What was I looking for?
Earlier this week I shared my story about how I first started with Alexander’s work, as a music student with stage fright.
Fright is a physical state: the stiff neck, the clenched fingers, the shallow breath.
It is also an emotional state. The word we use here in the UK ‘fear’ becomes attached to these physical sensations, brought on by something, or even just the idea of something scary. So it is also a mental state.
I don’t divide mind and body. It’s all you, all together.
I have a memory of me as a little kid, chased into the bathroom by my dad with a slipper raised above his head. He was angry about something, and momentarily lost his cool. I was terrified, and once or twice I did get hit. (He had his own war and early family trauma, mostly he was a good and kind man.)
So then, whenever I saw him holding his slipper, my body went straight into that fear state, even if he didn’t actually use the slipper. My nervous system had got trained to anticipate, and if possible, avoid scary moments, and pain. (What a good idea!)
Years later, when I worked at the BBC booking replacement musicians for concerts and recordings, I’d get that same feeling in my body. The stimulus was different, but the urgency and fear were the same body sensations. My body didn’t know the difference between ‘fear then’ of actual harm as a kid, or ‘fear now’ of missing a deadline and any consequences.
It turns out this is a very human pattern. As Marjorie Barstow (a first generation Alexander teacher) said, “How we get ourselves into this mess I don’t know, but this is a way to get out.”
So while it was frightened-music‑student-Lucy who brought herself to this Alexander work, the reverberations went far deeper into my nervous system and body memories than I could have anticipated.
The ancient part of our brain, the amygdala, that evolved for survival through ‘fight or flight’ has no time stamp. We can flip into another memory, another age or stage, in an instant and get lost in a timeless experience.
Having a system to find my way through the fear of grip, something to rely on, has be incredibly helpful. Fortunately, Alexander discovered a system through his own problems, experimenting and refining, a way of thinking that can help us in mental, emotional, and physical situations all at the same time.
When I came to the work, I just wanted to play the trumpet better in front of people and get a better grade for my degree.
I had no idea I had stumbled into a reliable process, a repeatable system, that could help me in many sticky situations. Staying with my body, using my mind, and feeling my emotions – all together.
The more I work with these discoveries and the principles found in nature, the more I’m able to make small tweaks and changes as I go along, even at speed, even in tricky situations.
Whatever stage you are at in life, whatever physical stage you find yourself on personally or professionally, the way you learn to look after yourself can follow a process.
I didn’t know, back then, that I could learn to steady myself from the inside out. I didn’t know I could meet fear with curiosity instead of collapse. But I did learn, slowly and gently.
And if I can learn it, anyone can. There is always a way to meet yourself where you are, to stay present even in a difficult moment, and to find a little more ease to move well. If you didn’t know this as a kid, if you were never shown how, if you’ve had moments of been alarmed and alone, you’ll probably need someone to show you how. To experience yourself without the habitual ‘fight and flight’ pattern being your only recourse to uncertainty.