You may know that I am away at a retreat with a theme of walking with a teacher of mine, way out in the New Mexican countryside. The landscape is gorgeous. I love the colorful rock formations that are eons old. We have free time every day and I’m writing down some of my thoughts, some of which I may share with you some days. If you’re not interested, please delete and carry on.
I think I am beginning to understand why I came here to learn. To reconnect with living intentionally and sustainably. Of course I came to reconnect with the Alexander Technique work and with the wholeness that this work helped me to find, and to improve my skills of working with my hands and of sharing the work. But already it is becoming clear to me that I came to find clarity in how I want to live my life in mind-body-soul.
I originally began learning Alexander Technique because of severe chronic neck and back pain. But I realized then that I was needing to change the way I was living, to stop running in circles, efforting, caught up in trying to be somebody important at whatever I was doing. The work helped me to stop efforting, stop bunching myself up with tension, stop dividing myself in parts, stop the pain. It helped me to be present to what is in my body in the moment and to allow rather than force.
One of the wonderful things about Alexander Technique is that it’s not a technique for making ourselves perfect, it’s not about correcting posture or moving correctly. To paraphrase Marj Barstow, the teacher of my teacher, the work is about becoming more sensitive to what is in our whole self, and then what we do with that is up to each of us.
So I am again taking time out of my regular routine to become more sensitive to what my heart and body and mind and energy are telling me. My teacher Bruce says this is not a retreat, it is an entering. And I feel that I am entering into the next phase of my life, where I begin to live more intentionally and sustainably.
Those two things are not easy in this world, and I plan on being compassionate with myself as I do the best I can.
Wishing you clarity, growth and self-compassion,
Mari
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