(Personal post) How can I be so mindful yet have blind spots?

Note: This is a post on my learning process during the Alexander Technique teacher training course, and it might not reflect my current understanding of the technique.

My A.T. awareness expands unevenly

When I first started practicing the Alexander Technique, I used to imagine that my self-awareness would expand like a lightbulb that evenly and gradually brightened in a previously dark, square, empty room. But my experience so far is more like multiple lightbulbs in a twisty cave full of nooks and crannies; some of them brightening more quickly than others; others are still completely dark; some combine forces to dissipate shadows neither alone could have vanquished. I’m hoping for more and more of that last!

For example, I believed that if I successfully overcame some painful habits in my right hip (on which I had surgery), then perhaps my left shoulder pain might automatically improve ‘for free’ even without conscious directive thought in that area. Well, yes and no…but mostly no. It was two years ago that I first changed the trajectory on my hip habit, and only now am I beginning to gain traction and clarity on that painful shoulder habit in the context of a larger pattern.

[commentary 2/24: An update on this: In conversation with my teacher, I’ve come to the conclusion that habits that have a strong resonance with emotions, beliefs, traumas, etc – in other words, really charged habits – won’t resolve “for free;” they’ll require conscious process. Other less charged habits might dissipate without such conscious process. ]

So yes, unity of self, and also, parts in the context of the whole.

The experience resonates with quotes I ran across while reading about meditation:

sometimes something comes up in my life that’s so massively flawed in my personality, that I marvel that I could have ever made such subtle meditation practice when I was overlooking this big elephant, a problem that I can triangulate on > and work to fix because it is so basically wrong. I’m definitely not a perfect human being. All of these are true and they don’t seem to conflict anymore. There seems to be a middle path that continues which isn’t constrained by awakened > or unawakened in the same solid sense anymore. source: shargrol

and:

The various compartments of our minds and bodies are only semi-permeable to awareness. Awareness of certain aspects does not automatically carry over to the other aspect, especially when our fear and woundedness are deep. This is true for all of us, teachers as well as students. Thus, we frequently find meditators who are deeply aware of breath or body but are almost totally unaware of feelings and others who understand the mind but have no wise relation to the body. source: Jack Kornfield

Mindfulness in AT doesn’t necessarily translate to other life domains

This uneven A.T. progress recently let me admit to myself that I possibly wasn’t aware and mindful in another important domain: my gut. To explain, I had an attack of pain-predominant IBS over 10 years ago while pursuing a master’s at a classic music conservatory. I believe it was triggered by acute performance anxiety brought on by a major mismatch between my technical and aesthetic musical beliefs and those of my teacher. Since then I’ve been largely healthy, aside from having to avoiding onions and garlic or risking a pain attack. But after a series of stressful events starting 2019 (2 cancer diagnoses in the immediate family; gave birth to my second child; was laid off from work; started a business, covid19 hit), I’ve experienced chronic, mild to moderate stomach pain – and my previous diet modifications no longer work.

So the long and short of it is, I’ve started a mindful journal around my gut, using ideas from psychologist Dr. Jennifer Franklin of donthateyourguts.com. I’ve found that when I’m strongly attracted to a philosophical or psychophysical framework, I usually need to temper my beginner’s enthusiasm to actually get the most of out said framework. Frameworks tend to have absolutist statements, but the human self is such a complex mystery that only paradoxes can accommodate absolutes. So yes, I believe in acceptance AND change; nondoing AND doing, not ‘controlling’ my symptoms but also reducing GI pain in the short term where possible, etc. I also accept that usually a combination of different frameworks work best for me, and that what works in a time of crisis may not be the thing that works long term (for example, immediately after hip surgery, Feldenkrais was enormously helpful, but long term, Alexander Technique is the most fruitful path for me).

Here’s to exploring!

[commentary 2/24: Wow, I’ve come such a long way since this post with respect to my gut pain! Actually, “healing” my pain set me on a path to waking up in my everyday life – in the nondual/nondeliberate meditation sense of the word – and gave me new insights into the A.T. I’ll have to do a separate post on this at some point.]