Simple

How does one convey the deep simplicity of Alexander Technique? As I am writing this, I am applying AT, choosing to be attentive not only of the computer screen, but purposefully embedding it into a wider awareness made up of sounds, people, colors, and the sea all around, because I am on a night ferry to the UK about to attend an AT weekend in London. Since I am a bit deprived of sleep, things have a somewhat eery glow, and my mind is quite still, making it easy to slip into the Alexander zone.

Someone walks in with a minispeaker with loud music, obnoxious toward fellow passengers trying to sleep at 4 am in the morning, and my reaction to it made me — as I suddenly realize — lose the awareness of the moment, having went into my habitual reaction to people who act like this in public spaces: a narrowing of my throat and tensing up of the stomach muscles, and some vague thoughts about how much I hate this kind of people. Anyway, having lost “it”, I haul myself back into that elusive awareness of the present moment.

That hauling in the last sentences was a bit of a joke, because returning to the present moment is more like remembering that the “now” is always there; there’s little hauling to be done, ideally. The fact that “now” never goes away, and it is always there, at our disposition, harbors much of the core of the simplicity of AT. It all seems so fundamental to me as I am writing this, cosily slipped back into the AT zone, so profound, and simple, but often not easy, as our habits die hard.

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