Had a tremendously interesting exchange with by DM, concerning Alexander Technique.
Most mind-boggling part: how similar it is to various forms of meditation, but with a different orientation.
Going to be chewing on the implications of that one for a while.
Conversation
My aunt gave me several Alexander Technique sessions and she pointed out that it has many overlapping concepts to other modalities, but introduces the concept of direction.
Not sure what ’s thoughts about this are, but thought I’d share from my field notes. 🤓
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Thank you for that bit!
I had some spontaneous interactions with direction in the past (learning to anchor my awareness to spots in or around the body).
However, I never realized how many somatic implications it had. Most of what I experienced was changes in cognition/emotion.
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So when I was talking with he was pointing out issues people sometimes have with being aware of space in certain directions, affecting posture etc.
Even though I know how to move awareness around spatially, I was pretty surprised to realize it made my posture change!
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It's such a subtle change but makes a huge difference.
My favorite is how the rib cage expands: we tend to think of breathing as moving the rib cage forward and back, but the rib cage actually expands in all directions.
That can lead to much better breathing.
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Yeah. I learned breathing in a singing context with little focus on the ribs, but I have noticed that that made my breathing change character.
Shallow breathing is such a common experience with people who are not either in very good shape or engaged in some breathwork elsewhere.
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Anyway, all of this stuff is still very new to me in this specific contextual framing.
It's very strange to see elements of stuff I've known for a long while, but in narrow understanding, blend and synthesize.
Got to put some more work into this and see what else emerges.