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Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
If you physically look perfectly sane, will that help return you to sanity? I need a definition of sanity here. After a lifetime of doing a whole lot of psychotherapy, becoming a certified Alexander Technique teacher (three years and 1,600 hours of training), here is my definition of sanity. Sanity is the ability to be able to, in a timely manner, do something different that is loving, when what you’ve been doing isn’t working or loving.
This is my definition of sanity, but I’m not sure I’ve met anyone yet who could do this consistently. Why do I think so few people can do this regularly? Because by the time you’re conscious enough to choose what you want to do, you have very strongly identified with who you’ve learned to be.
It is a huge huge threat (a death threat) to who you’ve been, not to continue to do what you’ve always done the way you’ve always done it. You so strongly identify with what you learned to believe from your family and your culture, that who you believe you are is in total identification with these preconscious beliefs.
Your ego may give you a break in certain areas of your life, allowing you be totally flexible in certain situations (able to make only a loving choice), but it rarely lets you do so in all of the areas of your life. If you were able to make truly loving decisions 24/7, then by the definition of what a human is, you wouldn’t fit in. You’d be a god. Think about it. If you made truly selfless and selfish decisions fearlessly 24/7, nobody would know who you are from the human perspective. I believe this would be an amazing place to exist.
What is it that the Alexander Technique can contribute to a person’s process who is going to a psychotherapist regularly? Let’s assume you’re in therapy because things are not working in your life, so you’re in emotional pain. You’ve decided with the help of psychotherapy to bring to consciousness all that has run your life – that has not let you do what you want to do to be happy to follow your bliss. What is the Alexander Technique contribution to this healing process you’ve entered?
Very simply, if you can physically embody happiness with the posture, movement, and the whole body use of a truly joyous person, then your body isn’t backing up your insanity. So, the psychotherapist can help you let go of not being who you aren’t, while your body is already telling the world who you really are – a loving being able to make loving choices after every unloving path you’ve taken.
Is the Alexander Technique reductive? What I mean by this question, is the Alexander Technique telling you to just stand up straight and snap out of your emotional garbage? No. It would be if it told you to stand up straight, which it doesn’t. What it does is ask you to let go of collapsing yourself physically and discover what fearless, loving, and expansive posture looks like and how amazing it feels.
If your body doesn’t feel like it has always felt, then you don’t have to feel what you’ve always felt and do what you’ve always done.
