This sounds very familiar!
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When I'm teaching Alexander Technique I often unnerve people by pointing out exactly what is going through their mind at the time.
Whether it's some kind of processing, that their awareness is closed off in a certain direction or that they are off somewhere else.
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That's very interesting.
Where would you say your own anchor, to use my own terminology, is located when you are doing this?
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In my example my awareness stays firmly 'here', so to speak.
Part of the work as a teacher is to notice the effect the student has on your own subjective experience, the pushes and pulls, and to leave yourself alone while noticing changes in the student.
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Getting caught up or in some way dragged along by the experience of the student means I'm no longer able to be useful - I'm on the same rollercoaster they are.
My role is to provide an external anchor – an awareness true north in the here and now – that they can hook onto.
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Sure. Spending all your time inside someone else's body is very destabilizing. It's like trying to read on a screen when someone else is constantly changing what's on the monitor.
I found that being outside both my own body and the other person's body made me sensitive to both.
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Agreed.
So when I'm teaching with hands on the student, there's a moment of 'connection'.
I can put my hand on your back and it's just a hand on your back. Then I make a change (hard to describe) and now my system is mapping your system (and we can both feel this).
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Sounds like the same kind of deal.
Does this fit? Your hands become not just a 'doing' to your girlfriend, there's a quality of listening as well. This is a non-doing touch, even though you're massaging. It's like there's a non-verbal communication between your system and hers.
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Yeah. I have to do a lot of probatory touching. My hands will just sort of move over an area and feel what's there, to create their own map.
Then, when they actually get into massaging, they tend to move with a rhythm of their own that I can only diminish by conscious control.
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Yeah this is largely an intuitive process.
An AT lesson is largely the teacher being guided by 'things that they find themselves interested in'. Where that information comes from can be non-obvious, but by exploring in a curious way fun things reveal themselves.
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Yes, exactly. There's a sort of constantly brushing against new information nonjudgementally.
You feel something and don't know if it's a tension or not, then you move around and your hands sort of sense if it feels right nor not.
You try some touch and note the response.
Etc.
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