@theCALMzone

Alexander Discovery, Alexander Technique, attention, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, happiness, intention, love, mindfulness

Having breakfast

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Photo by Sam Lion on Pexels.com

Yesterday was Saturday and we have started having breakfast at The Art of Coffee in Coleford, the coffee is great as is the breakfast, during our weekly shop. Yesterday was the Faddle Fair at Coleford, we didn’t realise the Fair was on so the town was busy as was the Cafe. I must have sensed it was busy as I rushed to the Cafe to book our breakfast and find a table to sit at. It was quiet however moments later the cafe filled up.

Our breakfast arrived and so did the cacophony of noise from the very chatty clientele, it was getting louder and louder. My wife wanted to eat up and leave quickly; most weeks it’s been a quiet place with couples and singletons enjoying a quiet breakfast reading the newspapers or quietly planning their day.

Not today!

I had a brain wave, why don’t I connect with everyone in the cafe and ask for quiet, I didn’t stand up and in my best loud voice say ” Excuse me but can you all talk quieter the cacophony is getting too loud” I don’t think that would have gone down too well!

Instead I did what I’d learnt during my Alexander training, that is to invite quite into the room. It does sound crackers, trust me it does work, my wife can testify as this is what I did yesterday.

How to do it is the complete opposite of what you may think you need to do. There is no doing involved, there’s letting go of trying to do anything. Letting my energy be at peace, letting my energy be calm and allowing the calm to spread to everyone in the room. When those in the room received my calm they quietened down and either stopped speaking or lowered the volume of their voice. My wife was impressed at the speed they quietened, then we enjoyed our breakfast in full cafe with everyone enjoying a few moments of calm with their breakfast. I do hope the other clientele enjoyed their calm moments and return to the The Art of Coffee for more chilled moments and of course their fabulous coffee.

This practice of quiet is what I use when I work with groups or when working with an individual client. It is the first stage of helping them with whatever angst they bring to me. As several of my clients have said to me on various occasions, this calm is better than drugs, I guess this is the calm what some people seek through drugs, I digressed.

Being calm is one thing, it is fantastic, what I’m seeking with my clients is a change is being able to be calm and also in activity at the same time. Two focuses at the same time, the focus of being calm, that’s having a full attention to their body and the place they are in and the focus on what they seek to do, the intent to achieve something.

Simple ah!

What stops everyone, including me, is the self-doubt and unworthiness in whatever form it takes that prevent you from having the attention to your body and space around you, and the intent to achieve something. I’ll help you with letting go of this self-doubt and unworthiness. When you watch my testimonials this is exactly what they are saying.

If you are seeking calm and or want to manage your the self-doubt and unworthiness then do contact me, i can help you.

See you soon.

John

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Alexander Discovery, Alexander Technique, anxiety, Asthma, body mapping, body-mapping, freedom, happiness, Inhabition, mindfulness, self-doubt, trying, wellbeing

STOP WORRYING; if it was that easy!

John

You may think what is the Alexander Technique is and what it is to do with your mental health, from my point of few quite a lot; the Alexander Technique saved me from living  the rest of my life in depression or popping antidepressants to keep me happy.

The Alexander Technique sort of works the opposite direction to other methods in helping you with your pain be it physical or mental. We tend to not worry about what has happened in the past or what is to happen, The Alexander Technique is an educational approach that teaches you how to live your life fully now.

From my experience of mental health, I worry, I’m anxious. Worrying puts me in a place that is in the future, when I’m in the future I have no control of anything as I’m in a place that doesn’t exist, I’m worrying about nothing, I use a lot of energy worrying about nothing.

That can’t be healthy!

There is a premise that every thought produces a muscular action, we can only tighten muscles, worrying is thinking hence I tighten muscles when I worry. Tightened muscles get tired and eventually start to produce pain signals to ask for a rest. Continually worrying uses a lot of energy and eventually a lot of pain. You may start to blame the environment, chairs, beds, shoes, clothes, the food you eat. You may start to blame friends, family, your boss at work.

Take a moment to think; are they doing the worrying, they may be, but they are not doing your worrying, YOU ARE!

There’s a simple answer “STOP WORRYING”. If it was that easy!

I’ve noticed that when I worry I need to think about something, something not about me, something in the future or something in the past but definitely not about now. If I try to think about NOT WORRYING I need to think about something else, probably promising to be better in the future. This doesn’t work it is just more worrying.

It sounds absolutely hopeless, I thought that; back to popping antidepressants. However if you just could be in the moment then worry disappears, it’s true, there’s plenty of mindfulness practices that can do that. However the Alexander Technique has the edge on mindfulness, it is mindfulness in activity; knowing where you are in time and space as you engage with your daily activities.

You can teach yourself mindfulness in activity but we have a very good knack of not seeing how we move in activity, just try looking in a mirror and if you are like I was, you will do plenty of avoidance and that’s just looking at your face. This is where you need a nonjudgmental teacher to encourage you to observe yourself without judgement; it takes time but worth it.

It all goes back to those muscles you tightened when you worried, they learnt to stay in tension, if you just engaged in mindfulness it would some time take time for these muscles to release their tension, release their pain. With the Alexander Technique your muscular tension you developed over time, can be released by encouraging you to think differently, thinking the way you used to when you were a child, thinking that allows easy and freedom so you can do the activities you want to.

It worked for me, I have written a lot about muscular tension, all tension is related; by releasing muscular tension worry and anxiety disappear. It they reappear I’ve got the tools to let my anxiety quieten and disappear.

The opposite direction I mentioned earlier is to approach the muscular reaction to a stimulus instead of working on the stimulus to minimise the muscular reaction.

Intrigued, then why not contact me for more details.