Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Comfort of habits
Habits can be so comforting; it doesn't matter whether it is walking down the same side of the street, putting our shoes on in the same way, doing our ablutions in the bathroom in the same sequence. eating at the same time or munching on our favourite snack while reading a certain page in the paper in the same train seat at the same time on our way to work. We can also consider our habitual way of standing, sitting or generally holding our posture as habits that we derive a certain amount of comfort and familiarity despite them even causing some pain.
Changing habits can be quite demanding. If you have any habit at all such as those that I have mentioned above, try changing and see how awkward, unfamiliar and even unnerving the process can be. Changing postural habits too can feel quite 'wrong' at first as we have become so attached to them and practiced them for so many years: they feel 'right' even though we know they are not necessarily doing us any good at all.
If we do make the choice to change our habits, unfamiliar as a new way may feel at first, it gradually becomes easier and soon any new way does not feel so alien and may even be more enjoyable or hold benefits over the old way. This applies to finding a new route to the station or changing the furniture layout of a room. As we accommodate some change it can seem to be easier to adopt other changes too. It can even become enjoyable exercising our choice to do many things differently. Out with the old and in with the new.
As we are redecorating one or two rooms at our clinic in preparation for new health practitioners starting to work here in a month, we are contemplating switching the waiting room to another location. This little switch of two rooms will certainly benefit the new practitioners but I bite my lip as I contemplate having to walk a few paces more down the hallway to the newly located waiting room. How awkward and unfamiliar will that be? I'll even have to walk further for my water or tea from the machine! But hold on just a wee minute; the waiting room will be larger, it will be brighter, we're getting it decorated and all will feel quite refreshing. How strange that I detect in myself a certain unease about a change that ultimately holds more benefits than it does negatives.
Most people who come for sessions in the Alexander Technique do so because they want certain changes in their posture or other aspect of health. This ultimately requires them to 'let go' of some very familiar patterns of tension and to take on some new ways of doing things. It requires thinking a little to avoid the old patterns of tension creeping back and they're sure to lapse a little during the transition. But by repeating the new ways they soon become established and old patterns disappear. I wonder how often I shall walk into the old waiting room even when it is changed to a consulting room. I guess I'll get used to the new layout eventually. Ah well......
