On the road to Bend, Oregon
As 2012 came to a screeching halt, I was musing over what I learned during the past year and it has been much! December marked a year since I decided to call my business-practice Breath is the Answer. I am amazed that I have used that phrase for no less than two decades yet, only now it has become the centerpiece of my business. Since the moment I recognized Breath is the Answer as a theme to all of my work, inspiration has flooded my being. The exploration of how inhibition, breath and the authentic voice are entwined continues to excite and inspire me every day.
Over the past few months I have written often about the Alexander Technique and the principle of inhibition or pausing and stopping. It seems to me that if one does not pause very little else can consciously occur and it is out of the act of inhibition that consciousness, breath and choice come. I received a gift of Thich Nhat Hanh’s small book, The Miracle of Mindfulness and find there is much in it that inspires and aligns with the Alexander Technique. In the introduction he writes, “The mindfulness of the positions of one’s body is not enough,…We must be conscious of each breath, each thought and feeling, everything which has a relation to ourselves.” For me, this is the essence of the Technique. The next question, though, is how do we implement these ideas into our day to day living? That is THE challenge and I certainly wrestle with that question every day and sometimes I am more successful than others, for sure.
This week or so I have been pondering the concept that Thich Nhat Hanh mentions in a beginning chapter of his book about bringing mindfulness into our lives and how that looks. He says that while we are sleeping we must be mindful of sleeping, while I am typing I must be mindful of typing, while walking I must be mindful of walking, while sitting I must be mindful of sitting, etc. While I was awake during the night last night my mind was racing on about writing this newsletter. It involves approaching a new application with which I am almost clueless, so the racing mind was not welcome when I wanted to get more sleep. The thought came to me that this was sleeping time and that I should be mindful of sleeping. I continued on to my breathing-exhaling and soon I was asleep. I can’t imagine that this is necessarily so easy, but I have been playing with the concept. As I was eating breakfast I again let my mind wander to doing the newsletter; my brain then said “you are eating, be mindful of eating.” Ah ha!! I chose to enjoy my breakfast and take care of this newsletter later. AND, when I began working on this newsletter I deemed it was time to be mindful of actually doing this rather than letting my brain wander on to wishing I were doing something else. Even when frustrated that I lost my initial attempt, I decided to move on and begin anew, so be it. As Miss Goldie said, “the Alexander Technique is brain-work.” And so it goes as we plow into the New Year and 2013, endeavoring to be more aware and appreciative of every moment. As the year unfolds we will discover more about how the breath, mindfulness, and inhibiton help us find our authentic voice and help define the choices we make.