Reframing

I've noticed that if you are going to be making a comment about what is going on in the moment, (especially when you have a personal investment in the outcome of the course of events that may follow,) it's very tricky to make your motive be understood when your motive is the intention for mutual insight. I find that it works best to prepare the ground to be received in the spirit of what you are about to say before you say it. So linguisticallly, the first skill is called "reframing." You must redefine the frame for the audience, because it is quite likely that they will misunderstand you if you assume they are on the same page as you are.

There is also a time of arrival factor that is also important. Once people are locked into repeating a vicious circle, it's very tricky to stop repeating what is the problem. Better to wait for another time when the vicious circle is about to happen, and make your attempt to interrupt the event that you can recognize is ABOUT to happen at that time...because this sort of thing will happen again and again if it really is a problem.


Often saying something will have no effect, because the action that is going on is that people are saying something - content is being ignored. So for the content of what is being said to have an effect, communication works better if you can figure out a creative way to "change the game" of HOW the content is being delivered. This is another form of reframing. Otherwise, whatever you say will just be reacted to as if it's merely a brand of violent defense or retort driven by the interpretation of some sort of paranoid motive - the sort which is left up to the negative imagination of the person on the defensive who doesn't have enough creative ability to imagine any possible positive constructive motives for your actions.

So this is another skill that I have learned to cultivate - the ability to imagine, under duress, multiple creative, reasonable explanation for the other person's actions when it "makes no sense" that they are in conflict, not becoming violent and getting upset. This is quite a challenge because anger and other emotions tend to block creativity.

Responsibility Assumption

An idea of "ultimate responsibility" in Alexander Technique fascinates me. It strikes me that this idea of how Alexander regards responsibility makes his work unique. Wondering about this assumption is interesting, because most assumptions are the act of intentionally setting up a given characteristic. Assumptions work like axioms; they branch off and lead down a very specific pathways of action, pre-empting all others.

It seems Alexander jumped to an assumption involving a person's ability to direct their own actions. This assumption states the person is ultimately responsible for what he does, no matter how it feels internally after routines have been adopted and feel as natural as breathing. In Alexander's world, there is no subconscious, only divided consciousness or undivided wholeness. Sometimes I wonder if this is one of F.M. Alexander's mistakes.

We do not really know all of the sophisticated responses that are put into motion in a single order we have given ourselves. Because humans are adaptable, we forget the routines we have installed or been conditioned to repeat as the "standing orders" from our past experience. Are we meant to know the ways they are carried out? Alexander thought we should know, that we need to bring our choices into awareness, but I am not so sure.

To undo the order, it seems more efficient to trace it back to its origin and change it there, rather than to piecemeal the change directly by messing with the whole system. In some ways, it's tempting to mess with the system as you become capable of doing so. But all these adjustments are merely compensations, ...until you find the originating order and the subsequent directives. You would usually only want to bother because these directives have not worked so well to solve the problem, or the circumstances have changed. Once you find these directives, then you may update them and choose different ways of responding, ...and the habit is completely and totally transformed; no looking back. This is where an ideal of "insight" or even "enlightenment" comes from - which I believe is deserved.

I wonder why Alexander did not put together that we are always falling and always uprighting our bodies; I guess he did, but he didn't spell this one out very specifically either. I imagine by the time someone was able to gain this secret for themselves, their coordination was so completely re-sensitized that it was a moot point.



For this reason, I think this assumption of "ultimate responsibility" is very much worth exploring.

How are we responsible for the ways we respond to a desire? How does knowing and responding to a desire work in particular, in me?

Best Laid Plans..

Well, so much for my plans gone awry. It took waiting for Airtech until July 3rd to get me home again.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to take Tammy with me to Hawaii. She'd never been on a vacation before, so I thought it would be a wonderful treat for her to come with me for the first week I was back. Chris and I showed her a fun time for the nine days she could stay and drove her around the entire island.

At her last night at Anaehoomalu Bay next to the Mariott Hotel, Tammy got to see the Hula show that Chris has been working at for Tehati.


We had a great time, didn't we Taminator? On your last night here you didn't want to go.

Of course we went to my favorite beach Mau'u Mae; she was at the Four Season's Beach when she managed to call a sea turtle to swim up to her feet in two feet of water.

On our way over, Tammy won the halfway point contest on the plane. When we went into the Hilo Hattie store to collect her prize, she went to the counter with a dictionary on learning Hawaiian...so the cashier there gave her a couple of coffeecups; which was how Tammy learned about Hawaiian Aloha. I almost drowned her in the water at Ho'okena beach where Tammy jumped waves for the first time even thought she really couldn't swim! Here is Tammy standing in Kaumana Cave;


Here she is at the Umauma Falls Botanical Garden next to the torch flowers and by the falls...


Hope you can come back sometime on your own steam! Hawaii seemed to agree with Tammy.

I'm Back! After A While Being Away

A couple of weeks ago, I just finished my projects that I flew back to the mainland to finish. My yearly project is now at the printer's being made and will be done in a couple of weeks, hopefully. My sweet friend Tammy Lehman is going to be the volunteer distributor while I'm gone. I've got myself a "new," used computer with a humoungous hard drive, etc. Generally, it has been a very hard-working and successful two months away from Hawaii. But I'm chomping at my bit to fly home anytime soon now!

At least I have some time to update this blog again. I wonder if anyone missed me while I was away?

Since it seemed to be the time of the year that everyone else was wanting to fly and prices were high, I bought a discount ticket with http://www.airtech.com/. Well the price was right for this time of year, (only $209!) But I've been waiting to fly for my second "four-day flight window"week in which the Hawaii part of Airtech, (a very nice, communicative guy named Steve,) is supposed to be able to find you a flight. Steve keeps trying to get me to pay more money for a 28-day-in- advance deal the airlines just offered him for a sure flight. He says I could also take a flight to a neighbor island. But it's now about eighty bucks more to get to the Big Island, so I'd rather wait for the 24 hr. e-tickets to happen. Guess it's the time of year when school is out and everyone wants to come to the Big Island! Here I am waiting while sitting on a bear instead...

I offered to fly Tammy with me for a week's visit to Hawaii, so that's two people I'd have to pay for, and I just don't have the extra hundred and fifty bucks along with feeding Tammy and paying for gas to drive her places before I situate myself again.

Fortunately, the delay has given me time to do some useful things that I would have blown off, such as weed around my my RV to prevent berry bushes from climbing into the engine.

Once I get back to Waimea and recover for a week while I'm showing Tammy the Big Island, I'm going to be looking for a new job. There are so many interesting jobs available on the Big Island - jobs that you do not see in the newspaper anywhere else. I'd like to get a job that will help to start up the work I really want to be doing more. That is, I'd like to be teaching the Alexander Technique more often.

I'm planning to start a free intro class at Tutu's House, because I realize that many who need to learn do not have very much disposible income as in other locations. I also thought to approach various golf courses and give tourists introductions to some of the ideas of AT.

Someone on the Alexander Technique Teacher's List on GoogleGroups suggested that I do walking tours. I think that's a great idea! So, we'll see how I do with it.

Another bright idea I had involved walking around my neighborhood, knocking on doors with the idea of making a neighborhood phone book. Then after I found out everyone's phone number, I thought I'd arrange a subdivision block party. After we met each other and found out what everyone did for a living, etc. then I thought I'd ask people if they would be open to having some younger kids sort of interview them about what it is like to work the job they do for a living - sort of like a career counseling day.

It would be so interesting for me to exercise my enthusiasm for learning new things to do for a living by turning other young people on to how interesting I thought it was. My own dad did that for me and I do not see anyone else doing such a thing anywhere for young people. It would be pretty fun to be tromping around the neighborhood checking out what people do to make money who might want to share some of their trade secrets to young people.

Anyway - just some ideas for today. We'll see if they turn into anything...

What To Do When Noticing Assumptions

What do you do when you notice an assumption?

Part of the challenge is to notice what you usually do. An indicator of something that is "sticking out" that may eventually become some sort of problem is a signal. Usually when people notice this, it more often means they must "shore up" or "justify" the need for their conclusion or assumption, reinforcing the circle and reapplying their "remedies" that are really keeping the circular problem in place.

Because their focus is on the content as being more important, they cannot see the larger picture of how they are caught in a repeating pattern. They only experience that some part of the pattern is working in the ways they intend, when it is really an out-of-control pattern that MUST repeat whether the person wants it whenever the trigger is pressed for the habit to "go off." I would say that there are "endorphin squirts" that occur in pressing the trigger originally, but often the experience of the squirting may not register any more because it, too has become habitual.

If you take away the need, I believe our systems "self correct". You do not have to "do" anything but experience the lack of need, then just wait and watch yourself. What happens next will tell you quite a bit about everything you have been experiencing. If you just get the familiar justifications for your habits, just stop again and wait. Each time you stop, your senses will wake up a little more as you take the next layer of the habitual assumption off. It seems that people are naturally sensitive underneath layers of habits.


That's why stopping yourself when you would have normally started talking is such an effective technique in Dialogue - or in any conversation. Listening will tell you more than talking, for obvious reasons. You merely interrrupt yourself right when you found a need to say something and watch what happens in yourself. You question your motive of wanting to talk, because there will be usually be feelings and needs underneath the assumptions.

So if you don't know what these feelings are or they don't surface because they are the submerged part of the iceberg, you can find out what they are by stopping yourself from going into the habit repeatedly. My experience has told me that there is often more than one need/motive/justification. Sometimes these are tricky to uncover, because the remedy of the assumption is trying to cover it up by answering the need. So this is where Dialogue comes in - you put yourself in a situation where this issue comes up again and again - and you watch what happens in yourself each time you notice the reaction.

Tammy, pictured here is an Alexander student of mine who has the rare ability to challenge her assumptions and do something different about them. Perhaps you have some more characteristics of how to notice assumptions - or you might have more 'tips' of what to do when you do notice these assumptions? I'd love to hear about them.

Thought Proprioception

I believe the way thought and movement work together are quite similar to the way thought works when it has no corresponding overt motion to express its effects. Intention is response, whether it has a word attached to it or not.

Some people translate action or reaction into language before they move, some don't. Sometimes translating intention into words will make their movements delayed.

Decision is the first part of response, but there can also be a habit that recognizes and handles reactions too that can work very fast.

As a technique, if you think any movement through step by step, you'll detour the "trigger" word and the corresponding sets of habits - whether they have words or not. That this works is really handy, because it can point you to a decision you made historically and then forgot.

Dealing with High Sensitivity

As a child, my very high sensitivity worked intensely even though I might try to defend like mad. No emotion precluded it. Anger, fear, or intimidation did not shut off my sensitivity or cover it over as many people commonly could do. My sensitivity worked overtime no matter what else happened.

The only thing that did work was denial. To use denial to deal with grief I had to throw a very gross "big switch" that cut me off from everyone and everything that used to bring me pleasure. Later I was wary after that of doing anything but experience however I felt, no matter if it was in intense high definition.

Therefore, I imagine that certain people are born more sensitive than others, but sometimes I believe that we all have high sensitivity and some supress it. Many are tempted to deliberately use other emotions to shut down their sensititivity as a covering up strategy. For instance, feeling angry feels more powerful than feeling sad. After a habit is designed and in place, one emotion precludes or dull natural sensitivity. It takes much effort to stop because the habit becomes an assumption that works insidiously. From what I understand, sensitivity for most others needs safety to emerge or for them to notice it behind other more savory emotions that are underneath their other more intense unsavory emotions. However, if you merely remove the habit, natural sensitivity will rebound as if by itself.

Perhaps because of my high sensitivity to both external events and my internal responses, I was sort of "forced" into experiencing other people's emotions. I did not learn that I was experiencing the emotions of others until my teens, when gradually I learned that my emotional empathy seemed to be controllable by proximity.

It took much practice before someone could ask me how I felt and I could answer truthfully. In the interim of learning the skill of separating out other's emotions from my own, I sometimes needed to turn away and not look at them while I was asking myself what I felt. At the beginning I needed actual physical isolation to sense myself as being distinct from others. Now I'm able to carry a sense of autonomy with me, knowing where emotion is coming from usually with certainty. It was a long road!

Responding is an Art

I'm fascinated how the way meaning is phrased has to do with how it's received. These sorts of choices about exactly the way to write meanings are what continues to challenge and fascinate me as I get better at expressing my thoughts.

For instance, saying, "I am the one who is responsible for myself" certainly would be in keeping with the cultural view of identity. Let's make some observations about meaning from the way this is stated. The direct object takes away the action of responding and turns it into a noun. Perhaps that doesn't express the same meaning that I'd like.

Let's try to come up with a sentence that makes grammatic sense & also communicates. Here are some ways to express similar content:
"I believe that my sense of identity is how I can respond."
Or how about: "The many ways I can respond expresses my unique intent."
Or since choice is implied by the "can" we could say:
" Identity is the choice of response."

...but is identity "only" the choice of response and nothing else? For me it is, but to make this statement implies this is true for everyone - and I wasn't saying that. So to keep it more personal I would prefer the previous definition.

This could be expressed in the social niceties of pleading, "No, allow me! It is my pleasure to offer..."

The first statement using "response-ability" involving a direct object (being responsible to) that implies an action on a "thingification" (answering to our obligation to an identity.) Also the ability to respond "to someone in particular" is implied in the social nicety, which is how it would usually be expressed. Response can be to anything, even an internal conclusion of thought, such as an interpretation of beauty, a fear, or it can be external as a sensory experience or another person, etc.

Instead in the second way of saying it, we're using "is" like an equal sign, which is more in keeping with the nature of the statement: identity
= choosing my own responses.

In a way, learning to write or use any medium to adequately convey my response. Communicating the response or recognition of meaning that I might like to create in the other person is quite a transcendent skill that seems to be never finished. I also believe that the ability to respond using various mediums of expression with the objective of bringing about certain deliberate effects for others is a definition of art.

Erasing Identity

I knew someone who had been very close to me who really believed that their identity was an illusion. So to express this idea they got rid of their driver's license, ID cards, etc. That action got them into lots of legal trouble the next time they got caught driving, which wasn't until years later because nothing else had been transgressed. Continuing to ignore the "rights" the legal system and countries had over them continued to cause them more problems.

Turns out the guy was born in the UK and his parents had brought him here when 3 years old and thought it kind to leave US naturalization to him. Turns out this wasn't such a good idea for someone who had trouble dealing with bureaucracies. So when this guys got rid of his "identity" and then got into legal trouble, of course eventually he was threatened with being sent back to the UK, where he had never lived. This guy's remedy was to kill himself so nobody could have further control over where he was.

The ironic thing about this was a friend of mine just told me the other day that it was this guy who convinced him not to kill himself. Very strange.

Quoting and Egolessness

Quoting is also an indirect way to get some idea on the table without having the responsibility of owning the idea...because it was someone else's idea, not yours, you cannot be attacked, blamed for it, made to answer a question about it, made to follow up on it - all of the attachment implied to having birthed the idea yourself...the same with quoting the historic authorship of the idea. The advantage is you can just dump it if the idea is not well-received by the group. The disadvantage is you may be asked for a book report. Then there's the advantage that you have been the source of the idea by being such a good reader and having the ability to trot out an adequate synopsis. But the disadvantage for the group is that nobody else may answer you, except with another quote that is somehow related.

So if more than one person does this, it very easily becomes an extension of the "who do you know" game.

I think the assumption behind this quoting thing, as well as the "no persona" idea is that the Freudian ego is the source of trouble. If you claim an idea as a product of your own thinking, observation or experience, it implies you "must" have a vested interest in the outcome of the conversation and this attachment is somehow forbidden. It's tricky to demonstrate that you do not have attachment to an idea that is your original one.

I think the reason people like to do this is they imagine that a lack of ownership or authorship is a sign of suspension by a willingness to dispense with any claim of authorship for original thinking.

Good think Bohm didn't impose that limitation on his own thinking!

Can Mindfulness Become Automatic?

In order to do anything reliably, it needs to be practiced. Even mindfulness or cultivating a tolerance for confronting the unknown, or anything else. You could put mindfulness into a "program" of familar habit which would spoil its positive effects, but then there are always going to be those clumsy trip-ups, surprises and nuisances that would be telling you how "unmindful" you really are.

The qualities of some disciplines do not integrate well into our "favorite" ways of doing things, and we must put them aside if we want to learn otherwise. Whether we "match" or sort for "differences," we'll notice something isn't right.
Describing qualities will often avoid cramming new stuff into our old familiar ways, assumming we "have it" if we apply our usual operations or "factoring" processes. If these things we want to "have" do not have the qualities of our former experiences of it, then we know we're missing something.

It would be nice to have unlimited learning be put on automatic, as it was when we were kids! Learning is a big job though, so as adults we're called upon to keep it together more often than open up and learn. Going from opening to learn to consolidating to apply the learning and then back to opening up to learn takes more flexibility than most grownups have. So we need some help from the kids and those who know how to learn easier.

Proprioception of Thought and Movement

I believe the way thought and movement work together are quite similar to the way thought works when it has no corresponding overt motion to express the affects of a thought. Thought has no proprioception built into it, but the judgment of movment does. But proprioception only senses differences, it is not an absolute measuring device.

Intention is responding, whether it has a word attached to it or not. Some people translate action or reaction into language before they move. It makes their movements delayed. Decision is the first part of response, but there can also be a habit that recognizes and handles reactions too.

As a technique, if you think any movement through step by step, you'll detour the "trigger" word and the corresponding sets of habits - whether they have words or not.

An Uncovered Assumption Feels Weird...

Rather than replacing a "bad" conditioning with a "good" one, practicing Alexander Technique on oneself removes conditioning. This requires learning or cultivating a willingness to tolerate and utilize unknown or unexplained results. It also involves how to apply discretion and judgment while selecting for results that will help you. Other than selling effortlessness as a means, goals are usually left to the student.

It has similar benefits to uncovering assumptions of thought which is a goal while in Dialogue. Only with Alexander Technique, you're also studying the ways how you carry out intentions, as well as how you respond and react to what comes at you.

Everyone has built up kinesthetic assumptions about how they should move to direct their actions to answer an intention. These assumptions, expressed in moving, are often quite unnecessarily heavy-handed or outdated. If you train yourself well, habit become innate. This means habits disappear and run automatically without you even noticing. If you has gotten used to being heavy-handed while training yourself - or you forgot what you already are doing, you can be habituated to simultaneously moving in opposing directions. That's why people feel all bound up - because they are.

New discoveries can be applied selectively, in theory. But sometimes in the dismantling process, you can disorient even your self-image or balance. Or you may feel as if you cannot speak or move. What you are getting is weird feelings about experiencing too much freedom. Some people decide this is alarming; all their self-preservation convictions freak out, so the teacher or situation must reassure them that nothing dangerous is happening - when really, the unfamiliar is exceptionally dangerous. The AT teacher knows ways to make it quite safe so that anyone can feel just a little weird - and their habit is always available for retreat. To want to experiment takes some daring and fearlessness, which some people lack, so often that must be trained. But that would be training a new skill of dealing with feeling unfamilarity, rather than returning to a former state that was more essential. Being able to dare to speak or move easier anyway, despite not feeling like yourself, is a new skill that can be "conditioned."

The sensation of effortlessness and weirdness is the signal you're heading into new territory. If it has a characteristic of more freedom, you might be able to make a discovery - but that's a challenge because the state often doesn't have words to formulate the new information. You cannot decide beforehand what the unknown will be "like." Each time you're heading out into new territory.

In my case, my earlier form of conditioning concerning ways concerning the way I learned to walk as a toddler was not "more cohererent." But for most people the way they learned to walk as toddlers was an excellent use of energy. Another common comment would be that more freedom feels like "coming home." So this person would agree with you - they're uncovering a more essential state of coordination that was cultivated and conditioning as a child.

My Decision Making Style

Thought that I'd talk about how I entertain different conclusions about what I might do while in a decision making process for my own life. I know everyone does it differently, so I thought I would tell you how I make decisions. What is your style of decision-making, if you could describe some of it?

I might reorder different facts, prioritizing them alternately, and then given the selected ones, make the obvious decision that follows. Then I would go back and select other factual priorities and see the obvious decisions that come from those alternate particular sequences. By doing this, I'm able to trace back how long preparations will have to be made so I can be in the position to be able to make this decision at the time it may be possible to choose. Because opportunities come from both the ability to see them coming before they are ripe, and the ability to be ready to recognize what they mean and grab them when they fly by on the merry-go-round.

So often I get a sort of flow-chart such as, if this happens, this will be the result, and if this other possibility is happening, then I will be able to put into action this other decision will this other result...etc. In this way, I can see what possibilities mean after they unfold, even though they are now in a very small 'seed' form.

What all this often tells me is how long I can put off making the decision, in order to determine what events can tell me more fact before I act. Putting off making the decision also tells me when is the last cusp of action in which a default will occur if I refuse to alter events by redirecting them by choosing to act. I've also learned that, without experience, sometimes I cannot forsee the situation adequately until I take the step that puts me up into the perspective of being able to understand what the next best step can be toward my purposes. So this is why I would want to put off making the decision as long as possible, but not so long that I'd lose possible options.

Here - I'll give an example of how I used some of these ideas of mine about how to make wishes come true. One time I needed a place to rent, and I don't enjoy moving regularly. I was living in a location where people often rented their houses before they sold them. Also, landlords often wanted top dollar for their rentals which I could not afford. However, I could afford to wait for the right place.

So I thought of my situation as being an advantage to a very unusual person that I needed to put some effort into imagining. I listed my needs as characteristics, and then imagined who might want what I had to offer, rather than only noticing what I would be getting from my own benefit.

So I realized that, though I couldn't afford much money, I could stay indefinitely in their house. I could fix or take care of maintaining the house while paying my measly rent on time if they paid for the more expensive materials. I decided that this next landlord of mine was someone who had trouble communicating with people and would want me to talk for them to arrange upkeep on their house. Perhaps this person lived on a fixed income that would be decreased if I gave them more money than the cost of taxes, etc. and also they wanted to keep the house indefinitely for some reason.

Then I waited for this landlord to appear, now that I knew how to recognize them. When I saw that situation, even taking a temporary place to wait for the place to possibly become available was not too much trouble. I could forsee that the carpenter who was living in that house I had my eye on was commuting too far to his other jobs, and it was only a matter of time until he moved out. After waiting four months, I rented this house at an incredible bargain rate for 13 years. The landlord only raised the rent once, thirty dollars when the taxes increased.

So, this is an example of how some creative thinking on my part after assumming the point of view of someone completely different from myself paid off immensely. Not only do you need to wish for what you want, but it helps to recognize the wish so you can have it.

Halfway to Staying Where I Can Swim Every Day

There is something to be said for the wonder of swimming in salty water that's about seventy five degrees and completely clear. I hope to get even more often used to it as time progresses. It's doing wonders for my health as I find that I'm sleeping for a couple of hours each time after I come back from going swimming.

I feel as if I have to apologize to anyone who was reading my blog - I've been traveling without internet access for a couple of months now. Really, I just wanted a break after working my butt off 'way too hard - but secretly I really miss writing regularly. I'm writing at the library in Waimea, on the Big Island of HI. right now.

I'll have to get back in the saddle soon, or figure out a way to take care of things that I need to do from where I am. I'm imagining myself doing everything that I need to do in cyberspace - except go swimming.