What I love about my work

The Alexander Technique (AT) is the work of opening doors and windows and tiny cracks in people's habit patterns so they can experience something new. When you experience something outside of your automatic, stereotyped behavior, you can start the work of change - of figuring out what you want and moving toward it. Until you can step outside your habitual pattern for a moment, there's very little real ability to change.

AT is about bringing to light our habit patterns so we can avoid activating them. Only then can we start to have access to something new and different. One of the wonderful things about this work is that you can't quite imagine what the new thing you'll have access to is. It's at the far side of a leap of faith. Alexander referred to this as “going from the known to the unknown.” You can't know ahead of time what it will be like to have a new experience.

I think of acupuncture as the same work in a different form. I use needles, non-insertive tools, cups, gua sha tools, and moxa to make small changes that add up to a new experience of one's self. Once you have a new experience, you can begin the work of nurturing the conditions which allow this new sense of self to flourish.