“I intend to trust my inner manager”
Say this thought to yourself little and often throughout the day.
Information and knowledge are useful. Putting these into action is even more useful. Committing to doing this action one, three, or ten times a day – then you’ll really start to notice the benefits.
As many of you know, one of Alexander’s major discoveries about us mammals is that the relationship between the head and spine govern the coordination of the rest of us. Yes – all of us! Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – we don’t separate – its all one thing – our Self.
A view through the hedge onto our local allotments
“I intend to trust my inner manager”
I recently had an email discussion with someone who has been noticing his embedded habit of trying to actively help his shoulders do their job. I love the way he talked of an unenlightened management style
where the line manager tries to micromanager the subordinates instead of trusting them to do their job and get on and use their own skills and talents. He noticed that saying “I am walking tall and easy” tells the micromanager to back off and creates the conditions where something else can happen.
I am grateful to my reader Tony for putting his self-observations into such clear language. F M Alexander noticed that we humans are fundamentally mammals, vertebrates, and share the same movement principles as our four-footed furry animal friends. Namely that our head and spine joint coordinates the movement of the whole of our Selves. That there is a natural order to this sequence of movement which travels down the whole length of our spine. That our torso can lengthen and widen, that our limbs flow from this torso.
So instead of trying to micromanage ourselves by trying to find out where we should ‘put’ our head, or how to ‘hold’ our shoulders, we can prime the Manager instead. Alexander called the Manager the Primary Control, which is the reflex instigated at the top joint of the spine to our skull.
If we let the Manager dictate every detail of movement we are not efficient, the subordinate parts aren’t happy, and we can get many aches and pains as they complain and our movements literally go out of order.
Now if this mix up has been going on for a while, it may not be straightforward to start trusting the Manager to do their over-view and give directions and let the subordinate parts do their work with the skills and talents at their command. This is why I suggest we ‘intend to trust’ so that we are pointing towards this possibility and growing the trust, rather than expecting or demanding it to be reliable immediately after a period of inattention.
“I intend to trust my inner manager”
So if we go back to walking in the park, and noticing that we are hunching our shoulders, one option is to try and tell the shoulders exactly what to do and ‘put them back’, or to ‘relax’ but this doesn’t work in the right way for how our mind-body are wired and organised.
As Tony says, when we give the direction to the Manager “I can walk tall and easy” this tells the micromanager to back off. It invites the Manager to step into the right place. It ‘creates the conditions’ for something better to happen. Now we are cooking on gas.
- What do you know about yourself and your micromanager?
- Which are your favourite body parts to try and micromanage?
- Which parts of you regularly send the ache or pain message?
- Are the pain messages coming from the same places which you try and micromanage?
- Can you calm your micromanager down at will?
- Can you restore your Manager and Subordinates to their right relationship?
If you’d like to discover these skills and practice the skills I’ve laid out here, please get in touch and we can have a conversation about how I can best help you.
