by Cate McNider (originally published here)
I want to tell you a little story.
A student who’s been studying AT with me since 2019 (with the interruption of the 2020 lockdown plus some months after vaccinations), recently finished another package of nine lessons. The pattern is unfolding beautifully to reveal a resolution in the upper and lower body in process and more ease all around. She reported a very interesting incident after leaving the previous week’s lesson going to her next destination.
In her own words: “I went the wrong way coming out of your house, I made another wrong turn, and another wrong turn, and got on the wrong bus, then I turned around and got on at the right bus and got to where I was going.” She asked someone about the bus's direction, and was told to walk to the opposite side of the street, to take the M14 going west. She did, and arrived at her destination!
Why, you ask, is this significant in the direction of the goal of changing one's bodymind habits? Because her surety of knowing had been redistributed, or more truly, the illusion of surety was revealed, I should say. Being a New Yorker for 55 years, this was quite perplexing to her, and even more so when I was smiling as she was recounting the event. I was smiling because the disturbing of our habits has many expressions and outcomes. This was a demonstration of the depths of how our orientation works — change the bodymind’s habits, and how you see and orient in the world has to change also. That period of time she was walking in what she formerly had known as the wrong direction was similar to what a computer does while in process of an update, it cannot compute as it once did with new incoming coding. Once it was complete in it’s new processing, she found the right person who had the right answer for her!
So often, what we think is right, based on years of habits, is actually wrong in terms of natural alignment, balance and knowing where we are in spatial terms, and once that is in the process of being corrected, we are faced with that liminal space. Anyone who has ever gotten lost traveling in a foreign city, knows the feeling of lostness. And it’s an ok space to be in, very good in fact, encouraging to be precise, in the context of allowing change.
Anyone who has practiced Alexander’s technique knows that inhibition is the secret spice of change, and in that liminal space: sitting, being in that waiting place, watching the pull of the habit tug at you, and not letting that message follow through, allows a new message to be given and be received. We’re all facing our conditioning when we sit in the ‘between the between’, to allow conscious control to take over, and then choice is yours, consciously.
So, if you get lost, don’t know where you are, because your once sturdy habits are in the midst of an update, that’s a good thing — relax, look around, ask questions, either the answer will come from within, or will arrive shortly in the form of another traveler.
May newness bring you joy, openness and abundance in 2022!
Cate McNider has been working with the bodymind and spirit for 29 years. Through every stage of her healing and working with others through different modalities, she now finds the Alexander Technique, most actively helps others address pain and stress. She is giving online classes during this time of 'social distancing'. President of The Listening Body® has spent three decades in the Healing Arts — spanning Massage Therapy, Reiki, Embodied Anatomy, Yoga, Body-Mind Centering®, Contact Improvisation, Deep Memory Process® and more — and has further sensitized her instrument through the process of Alexander Technique. Her AT training represents the culmination of a lifetime of work and study and a springboard for future creations. Cate is also a painter and published. www.catemcnider.com and www.bodymind.training.