another corker

My Teachers workshop finished on Friday
Another corker. Such good fun, great team spirit and learning for all.

My highlights: watching Michel doing the Chi Kung quietly on his own at the end of the workshop on the quay at Mikros Mourtias, realising how truly powerful and centred it is (Even when he has to suddenly hop about and swat the air to discourage large flying thing in the vicinity. );

Angela tromping up the prickly path to the monastery in her Crocs and swimming costume;

the late night drinks at Maureen and Michel’s when wine was quaffed and viola’s played;

James finding the lightness of ‘inclusive awareness’ ;

‘plastic bowl thinking’ for climbing up the steps;

Anthea realising monkey was an old skill she used when playing netball;

Susan floating in the shallows, experimenting with her fear of the water;

and the last evening at the sunset when all shared a heartfelt piece of music or prose for the rest of the group.

Now a break from workshops till September to teach some individuals, and spend more time with my darling Mo who has been my ‘wind beneath my wings’ - sorry I always think of wind being about farting, but once that schoolgirl joke is over, I really mean he’s been my support, just there and being him and socialising when necessary, and watching his tv and feeding me.....thank you Mo!!

Workshops, boat trips old friends and a trip to Volos.

Two successful workshops have been and gone, and my fellow teacher Becky came with her family to visit me from Cape Town.
She and I trained at the same time, so come of age together – 18 years - this Thursday. It’s always good to talk of old times and discover how we’ve grown, how life has developed. She teaches singing and has had a lovely child Rouane who is tall and 14 now. Her husband Paul is also a teacher but does muscle relaxation therapy too. He used this on Costas at Paraport, their favourite tavern. He saw him limping and recognised immediately where the trouble was and had him face down on a bench (there weren’t other customers at that time) giving him deep massage in the lower back and showing him how to do it for himself. It was much relieved and his mother gave me a spinach pie to give to Mo.

First workshop was dogged with changeable weather, our last session under the canopy of ivy leaves on my pergola was just possible as the raindrops fell. The boat trip was an experience of waves and rain and sunshine and calm – sunny for us to have a nice lunch at the fishing village of Kalamakia and a snorkel across in Peristera, before the clouds arrived again. But much learning and joy in the work itself.


Second workshop boat trip was great and we saw three dolphins on the way back. We searched for a wreck on the Two Brothers but didn’t find it, just some debris of guard rails. And we visited Skantzoura and walked up the top of the hill to the abandoned monastery. So peaceful.

In the morning walks down to Mikros Mourtias, snorkelling was preferred to help rid us of pulling the head back as we swim, and for one anxious swimmer, a way of breathing more easily. With my small knowledge of Shaw Method, having watched both Jan Jordan and Stephanie Dutton teach beginners, I was also able to give some sound advice to June to not hold her breath when floating, but breathe out as she gently let the water take her and breathe in as she came up. It was a revelation and by the boat trip was confident to be happily snorkelling about - with her better half keeping a watchful eye and towing when needed.


I have also been helping a Dutch yoga teacher for a couple of weeks. She was getting terrible neck pain after practising so we were really playing with her not trying hard! Her new iphone sadly stopped working whilst she was here, and the greatest story is that she discovered our local priest is a whizz at modern technology and mobile phones! But sadly even he couldn’t fix it. I think sometimes the universe speaks to us very loudly and clearly to stop and let go. The island is very good at this.


A long term resident is having a few lessons in return for doing some washing for us (we have no washing machine). I am so happy as I know she has had a lot of back pain in the past and at last I can give her some help. A doctor recently diagnosed a herniated disc in the thoracic spine, and suggested AT might help. So far so good, and her head is turning more easily in both directions now and she has a smile on her face.


The other big event is taking my partner off the island yesterday to go the Volos hospital to get an infection checked out at casualty. It cost a return flight from London to Athens to get us both there, but well worth the relief of knowing all was well, and the antibiotics should do the trick. There is a medical centre here, but it is limited.

Last time Mo had septicaemia he left it very late to go to Volos and it left him with two months in a UK hospital, three skin grafts and a bad foot. So we don’t take chances anymore.

And it was very good for him to leave the island. He has lived here for nearly thirty years. I took him away for five when we first got together, but in the last 12 years he has left the island once for an overnight in Athens, three or four times to get his IKA card in Skopelos and to make a will, and now this. It wakes the brain up to have new surroundings and I enjoyed travelling with him- particularly on the way back when we were no longer anxious.

Our lovely dog Spiros was a very good boy without us. He did howl from the balcony (sorry neighbours!) for about an hour or two now and then apparently, but Cathy and Simon, two of my students who are dog lovers, looked after him for the day and took him for his usual morning walk and wade to Mikros Mourtias.

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.

travelling

April 25th saw me travelling from Alonnisos to Volos on my way back to UK. This is what I wrote:

'I am on the Skiathos Express with friends from Alonnisos, two also travelling back to UK , two to visit the cardiologist and an operation for the heart.

My dog Spiros I left sulking on the bed. He wouldn’t look at me, head on the pillow, deigning to let me stroke him goodbye....Mo came down to the port to see me off. We sat and drank our coffee and beer staring out to sea, just like when we got together 17 years ago....

I was supposed to have left on Friday to do a workshop for the union of music teachers at Thessaloniki – EEME - on Saturday. I had been suffering with appalling dizziness since Wednesday however and had to cancel. I hate doing that. But I spent a day in bed and slowly slowly got better – thanks to some advice by the German ladies I knew who all told me it was labyrinthitis and needed to crash down head first sideways onto the bed both sides to release the stones from the hairs in my inner ear. That and a couple of exciting journeys on the back of Mo’s scooter to Patitiri to change my ticket and buy some ibuprofen. Love the feel of wind in my hair in the sunshine and clapsing the back of my beloved as we zoomed down the hill.

People often ask what do I do on a Greek Island. Well.....at this time of year, work on myself, the garden and being domestic.

I planted an olive tree on the land below, plus a couple of cacti, clearing some of the weeds whilst keeping the poppies going.

I walked the dog long walks, took photos of the wild flowers and views of the light and the village.

I went with the Walking Club and walked up the stony bed of the Gorge to magnificent views above Agios Dimitrios and the new reservoir that is being built with EU money– our water table is going down with more tourists and more swimming pools, showers, toilets etc etc being built.

One evening we went to a rock and roll night at Mary’s Bar and danced the night away with the Aloni Band – you can see them on YouTube, and they’ve been on Greek and French TV – rock with the over 50’s... Mo was very stiff afterwards, but so nice to have a go at jiving with him.

April 13th was Alexander Thinking Day when all my 1st year students are supposed to think in AT terms. I remembered by about 2pm. I laughed and laughed and realised I had already been thinking in Alexander terms of course. I started out walking with Spiros not knowing where I was going, but if I kept going, I’d get there! We ended up visiting Polly and John for a cup of tea near the well, then going on towards Chris and Julia’s and turning off down the path through the olive trees to the kalitheri to the track through the burnt pine forest and around lesser known paths till we arrived on the road from Patitiri to the village. Just before I met our summer neighbour Senora ‘Pou pas?’ ‘on my way to milk my goats’, then nearer home on the mule track I met Fat Maria (no longer fat since her diagnosis of diabetes, as Thin Maria is no longer thin as she has got older) walking her goats up the hill past Panayiottis’ mules and shouting the time of day. Then we met Aleko who was clearing his olive grove, and I felt part of the community for a moment – connected. It seems Kafka’s quote about life rolling at your feet was truly happening without my doing anything – it has no choice.

Of course the volcano erupting in Iceland and stopping air traffic was big news and affected our neighbour Charlie who turned back from Athens airport and stayed a week longer than intended. I seem to have escaped any flight problems – I just missed BA cabin crew strike coming, and the aeroplanes are flying again as I return.

I gave two lessons whilst I was there. One was to Claudia who I have been dying to get onto my table ever since she complained of neck pains some years ago now. The sun was going behind the house by the time she arrived and it was beginning to be a little cool out on my terrace, but nonetheless she wrapped herself up in an extra hoody and I believe she had some new experience of herself.

The other lesson was with Charlie and we had great fun as we took the lesson out to a terrace at the end of the village to experiment in being present, and discovering what was happening to our attention as we gazed down at Mikros Mourtias and over to Skopelos and ducked under the mulberry tree...

I had some more bookings for the summer workshops which I'm very pleased about. I think it's more companionable for participants if there are three or four people to share the experience with.

So there are some memories of my Easter break on Alonnisos. Full of wild flowers and butterflies and fragrance of sage and thyme.'