Some years ago, a few of us wanted to know when Marjorie Barstow's birthday was - she wouldn't tell us - and we wanted to be able to surprise her.  During class one day, I was dispatched (a selection made by the reset of the students) to find her driver's license and, hence, her birthdate.  I hope I read it right - I was in a bit of a hurry - for after that, every August 25th , we celebrated her birthday.  (Easy for me to remember as this day is also the date my mother was born - perhaps the two of you can party together in the world you are now in.)

Each day I am grateful for her and grateful for her teaching.

In looking for something she said to post today, I found Robert Rickover's reposting of this aphorism from Direction Magazine -

I can’t teach anything that I haven’t done myself. I may not always do it, you know we don’t always do what we should (life would be very dull if we did). But I know when I want to have more freedom, I know what I can do and what I must do, then I make the choice of whether or not to do it.

 

I am just back from a vibrant residential workshop at XXG Sanctuary in Snohomish.  I am grateful to the organizers, the participants, and those who made the Sanctuary such a beautiful place to host an event! 

All Alexander Technique lessons, classes, and workshops are what I call “deep play”, and my experiences last week renewed/confirmed the transformations possible when we –as adults- choose to give ourselves time to play outside the bounds of our daily lives.  (The term, deep play, comes from a Diane Ackerman book of that title.) Following are excerpts from an article I wrote about it:

Above all, play requires freedom. One chooses to play. Play’s rules may be enforced, but play is not like life’s other dramas. It happens outside ordinary life and it requires freedom. (Ackerman 1999, p. 7)

Deep play describes my preference for creating a learning situation that calls on the desire to learn, inviting curiosity to lead the enquiry. Deep play is full of trial and error, full of finding out that one thing accomplishes desire better than another. The teacher provides the learning environment, the feedback, the information, the model, etc.; and the emphasis of deep play is on the joy of discovering the new, more skilled way to do what you intend.

…Play is how we – and many other animals – learn to perform our daily tasks. It is how we learn to survive, to socialise and to improve skills.  Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga who was interested in the play element in culture, defines it:                       

Play ‘is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exultation and tension accompanies the action’ (Ackerman 1999, p. 3).…

If we use this definition of play … every Alexander Technique class, workshop and lesson is play. “Deep” play emphasises that play can facilitate significant, i.e. deep, change.

(Kentauro posted (and probably took) this picture from the Residential on Facebook.)