Clearing the Space

Hot here in Alonnisos. I have spent most early evenings getting the teaching space ready. Still not ready yet. Dug out the cloths for table and shade, took them to my dear German friend Heidrun for washing, dug out my wobble cushion, the head rests, the anti-slip mat, the floor mats.

It is much pleasanter to be pruning ivy and honeysuckle and sweeping it all up and tying back the bourganvillea, etc than just hoovering and dusting the space in London! It is very pretty at the moment with my lambada bush hosting lots of tortoiseshell butterflies.

I have been walking down to Mikros Mourtias every morning with Spiros, having a swim and practising my chi kung on the quay. I get there about 9, so I have about an hour before an English couple join me and head for the quay. At which point I slip on my goggles and all hot from the sun, slip quietly into the cool water and head for my towel on the beach. I was very proud of myself yesterday as I saw an ‘ear’ shell, a tiny rainbow amid the sand and rocks below and actually managed to dive for it and pick it up on the second go. It lay there quite deep.

I can tell my swimming has improved too, as I want to swim further and get into a nice Shaw Method rhythm in my breast stroke, eyes leading me into the clear waters below, up to the blue sky above....

Today as I stood there in Wu wei I saw tiny fish circling near the surface of the sparkling water and I thought how in my brain were thoughts that I could fish for, then like that Australian fisherman, Ray..? I could kiss them and put them back so they swim away. Like Buddhists suggest to stare at the thoughts to dissipate them. I was surprised how few clumps of thought I had. Mostly it is repeats going round in my head. Anyway, this imagery really worked and helped me find a quieter mind.

I went to a flea market today in the village and bought a couple of rugs which may be useful to use in the teaching space. The vendor enquired after lessons and I suggested they have a lesson with me in return for the rugs....we shall see if they take me up on the offer.

I also met Julia who was here last year and swapped lessons for clearing up and preparing the little house next door for visitors. She is happy to do the same – although she talked of swapping massage in return for the lessons. This is not so useful for me! I don’t always like massage. Depends how it is done. I am an AT sensitive!

I am reading The Plastic Brain which I highly recommend, where neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama meet to exchange views and information about the brain. I am reading about the recent experiments demonstrating neurplasticity - we grow new neurons as well as forge new connections all our lives which I find exciting and a relief!

Three people arriving in Friday for the first workshop. Need to photocopy some papers for them and finish preparing the space. I’m sure it didn’t take so long last year. I am being thorough- a messy area I curtain off is being cleared this time. Clear the space, clear the brain, start afresh, beginner’s mind.

Some lessons in my travels

My nephew Toby and I had a wonderful Alexander lesson together. We were outside the hotel we were staying in at Mathraki, (there is only one hotel, completely empty except for us) on the concrete square where the washing lines were. The wind was blowing Toby’s shirts on the line as we talked of consciousness and awareness and he rose gently up from the chair and sat down again and walked about with me, my hand on his back, or his hand on mine, discovering when we had lost our widened attention and lost contact. It was very exciting and I am pleased to say Toby’s eyes twinkled and his whole self glowed when I suggested we continue in the autumn for a weekly lesson.

I was sad to leave him and my brother at the security queue in the airport in Corfu. I was getting a later flight and had a lunch appointment with Miranda, who teaches at the Ionian University, at the Esplanade.

Also at the table was a colleague of hers, Spyros, who teaches violin and just back from teaching in Ohio. He asked me about his stiff neck/shoulder and a pain in his thumb which he gets when doing vibrato. So a short table consultation, and I suggested he be aware of what he is doing with his legs whilst playing. Aha! He realised that more recently the pain has been getting less and he is standing rather than sitting to play....he promises to attend my next workshop in the autumn which Miranda is hoping to arrange. She made the point that musicians playing for 5 hours at a time are like athletes, and have no lessons to help them with their bodies and fitness.

I stayed with Alexis in Thessaloniki for a couple of nights. He has been on a number of my workshops there, is a wonderful composer and musician and has found Pilates very helpful to help him out of his old use patterns. I gave another lesson to a man who is hoping to come over to Alonnisos this summer and who found me in London in the winter. He had been feasting as you do on a Sunday with friends with the help of wine and ouzo....not so helpful for lessons to be feeling giddy, but by the end he said he felt much more centred.

But my favourite lesson was with Alexis – he is so sensitive to the work, and had one of those sartorial experiences when I placed my hands on the bottom of his ribs at the back and he had a sudden release that gave him more breath and height and o...almost impossible to recount except he put it nicely ‘ Pilates gives you the external, it is nothing like Alexander, it is exercises. But this is something completely different, it gives you change on the inside. It is unbelievable...’


We went off for a drink at his favourite bar to talk more – I needed to be back early so he dropped me home at 12.30am before going off into the night with another friend....and in the morning at 6.30 I was half asleep and jammed the plug into his wash basin with no way of removing it. Ho hum.

All of this to say how fun it is to sow a few seeds in my travels.

Travels with my nephew

I write this in an empty hotel, windows flung open, the light streaming through the French windows and the sound of waves insistently rolling and swashing onto the sand below. It isn’t sunny – intermittent cloud cover is keeping the savage sun at bay, for which I am quite grateful: I can lounge late in bed and not feel guilty that I haven’t immediately risen to walk on the shore or bathe in the Ionian waters with the backdrop of Corfu and the mountains of Albania gleaming in the distance.....I am on Mathraki a small island off the coast of Kerkyra where my brother has bought an abandoned olive press in the hopes of making some living quarters in the ruins. My nephew Toby is a young architect and here to make some plans and suggestions. I am here simply to admire and make helpful comments, en route for my summer sojourn in Alonnisos.

My brother met us at the airport at 3 am on Tuesday mornings. He drove us to the bar at the port where we could drift off to sleep before waking to catch the 6.30 boat. Toby found somewhere to stretch out his long legs, whilst my brother and I sat talking over hot chocolate before I realised he wasn’t answering anymore....I went for a stroll round the large desolate bar space and wondered at my own wakefulness – remembering times like this in Athens airport waiting for the bus to Syntagma and the ensuing journey to Alonnisos. There’s something otherworldly about the early hours, the sort of space and time that Edward Hopper was good at capturing. I was careful to prop my head against the wall. If I sleep free-fall my head droops in front curling my spine downwards in the C bend of my habit which ends up with a stiff neck and painful back. Sleep is the last refuge for our habit, Walter Carrington (Important Alexander teacher) allegedly said.

When I eventually sucumbed Lethe-wards for an hour I actually woke with my head on my brother’s shoulder which was rather sweet. By 6 the weather had turned. The sky was green and grey and stormy. The wind was bending the palms and we waited with low expectations for the Alexandros, our small ferry to the island. It bobbed up and down in the harbour and I was glad when it was cancelled. A hotel and a day in Corfu instead.

I had visited Corfu last November to give a weekend workshop for young musicians studying at the Ionian University and had explored Corfu town – the streets so like the canals of Venice. After booking ourselves into a hotel and taking some more hours sleep, Toby decided he wanted to explore the south of the island which none of us knew. It is one of my delights to pour over a map, decide to take a route and then find out if it’s as I imagine. In other words having an intention and enjoying the journey, the unknown ‘means whereby’ which in this case took us through mountain passes and hairpins with stunning vistas of valleys and slopes peppered with sharp shaped Cyprus trees poking up into the sky....Toby was taking photos and doing the map reading hurrah! My brother doing the driving so I could just drink in the scenery.

We stopped at a 13th century fort we happened to pass by. In the centre a wooden platform had been erected with an abandoned coco cola fridge nearby – a spot for summer concerts maybe? It had a fabulous acoustic, so first my brother spoke lines from the Tempest and I joined in the Shakespeare fest with my Isabella from Measure for Measure, using my brother as my Angelo. O it was the best I have ever done it! Always when we are calm ,relaxed not trying, but enjoying, the poet is allowed to come out, unhampered by the doing of interpretation of the actor....Hamlet was FM’s favourite, but whichever, the bard is really extraordinary.

Toby didn’t spout, but looked handsome and took pictures.....until when we reached the Lake and beach we had intended and then sadly the wind was whipping fine sand up from the dunes and it got into his camera. Oh Poo! He watched his father walking, plodding along ahead of us and said ‘He always walks with his head and neck at right angles, doesn’t he?’ This is true. He also used to drop his neck to look at his laptop computer screen until recently he started getting pain and had an x ray to reveal bone spurs on his top vertebrae...Despite my entreaties for him to see an Alexander teacher regularly and my own session with him, he fixed the problem by having the screen higher, so he couldn’t droop down. Good for him. One of his pieces of luggage coming over this time was a large screen for his tiny travelling notebook that he can leave here, as he was beginning to have the same pain starting up again.

It’s a funny thing with my relatives and AT. Some teachers seem to have their whole family involved. I have given sessions to my father, mother, sister and two of my brothers, nieces and nephews, but none have taken it up. They enjoy the sessions, are intrigued by the philosophy, admire my work, my life, but that’s about it.

So I was very pleased when Toby last night, after we had eventually arrived on Mathraki here mid-day, asked me for a session some time before we go. I think he had seen his Dad, in his 60’s with the family habit of dropping neck and hips pushed forward (which makes his stomach look much fatter than he is ) and decided he didn’t want that for himself. Toby has a philosophical bent and as an architect understands the nature of design, structure and how a structure is used. I have great hopes here.