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Jun 12

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A Little Lightness

Photo: B. Fertman

Photo: B. Fertman

Mr. Yamamoto has had a long day.

Finally finished, he gets on his bicycle and winds his way through narrow streets lined with old, dusty shops and brown wood weathered houses. It’s winter, 6:30pm, and already dark. Heavy, white snowflakes fall in slow motion through an indigo sky, the way they have in Kyoto for 1400 years.

Mr. Yamamoto emerges from the back streets of Old Kyoto and into what looks like another world, wide avenues full of vertical neon signs, high rising financial institutions, and upscale department stores. He pulls in front of a Seven Eleven, grabs a bento, and a box of butter cookies to share during the break, gets back on his bike and realizes he’s late.

Mr. Yamamoto is a 50 year old high school math teacher who dreams of retiring. Inside his beat up leather briefcase, which is now resting, seemingly exhausted, in his bicycle basket, he’s got his students’ math exams, which he will be grading late into the night because, this evening, he will take a class he wants to take, a class for himself.

Mr. Yamamoto’s hoping to learn more about his body. He wants to have more energy. He wants to have some fun, do something good for himself. At the suggestion of a friend, against his better judgment, he signs up for a series of classes in the Alexander Technique.

About twelve students have gathered, men and women, old and young, people for the most part who just want to feel more alive, a bit lighter, a little happier.

Tonight I’ve been working with the students doing things they have to do at work that they don’t like doing. I worked with a man who receives phone calls from disgruntled customers complaining about what they just bought and wish to return. I worked with a woman scrubbing a wooden floor on her hands and knees. I worked with a man who has to listen to his boss yelling at him first thing in the morning.

It’s Mr. Yamamoto’s turn. He unsnaps his briefcase and slides out his stack of ungraded exams. He sits behind a desk in the front of the room, drops the pile of papers onto the desk, pulls out a pencil from his shirt pocket, lets out a big sigh, and begins.

I just watch, feeling how he feels, seeing what’s happening throughout his entire body. Under the table I can see that his feet and legs are turned in, especially his left leg. His pelvis is rolling back. His stomach’s tight. His chest is sunken. His head’s dropped and tilted to the left. His body looks like it’s crying, but Mr. Yamamoto is not crying. Then I see it: quiet, almost desperate, resignation.

Mr. Yamamoto scribbles something onto the first exam. “How did your student do?” I ask. “D. Not good.” Mr. Yamamoto continues. C. D. C+. F. He’s shaking his head. He’s aging right before my eyes.

“Mr. Yamamoto, (that’s what everyone calls him), how do you feel about my helping you a little?” “Onegaishimasu,” he says bowing slightly. Please help me. I walk behind him, softly place my hands, one on either side of his neck, and gently guide his head back on top of his body. His body rises up like a man underwater who’s finally coming up for air. His chest swells, his whole body expands reflexively in every direction. A thin, tired Mr. Yamamoto now sits at his desk exuding a quiet, focused authority.

“Okay, Mr. Yamamoto, begin grading your papers and let’s see what happens.”

B. Everyone smiles, but not Mr. Yamamoto. B+. Eeeeehhhhhhh!?, a rising sound heard when Japanese people are pleasantly surprised. More smiles and some laughter, but not from Mr. Yamamoto.

A. A. A+. A. Now everyone’s almost falling off their chairs. The laughter is irrepressible. Mr. Yamamoto remains still and expressionless. I’m not sure what he’s feeling. I’m doing my best to stick with him, but the unbridled laughter in the room is too contagious. I just lose it.

And, suddenly, so does Mr. Yamamoto. He’s laughing so hard tears are rolling down his cheeks. “Maybe those crazy Buddhists are right”, Mr. Yamamoto says. “Maybe the world is nothing but one big mirror.”

“On that note, let’s finish,” I say. Quickly everyone sits in a circle on the floor, kneeling in seiza, and bows deeply. Still smiling from ear to ear, we loudly exclaim, “Doumo arigatou gosaimashita.” Thank you very, very much.

We’re thankful to be together, thankful to be learning, thankful for a little lightness in our lives.

Mr. Yamamoto throws his scarf around his neck, tosses his briefcase into the basket, and hops on his bike. The crisp night air fills his lungs. The snow looks whiter. It’s swirling. It’s falling up.

Jun 3

3 Comments

Just Between Us

Photo: B. Fertman

Photo: B. Fertman

It’s crowded. The waitress finds us a corner table. I watch Erika quickly size up the situation. She sees there’s not a lot of room around the table and proceeds straight away to slide through a rather small space into one of the chairs, no small feat given Erika is in her mid-eighties.  I squeeze, not quite as gracefully, into the chair next to Erika. Some pretty big, jovial people live in Australia, and a few of them happen to be sitting at the tables next to us. Still, we’re happy to have gotten what appears to be the last table.

Christine’s looking around too, but it seems she’s looking for where there is the most space. Sure enough she sits down in the one chair that is not butting up either against the wall nor next to a chair occupied by one of our large, husky fellows. Barbara takes the remaining chair.

Christine still feels as if she hasn’t enough space. She moves her chair back, further away from the table and proceeds to sit on the very edge of the chair, legs apart, perfectly upright, as if she’s about to begin meditating. Christine’s an Alexander Technique teacher, and a very skilled one at that. In fact, all of us teach Alexander’s work, Erika having begun studying with Alexander when she was eight years old.

In contrast to Christine, I notice that Erika’s chair is drawn up almost as close to the table as possible. She’s comfortably leaning back into the chair. Rather than taking the most space, Erika created the most space around her as possible.

Four tall glasses of water balance precariously upon a tray which a shy, young boy is carrying over  to our table. He’s not sure how to get around Christine’s chair. He decides to cut left around the table, doesn’t see the leg of Christine’s chair sticking out, trips, miraculously managing to prevent the shaky glasses full of water from toppling. He feels terrible about it. I get this feeling it’s his first day on the job. He apologizes profusely. Erika praises him on his stunning recovery, coaxing a slight smile from his sweet face.

Christine pauses for a split second, perturbed that this boy had interrupted her account of an Alexander lesson she had recently given.

My eye catches Erika’s eye. She smiles at me.  Silently, I thank Erika for her exemplary way of teaching without teaching.  She heard it, I’m sure.

Commentary.

In the Alexander Work we sometimes speak of the relationship between parts of the body, the relation of the head to the neck, or the relation between the ribs and the arm structure, or the relation between the hips joints and the sacrum.

As Alexander teachers we rarely ask a person to notice a part of their body in isolation. We teach our students how to perceive themselves “relationally.” We’re after a harmonious orchestration of parts into a symphonic whole. This “unified sound” is the product of a myriad of instruments all attuned one to the other.

What if our work extended beyond our “little body”, into the world, into our “big body.” What would happen if we perceived our body/self as just one little part of a larger body/self? What would the operational principles be for integrating into the larger body/self? How do we help make our big body/self comfortable, peaceful, and lively? How can we distribute support and freedom equally throughout the entire body/self, so that no one part is given less attention than any other?

It might be worthwhile to extend Alexander’s concept of “use” beyond our individual selves. What if we were attending to our collective use, our immediate social body, as was Erika during our dinner together? Isn’t the waiter as important as anyone else? Wasn’t he part of who we were that evening?

Our souls dwell where our inner world and the outer world meet.  Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.  The soul is found, not within, but between. 

Novalis

May 24

Life Is With People – Nov 2012 – Mar 2013 – Workshops in Japan

This video is in honor of all the bright, inquisitive, lively students who took my workshops.

It’s a thank you present from me, to you.

I’ll be returning to Japan, my second home, in the beginning of November 2013, and I will live in Japan until mid-April 2014.

I hope to give lots of workshops. And I will be giving individual lessons in Osaka and Kobe too.

I hope I will see many of you again.

Life is better when we’re together.

Yours,

Bruce Fertman

May 12

2 Comments

Moms

Photo: B. Fertman

Photo: B. Fertman

 …from Where This Path Begins

Renderings from the Tao Te Ching by Bruce Fertman

 Sphere within a Sphere.
A child grows.
 
Sphere within a Sphere.
Without knowing this child, she loves this child.
 
Sphere within a Sphere.
A child comes into this world.
 
The child begins to crawl, then walk.
The mother’s sphere grows larger.
 
The child begins to run and climb.
The mother’s sphere grows larger.
 
The child leaves home.
The mother’s sphere grows larger.
 
The child has a child.
The mother’s sphere grows larger.
 
The child’s mother dies.
The child’s sphere grows larger.
 
Sphere within a sphere.
The mother grows within the child’s heart.

Apr 21

3 Comments

On The Grounds Of Modesty

Photo: B. Fertman

Photo: B. Fertman

Bruce,

Today I have a question for you. It’s about the center of the body. People often say the center of body is near the navel. But when I think about the navel as my center I tend to bend at the waist and this doesn’t feel right. When I relocate the center of my body nearer to my hip joints, this seems to work. But actually, I ‘m not sure. What do you think?

Different ideas work for different people. You have to play with it, as you are doing. I have thought about this one for about 40 years. Here are just three possibilities.

In Aikido there is the idea of one point. You meditate on your one point getting smaller and smaller as you are becoming larger and larger. But it is not at the navel. To find your one point, walk the tips of your fingers straight down below the navel until you come to a place that is very firm, just above the beginning of the pubic synthesis. Then press in slightly but firmly, on about a 70% angle, scooping upward toward the back, just where the lumbar spine begins to curve into the thoracic spine. This is easier to show on a skeleton. You just have to poke around until you find what works for you. If I direct through that point just so, then I sense my body becoming strongly organized. But be careful not to start sucking in your abdominal muscles. One point is deeper in than that, behind the stomach muscles. If you tap into this you will find that your body has a tendency to organize itself over the hip joints, which will likely create a sensation of being ever so slightly inclined forward. But it is not a bend from the waist. It’s being poised over your hip joints in such a way that they feel oiled, so you are ready to move in any direction. When the body is in a condition of readiness, like an Olympic diver preparing for a dive, you won’t see a person who is standing at an exact 90% angle in relation to the floor. Their whole body will incline slightly forward from the ankle and a tiny bit from the hip joint.  When you are sitting, and you tap into one point, it will orient you slightly toward the front of your sits bones.

Now if we travel from Japan into China, the Hara becomes the T’antien, which most often is translated as belly. So rather than being a point it becomes a whole area, a large container. In English the word belly usually implies bigness, fullness, relaxation and sometimes humor. My tai chi teacher used to talk about the belly as a large basin, a very big bowl, like  people, in the old days, would use to wash up before there were sinks and running water. My teacher would ask us to move as if that basin were completely full of water. She wanted us to sense the weight of the water, while at the same time, moving so that we didn’t tip the bowl causing the water to spill out of the bowl to the front or to the back or to the sides. This is particularly important when doing tai chi, as it is critical to cultivate a strong sense of horizontality while moving.

For some people this larger sense of center works better.

Now we get to my favorite version.

Nietzsche wrote, The center is everywhere. This frees me. I no longer have to look for “my center” or locate it somewhere inside my body. Actually, I don’t have to try to locate it anywhere.  Drop the very notion of a center and sense what happens. Look around and sense that the center is everywhere. When this works, it really works.

Stephen Hawking, the great astrophysicist, has the same idea, but here he is contemplating our macro-cosmos.

“Now at first sight, all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe.  In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe.  There is, however, an alternate explanation: the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy too.  We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption.  We believe it on the grounds of modesty:  it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe!  The situation is rather like a balloon with a number of spots painted on it being steadily blown up.  As the balloon expands, the distance between any two spots increases, but there is no spot that can be said to be the center of the expansion.”

As usual, great question. I hope this gives you a few possibilities with which to play. If you discover something let me know.

Apr 12

6 Comments

The Stampede

The Red Hats

There’s nothing quite like real life.

Helping people who come to our studio for lessons to become more physically and personally comfortable really does help. Sometimes a lot. It’s a beginning. Helping a person experience this newfound liveliness as they engage in an activity, like playing a violin, or doing the dishes, or working at a computer takes the work beyond the bodyself and into the world of action, and interaction, into life. My teacher, Marjorie Barstow, was masterful when it came to “working in activity” within a group setting. That stands as a major pedagogical contribution. Overtime, for me, “working in activity” evolved, transforming itself into “working situationally.”

It was some years ago, a workshop in Lubeck, Germany, an elementary school teacher wanted to work on teaching. I said, “Sounds good, lets do it. What’s the most stressful moment look like for you when you’re teaching?” She says,” When class is over and the students are running either out the door, or to my desk, while simultaneously, the next class is running through the same door and  into the classroom, or toward my desk.” “How’s that feel,” I ask?  She says, “ I feel bombarded”, and I observe her as she answers my question, her eyes wide open, her lips apart, her body arching back, her hands springing up in front of her like a shield, her breath held high in her chest.

To the fifteen other people in the room I say, “Okay, let’s make a classroom.” I ask the teacher where the door is in relation to her desk and the students proceed to set up the room, happy to be participating. I watch everyone move and interact. My job is to get to know people, so I sit back and watch as much as I can.

The room’s set up. The teacher is standing in front of her desk. Half the students are in their seats, the other half ready to stampede into the room. Everyone understands that they now are 9 or 10 years old. “Okay, go!” I watch the scene as it unfolds. I see what I need to see.

The teacher’s eyes are bugging out of her head, mouth open, body arching back, hands behind her, elbows locked, hands pressing down against the edge of the desk, knuckles white, body rigid. She’s virtually paralyzed, appearing much like she did when responding to my earlier question, though much more pronounced.  I get all the “kids” to pipe down and to prepare for “take two.”

I ask the teacher to sit behind the desk. She wondered why she had not thought of that. Once in her chair, I ask her to pull her chair forward, closer to the desk, and then to sit back, to let herself rest against the back of the chair, to let the chair support her body. I invite her to feel how the chair comes up under her and supports her pelvis and her thighs too. I have her rest her hands in her lap, and her feet on the floor. Gently, I use my hands to help her decompress her spine, I make her aware of her facial tension until she is able to release her jaw, let her tongue rest, which softens her breathing and her ribs. I encourage her to feel the weight of her eyelids until her forehead relaxes. I watch her arms disarm, her legs ungrip.

I tell her, even though a batch of kids may arrive at her desk in the near future, seemingly all at once, that one student will get her attention first. “Turn and look at that student and address only that student as if she were the only person in the room. Give her all the time she needs. When you feel finished, notice the next student who catches your attention and do the same. Just see what happens. You won’t know until you give it a go. Okay?”  She says okay. Getting that commitment is important.

I give a nod, the kids flock toward her desk. The questions are coming from everywhere. Resting in her chair she turns her head toward one student and says, “Hi, what can I do for you?” She listens to the child, thinks for a moment, then replies. The other kids are desperately trying to get her attention while she’s living inside of a private world with this one student.  She smiles, and tells the child she looks forward to seeing her tomorrow. She turns to another student and says hello. Suddenly, a breeze of silence fills the room. The teacher continues to give her undivided attention to the second child. Gradually the students at her desk decide to leave until only two are left. She finishes, turns to the two other students and tells them she really wants to meet with them and that she’d like to do it after class. They sit down.

Working situationally.  If you bring a person’s real life into the classroom, they will more likely be able to bring what they experienced in the classroom into their real life.

That has been my experience.

Apr 5

4 Comments

Perceptions

Photo: B. Fertman

Photo: B. Fertman

Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring dv 1665

Perception

…a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; intuitive understanding and insight.

How are these two women feeling?

Look closely.

What do you actually see, what specifically tells you  how they may be feeling?

I’d like to know what you see.

If you like, share your perceptions with me.

Thank you.

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