The great Artesian Basin - What does this image make you feel?

It’s funny how an image, a suggestion or a perception can be a trigger for action. What creates the impulse for action, whether positive or negative?

For that matter, what creates any impulse? What is it that we respond to?

Is it just a thought or feeling? or a more complicated chain of events? Where do we sense it? and how can we have a choice in the way we respond?

Within our bodies there is so much sensation. Some of it we can sense directly but most of the background sensations that drive us are hidden .. obscured by instantaneous physical reactions - the tensions and reactions that twist us into our characteristic posture and attitude.

Those habitual tensions relate to our orientation to the world rather like a background operating system. If we are lucky enough to perceive them and see their connection to the way we feel the possibility of a new course of action becomes available.

FM Alexander’s first book, ‘Man’s supreme Inheritance’ and Moshe Feldenkrais’ s third book, ‘The Elusive Obvious’ both speak to this challenge. It’s at the heart of both methods.

So this term we’ll be exploring an area central to those habitual reactions - the inside of our our head, neck and upper ribs. So much going on there! So subtle, yet so fundamental to the quality of our movement and perception. The special organs of sense, our heart and lungs, our mouth, tongue and larynx and a few remarkable glands are just the beginning.

Have a look at the bones in our skull. They all move! Surrounded on the outside by skin, muscle and fascia and supported from the inside by our nervous system floating in an ocean of cerebro-spinal fluid and encased in three remarkable layers of fascia. It’s an amazing structure.

All those bones connected to each other and balanced on top of the spine, moving as we breathe.

Sensing within the head, neck and torso is subtle .. but if you travel within your self and explore the mechanics of how it all connects you’ll experience some deep peace and who knows, maybe even a new perspective on your current projects.

It’s one of the beauties of this work that discoveries are often made indirectly. We listen closely to what we’re doing and the stillness that requires enables us to realise lightness and ease. It’s the discovery of poise that allows new movement and with it the possibility of new perception. There lies accidental insight.

So we’ll be taking the time to see and feel those things we take for granted ..

This Thursday at 9.30am upstairs in Avalon Recreation Centre. Bring a comfortable mat and call me if you have any questions.

With love

David

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The accidental insight