What Happens If You Decide To Not Rush?

I’ve rushed around most of my life trying to get a lot of stuff done.

This has not been an efficient way to live. I’ve often had to repeat my shoddy work and often felt like a chicken running around with his head cut off.

I had bosses who complained that I would get tunnel vision and ignore everything except the task at hand.

David Gorman discusses this tense way of living in an interview with Robert Rickover. (Also check out David’s interview at DirectionJournal.com.)

David: It occurred to me that what was going on in the teaching room [with some students] was not that important but it was what was going on at work.

People were getting ahead of themselves and this rushing around caused needless tension and inefficient movement.

Robert: “Many people are not present with themselves.”

“If a person is not present, then telling them to talk to their necks and to not tense it might not be effective because a whole period of time has gone by and they’re not present and the damage has been done.”

David: “Maybe it is the whole way the person is going about to do things and the tension is the coordination of them rushing like that.”

“So I’d then spend the lesson helping someone to go out there an experiment with going to work one day and deciding not to rush. You might get less done. See if that is what is causing your tension. People could do it if we set it up as an experiment, as something to try for one day. People who managed it came back and said, I did not get tense. I was more present. I did a better job because I was not juggling three things at once.”

“This was the start of the Learning Methods. I saw it was not a set of unconscious habit patterns of functioning but more a use of themselves, what the self was up to, not what the body was up to. The body functioning, the tension, is the coordination of the human being rushing. That rushing is just one pattern.”

“I work with a lot of performers. There’s another huge habit pattern — it is extremely important to get everything right. Consequently, there’s a lot of fear of not being perfect. So they’re putting undue attention on getting all the notes right and then they wonder why they get so tense and caught up.”

“Why would you have a neck that wasn’t free? Could it be because of these ideas?”

Most of Robert’s interviews are over in 25 minutes but this one lasts over an hour.

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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