confronted me with a stimulus to learn something the “hard” way (through difficulty, suffering, and fear), something in me has in fact carried me through to the other side, and I have emerged from the trial with a deeper understanding and greater strength.
Learning to trust that “something” that carries us through – it doesn’t really matter so much what we call it – is where the real work and art of living takes place. It has been said, “Living is not for the faint of heart”!
The practice of being confronted with the seemingly impossible, facing the fear, and making conscious, principled choices about how to deal with the stimulus, is a practice that it would be better not to ignore, although most people do, most of the time.
F.M. Alexander said, “Anyone can do what I did, if they do what I did. But nobody wants the discipline.” The first part of that quote used to be the more important part for me, because I wanted very much to know what he did, and how to do it; now I find myself even more interested in the second part. The practice of increasing our conscious awareness and making principled choices in the face of fear and discomfort is the most difficult, but the most important, discipline.
We don’t have to engage in this kind of self-discipline. But, I personally choose to do so often, because I know that someday I will be confronted with what seems to be the most impossible thing and the greatest Unknown: my own death. And I do believe that the death of this body I inhabit is inevitable! I don’t know with absolute certainty what will happen when it dies, but it is possible that the prospect of no longer existing in material form (or otherwise? can I really know with absolute certainty? can anyone?) may fill me with the greatest fear response I have ever before experienced. What if that moment suddenly presents me with the opportunity for a performance of a lifetime? What if I will be called upon again to do something that seems utterly impossible, and more difficult than everything that has come before?
I would like to have a peaceful, positive experience of death when the time comes. To me, one way to increase the odds of having that experience (not necessarily the only way or the only right way) could be to see this lifetime as a rehearsal, a learning, a preparation for that moment. People say, “Life is not a rehearsal,” but it is possible that this really means: learn how to perform Life well NOW, so that when death comes, it’s just another moment to enjoy. The rehearsal is the performance, and the performance is the rehearsal.
In any case, when death comes, I would like to be prepared as much as possible; I would like to have my “trust muscles” so strong by then, that I won’t hesitate to fly off the cliff or dive off the diving board, into the vast, beautiful, heavenly Unknown. And since I don’t know when that moment will come, I am preparing in earnest. I don’t want to fall off the cliff to my destruction, and I don’t want to drown. I want to rise above my fear, and overcome the challenge.
For this reason, I am grateful for every opportunity life offers me to practice dying (living) well, no matter how difficult, seemingly impossible, or painful.
“Those who die before dying do not die when they die.” – German proverb
I would love to hear your responses to this blogpost. I welcome your comments!
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I enjoyed this post – especially:
The rehearsal is the performance, and the performance is the rehearsal.
“Those who die before dying do not die when they die.” – German proverb
Over the past year I took care of my mother who was dying. We had a lot of good times together even as each day brought us closer to the ending of our time together in this here and now. We talked about the Alexander Technique (which we both practiced and taught this together and individually for the past 30 years) as a way of being easy when navigating our parallel but unknown journeys. She was figuring out how to let go of here and move into the next phase. I was supporting her transition and letting go of having her physically present in my life.
After she was gone, I relied on my practice of the Technique to navigate the memorial, the disposition of physical things, the settling of financial accounts, and to allow myself to feel my way through my grief.
Thank you for the good thoughts.
This popped up in my email today and I reread your post and then my comment – at the beginning I didn’t notice that it was my comment and so again – 6 months later, this quote “Those who die before dying do not die when they die.” – German proverb still speaks to me.
Letting go, trust, knowing what I can rely upon inside myself – these are the gifts I’ve learned through my studies of the Alexander Technique.
Thank you for writing, Laura, and for sharing your experience. What a wonderful thing for both you and your mother to have shared the understanding of letting go that the Alexander Technique teaches us. I do believe this is one of its greatest gifts: to learn how to be detached and attached from the things of this world in the most positive way. Everything becomes easier with that perspective, I believe… and your experience shows it to be so – even in the most challenging of situations, which is the transitioning between life and death. Blessings to you on your journey!
Jennifer,
since the death of my mother (2 years ago) , I have been contemplating my own death, my fears, my attitude to if, quite often. And I often think of the words of my mother which are just about saying the same as what you say in your blog. My mother never had any Alexander Technique lessons. But she had a very strong faith and believe in God (which I do not share). She often said: “God will give me the kind of death that matches my life.” And I think that is exactly what happened! She got exactly what she had prepared for in her life. An easy, peaceful death, made simple. The other astonishing thing I am carrying with me as a gift from her: About ten days before she died, she said: “I am really curious to find out what it will be like (dying).” Then she added: “I think this is a healthy curiosity.” I love her for this. It is continuing to explore, to be curious, to take an interest. That is how I want to live – and that is how I want to teach.
Thank you for the blog – it brings together my own preoccupations, and my work – something which I had not thought about before.
To look forward to death with a healthy curiosity… How beautiful, and what a wonderful example from your mother! Thank you so much for sharing this here, Magdalena. The more I explore the Alexander Technique, the more amazed I am at the endless connections that can be made. I don’t think there’s anything that it can’t be applied to!
I am religuous and have strong beliefs about what happens to our body and spirit when we die. If you are interested you can visit http://www.lds.org or http://www.mormon.org to learn more. Thanks for sharing.
I believe this body will change, but I am not convinced that it has to die, in the sense that we commonly accept death. (There is substantial archeological evidence that people believed in life of the body after death, and of extended life spans.) Our material existence is…very primitive, compared to what our minds are capable of. Those who limit themselves to animal bodies remain animal. 🙂 At worst, death is a passage. For animals, perhaps they become like smoke, dissipating with any slight breeze. For those prepared to accept adversity, it becomes another step.
One of my favorite mottos is, “Anything is possible!” I agree that our minds incredibly powerful. Thank you for writing, Michael! 🙂