Had great fun last week with my theatre students: I designate one day for them to spend the whole day in clothes they don’t habitually wear. – out of their usual style. This means they wear make up if they don’t usually and vice versa. If they wear jeans down below their bottoms, they have to wear something smart and high-waisted. Always wear bright colours? Wear some sombre ones. No parting in the hair? Put one in. Always neat and tidy? Find out what it is to wear unironed scruffy clothes for a change. It can be extremely liberating to come out of our own style for a day – people change towards us or not at all – we become clearer about how over concerned we can be on how other people see us. I say ‘we’ because i too join in with this. This year i favoured the biker chick image, the year before the pretty patterned dress with heels. I would put some photos up but the web blog is refusing this at the moment, so you’ll have to imagine. And try it for your self and let me know how you get alexpen@onetel.com It can be extremely discombobulating – not all my students enjoy the experience and look positively miserable without their usual clothes to hang onto, to shield themselves from the world. Our personal confidence is often tied in to our ‘image’ when we’re 19……however if we inhibit our reaction, and direct ourselves all things are possible!
I was working with a group of young actors in training with learning disabilities from the Bradford-based Mind the Gap project last week. They are resident at ArtsEd in London where I teach Alexander Technique to the BA/MA acting students. Thanks guys for some fun sessions and for insoiring me with the following! I like the name Mind The Gap – it’s very Alexandrian. The gap between stimulus and response, that’s where change lies….. in Alexander parlance it’s called ‘Inhibition’. Deepak Chopra mentions the Gap between thoughts, a meditative state, the potential for anything where we can contact the Universe and ask for help. Inhibition for me is a Gap where I have stopped the world and got off for a moment -the world being the ‘crowd of my thoughts’ *, my ego-laden reality. When I can stop all that there is an extraordinary peace and I may well choose not to bound back into the habit-laden rigors of my life. So, whatever you are doing just now, ‘Mind the Gap’, stop what you are doing and look around you, take in the outside world, the sounds, the sensation of being alive right here right now. Then return to what you were doing – if you want. And maybe with a freer neck, a direction of ‘up’, feet released into the ground.
And practise these moments of stopping throughout the day. In Alonnisos in January I was walking with my darling dog through the byways of the island, making a helluva noise with my crinkly anorak and then I just stopped. I heard the birds, the sound of the rain dripping, smelt the damp earth, saw the myriad shades of green in the trees and bushes….and agreed anytime I thought of stopping I just would. It’s a great game and I’ve been playing it ever since. Just stopping, and finding out what happens. ( I don’t drive, but I guess it could be possible to just decided to safely pull up for a moment, before continuing a journey….) Happy playing!
News on my workshops and lessons in Alonnisos in the summer this year are now posted up on the website www.alexanderingreece.com I am there from June 7th and look forward to working with some of you out there. It’s such a beautiful place! I don’t know anyone who has been disappointed and there’s a cute little hosue next door you can rent out for only £200 a week if you are taking lessons with me….