I am having a surreal experience with my Alexander Technique lessons! I can barely describe it; it is so elemental. Learning to properly use your body - identifying your muscles in a way that is basic and clear, without the incumbencies of everyday life to confuse things. It transpires I have been doing it all wrong, which is no big surprise as I enter year three of pain. It's liberating to learn a method that may go some way to fix things. But part of me is staggered at how simple it is. It feels a bit like loosing weight - eat less, exercise more. Or saving money - earn more, spend less. So obvious and yet its simplicity deludes people every day of the week. The point is: I needed to be told.
I have read countless books on recovering from chronic pain and almost all of them identify the need to adopt mindfulness, to take up yoga, to meditate. To relax and release stressed muscles. I have read and read and still found myself wondering: but how? It's so obvious yet it has become like the holy grail for me. This technique may just have the answer (I don't want to jinx it). I don't know, but I see that sometimes we need fellow humans to point the direction, to teach. It makes me realise how much there is to learn from others. We, in isolation, do not know it all - no matter how many ways we think around a topic. Solitude is not always an enabler.
Meanwhile, I dreamt last night about a conversation that took place last summer, around the time that my children were changing schools. One of those conversations where I was so taken aback by what was uttered, I had no retort. It was a drop of vitriol so toxic, at the time, I was incapable of anything but a sharp intake of breath. It was from a fellow school mother, I regretfully note that some women have developed the most precise method of the veiled put-down. So how strange - some six months later - that I should relive it in a dream!
I do wonder, why is it that some people must bring others down? Surely life is too short..?
This is my last week of my sabbatical. I will write more about how life-changing it has been for me in another post. But for now - suffice to say - it has rocked my world. Happy days.
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