🌊 Go with the flow?

DO I WANT TO GO WITH THE FLOW?

When do I ride the waves of change?

When do I resist the waves of change?

My teacher asked our group this question in a movement class recently, and it made me think about when I feel at ease in myself and the situation, and when I feel resistance or strain.

And now I’m bringing this question to you.  

Here is my lens (what’s yours?):

We are self-regulatory beings, designed to meet moments of resistance and adapt.  

We are designed to discern what is happening, integrate what we need, allowing us to adapt to a new situation, and discard what we don’t need.  

“Adaptation/learning underlies the literal physical adaptations our system is constantly making to our lived and imagined experiences. We are talking about adaptations on every tissue level  from genes in our cells to neural network connection and pruning--- WHOLENESS.”

Babette Lightner, Wholeness in Motion

Every need or desire is paired with a corresponding resistance (#wholeness).  By bringing gentle awareness to our resistance, we can learn more about how we learn and what’s meaningful to us.  

Perfectionism is an example of resistance AND support.  Am I overeager to learn this new piece of repertoire perfectly? How is my resistance impacting my learning?

How is my resistance supporting my learning? What function is my resistance serving?  Perhaps it’s a message from my system to slow down; maybe I’m rushing through this too quickly to really integrate these new skills, for example.

Resistance is Assistance

Change (a.k.a. learning) involves a letting-go process, and acknowledgement of what is impermanent (thank you to Babette for introducing this word as part of the learning process).  

This can be challenging when we’ve been holding onto our habitual patterns for a long time, even if we have outgrown them.  Letting go of “trying to be right” tendencies can be a challenge because we are so used to being perceived in a certain way, predicting outcomes, etc.  Trying to be “perfect “has probably served a very important purpose up until now.  

(If you’re curious to dive a little deeper into our familiar “trying to be good/right/perfect” routine, and how it impacts our experiences with learning and performance anxiety, check out this great article, Good For Whom? by Elizabeth Garren on David Gorman’s Learning Methods website.)

What is your experience of going with the flow?  How do you experience your resistance to change and impermanence?  In what situations?  How is this process present in your learning, teaching, and facilitating?

When is your resistance assistance?  

How are you aware of your students’ or clients’ resistance?  

How can you support their process?

Your Sense-Able Body: Self-Regulation and the Alexander Technique

Self-regulation refers to your ability to manage, adjust to, and recover from extreme situations.  This can include emotional and psychological self-regulation, and physiological self-regulation.  It can be a conscious or unconscious process.

It can be useful to build awareness around how you self-regulate - both consciously and unconsciously - because our systems crave stasis - equilibrium - balance in order to function and relate optimally in the world (whatever “optimal” is for YOU - it will be different for each person).  

A healthily, optimally functioning human is designed to be able to return to stasis after a moment or period of stress or stimulation.

We are designed to be able to adjust to the regular ups and downs of daily life.  When we experience a stressful stimulus or situation, our nervous systems become activated.  Throughout the day, from moment to moment, we naturally move through a process of arousal and recovery.  We are generally able to recalibrate using our built-in and learned self-regulation tools and strategies.

The Bunny and the Fox: The Threat-Safety Processing Cycle

A bunny lazily munches on some clovers. It is relaxed and at ease. Suddenly, it notices a fox approaching.  The bunny freezes for a moment, assessing the potential threat, then quickly breaks into a run, racing to a safe place.  Once it gets to a safe spot where the fox can’t enter, the bunny will lie down and shake.  This shaking is how the bunny processes the effects of this stressful moment.  The shaking releases muscle tension and helps to process excess adrenaline. This process is the bunny’s way of supporting its nervous system to recover and repair, so that it can go back to nibbling clovers and living its bunny life.  

We humans are also animals, so we have a similar physiological self-regulatory process. For our psychological and emotional self-regulation, we can also draw on interpersonal supports like telling a trusted friend about a stressful situation, or getting a hug when we are sad or scared. 

Can you think of some examples from your own life of the ways that you self-regulate when you’re in pain/discomfort/just feeling a bit “off”?

In some circumstances, however, our innate process of recovery and repair gets interrupted. For some reason we may learn that it’s not okay to self-soothe or be supported when we are sad or angry or scared.  Our family or school or work culture may have certain “rules” around needing to “toughen up,” for example, or we learn that we have to “hold it together” for everyone else.

The natural release of shaking or crying or getting a hug or moving when you need to move might not be modelled or accepted in certain situations. Without this support, our recovery cycle gets interrupted, and we get stuck in an incomplete loop. And so we keep accumulating unprocessed cycles of energy in our bodies until we reach a point where this way of being is no longer sustainable.

This unprocessed energy can show up in your body as:

• muscle tension

• chronic fatigue

• digestive issues

• headaches and migraines

• irritability

• musculoskeletal or postural issues

• holding yourself in a particular posture or shape, possibly for protection

• brain fog

• vocal fatigue or hoarseness

• jaw tension

• tight or closed throat feeling

It All Adds Up

When we have persistent experiences of stress, it can be taxing on our whole being, taking a toll on our emotional, psychological, and physiological wellbeing.  We can get stuck in a habitual pattern of responding to stress, even after the stimulus is no longer present - even after the fox has disappeared.  

This stuckness can mean that we are functioning outside of our window of tolerance, or our optimal arousal-recovery zone. From here we may push ourselves to do more or work harder when what we really need is support and rest. When we become dysregulated in this way, we are unable to take in new information (i.e.: learning process or reading a challenging email) or function physically (i.e.: efficient singing coordination or safe lifting) the way we’re used to.

Your nervous system connects to all of your organs and tissues and automatic survival functions, including your heart, lungs, and voice.   It also controls your muscles, motor function, and coordination.

When you are dysregulated, ALL of your systems are impacted, including your circulation, breathing, sound-making coordination (aka singing and speaking), and the ability to express yourself fully and effectively. Muscular coordination can also be affected, especially if your system takes you into a protective holding or compressed body posture when it perceives a threat to your safety.

In short, when you are attempting to do something as complex as singing while dysregulated, you may find that pushing or trying harder or practicing more is not working anymore.

You may need to attend to your whole-self regulation first.

Cue: The Alexander Technique

The Alexander Technique can help you self-regulate by teaching you how to slow down, do less, and reconnect yourself with your body. The skills of pausing, sensing, awareness, and redirecting attention you learn in Alexander Technique lessons can support you to recalibrate after or during periods of overstimulation and stress, including helping to regulate your nervous system to bring you back to your optimal arousal-recovery zone.

Through verbal guidance and subtle hands-on support from your AT teacher, each session supports you to bring new awareness to your whole-self unity. We use simple everyday movements like sitting, standing, walking, lifting, and lying down to illuminate the interconnectedness of your thoughts, actions, and muscular involvement/coordination. We explore anatomy to clarify how you’re constructed, and how you can work with your human design instead of against it, for optimal efficiency of movement. We investigate how your attention and intention are inseparable from how you function in the world, so that you can better understand how to work with yourself, rather than against yourself. You will gain tools to help you ground yourself, so that you come back to being a receptive listener, who can respond with flexibility and awareness in a wide range of situations, including day-to-day activities like doing dishes and brushing your teeth, as well as specialized activities like singing and teaching.

FOR EXAMPLE, you may discover that you’ve been working harder than you need to while you’re singing. In the Alexander Technique we call this goal-oriented, perfectionistic over-efforting “end gaining,” and it’s a fairly common way that we get in our own way. Your new awareness of your end gaining, coupled with an embodied experience of how your shoulders relate to your hips - has a releasing effect on your whole torso and breathing mechanism, also releasing something in your jaw, and giving you a new experience of singing with more ease and availability. In learning to allow things to happen rather than doing them, you get out of your own way and can be more available for expression and emotion.

Hellooooooo, increased vocal range!

Hellooooooo, access to resonance!

Hellooooooo, availability for longer phrases!

A NOTE ABOUT POSTURE - When you start to unravel your habitual responses, and begin to notice how these responses have been impacting your body, you may find that you experience postural changes as a result of your new awareness and new way of using yourself. While improved posture is not a goal of this work, you may experience this and other benefits from working on yourself in this way.

After a series of Alexander Technique sessions, many people make new discoveries about themselves. This could include:

• postural changes

• reduced back pain

• relief from pain, muscular tension, and stiffness

• breath awareness and ease

• more ease working at the computer

• responding to stress and anxiety with more flexibility and availability

• improved balance and coordination

• ease of movement and mobility

• preventing injury

• expanded attention span and increased focus and concentration

Whatever your reasons for exploring embodied work such as the Alexander Technique - whether it’s an interest in learning about your anxiety, addressing postural concerns, or investigating vocal issues - you will undoubtedly gain new perspective about your innate wholeness. Which, in my humble opinion, is always a good thing.

Would you like to learn more?

To learn more about how we can work together to support your needs, click below to schedule a free 20min consultation:

For examples of how we might work together, visit my YouTube channel:

To dive right into self-regulation application, click below to purchase the 30-Day Constructive Rest Invitation self-guided online course:

Try this: Making Mistakes on Purpose to Access Creativity and Expression

Today my young student was really struggling with a song she has been working on for a few weeks.

When a student - of any age - is in the early stages of learning something new, I always allow creative interpretations of notes/rhythms/tempo. Instead of jumping in after a run-through to fix or correct, I simply ask the student, “How did that go for you?”

Invariably the student - especially adults - will be hard on herself, immediately going to all of the things that went wrong.

We do this. As musicians, many of us have been trained to zero in on errors. With this narrow focus, trying so hard to get it right, we can lose sight of the big picture: what went well, what felt good, what was different - not better or worse, just different - than last time.

When I asked this student how she thought it was going today, she said, “Good, but I still made lots of mistakes.”    (Note: One note was out of place.  One.  And maybe the tempo was slightly inconsistent. And maybe she was moving through it with some hesitancy - which makes perfect sense, given that she was being so darn careful not to make any mistakes! More on this in a bit.)

My student seemed unable to even consider dynamic range or musical expression until she could get Every. Note. Perfect.

We regularly build on sight reading skills in her lessons.  But I didn’t want to use this moment to work on those skills directly.  I sensed we needed to shake things up a bit and come at this selection from a different angle. I could sense that she was stuck, and not in the right headspace for direct skill acquisition.

“I have an idea,” I told her, smiling a bit impishly.  “Tell me what you think about this: what if this time through you make mistakes ON PURPOSE?  As many wrong notes and wrong rhythms as you dare, and as wildly incorrect as possible.”

Her smile got HUGE.  She enthusiastically agreed to give it a try.

And my goodness, if it wasn’t the most musical and expressive performance she’d ever given!

After she’d finished her new variation on this old song, I asked her, “What was your favourite mistake?”  And she excitedly listed at least seven spots where she had deliberately done the wrong rhythm, the wrong notes, sustained a pitch for way longer than was written.  Her FAVOURITE moment was when she deliberately played the “mistake” she often makes by accident.   (Normally she huffs and tenses up when she gets to this spot in the music - this time she lingered there, riffing on her usual “mistake” and creating a real musical moment.)

She seemed so empowered in that moment of describing her experience of making mistakes on purpose. Her eyes got very wide and her face was open, full of wonder and joy.  Her “mistakes” were no longer owning her.  She was owning her “mistakes,” and making them into purposeful, deliberate, expressive musical moments.

Learning is Target Practice - there are no mistakes

My student’s discovery about the empowerment of on-purpose mistake-making reminds me of my own early learning experiences. I used to be so held back by trying to be perfect. All the time. At everything, not just music-making.

Eventually, thanks to the support of many wonderful, compassionate teachers and mentors, I came to understand that learning happens in the miss-takes, in the off-target moments (I recently wrote a post about learning as target practice. You can read the full article here). These teachers understood the conditions necessary for humans to learn: namely that there needs to be an environment where off-target moments, experimentation, and surprises are welcomed, modelled, embodied, and encouraged.

So. Back to my young student and her discoveries about miss-takes.

This particular student isn’t even a teenager yet.  So I held back my exuberance about what her discovery means about how we learn, and how important “mistakes” are to the learning process.  (To be fair, I have had some version of this conversation with this particular student on several occasions as we examine “perfectionism” together in a light, playful way, creating our own experiments and games around “trying to be right” vs allowing all sounds to be welcome. But I’ll save that story for another time.)

For example, in order to make mistakes on purpose, this student had to actually think about the correct notes/rhythms in order to mess them up.  She was able to attend to her music-making and interpretation in a different way.  

By deliberately doing it the “wrong” way, she was actually teaching herself how to do it the “right” way!

Before, her goal had been: “don’t make any mistakes.”  (I think many of us can attest to how successful THAT goal usually is!)

Her new goal was: “make mistakes on purpose.”  Which, as it turns out, was a heck of a lot easier - and more enjoyable! - than trying to be perfect.  AND actually resulted in an expressive, musical, inventive, colourful, and FUN performance.

The part of her conscious attention that had been all tied up before in trying to be right, was now free to attend to much more nourishing aspects of music-making, like personal expression, interpretation, spontaneity, and creativity.

Would this student be happy presenting her on-purpose mistake-making rendition of this song in recital?  Likely not.  (I, however, would be thrilled to attend such a radically authentic performance … but maybe it’s a wee bit early in her musical career to be encouraging performances that challenge traditional music-making paradigms and music-consumption habits … hmm?)  

I can tell you, however, that when this student went back to performing the selection as written, those halting miss-take moments from before were nearly non-existent.  And her engagement with the music had really shifted since her first run-through. She was smiling at the end. Which is a huge win, and much more important (in my humble opinion) than being perfect.

Paradox: Learning happened

By deliberately messing around with her song, and owning her miss-takes, this student was able to actually WORK ON the spots that had been getting in her way before.  The difference was that this time she was going about it through a less direct, more creative approach that came from curiosity and experimentation, rather than perfection.

So.  Bloomin’.  Cool.

PS - I also 100% use this purposeful miss-takes game with my adult clients.  There is no age limit for being hobbled by so-called “mistakes,” nor for re-molding those miss-takes into satisfying, yummy artistic expression.  

What is Supported Singing?

What does Supported Singing mean for you?

Do you think about your breath?

Your diaphragm? 

Your ribs?

Your bones and muscles?

Your larynx?

How about your back?  or your legs?

(Spoiler alert: all of these aspects of Supported Singing are CORRECT if they support your ability to sing with joy, freedom, and ease.)

Many of us have our own understanding of what “singing with support” means to us.  Often this understanding emerges from our early voice lessons, from ideas passed down from various teachers over the years, from our own lived experience and exploration.  

There was a time when I didn’t have the tools to connect with my inner wisdom about what worked for me and what didn’t, what was true for me and what wasn’t.  I looked outside of myself to my teachers and coaches and music directors and peers to fix what I thought I was doing wrong.  And I wasn’t always supported in the vulnerable, messy moments of my learning.  I was even hurt sometimes by the feedback I received.  However well-meaning and unintentional, these statements hurt me.  They burrowed into my body and festered into inaccurate beliefs about my abilities and worth as a singer and as a human.

Thankfully, I was also gifted with knowledgeable, compassionate mentors and colleagues who understood the complex art of whole-person pedagogy.  And my experiences learning with and from these magical unicorns continues to shape the way I create, lead, and teach today.

To me, in this moment in time (subject to further inquiry and exploration), Supported Singing requires an unwavering belief that the student has the information about their voice and body, not the teacher.  I don’t have that information unless and until I ask for it.  Only when I gather the information from my student can I suggest/offer/observe/update.  (And of course Supported Singing also includes: technical knowledge, anatomical understanding, stylistic sensibility, musicality, etc. - voice teachers have many finely-tuned skills!)  

In my studio, I understand Voice and Movement sessions to be a shared, co-created experience between myself and the student, where I defer to the student’s in-the-moment experience rather than imposing my own beliefs/opinions about what something should look or sound or feel like.  Breathflow, soundflow, and movementflow emerge from this foundation.

So, what does Supported Singing mean for you today?  

Range of Recuperation

What are you recuperating FROM?

And where are you recuperating TO?

What is your natural self-nourishment go-to?  When you need to recharge, what do you usually do?

Do you go for a run or do some gentle yoga?

In order to truly tap into your innate recuperative super powers, it’s important to know what you want to recover FROM, and what you want to recharge FOR?  (As in, “I am nourishing myself in order to do ________ [insert chosen activity here].”)

Predictability is a comfort

There is something so comforting about watching a TV show you’ve seen dozens of times, isn’t there? It’s predictable.  You know how it’s going to end.  You know the conflict will be resolved by the time the credits roll.

We crave resolution.  We are comforted by patterns and predictability.

And yet.  

A resolution of a dissonant musical chord is only so sweet because we experienced the dissonance that preceded it.  

A luxurious yawn-sigh-stretch feels yummiest when we’ve been sitting in one position for hours without much movement.  

So, we actually need the dissonance in order to fully appreciate the resolution.  We need the moments of grip and stuckness and low energy in order to fully appreciate the experience of ease and lightness and aliveness. 

These extremes and contrasts are what provide a wholeness of experience, and make us whole.

Recuperation encompasses a wide range of activities, because you as a human embody a wide range of states of being and every-changing needs.  Instead of thinking “I need to calm down,” consider why it makes sense that you’re in the state you’re in, experiencing what you’re experiencing right now, in order to decide what you need next and what to do to achieve it.

Noticing where you’re at and what you need

We often associate recuperation with relaxing and calming activities like deep breathing and gentle stretching.  The term “self-care” is often used to describe the activities that help us recover from the typical state of being in Western culture: overstimulated, over-worked, and stressed-out.  

(I’m speaking in very general terms here.  I recognize that not everyone will fall into neat-and-tidy columns of “calm” or “jazzed.”  It’s more likely that many of us find ourselves somewhere different on the calm-to-jazzed spectrum at any given moment, while also noticing that we have a default energy base most of the time.  What’s yours?)

If you spend your whole day teaching people new skills and solving problems, you may need to just BE for a while, without learning anything new or pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.  

If your day is full of quick-thinking and fast-moving, you may crave slowing down and feeling your body.  The movements you choose and the sounds you make will reflect this.

Recuperation doesn’t always mean calm and quiet and slow

Recuperation can cover a wide range of activities, not just calming ones.  It just depends on where you’re coming from and where you’re heading next.  Knowing what you need and how to support that need is a big part of taking care of yourself.

If you’re about to go to sleep and you’re feeling antsy, you’d probably be more likely to do some mindful breathing or watch your favourite TV show than go for a jog or do some jumping jacks, for example.

If you’re pumping yourself up to give a motivational speech or teach a voice lesson, and you’ve been lounging on the couch all morning, you might jump up and down a few times or walk briskly around the block to get your blood pumping and wake yourself up.

You can know what you need in these situations, so you can choose the recuperative activity that will best support you.

Sometimes you need to recuperate from lethargy or a lack of energy.  These are the moments when there is so little going on, so little stimulation in your day-to-day, that it’s difficult to predict what’s coming next (#lockdown).   And so you feel stuck.

Lack of variety in your daily activities can create a stagnation that no amount of meditation or relaxing bubble baths seems to budge.  What your system might crave in these moments is stimulation, something to ignite your curiosity and mobilize you to take action.

The “low tone” energy state requires a different sort of recuperation than when you’re feeling overstimulated, stressed out, or over-worked.  In these moments you may find recuperation in a vigorous activity like jumping jacks, punching the air, or jiggling, combined with short, sharp exhalations of breath.  Again, the movements you choose and the sounds you make will reflect what you need in these moments.

Listening to your body’s wisdom

Learning to tune in to - and decode - the signals your system is sending you takes time and practice, especially when the dominant culture around you may not place value on your preferred pace and the time and space experiential knowledge requires.  (Western culture, for example, tends to value intellectual knowing and cognitive processes over embodied/experiential ways of knowing.)

Your body is constantly communicating your current state of being and needs.  Muscle tension or low muscular tone, for example, can alert you to where you’re coming from, and what you might need (a massage or a jiggle, respectively).  Cue listening to “monkey mind” and “brain fog” signals, too.

Your breath is a barometer for how you’re doing at any given moment.  Long, slow breaths can tell you that you are calm or relaxed or sleepy.  Short, shallow breaths can be letting you know that you are unsettled, while heavy, full breaths could be an indication that you have just exerted yourself.   

At any given moment you can attend to what you’re experiencing in the moment, and make a clear choice about what you’d like to do next, based on what you need, rather than what some external source is telling you you “should” do or feel. 

To experiment with first-hand, lived experience of the range of recuperation, you can explore the self-guided Constructive Rest course, or attend the live 4-part Breathing Series group classes.

Special thank you to Babette Lightner for her wisdom, and Maureen Batt for her collaboration. 🦄

🌱 How You Take Care of Yourself 🌱

The Gestalt cycle of experience demonstrates the process of how we take care of ourselves. It is a process of self-regulation, outlining the steps we take - conscious or unconscious - to find and maintain inner balance.  

Needs can be emotional (belonging, safety, connection) or physical (hunger, thirst, too hot/cold). 

The self-regulation process moves from becoming aware of a need (i.e. thirst), mobilizing toward meeting that need (getting up to get a glass of water), recognizing when that need is satisfied (no longer thirsty), and withdrawing and moving on (checking in with yourself to see what else you need in this moment). 

Some needs we can meet on our own (grabbing a snack when hungry), and some we will require outside support (setting a broken bone at the hospital). The type of support will of course vary from person to person (a toddler may need help getting a snack, while an able-bodied adult may be more self-actualized). Our ongoing work is to recognize when “I got this” will work (self-support), and when to ask for help (environmental support). 

We are constantly changing and growing. Our needs are constantly shifting. As our self-awareness develops, and we gain more life and interrelationship skills, we become more resilient and interconnected with ourselves and the world. We become more able to ask for help, and because we are more supported, we can show up to support others. 

To learn more about how to use your body sensations and awareness to take better care of your whole self, book a chat with me today:

https://alisonjanetaylorstudio.as.me/free20minconsultation

🦥 Relaaaaax

Relaxation is a common misinterpretation of the sense of ease and efficiency.

Babette Lightner

Relaxation and collapse have their usefulness! One of my Alexander Technique teachers once said, “sometimes you need to take a good ol’ SLUMP!” And I do. Choicefully and mindfully.

What I teach is a clarification of the SENSATION of relaxation when a student moves or sings in a way that feels easy and efficient, especially if what they’re used to is the sensation of EFFORT (heavy, tight, strained). Links to Babette Lightner’s Wholeness in Motion work HERE.

🐛 Get Your Wiggle On! - Finding Vocal Release Through Jiggling

🎥  VIDEO 🎥 

https://youtu.be/858vhGKSE_c

🐛 Come back to your innate wholeness by jiggling. In shaking and jiggling, we press ourselves away from the ground very quickly many times. In Alexander Technique we call this relationship opposition. 

🐛 Jiggle with an awareness of releasing your joints: let the hips, knees, and ankles be free. Allow your head to be dynamically poised on top of the spine (not slack but continuously pointing forward and up). 

🐛Jiggle with a sense of buoyancy through the pelvis, ribs, and arm structure. Not making these areas dead weight but feeling the springy nature of your torso as you bounce and jiggle and wiggle. 

🐛 Add sounds. Sing a phrase. What do you notice?

Pelvis and Sitting Bones - Freeing the Lower Back Through Mapping and Movement

🎥  VIDEO 🎥 

https://youtu.be/F5r9z22v8w0

The sitting bones are the two curved bones that make up the bottom of your pelvis. The fancy name is the ischial tuberosity (ya, that’s why we say “sitting bones.”)

We often experience discomfort after sitting for a long time if we’ve been balancing on the coccyx (tail bone) instead of these two majestic rockers. As a way to bring freedom back into the torso, we can explore the movement of the pelvis rolling around the head of the femur (thigh bone) by rocking forward and back on the sitting bones.

There are many ways into freeing your lower back from pain - this is just one exploration using some basic body mapping and gentle movement.