On Relaxation
By David Moore
Relaxation is a state of body and mind sought by many people. One
of the most common reasons that people tell me that they are
coming for yoga or Alexander lessons is that they are too tense
and wish to relax. In fact I am not very interested in
relaxation. If people are tense it is the result of a whole
approach to life and manner of using themselves, and it is only
when these areas are dealt with that "relaxation" is a
possibility. Otherwise whatever method or technique we may choose
to do, it will only be dealing with the symptoms of the problem.
There are many ways in which people can be taught to
"relax." One of the most common is the Yoga Nidra, in
which a person lies on their back in the corpse pose and goes
through all the muscle groups of the body, releasing them (or
sometimes tensing and then releasing them.) We can also find
relaxation by listening to music, smoking a joint or having a
drink.
Tension manifests as negative mental states, usually accompanied
by obsessive thought patterns, bodily pain, discomfort and
miscoordination and impaired breathing. From an Alexander
perspective, it is mistake to try to go directly for
"relaxation." The question that we should always ask
ourselves if we are tense is "What am I doing to myself to
be in this state?" A constructive solution to the problem of
tension and relaxation can only come out of a state of inquiry.
It is quite possible to use our relaxation or yoga practice
exactly as we use a joint or a drink, to temporarily calm or mask
the results of a whole way of life and patterns of use which need
to be questioned. This questioning is of course the last thing we
would prefer to do. Wouldn't life be so much simpler if there was
a magic pill (Prozac?) which we could take and all our troubles
would be over!
F.M. Alexander, after who developed the technique was an actor
who lost his voice. Alexander first went to have medical
treatment and remedial exercises to try to regain theu use of his
voice. All of us will first of all go looking out there for
someone or something that has the solution to our problem. Or
even worse we project the cause as being something or someone
"out there." You can divorce your wife, change your
job, change your city or country, but you still take yourself
with you and you may well find that with your next wife, job or
country the same problems and stresses reappear. Sooner or later
we have to come to the rather chastening realisation that the
problem lies must closer at hand than we ever realized. When
Alexander realized with absolute clarity that it was what he was
doing with himself that was causing his problems he says, "I
realised that self - accusation must replace self - pity."
And he set out to change what he was doing with himself.
There is a Buddhist parable about
three types of horses. The first horse will run by simply seeing
the shadow of the whip. The second horse will only run when the
whip strikes it's skin. And the third horse is only prepared to
run when the pain reaches the marrow of its bones. Hopefully we
can initiate a process of inquiry and change before the pain
reaches the marrow of our bones! We have to begin a process of
change within ourselves - and of course we would all prefer for
that change to happen while we still do exactly what we have
always done. As we begin the process of change within ourselves,
we may also change the external circumstances of our life, but
this change arises out of wisdom rather than delusion.
Here is what Sheila Kitzinger has to say about relaxation in her
book, The Experience of Childbirth. "A French
psychologist has said that 'relaxation is not simply learning at
the level of muscular tone, but involves a maturing of the body
image. In other words we cannot think of relaxation as a more or
less specialized form of gymnastics, but must see it as an
emotional experience involving a human being as an existential
whole (embracing past present and future)" (p97) "The
relaxation that is needed in labour is the kind that is required
to perform any sport, to dance, to play the piano, to drive a car
or to ride a bicycle. That is, all unnecessary tension is
eliminated, everything that is not required for the task in
hand." (p.118)
School
for F.M. Alexander Studies
330 St. Georges Road
North Fitzroy (corner Holden Street)
Victoria, Australia
Tel: 61 3 9486 5900