August is the hottest month

Very hot and humid these past two weeks and today at last a little breeze but the temperatures are still in late 80’s/90’s. This is what Muffin does to stay cool....

I am very pleased with photographs I just took of the humming bird moth. The creature is very blurred because it moves so fast it’s the best I can do with my little Canon Ixus 70 (which i highly recommend by the way). But you will notice how enormously long its proboscis is to suck out the nectar from my Lantana flowers . Again! If you look earlier on my blog this summer you will see the pix I took of this bush with the butterflies all over it.

It has been a still busy month on the island despite the economics. The Aug 14th festival here, Panagia day when the Virgin Mary is assumed into heaven and also the day 15 islanders were shot by the Germans in 1944, was a little quieter than usual. However the band were really loud and I know some didn’t stay longer than 10 minutes. Too loud to talk to people. I love watching the line dances, and had a little go myself. Always a bit tricky when the foreigners join in as we don’t understand the 5 beat imperative, and as usual I found myself stretched between two people in different rhythms and pace.

I have also taken a trip further up the island to Monturo, where my good friend Waultraud lives. She is herbalist and there was a gathering on account of her birthday one evening. Delicious pasta with pesto made from Alonnisos pine nuts, which her companion Martin had hand peeled and mashed! And the home-made bread I took home with me, herby and fresh and wholesome. We ate and drank wine in their pretty garden, full of useful plants, overlooking the sea and Peristera. The heat has been making me very sleepy and in good quiet company speaking German or French, the muttering of voices and tinkling of laughter, I managed to doze off as I sat in a deck chair, looking up at the shooting stars...zzzzzzzz. How perfect. Uschi, another magic person who lives in the forest near the village gave me a lift home (my little motor bike got taken away to the knackers yard earlier this year). Uschi teaches yoga in Bavaria, as well as vision training and gives cranio-sacral therapy.

I have always found CST powerful work, first coming across it during my training in AT. Our co-director Margaret Edis was training up in this at the time and wanted guinea pigs. It is not uncommon for teachers of AT to further train in this work as it is very non-doing, and is affecting the cranial rhythms, the spinal fluids and deep connective tissue. My vertebrae T 9 10 11 get stuck sometimes twisted from my right SI joint and my neck vertebrae. Without AT I would be in a very poor state, but occasionally I need outside help to untangle these old patterns. (If osteopaths are the car mechanics, we are the driving instructors....) I recognise I have also been emotionally affected by the loss of some hours teaching at ArtsEd – my course has been hacked apart! - so it was no surprise that my back has been saying hello again in a big way. I also have osteoporosis in my L4 and took some heavy medication for this in February which I found really unpleasant. With discomfort in that area too, I decided to ask Uschi for help.

We have often swapped work in the past, and she gladly came over to my bower, my glorious teaching den, shaded with bourganvillea, vine, ivy , Virginia creeper and honeysuckle....It is fairly cool for this steamy weather, but connecting quietly in an Alexander way with such lovely people here year after year, the place has a really peaceful atmosphere. I lay down on the back on my table and my journey began, Uschi’s hands immediately hot with energy. And almost immediately I was drifting into ‘yugen’ as the Japanese call it, ‘half-concealed beauty’ half wake, half sleep, dream time. All sorts of thoughts and visions came up, none memorable except some understanding of pulling away from having fun, and this was the word that Uschi suggested I remember and use. When at the end she placed a finger on my forehead and another on my chin, my whole face/skull/jaw released opened and reshaped itself.....when she finished I floated off the table and felt refreshed and new and still in a state of wonder at the subtle energies and connections .....

Since then I have been singing to myself as I walk down to Mikros, or singing on the quay if no-one is there, singing myself into a present state, singing my bones into density and health, affirmations in song. Singing my surroundings in opera recitative is a wonderful way of halting the chattering mind and thinking only of what I see and hear and experience right now. And my back has been so much easier and freer, needless to say.

Because of the heat, I have been sleeping outdoors at night – sleeping under the stars on our balcony. I make sure I cover myself with anti-mosquito fluid, and lay looking up Jupiter who is shining brightly at the moment, till I fall asleep. When I wake at 5, Orion has risen, and today I slept more until the sun had woken properly and made myself a cup of tea, munching toast looking at the sea and the Two Brothers from my nest, faithful dog at my side, before the sun’s heat fiercely came round the wall. Sleeping out a night means I don’t feel I’ve been to bed! I’ve not done the usual ritual of climbing onto an inside platform and snuggled up to the pillow (and my partner!). Clearly I have had a night’s sleep, but it feels more intimate with the night, conscious of the movement of the earth, turning in space, changing the canopy of stars..... and I feel rested. Very glad dog is at my side and Muffin our cat came and found me this morning too. All helps to keep any other night creatures at bay!

I have been teaching now and then, but mostly resting and reading and swimming and walking. Teaching in this heat reminds me of Haifa, in Israel. In the 90’s I had a student teaching at the Technion there, a mathematician who was working on neural networks and had RSI. She had been working successfully with me in London so when she returned to Israel invited me out there several times to continue her lessons. Rivka Cohen had an Alexander training there too, so I would also take the opportunity to visit her school. One August I went, it was 40 degrees and no air conditioning. We were slippery with sweat as we put hands on and Rivka called to us ‘Up! Up!’ . Rivka is a great teacher and full of kindness to me at the beginning of my practice and very green. She was very open and wanted to find out what David Gorman’s work was all about. I also remember her lying on the table for me to work with her, her eyes closed and resting. They opened a slit and she said, ‘Penny, you have healing hands...’ This is separate to any ability I might have in getting the Primary Control going - which is her big thing. A very dynamic teacher, full of direction.

In two weeks I start the last workshop, possibly depleted by 2 as they had booked with a UK travel company Kiss airlines that have gone bust. One of them has had this happen for the second time, as they had booked with Gold Trail . When Gold Trail went into liquidation in July, three of my teachers had probably been on their last flight to Skiathos. Luckily one had phoned to confirm their return flight and discovered what had happened. A quick call to Dimitri at Skiathos meant they all managed to secure a flight back home – but they did all have to pay again. There are still flights available in September but all horribly expensive – over £400. I suggested they wait till the last moment and see if they can get a cheaper deal.

Heat, flights, dreams and stars, all part of the rich tapestry of Alonnisos in August....

Violin lesson, swimming and song

Sitting on cold marble tiled floor out of the reach of the sun’s hot steamy rays this day. No-one to teach today – hooray, a proper weekend!

And I did the usual walk down to Mikros Mourtias a little later than usual having ignored our cat Moaner’s plaintive cries to be fed at 6.30am and slept in for another 2 hours...

Despite my late arrival, there was no-one there. Spiros and I had the place to ourselves for a whole hour. I swam gently over to the quay remembering what I had learnt in my violin lesson with Angela.

Angela comes here every year with her daughter and busks in the evenings. It turns out she knew our cello player on the teachers course, and they hadn’t seen each other since the Royal Academy days x years ago. (That is not unusual on this island for old connections to be discovered. Our busking guitarist Akis turns out to be a friend of a friend living in Lamia.)

Anyway, I have a desire to learn the violin. It’s good for the brain apparently to learn an instrument, and I have always loved it. I had a go at 16 and got on very well – twinkle twinkle little star- but let it lapse. So I treated myself to 2 lessons with Angela, and discovered the essence of non-doing, how the bow will play the violin all by itself if I let it. I learnt with joy of my wings and the balance of the bow. I allowed myself to move, my arm to flow through space and lo and behold beautiful music came from the instrument! Very very Alexandrian approach, although Angela has only has 20 lessons in the Technique herself yet her teaching is the very essence of FM’s work, not end-gaining, and sticking to the means-whereby.

And as I swam this morning I heard Angela telling me gently ‘You’re doing too much’ and I effortlessly moved in the water till I arrived at the quay. So violin lessons can improve your swimming it seems!

During Chi Kung I sang. No-one was there so I could quietly sing Bach-type fugues affirming my bones as strong and dense and flexible, a singing meditation to keep my poor old bones healthy.

After Chi Kung I lazed on the beach as others gathered and dipped in and out of the cool clear waters, before heading back up the path continuing this sense of non-doing. Although always a huff and puff particularly in the heat of the day, yet I was walking as easily as I could, taking my time and enjoying the fragrance of the pine and herbs, playing with being present, staring at my clumps of thoughts as they arose....Some of the thoughts were more songs.

On the first workshop we experimented with singing as a way of helping us up the steep path, setting up a rhythm – as many armies do. I began with The Grand Old Duke of York, which was universally deplored, and then we began musical theatre scores.

Today I found myself singing ‘When we go big bug hunting , when we go big bug hunting, when we go big bug hunting, With a gun and a spray and hip hooray! When we go big bug hunting!’

This popped up from nowhere – but was a song from a Cap and Bells Puppet Theatre show I did in the winter of 1978 with Violet Philpott for her tour of Bandicoot stories. We toured junior schools and Mervyn (where are you now?) was the Lion and I did the voice and hand operations for Monkey. Monkey and Lion got up to all sorts of tricks with Bandicoot and each other when Violet and the children weren’t looking.

Funny how the brain works and remembers and associates. I hope I don’t have that banal song on my brain every time I tread the path now!

I am dipping into a very interesting book entitled the Mind and the Brain by Sharon Begley and Jeffery M Shwartz, in particular about quantum theory and how our attention affects things, and can change the hardware. It’s the sort of book that is fascinating for a small amount of time and then my personal quantum brain can’t take any more and needs to check out. To take another choice in the alternative universe of possibility. And now I choose to stop writing and sing my way out of the door.

PS I am teaching a terrific singer of Greek traditional songs. He did a concert at the bus stop last week. I took a video of him and we looked at it together discussing his pull down, and how much is needed for the style and how possible it might be to stay ‘up’ and not pull the head back when singing. I am delighted that he intends to continue the lessons in Athens on his return.

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.

Poems and plays

The man on the bus
looked like Clint Eastwood
short greying hair, blue eyes
and a furrow between his brows.
But then Clint Eastwood went pear-shaped
as in a dream when something’s not right at all
and all that was well becomes a horror....

He sat in his blue tee shirt that
matched his eyes
in a slump on his coccyx
his chest sinking
his shoulders rounded,
and it mattered not
he put his sunglasses on
he simply didn’t look cool anymore

and I was glad when he picked up his backpack
and got off at the next stop.

21.5.10




On the bus

The little girl with long dark curly hair
and a cute nose and freckles
dangled her feet from her seat.
She wore Indian sandals
flip flops with fringed fabric colourfully slung between the straps.
She smiled intermittently at
her mother who sat nearby
as she licked her ice-cream....

Her little arms were resting on the
giant arm-rests and her shoulders
were up by her ears

and I had a vision of her as a young woman
smiling on reception,
pretty, shy, friendly
her shoulders still up by her ears and wondering why
she had a pain in the neck
by Friday afternoon.

21.5.10

Do you like them? They are the sort of thing that this Alexander teacher sometimes thinks of when travelling on a 214 bus from Old St to Hampstead Heath for a walk in the hot sunshine (the world and her husband was there this Saturday!)to Parliament Hill before catching a train to Brondesbury to meet Alexander friends to watch 'Shrunk' by Charlotte Eilenberg at the Cock Tavern. Charlotte trained in AT at LCATT in Highbury and was an assistant at ArtsEd with me briefly when she graduated. And clearly she still writes plays! Very very clever - I won't give the plot away, but not unlike a fantasy I had once about a student who suddenly turns into a terrorist in my teaching room and challenges my assumptions about inhibiting reactions to stimuli. 'INHIBIT THIS!' as she pulls the trigger....

Happy days!

On the subject of poetry another student of mine, Peter Daniels won the TLS poetry competition with his poem The Pump. http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tsl-pdfs/poetrycompetition.pdf

Creative lot my Alexander colleagues and students.

Wizard of Consciousness

Wizard of Consciousness

Do you like that? It’s me apparently. (Not in the picture - that's Faye. Though I think she is one too.) I am not an AT teacher but a wizard of consciousness using Alexander Technique as my magic wand or book of spells. It all sounds quite thrilling – intimidating maybe to some- but made me gurgle with delight.

You might be able to tell I was at an Alexander and NLP workshop run by Annie Kaszina.

I thought it up because of my experience when I was attending the International Congress of Alexander Technique at Lugano in 2008. I just felt we were all wizards descended quietly on the world of muggles, walking around incognito. I would come down to breakfast at our little hotel every morning and see lots of fellow wizards sitting up eating their muesli or croissants, and in between a few muggles stooping low over their cereal, growling at the world......It was so lovely to witness this – that for once there were more if ‘us’ than them. Sometimes it’s lonely out there.....

The workshop was fab, not least because as usual there were quite a few teachers I knew, so another chance to catch up and swap stories. One I was amazed to discover was someone I had taught many years ago and was now in her eighth year of teaching herself. She knew my ex-husband who was also a Nicheren Daishonin Buddhist and coincidentally so is my new lodger. I liked the coincidence – the Buddhists are out to get me!

This connection or coincidences have visited again this week – at Quakers this morning I met a woman who has a house on Skopelos, the next door island to Alonnisos and knows a fellow Alexander teacher who lives there and who I’ve arranged to meet when I am over in April. O and the night before I met new friends who have a house on Skiathos, another island of the archipelago....

Perhaps there is some wizardry afoot after all.....

Teaching at Artsed has been winding up for the Easter break and I have been very inpressed with the level of acting by both BA and MA students, and dare I say, with their use patterns on stage. This Alexander stuff seems to work! Every year I video the students at the beginning of the course and at the end. For the MA’s it is a two term course, so time to video them again and compare the two. Such an eye opener for some of them to see how far they have come. And for me too. One or two have really worked at it and transformed themselves. I am very proud of them.

The other bit of wizardry this week is to have suddenly set up an Event on my ‘I like lying down in semi-supine’ Facebook Group. I invited everyone to lie down some time after 2pm today, Sunday, and put up a pic and report on where they were and what happened. I Tweeted it too, so am hoping there may be a few. Already there are 3 pix up – one of 2 year old Faye, who wanted to copy her big sister Scarlett. It is sooo cute!! That's her at the top of the page. The ultimate wizard.

Just come in from a beautiful workshop with Miranda Tufnell, Alexander teacher, dancer and author of The Widening Field. It was a STAT organised seminar for professional development. Of the twelve of us there only three I had not met before, so a joy to meet with some old friends and put faces to names I had connected with only by email before now.

At the beginning...well it started late because the Holland Park tube was closed due to all the maintenance work going on in the London Underground this weekend and most of us had to catch a bus down from Marble Arch and it was terribly wet and windy and I had been appointed tea lady for the day so was trying to get there early and only succeeded to get there in time, and I saw someone get off the bus and thought ‘o she looks like an Alexander teacher’ as we smiled at each other from under our umbrellas, and then I shot across the road dashing through the traffic and then thought to wait for her in case it was someone from the workshop and it was rather rude of me to charge off, but I was so cold and dying for a pee, and then she didn’t appear from round the corner so I dashed off again, wheeling my little bag behind me with the biscuits and tea and coffee, and then by the time I got there and someone had let me in and said hello to Miranda, well then of course Michelle just floated up a moment behind me so cool and I thought, there you go again girl all that rushing for no reason...........sigh.

Anyway, as I was saying, at the beginning Miranda laid out different bones or collection of bones on the floor and we had to choose one to look at with a partner and find the movement in it. Ilan had chosen half a pelvis, which of course looks like Henry Moore with exquisite form and shape, but I saw this funny piece of skull that I decided was probably the sphenoid bone, a bone I didn’t really know at all or have hardly ever looked at properly. I was gagging for something new and there it was this funny little butterfly bone with insect legs that made me laugh. We had to place it somewhere appropriate in the room. Ilan placed his pelvis on a stool – like a sculpture, and my butterfly flew over to a potted plant and hid amongst the leaves- just as it hides in the centre of our skull behind the eyes and above the larynx.

We changed partners and explored the movement in our partner – rather like I use ‘sticky hands’ exercise at college for my theatre students, only this was not necessarily hand-based and finding support and resistance with each other. One had the eyes closed, the other was there to support the exploration of movement in the other....Another time we leant into each other 50-50 resistance and support, needing each other, and moving against each other . Later in the afternoon we lay in prone and listened with our hands to another’s breathing pattern and encouraged movement to start from the breath itself......Ilan said it was as though the hands were like boats moving on the waves of the ocean...

And at the end we picked up our piece of bone from the morning and asked what gift it had given us, something new it had found for us in the workshop...I giggled suddenly as I found the anchor points for the larynx, if you turn it upside down look like two hands with two fingers sticking up as though to say ‘fuck off!’, and so I had to share that, and didn’t know what sort of gift that was – except perhaps the quirky sense of humour that says not to take life so seriously. Everyone had a good laugh, before they gave poetic sensible answers for the messages from their bones.

I am wondering if the sphenoid may be related to my eye strain and migraines that I have been experiencing now and then this winter.

Last weekend i saw the 3rd years strut their stuff in Colour of Justice, the play based on the transcripts from the Stephen Lawrence enquiry showing the inherent racism within the police force in 1990’s, when he was left to bleed to death on the pavement after a racist attack by a gang of white youths who were never charged with his murder. It was a very moving piece and the students were very authentic, although some having to play several parts. I was very proud of them from both acting and Alexander point of view. And for the college to have put on such an understated powerful play.

I came across Stephen Lawrence again in a huge picture by Iffizi at Tate Britain, a large beautifully poised head, with tears streaming down, inspired by Stephen’s mother. I remember it. I loved the hugeness of the paintings and the colour - but not sure I would want to live with them. Perhaps two of the small watercolours. I went with two friends – one a colleague who has been on my summer workshops in Alonnisos, the other a painter, also someone I met in Alonnisos. Isn’t life gorgeous the way it brings in connections? Like knowing most of the participants in the workshop. Life is a connected place , or my brain seeks to make these connections, and find the mutual support.

I did a very good class for the 1st years this week. We were marking the quiz on body mapping ( the mini easter eggs were a welcome prize for s/he who gave the best definition of the Technique) and revising monkey, attaching it to the act of cleaning the teeth. We first worked in a large group, then divided into 3 groups, so 5 could have hands on with monkey, 5 lie down and 4 take the DVD camera next door and film themselves doing monkey...It was just kind of neat.

Here's me working with 2nd years - they are all learning lines for their Shakespeare project.

MA’s are cracking on apace, and there were some very profound discoveries for some on Friday when I did the Higher Creative Self Exercise. It is a bridge for the actors to find the psycho-physical aspect of the work and how it can transform them from habitual self through to neutral self, to the character. I gave a workshop on this at the Lugano Congress 2008 for AT teachers. And have published a paper on this .....watch out for it on my website soon.

On Tuesday I tried to get to my Chi Kung class and failed miserably as the Northern Line was crawling along because of signal failure. I got off at Bank and decided to walk up to the Barbican to see if there was a film I wanted to watch instead. I saw Peter Brook’s piece 11-12 was on and in the queue for a ticket, found someone willing to give me a very good seat for a very cheap price. Destined I thought. And sure enough, I met an ex-student from ArtsEd and reconnected. The play itself was not exciting for me. I get irritated when an ensemble piece has no women it. And I began to nod off. I always sleep so well in theatre these days....Give me the rawness of student productions, full of potential, not rather tired accomplishment.

A week of malaise

My own consciousness was in a fog this last week, but it seems to be re-emerging.

A funny thing on Thursday. I was revising breathing mechanisms with the first years, and one of the male students asked me in all seriousness- ‘Do men and women have the same number of ribs?’ Then ‘o no, I lost the bet last night in the pub...’ with some further mutterings about the bible speaking false.

I have been teaching them the meditation of breathing and they are finding it a delight – ‘Are we going to do it again? ‘ with excitement. So little time for silence these days.

Friday morning with second years at ArtsEd continues to be like a training atmosphere, with hands-on, lying down, and experimenting for themselves. One particularly useful experiment I set up for a girl who pulls her head back when she sings. Very simple – ‘Get Luke to video you as you sing and play it back and watch what you’re doing’ They had done a singing presentation the day before and I’d had some feedback from Andrew our singing teacher about that. I feel so blessed to be working in an atmosphere of sharing, acceptance and respect. Of course the student saw herself doing what everyone had been telling her. ‘But how can I stop that?’ and began her experiments at last in inhibiting it.

Another student, a very good young actor, uses too much effort and tension, and we experimented with him doing less, but still keeping the truth and driving intention. His confusion was that the physical theatre teacher expects him to take on different shapes to accentuate character, and then he has Alexander and singing and voice classes that ask him for his ‘neutral’, balanced state...how can both be right?

He felt so relieved when I said he could take on any shape at all that’s appropriate for the character, as long as it’s a conscious choice and done with direction. ‘It’s a technique – you have to apparently cheat it - make a fist, now keep the same shape but release some of the tension....’ 'Doesn't that become untruthful?' So we experimented with this on his Coward character who is frightfully angry at one point. The first time he was making his voice crack with the tension, then he played with keeping the truth but ‘doing’ less – o my goodness, his voice powered out! He broke into a big smile and understood how FM he speak truth. So pleased – I had been aware of his tying himself up in knots for a while, and so good at last for him to express his beliefs and to have his own realisations.

MA’s were very low key on Friday. Like me, all rather tired, a few absent with illness. I think they all caught it off the director who came in with a heavy cold on Monday. His office is very small – like a large cupboard in which also sits the photocopier. AJ is not brilliant anyway first thing in the morning and there he was sitting at his desk visibly drooping whilst I was bumbling about on the photocopier and his assistant from Iran was passionately expressing his difficulties in finding work as a director or actor. I felt for him. So on Friday, one lad was still recovering and did look very pale and unlike his usual jolly self. Hurrah! He was far too tired to ‘do’ his habit, end-gain etc and try hard. For once he experienced himself coming ‘up’ and walking with that effortless floating sensation. Now he just has to marry that with being well.

Twelfth Night is out on tour in schools next week already. I saw them swanning about the corridor on Friday in their swashbuckling pirate costumes and thought they looked fantastic! I had done very little work with them on Thursday – just notes on the run I had seen – but most of them were stuck on the tube at Earls Court and didn’t make it in. They very kindly trooped into the staffroom and apologised to me the next day. I was very touched.

One of the girls said as a special favour to me she would really work with not bracing her legs and tightening her back.....I won’t be able to see them till they play the main house the week after. Perhaps I should offer her a bar of chocolate as an enticement? I go with inducement rather than violence – I heard that FM would stand in the wings and threaten to throw a heavy book at Henry Irving if he should dare to pull his head back.

The weekend has been a joy. Another pleasant evening on Friday with my friend J, with tea wine and chicken casserole with sweet potato, before setting off for home on the tube. I walked smartly up from Mansion House. I want to keep up some exercise in the week and I have completely blown it this week with my swimming – staying in for workmen, fogginess and social occasions put pay to that this week. I instead walked into Covent Garden on Saturday and half ran and walked to British Museum today. Several joggers went buy and I noticed one on his toes and remembered how AT teacher and runner, Malcom Balk suggests this in his running workshops. I experimented and it certainly made me springier. If he is doing another workshop soon I shall maybe attend.

My student Peter last year who does triathlons knocked off 40 minutes from his time last year in the marathon. He came over to Alonnisos for one of the workshops in the summer, and apart from his ability to sink in the water rather than float (very heavy muscular legs), we noticed he was tripping down the mule track on his toes.

I tried running some years ago with a vague idea to train up for the marathon. I was teaching at The Broadgate Club and influenced by working with a very fit German trader who, following our AT lessons, successfully reduced his time in the London marathon and his fatigue – managed to walk home to Mayfair afterwards still feeling ‘up’ whereas before he would have lain flat out on the ground, moaning ,muscles aching. Inspired, I thought perhaps I could do havea go. It never got off the ground as after 4 weeks I ruined the ligaments in my feet – I wasn’t wearing good trainers and was running on hard pavements with flat feet. Ouch.

So it was with delight today that I realised as I was running that I really enjoyed fast movement and perhaps my ligament problem was over. Watch this space. Half an hour running would take less time than half an hour of swimming. That sounds absurd, but I mean that it takes more time to walk to the swimming pool, get undressed and showered and into the pool and the reverse on the way out.

In going over my week of malaise, I realise still quite a lot was achieved despite my foggy consciousness. Maybe that is like my students being ill and not able to do and try so much. I can’t say I enjoyed my fogginess. But then I guess my students don’t like having colds.

'Friday is Fish, is everybody happy?'

Actually didn't have fish yesterday, although severely tempted by a bag of chips on my way home after a full day of teaching in Turnham Green. £1.30 for a bag of chips!!?? (cue trembling elderly voice ..''I remember in the old days.....") However they did smell good , but inihibited my urge as it isn't pleasant for others on the tube platform to watch me gorging and I had had a light supper already...
When I walked up the stairs in the morning (thinking of stepping in to cardboard boxes- not) to the second floor of ArtsEd I was in gloomy thought. The weather was cloudy, cold and gray, I was tired.....and then I came across young Tariq a first year drama student, practising his lines loudly as I walked by. It was very random, something like 'He didn't understand why I wanted to cross- dress and the purple waistcoat was so important!' and I walked past grinning at the absurdity and my blessings to be working in such a creative place. Mood changed completely, and the day was fun and easy - lots of teaching assistants made the second year classes seem more like an Alexander training going on - so much help for them, in a non-doing way. The hour for lunch which is required to be filled with clearing up one classroom, walking 15 minutes over to the Catholic Centre down to road, and preparing the next one seemd to happen in acres of time , and the humous falafel wrap was quite tasty. My darling MA students in the afternoon were just quietly getting on with it, lying down thinking of their upper limb, using us teachers well to come up and out and into the world. That's the important thing - into the world. Using the present connection to the outside world, to release us out of the cage of our habits.
Imagine if I had been so caught in my cloudy gray cold mood this morrning, that I hadn't heard Tariq?
I was also working on spirals in my MA tutorials. Getting them out of the 'cardboard box on two legs' and 'we should only get up out of the chair in the 'proper' Alexander way' syndrome. What joy to see them spiral up out of and spiral back into the chair, still with this clear 'up' direction...
Next I visited my dear friend Jane in the early evening who lives nearby. It happened she was recovering from a cold and having trouble with her neck. She is an actor and director and has such sensitivity that despite terrible pain and restriction she was able to release a little. Just the warmth of someone's hands touching lightly can be so soothing. And I did enjoy the chicken casserole too!
Life is full of choices sometimes. Today, Saturday, the choice of what film to see with another friend that suits us both. Ian Dury it is. And what a beautiful blue sky I can see as I write this- uplifting after all the days of clouds....I quite like clouds - watching them change shape, but the light is different. And I do like the light of a clear blue winter sky. The rooftops of London sparkle in the sunshine. Specially with an early frost.

A philosophical day

Congratulations to my student Rhia for bringing little Matilda into the world last weekend. She was having such an easy time inside, she didn't want to come out! So despite our endeavours to free her up, UCH helped out after all.

I have spent an interesting hour or so, thinking about an ill-thought-out newsblog from my website. I edited it without more ado when certain objections were put and I realised I hadn't explained myself well at all.

I am still amazed when students of mine take the teachings of FM and use them in a real way to help them through life. In otherwords they are owning the Work for themselves, and I am but a facilitator for their learning. The Work is great, and they learn despite my teaching!

What would it be if there were no national boundaries at all? After all the birds know of none, nor does the weather. Nation states are more recently created in the history of civilisation. The only boundary that can easily be seen from space is the great wall of china. We have habits of mind and body, and there are cultural and social habits, designed to organise us. If we can organise the Self differently - which is what AT does I think - then the world may be organised differently. We certainly receive the world differently, as our perceptions change. Often this change manifests in just being nicer people - 'I don't know why but my husband seems to be more calm and easier to get along with....' could be he's had the Alexander lessons, (often the case) or could be the wife has had the lessons and perceives the husband differently...

So a very philosophical day today. I visited UCH also this afternoon not to see the new baby, but to have more conversations with a specialist nurse about my bones. They are lighter than they should be for my age. I suspect there could be a factor of Alexander in this - floating around a little easier may not be giving the bones enough stress to thicken them up! Now I have a choice to let it be, exercise more, continue having high levels of calcium and other key minerals in my diet, or continue the medical intervention with a yearly jab. Hmmm.

Afterwards I went into the Wellcome Foundation exhibition called I AM, about personal identity and had fun looking at myself in a 'real' mirror. usually we see ourselves back to front, not as others see us. This reverses the image so we see oursleves as others do. I really do seem to drop my head to the right an awful lot when I am not consciously directing. Is my use pattern obeying structural reform though, with the light bones I have, particularly in L4. My discomfort in back and ribs may well be to do with this. Thank goodness for semi supine and all my Alexander training. Where would I be without it??

A late lunch at the Friends Meeting House Cafe in Euston Road was delightful, as I met my Friend Molly unexpectedly from our local Quaker meeting in Bunhill. She comes to my drop-in Alexander sessions I run there on a Wednesday evening.

There is a correlation of inhibition with Friends practice and AT. In meeting for Worship no-one says anything unless moved to do so in the moment. We meet ourselves, each other and the spirit in the stillness. Stillness is very moving. I was moved to start the drop-in sessions when I saw a photograph of a new sculpture at Woodbrooke Study Centre. It depicts a circle of Friends sitting in meeting for Worship and they were all rather scrunched up, pulled down and collapsed! As though Spirit was having to be squeezed out of them... Compare this to other depictions of Quakers in the old days, sitting very straight-backed and upright,their heads gently bowed from the top of the neck, the atlanto-occipital joint and their hats and bonnets firmly on!

I like two suggestions from 'Faith and Practice too: 'Walk cheerfully' and 'live adventurously.' Very Alexandrian!

The picture at the top is of some Friends lying down at Bunhill Meeting.

Woodbrooke Study Centre in Birmingham http://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/ is the former home of Quaker George Cadbury and there is a very interesting article on the Cadbury legacy and the sad Kraft takeover on the following website

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1244582/Cadburys-Quakers-vision-Utopia-built-British-institution.html

Alexander Swimming

I went swimming this morning at the Ironmnoger Row Baths nearby. I intend to go two or three times a week but sadly this doesn't always happen. So I made sure today. I love practising Shaw Method there. My crawl is no longer the frantic thrashing and I have learnt that backstroke is more like sidestroke, or crawl upside down. Both much improved. And my breast stroke ......well, this is more of a challenge, to remember to really duck under and up and it's most enjoyable when I seem to find the flow, but it is a little haphazard. Today I found it by the end, and really felt my head leading rather than my arms. It felt more contained and powerful, using the water well. I do enjoy floating along, but...without end-gaining - I really would like to go a bit faster! Sigh. if you want to find out more about Shaw Method Swimming you can go to www.artofswimming.com

Today there were hordes of little girls in the changing room with their frazzled teacher 'Put your socks on last Veronica, otherwise they will get soggy'......and the girls squeak like little guinea pigs as they rush through the rather cool shower. It will be lovely when they have done the place up, but I shall sure miss it for the 2 years it wil be closed....

Of course swimming in Alonnisos is the best as the photo shows.....that was at Steni Vala last year.

Tonight I was at my Chi Kung class with Master Lamb. I did metal, water and fire positions. The chap next to me was shaking again. It was a very chatty session - Master Lam is insistent we don't try to quieten the mind as we are all beginners and need more to relax. I found it very useful this evening to relax my eyes ....zzzzz

Alexander Monday

Yesterday I was teaching MA theatre students at ArtsEd. in the morning.
I foudn out what they knew already about arms, and then filled in the holes. The Anatomy Colouring Book is still very useful for getting them to subliminaly learn by colouring in the bones or muscle groups. I had borrowed the big skeleton from the pupil's school which sits and grins at them in their 'Quiet Room', so we left the hall and went upstairs to look at him (Big Fred) , His forearm turns very well, so is very useful. My little Fred is good at showing the movement of the shoulder girdle but his elbows are a bit wired up and stiff. (O why o why have they stopped making Little Fred? He is an 18 inch Johns Hopkins Skeleton which is the cutest and most flexible chap I have come across. ) But we also did some great creative work - another 5 minute 'Happening' devised entitle 'Trying to Get it right' which ends with the quote from Hamlet ' There's nothing right nor wrong but thinking makes it so'....., and we also played with not end-gaining when using text, imagining the words coming to you from the other person standing opposite. So picture if you will two people standing opposite each other, looking into each other's eyes, not doing anything except being in an Alexander directed state and one saying 'I love you' 3 times. Very powerful stuff. I changed the text, so we had 'I hate you,' 'May you rot in hell!' and 'Please don't leave me' all spoken solemnly three times each. Except for the two guys who couldn't hack it and kept giggling! There's always one. Too profound, and the defences come up. It's a jolly useful exercise to get actors out of the habit of poking their necks forward and pulling down everytime they have to utter an emotional torrent. Less is more and all that. I call that habit, 'doing the chicken' , and as we know terribly bad for the throat although it hasn't stopped Emma Thompson or George Clooney making a name for themselves....
After all that excitement, went home for a late lunch and a cancelled lesson meant I could chill out and watch The African Queen! I do love that moment when Bogart gets covered in leeches.... after the private lessons, I decided, free choice and all that, inhibiting my reactions for a new response, to NOT open up my laptop, but read and go to bed early. Hurrah!