Tiny but Mighty Springs of Wellness
The story of my unraveling
A one-year assignment in Thailand had turned into seven. Again I found myself at the office late at night begging my brain and my body to get through another all-nighter, another speech, another powerpoint, another rise to the occasion and always feeling I was letting myself and others down. A sterile gray monolith building off the side of a highway in Bangkok, the Board of Investment is where I found myself yet again, my partner furious that I again did not meet to work out. I told myself (again) “Just one more written speech and then I promise we can stop.” My body was in a weird kind of numb from pain I could never quite locate. I was on a tightrope of frustration, I was the tightrope, not knowing where or why I was. My body was conditioned to do what it was told, hanging on, knowing not to get excited about another broken promise. The ratcheting effect of the rat race.
Then the universe winked
Within a wall of text, I saw in a publication a tiny ad for Alexander Technique lessons. Before moving to Thailand, I had taken three lessons in grad school and had found myself pain free for months. I emailed and set up an appointment with Andy. The ubiquitous pain continued to rev with the wafting up of the heat and pollution of the city, but this is when the ship of all my problems started its slow turn towards healing.
1 Year of AT Lessons with Andy
When I entered his studio, he first asked me to sit. There was a simple chair in the middle of the room. I collapsed into it and probably made some verbal and breathing noises. Months later he would recount how I sat like a sack of potatoes that first lesson. I asked for lessons twice a week, a cadence I kept for about a year.
I started feeling better. I started having religious experiences. I became a Buddhist. I found my killer instinct which I recognized as my will to live. The universe began winking to me more and more and I started following the path it was lighting up for me.
At some point I realized that the most important thing to me was to feel comfortable in my own body. I started planning my exit from my Bangkok life— after years of multi sensory overload of a city that never sleeps. It had been so long I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I couldn’t remember what it was like to be anywhere else but Southeast Asia.
I could move anywhere to study. I could get a visa to join the famous Constructive Teaching Centre in London. Or there were horses with the school in Melbourne. Or the school in Los Angeles would bring me back home, whatever that was. But again a series of events led me, this time to a school in Urbana, Illinois. I was like a dry leaf floating down a creek, bumping into rocks and debris, drifting towards something that felt pre-determined.
“the most important thing to me was to feel comfortable in my own body”
Healing in the Heartland
Driving from Chicago to Urbana, my first visit to the Alexander Technique training school of Joan and Alex Murray felt like a life raft in some ways. I would extend my three-year training to five years to incorporate getting married and starting a family. I loved being pregnant on the training course. I loved learning Dart Procedures, re-experiencing birth spirals, seeing fetal and forward-and-up everywhere. Getting a lie-down every day. Feeling almost like Joan’s hands were pulling me out of myself. I learned to use myself better. I practiced stopping and saying no. I started feeling more and more, taking time to listen to my body. Extraordinary experiences. The body did become my university.
The next 15 years revolved around learning ever more about the mind-body universe, taking care of my lovely boy, figuring out marriage, and developing mixed healing arts that has manifested into this website—“Wellness Weaved In”. Next up is the Somatic Commons for people to share with one another the common wisdom of health, community and heart-knowledge.
I did find my way back to myself again, my love for community, for activism, for diversity in all things, being creative and resourceful, becoming vegan, finding my voice, joining nonprofit leadership, expressing my entrepreneurial energies.
A colleague asked me where this warmth for others in board meetings comes from. Before I could think, the words came out — I like people. The words resonated in me deeply, and repeatedly I discover ways that this is true.
Listening
Now that I’ve learned to weave together my own life and also my sessions with clients, I get to be part of the surprise and the journey of each person I meet. I try to listen on many levels, using my intuition to be of service. I knit together life experience with the teachings of my many wonderful teachers over the years. I reach out to other dimensions of being and knowing.
Now that you’ve heard a bit of my story, please reach out and tell me yours!
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