Here’s a question for you. Have you had your eyes examined recently? I did, and learned that flashing eyes are not just a figment of fiction and fairy tales.

Dr. Michael Marmor, world-renowned retinal specialist and Professor of Ophthalmology, Stanford University, sat across from me. He wanted to measure the electricity that is emitted from my retina, as a measure of the health of my eye.

“Do you mean that our eyes really emit electricity?”

“Yes!”

I started to smile, “…so the idea of someone having flashing eyes is real?”

“We are electrical beings. The body works through electricity!”

I was fascinated. Pacemakers work on electricity. Brain neurons and in fact, the nervous system communicate electrically. Now I learn that our eyes not only have electricity, they emit it.

Alexander Technique is a method of neuro-muscular re-education and it improves balance, ease of movement and coordination. Does improving the way you move impact consciousness? Or do changes in the brain have to come first, to allow better movement? One of the premises of the Technique is that mind and body cannot be separated; in Alexander’s words, we are “psycho-physical beings.” It seems there is truth to this. Read the article.

Dr. Marmor set me up for the test. It wasn’t fun; they dilated my eyes fully and then put some kind of numbing drops in my eyes. They put in a glass contact lens with electrodes on the outer portion and put me into some kind of machine. My eye had to be open for the entire exam – 8 minutes – while bright lights were flashed at my eye. The system was computerized and recorded the electricity being emitted from my eye.

The hardest part was not moving nor blinking; if I did, they’d have to repeat the exam.

Then the process was repeated with my other eye.

Eight minutes per eye is a long time for a lot of thinking:

Why do we call some people “magnetic” and “charismatic?” Are they in some way running on a higher voltage than average? The electricity being emitted from my eye couldn’t have been anything visible in any normal sense of the word, yet it is in evidence and verifiable. When a psychic reads your aura, are they picking up on some electro-magnetic field that is as real as the electricity being emitted from your retina? Maybe there is something to it and we are literally Beings of Light. Aura photography was first taken by Nicola Tesla in 1891. It was later developed into Kirlian photography.

If a Stanford professor and Western-trained scientist calmly sits in his Menlo Park office telling me we are electrical beings, who am I to argue? Let’s say that he’s right.

My retinal exams were 100% normal, showing healthy eyes sending the right amount of electricity out into the world. Plug me in!

How did you come to find this blog? How did you find out about the Alexander Technique?

A number of people have come to me for lessons recently. When I asked how they found out about the Alexander Technique, several people have said that they have been reading a book:

How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live: Learning the Alexander Technique to Explore Your Mind-Body Connection and Achieve Self-Mastery, by Missy Vineyard

People tell me they are enjoying the book. It has many case studies with interesting stories and also gives a great amount of detailed information about studying the technique, and also, teaching it.

I know of this book from Missy Vineyard, and have been reading it, myself. I find that it is not simple reading, however it has a great deal of information that’s both interesting and also, food for thought. I particularly enjoy her discussion of the mind-body connection and neuroscience.

If you are looking for a complete book, this may be a good place to start.

Missy Vineyard is a highly regarded teacher and trainer, and the Director of the Alexander Technique Center, New England

My own training was at The Alexander Educational Center (TAEC) with Giora Pinkas and John Baron.

Did you know that there are currently 22 AmSAT* Certified training courses in the United States?

And did you know that there are 15 International Societies, as well?

Training and certification from AmSAT requires a minimum of 1600 hours of training over at least three years at an AmSAT approved Teacher Training Course.

Lots of work but worth it :-).

*The American Society for the Alexander Technique

Do you have dogs to walk? If not, how do you take little mental health breaks during your day?

Sometimes when we walk, I meet a neighbor. Other times, I just look at what comes to my eyes and think of Thich Nhat Hahn’s walking meditation.

Today, I looked at the yellow and pink snapdragons by my front door and noticed how relaxing it is just to pause and really examine the details of a flower. I remember feeling that way on a vacation at The Mauian, a hideaway in Maui, when a gecko walked up the glass walls of a phone booth as I was inside. You can lose your worries watching sticky little footpads inching up.

Of course, my eyes were open looking at the gecko and at the same time I had a feeling of relaxation.

Some people close their eyes when they try to relax. What do you do? Closing the eyes may be an unconscious association with a certain amount of tension in the body and eyes being open, and relaxation with closing the eyes for sleeping or meditating. I realized meditation is also possible with eyes open, as with looking closely at flowers.

Once in a while during my Alexander training, the Director would put a flower in the middle of the floor. We’d all sit in a circle and look at it. The instructions were to just notice the flower.

It’s easy; take your flower and just start to notice little things about it. Are the petals smooth around the edges, or are they jagged? Is the color even or does it have various hues? Is the stem smooth or thorny? How many leaves does it have? Do you see veins in them?

Look at your flower until it becomes unique in all the world. Put it down amongst more of the same type. It may surprise you, how easily you can pick it out again.

Sometimes instead of a flower, it was a lemon that my teacher brought. I never knew how different the bumpy skins are on lemons; they are like fingerprints. The skin smells so good. It is a moment of quietude and peace.

The same kind of noticing and serenity can be present in your body.

Try it; just sit quietly for a moment, or lie down and do Constructive Rest. Just stop and let yourself be with whatever is there. Don’t fix anything, really and truly let yourself Be.

When you look at a flower or notice something about your body, in that moment your thoughts are not on anything past or future. You are being present in the moment. Noticing that you’re noticing is an interesting thought to pop in!

As my dogs stop and sniff the grass, I like to stop and sniff the incredibly rich and seductive fragrance of a rose. Sometimes I notice the twigs and dirt underfoot. Or I may notice my neck letting go of tension and think, how nice the warm sun feels.

What do you ponder when you walk your dogs?

Welcome back. Yesterday we were talking about being Creatures of Habit and I promised to tell you about me.

I remember being horrified to realize that I was contracting my neck severely, every time I moved, and then to discover that I could not control this behavior. Try it again; try not pulling your head back into your neck as you get up. (And try not to achieve this through the unfair and unproductive means of stiffening your neck like a block of wood. Try to simply not do something you usually do!)

F.M. Alexander noticed habits of his own that he determined were at the root cause of losing his voice and thereby, threatening to ruin his career as an actor. He discovered a pattern of compression along the spine and through his joints, all the way to gripping the floor with his feet. He was tightening his throat and neck and throwing his head back and his chest out.

Have you ever tried to change a habit and then noticed just how tenacious they can be? F.M. (as he was known) discovered this difficulty. He reasoned that these patterns of contraction and compression were connected with the difficulties he was having with his voice. He tried telling himself not to do them, but when he’d begin to actually speak, he discovered that he reverted right back to his old habits.

Sound familiar?

Applying the Alexander Technique to our habitual reactions to life situations is empowering and freeing. It’s about human potential and consciousness and it provides a powerful tool that you can apply in your life as well as in your body.

About habits again…..I like habits; they make life easier. The more good habits we cultivate, the better our rose garden will look.

To tell you the truth, I even like dandelions and enjoy blowing their seeds, but I’d rather not have too many of them in my lawn. Give me just enough to keep me humble and remind me not to take my life – or my garden - for granted.

I do. I readily admit to being a creature of habit, and I propose that habits are good - as long as they’re the ones we want.

If you agree with me, then it’s also true that good habits are a matter of consciousness and choosing the habitual ways in which we live our lives.

My first (habitual) reaction to the idea of habits was to think of them as bad things: “He smokes like a chimney.” “She eats when she’s stressed.” “I’m always late to appointments.”

Then I thought further and came up with many good habits that we’re all supposed to cultivate, like flossing your teeth and exercising and getting enough sleep.

One way to think of habits is as a reaction to a stimulus that occurs without our thinking about it. Smokers may react to the stimulus of finishing dinner by wanting a cigarette. That’s their habit. Some people react to any bad news by becoming alarmed; other people are more sanguine and take it in stride. We have habits of mental and also physical reaction and they happen coincidentally. How do you react to the alarm clock in the morning? Can you say that it’s entirely mental, or do you also react physically? How about habits of fear, or anger? Do you know someone who reacts to a request defensively, with fear, or aggressively, with anger? How about people you like; do they react with a smile?

We can cultivate happy habits like growing beautiful roses, and we can pluck unwanted habits like dandelions in the lawn. They may come back, but if we keep removing them eventually the lawn will be clear and green.
(Ha! I can hear you laughing about the dandelions from here! Do they ever give up?)

How about habits of posture? Sometimes that’s easier to see on other people. I used to sit in a café in the afternoon when I first began studying the Alexander Technique. My awareness was focused on how I moved, and I’d started to look for patterns in others. People would stroll past on the sidewalk and I had a great view of them from the side. I was fascinated to observe what part of the body arrived first. Would they stick their feet out way ahead of themselves? Would their head arrive first, pulling a neck that poked forward from the shoulders?

Sometimes the thing we use to think with and the physical location of what we might call our Selves – our head – is the hardest thing to sense in terms of where it is in space, relative to our own body.

Can you guess what you do? Since walking is hard to see on ourselves since we’re too close to the action, let’s start with something relatively simple.

Try sitting in a chair.
Put your hand on the back of your neck and stand up.

Can you tell if your neck was long and your head moving forward and freely up, as you rose? Or did your neck bend and the back of your head come back into your hand?

Maybe you’d like to try it again and perhaps this time you’ll be able to notice what you do as you rise.

One thing’s for sure. The way you or I and most of the rest of the world get out of a chair is by habit, and what we’re doing now is an exercise to bring that habit to consciousness.

Consciousness is a curious thing. It’s much more fun when it’s about someone else.

Come visit here tomorrow and I’ll tell you about one of my habits…. ☺

This is very useful information for anyone as it's a good article that outlines the history of F.M. Alexander as well as explaining why and how it works.

It also includes pictures and notes about the actor, William Hurt, who has been an advocate of the Technique.

Enjoy!

* Multiple Sclerosis Foundation

Sloan Miller writes about how tension is part of her life as an asthmatic, and how the Alexander Technique has helped her release tension associated with asthma.

One aspect that may not be obvious to people who don’t have asthma is that panic is also a part of the cycle. Sloan found that her Alexander lesson was helpful to create “a completely relaxed and conscious state” for her.

Read Sloane’s article here.

Sloane found this benefit in her first lesson and decided to continue. As she said, "resting takes practice." It’s not uncommon for people to notice significant changes after one or two lessons. Getting those changes to last typically requires a series of lessons. It’s like learning anything; if you practice it for some time, it starts to “stick.”

For myself and in working with students, I have noticed that the Technique is very quieting, and that calm state can be very helpful.

May you breathe free!

Maybe you’re wondering how on earth what the most popular and highest paid actor in Hollywood in the 1930’s said could possible coincide with helping your stiff neck or tight shoulders.

Well, pull up a chair and let’s explore the idea.

Mr. Rogers said to stop digging.
He didn’t say to start something else.
The first thing to do is to stop.

I’m always telling my students, “First, we stop,” and I mean that literally.

Whatever is going on, IS, but while it’s obvious that it’s not anything less, what’s not always obvious is that it isn’t anything more.

If your neck is stiff and you come in to see me, I may suggest that you let it be what it is. I’ll say, “Let’s not add to it. Just don’t make it worse.”

Try it. Are your shoulders hiked up around your ears?
Try leaving them there and just noticing them.
What happens when you do? Do they start to release on their own?

When you stop digging the hole, it’s still there. Now you can observe it and perhaps some creative idea will percolate up on how to turn it to advantage.

I was working on that for myself the other day. I said, “I’m uptight.”

OK, so I was; I remembered to tell myself not to get tense about being uptight.
First, we stop.

Then I let it be there – I told myself, “uptightness, be there now!” I decided to let it be what it is and not make it any worse. It is what it is but not any more and not any less.

With the energy I am not using to get fussed up about being uptight, I have enough breathing room to look out the window of my studio across the street and notice the beautiful pepper tree draping it’s frondy leaves where it stands. The afternoon light is playing on the branches, shadows falling in different patterns as their far-reaching thin branches sway in the breeze.

I am starting to feel better already and I’m not even trying.

Is this making sense?
Have you ever been uptight and found your shoulders or your neck getting tense? If someone rubs your shoulders, does it hurt when they press on the tight places?

Taking something tight and pushing or pulling on is using one strong force to alter another. Your tight shoulder muscles may lose their fight to hold on and they might release, but the consciousness in-between the hands and your muscles (that’s you) may suffer some real pain in the process.

What if you just tried letting yourself be tense and then creating conditions where your muscles tend to release – because they can?

Alexander lessons interrupt the cycle of whatever it is that is disturbing us. By doing so, we’ve already changed a primary factor in its ability to persist.

First, we stop.
Let yourself Be, however you are. Give yourself space to breathe and be tense if you are!

If you are in a hole, stop digging.
If you are in pain, stop adding pressure and tension to the soreness.

Choice; that’s the gift of stopping.
Then you can choose to keep digging that hole – or not!

Am I still as uptight after thinking through all of this?
Not anymore.

And how are your shoulders feeling?

Did these mental gymnastics release something in your body?

Lessons in the Alexander Technique can be a leaping off point for lessons in Life. We can work on ourselves from the outside in (purely physical) or from the inside out (purely cerebral). Somewhere in the middle is an awareness of the Whole. Some call it consciousness.

It is a healing practice.

I invite you in.

Montel speaks about how he fights back and how exercise and an eating regimen play an important role, in an interview by the Seattle Times, January 23, 2008.

The MS Foundation is celebrating March as National Multiple Sclerosis Awareness and Education Month and the MS Society is celebrating MS Awareness Week, March 10-17, 2008. It’s all about education and assistance and empowering people with MS to live well.

Among the various types of exercise and movement awareness methods recommended for people with MS, the MS Foundation recommends the Alexander Technique. It can help improve balance and control, teach efficient movement and reduce fatigue, all of which are beneficial for Multiple Sclerosis.

Here is an article published in MS Focus about the Alexander Technique and Multiple Sclerosis, January 2006 issue. It’s called Come to Your Senses with the Alexander Technique. Posted here with permission. Download a copy of the article in PDF format.

In recognition of MS Awareness Month, I’m offering a special class focusing on MS and the Alexander Technique. It is free and suitable for all people, healthy or with MS. If you’re in the area, I hope to see you. You are welcome!