Poise

We are born into gravity - we need the pull of the earth to organise us. Ideally this is creates a subtle but robust state of balancing characterised by a readiness to easily and freely move… I am using the word ‘poise’ to describe this state.

We also learn to survive in the face of whatever life throws in front of us. However, this learning can generate habitual patterns of body/mind that are prepared, frequently and paradoxically, to sacrifice our innate ability to retain poise in order to simply … ‘survive’.

Typically such a compromise is a reaction that tends to either maintain rigidity or enter collapse. A better and available path is that we learn how to generate a context specific and adaptive, elastic response.

Given this, how might we rediscover our ‘poise’? (and is it really worth the bother…)

Stress

Like gravity, ‘stress’ - in a variety of forms - is part of our lives. Like gravity we need it to provoke and challenge us into curiosity and action.

When we are able to act just beyond the boundary of what we habitually know (that habitual edge which often feels so necessary to maintain) we can experience a ‘state of flow’ - a moment of adaptive response that we recognise as skillful.

How might we become skillful at meeting the varying demands of our lives?

Skill

Learning how to adapt and grow in the face of whatever life throws at us is to be skillful. It asks us to be responsive rather than reactive. This path challenges us to consciously choose the nature of our action rather than only rely only on the well worn paths of habit.

Alexander Technique understands that a skillful response to stress is one that always includes the matter of poise - how we delicately balance our structure in gravity, keep it elastic, allow it to move, to breathe …

Under this definition skill is no longer limited to the realm of creative or athletic performance but broadens to include to recovering from injury, dealing with chronic pain, enjoying being alive, avoiding getting ‘stuck’ in any of ways that can no longer serve us.