new alexander technique experiences

Now that my farewell rant to George W. Bush is over, I can mention a few other recent items...

The biggest thing on my mind lately comes from the Tuning the Air Performance Project retreat in mid-October.

Raft Island

We spent a week at a retreat center on Raft Island, playing guitar, working on our performance chops, and working in large groups along with guitarists from all over North America.

We also had SBC on hand, one of the most super-talented Alexander Technique teachers anywhere. She truly has a gift.

Through the first half of the course, she worked with us while we were seated in the circle playing guitar; she usually comes up behind you while you play, places her hands lightly on your shoulders and back, and then helps you to un-knot habitual tensions and patterns.

During one circle, she had me leaning way out over the right side of my stool. She had noticed that I habitually squinched up the right side of my back whenever I began picking, and as I began letting that go, I became aware of a huge knot in my back, right below my right shoulder blade.

I asked her about it, and she told me that she had noticed this habit on previous occasions when we met; she said I had always habitually held tension in that part of my back, for as long as she had been seeing me on Guitar Craft courses. But, I was only now getting to where I could actually feel the knot. (She also told me that I was almost unrecognizable as the same person after all the Alexander work I had done with Neil Schapera as my teacher in Cincinnati.)

Help! I'm a rock!

As we approached the middle of the course, I could feel that I was unravelling and close to freaking out. I've found Guitar Craft courses to be intense, with little time to chill out, and plenty of psychodrama to deal with; so, I wasn't particularly surprised to find myself several days into the course ready to go on a crying jag every time I heard somebody strike a note. I guess it's just what happens when you begin to wake up a little bit, and you see a little bit of how you are and what you are past the buffers you usually have in place.

The weird part (for me) is when you recognize the approaching emotional overload, but you have no idea exactly when or how it began. I wonder, "Have I always been this way, and I just didn't notice?"

After breakfast, I hid in the bathroom of the dining hall for a while to see if I could get it together.

Later, I became inappropriately angry during a meeting with one of the groups I had been performing with at meals. We had been issued a performance challenge and met it successfully, but now we were slogging; we had little time, the group was briefly noisy and unfocused, and I couldn't "focus my chi" very well.

Igor A. was there helping us out, and he gave me a look. I knew right then I had made a mistake. (I later apologized to the group and everything was cool, but I felt like a heel, and it sucked.)

Then it was time for the Tuning the Air open rehearsal (a large group of the visiting musicians would be observing from the middle of the circle).

Uh...wot's the deal?

There was some weirdness as soon as I walked into the room; my stool was missing from the circle. CG offered a comment in jest ("Ian, we've been talking..."), but the overall tension in the atmosphere of the room was so intense, that I began to wonder if I had been kicked out of the group and delivered the humiliating news in front of a room full of people. I was just about ready to walk out; I had that old chew-your-leg-off-in-order-to-escape feeling percolating through me.

It eventually became clear that they simply couldn't find my stool among all the other hordes of stools in the chapel. But in the meantime I couldn't find my stool, either, and I was thoroughly [sound of lips flapped up and down by right hand index finger].

Eventually, it all got sorted out rehearsal began.

Ian freaks out, but good

I still didn't know all the songs, so I had to sit quietly during a few pieces, which is harder than you might think. SBC went around the circle and worked on us, then went to sit down over near the door.

While I sat and paid attention during "Cultivating the Beat," I began struggling for breath, and I closed my eyes. My back hurt. I was primed for a meltdown.

SBC saw or sensed something, and she came over. She began moving me around on the stool; she pointed out that I was leaning on the guitar, which was in turn leaning on my right leg. And was this how I should be holding the guitar? There was something gently stern in her tone, like "I've been watching this thing in your back slowly ripen. Now it's time. We're going to do this. It's time to let it go, even if you don't quite feel ready..."

She had me lean way out over the edge of the stool again. It felt odd, and I told her so. She said I actually tended to lean way to the left, but now she was going to help me find my center.

Then the knot in my back let go. As the muscles relaxed and lengthened, it felt like the right side of my back was blowing up like a balloon; I had an image of my back as a thin membrane that expanded as air rushed in, as if there were whole areas of my lungs that had been cut off for a long time.

It didn't necessarily hurt, but it felt strange and unpleasant, like "Whoah! My body isn't really supposed to move like that, is it?"; that part of my back felt cartoonishly huge as it opened up, way beyond what felt normal, like my inner sense of bodily proportion and size had been completely out of calibration.

As that tension let go (many years worth of angst stored up in my body), it had to go somewhere. It needed an exit.

I began crying uncontrollably, gushing hot, dripping tears all over my guitar. Time crawled by, and the music all around me just seemed to go on and on and on, even though it was only a few minutes.

An entire section of my back completely realigned, and SBC said it was like I didn't trust my right arm to do its thing when I picked.

After a while, she worked her way outward from that area of my back. My body was putty under her hands, and it felt like she just wiped the tension out of my spine.

Eventually, things settled down, and she brought some paper tissues over. She said she didn't want me to rust my strings prematurely.

CG looked at me. You OK?

I nodded back.

My guitar soundboard was smeared with goop.

All in a day's weirdness

TM and several others later told me this sort of thing was common in circles on courses, and that I shouldn't be embarrassed or worry. They described some other incidents, including an occurrence on a six-week course when one guitarist went through a tension release so huge he fell off his stool and curled up in a ball.

Since then, I find I still hold tension in that area of my back; either it did not all release completely on that occasion, or my habit of tensing that area will take a while to dissipate. It's gotten easier to feel when I'm holding tension there now.

For a while, my right shoulder around my collar bone hurt; I've been told that when you hold tension long enough, not only do you stop feeling it, but the membranes around your muscles eventually change and basically shrink wrap you into whatever shape your holding. Then, when you let the tension go, that connective tissue then has to stretch out and adjust, which can hurt. Everything in your body is connected, and as things re-align, these adjustments radiate and travel outward through your body.

I've always lived very much "in my head," and as time goes on, I'm amazed to learn how intelligent the human body is, how our physical self has its own sort of intelligence, and how it will store all sorts of experiences.

At one time, I was actually a little afraid of Alexander Technique because of this, and avoided exploring it for a few years. On my first Guitar Craft course, I was outside the AT cabin when somebody inside began crying uncontrollably during a private session. It was spooky to listen to somebody going through that kind of release experience; now, I understand that it's not necessarily something fearful to go through, even though it might outwardly appear so.

I once read that Alexander Technique is not concerned, per se, with why someone is physically tensed up any particular way, or how they developed particular physical habits in response to traumas. Insights may arise, but AT is concerned mainly with just letting go of these patterns and moving forward.

The AT eye

I can sometimes look at people on the street now and see all sorts of things written into how they hold themselves and move. I'm not sure what they are exactly, but it's plain that something happened to make these people into pretzels.

I sometimes then try to imagine all the things experienced AT teachers see written in people's bodies.

Energetic contamination

Somebody on the course told me that during a course, SBC often feels like she needs to take several showers throughout the day. All of these hordes of people arrive with all sorts of issues wrapped up in their bodies, and as it lets go underneath her hands, she's right there directly in the path of all this negative energy. It gets all over her.

I think I have at least an inkling of what she experiences.

In the mid 1990s, I had an anxiety attack. I couldn't sleep for three days, and I couldn't seem to get a deep enough breath; usually, when I breathe in, there's a moment during the breath when something clicks in my body, I feel physically satisfied, and then I breathe back out.

In this case, that little satisfied click was not arriving, no matter how deeply I breathed. It couldn't scratch that itch, and it was driving me crazy.

Finally, I went over to see a friend and completely flipped out while sitting on his couch. It felt like a tightly wound spring in my solar plexus was suddenly unwinding and spinning out all at once; as this tension released, I cried uncontrollably.

Afterward, I felt amazing!

I had this incredible feeling that I was spiritually clean.

I later described it (in typical style for me at the time) as a "spiritual orgasm"—an amazing feeling, but the process of getting there was an ordeal, and I don't necessarily recommend it as something to pursue on purpose.

After a few days, the feeling went away, and I returned to the baseline level of habitual angst I existed in at the time.

But I always remembered that incredible clean feeling I had for a while.

The point being that we should try to imagine the opposite of this clean feeling; imagine being an AT teacher on a course several days in, and you're covered with all this negative stuff that has been coming out of the people you're working on—imagine feeling spiritually dirty!

You would have to be pretty dedicated to be in that line of work. Hopefully, AT teachers have some kind of training or strategies for how to deal with this stuff. (Unless, of course, Guitar Craft courses are unusually intense in this way. It may be that in the course of a day-to-day private practice an AT teacher is not exposed to this level and sheer mass of energy.)

OK, I'm done writing now. More later...

goodbye to chimpy

And now, a rant...

A lot has happened since I last posted, not including outward events like the economy and the election of a new President.

Speaking of which, I'm relieved the whole campaign nonsense is over and that America somehow managed to elect someone intelligent. Now let's hope he gets it right, that he survives, and that he's able to pull this country back from the brink of complete disaster. After eight years of George W. Bush, we're in a bad way. I believe Bush is a full-blown sociopath; that man has killed so many innocent around the world, using our money, in our name. He is directly responsible for a small mountain of dead bodies, but I don't believe he cares. Not even the tiniest bit. And he still has a little over two months left in which he and his cronies can loot the Treasury, steal everything that isn't nailed down, and maybe even get us stuck in another pointless war.

Bush supposedly bought several million acres of ranch land in Paraguay, so maybe he's planning to skip the country once he leaves office (and you will leave office, George, so don't get any ideas about calling a State of Emergency and overstaying your welcome). Good riddance.

We'll see you in the dock at the Hague—right alongside Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Dougie Feith, and other members of the PNAC flying monkey brigade who helped get Americans into this mess.

And, finally, could you please explain why you sat there in that Florida classroom while New York City was under attack? Why didn't the Secret Service do their job and drag you out of there to a secure location, like they're supposed to?

No excuses, please. The truth would be nice for a change.

Oh, whatever. Get out of here.

But don't go too far. There may be a prosecutor and a judge in your near future who would like to chat with you about a few things...