May 29

Sarah finished her last week in kindergarten (extra thanks to Sonia for being Sarah’s 1:1 helper for the last couple of weeks to make it a better experience for all). Sarah’s class performed a play several times throughout the week. Amy and I saw it on Tuesday. Tuesday was not Sarah’s most focused performance time and while I was watching I was also feeling varying emotions of disappointment and comparison to what might have been. When the play was over Amy leaped up to give Sarah a huge hug. Of course. All that mattered was that Sarah had been in a play and we love Sarah. Nothing else matters. I am so thankful to Amy for that reminder.

After his session on Friday, G wrote, "We dove in to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, moved through the fish-stripes obsession, and ended up singing and laughing quite a bit.  Today, Sarah impressed me with her ability to match pitch and rhythm as we sang the book to the Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star melody.  She has a very sweet, quiet singing voice full of all of her personality.  As with most things in life, when Sarah decides to do a thing, she does that thing with all of her brain, heart, and soul.”

What I loved when overhearing parts of G’s session was hearing the love and fresh, new responsiveness he had in response to her statements that aren’t actually new. That is what it’s all about. 

In my Alexander Technique teacher class yesterday I learned again and for the first time how my shoulder joints are really supposed to work and how often I have them misworking. This connects beautifully with my session with J. from earlier in the week when I had a revelation about my coracoid process (part of the shoulder blade that you can feel from the front). I became aware that my right coracoid process, and the surrounding musculature, is where I try to Hold Things Together (HTT). Even things that can’t be held together. I think I’ve been doing it for years, at least since I was 11 and my parents told me they were getting a divorce. Even though it went as smoothly, easily, and wonderfully as a person could ever hope for, I think I still perhaps wanted to hold them together or was holding myself together. It is helpful to have another point to check on myself (along with tongue and eyes), especially when I am feeling stressed and quite possibly trying to HTT.

I’ve been thinking about how I respond to pressure based on my belief about whether the pressure is good for me or not. When the girls are pushing me for something or I feel tense because I don’t like what they are doing (creating my own pressure) then I resist the pressure. When I am getting a massage and J. presses on a group of muscles then I consciously tell myself to go with it, to let go with it, because I trust that the pressure will take me to where I want to be. What if I held that perspective about other pressures in my life? What if I moved with them instead of against them, trusting that they will take me to where I want to be? This doesn’t mean yielding all my power. It means yielding my resistance and finding a different way to go for what I want or what rules I need to enforce. It means yielding in my muscles when I feel pressure, so that I am soft and easy, being fully me but without taut frautness. 

On Wednesday the girls got helium balloons at a party. I said they could play with them at home inside. They really wanted to play with them outside and Amy swore she wouldn’t let go. I didn’t believe this to be probable and kept my rule. Perhaps this parallels my internal belief that if I can just undo the past years of muscle tension then I won’t redo any of it. I swear! I hope that on some level my insistence is just as adorable as Amy’s.

I’ve also been thinking about the still point when something is just what it is and nothing more or less. I often feel this about various parts of my body when I do constructive rest and sometimes after receiving a massage or AT lesson. I have wondered if I could approach being me with this goal in mind of finding the still point for my whole self, finding the still point for how I perceive my children. It feels clean and calm.

May you move flexibly and easily through whatever pressures you encounter, may you respond to your own habits with love as if each one was new and fresh, may you find your still point, and may you receive a huge hug for just being you.