I’ve become much more active over the past three years. Rising cholesterol and blood sugar levels convinced me I had to get more exercise. So I’ve been taking yoga and riding my white steed across the internet, doing battle with dark knights and rescuing damsels in distress.
During the course of my adventures, I’ve tweaked various things.
In February 2009, I was recommended to a great physical therapist — Lyn Paul Taylor in downtown Los Angeles.
After about six sessions, he undid most of the damage I’d done to myself in my first month at yoga (where I strained various ligaments and hurt my feet and my ego).
One romantic weekend in April, I went away to the beach with my girlfriend of the time and we methodically performed over Shabbat the first 47 positions in the Kama Sutra (“a guide to a virtuous and gracious living that discusses the nature of love, family life and other aspects pertaining to pleasure oriented faculties of human life”). At one point, she was….
When I came home on Monday and tried to walk some books back to the library, my back went out and I fell to the ground. It was most embarrassing.
The next day I went to physical therapy and Lyn told me not to swing girls around when they’d clambered on to my waist and I was holding them up with my hands under their hips and…
He brought the staff in to look at the damage I’d wreaked to my back.
Theoretically, I could’ve walked around in agony for six weeks while I Alexandered my way out of trouble, but I needed a quick fix.
Over the next three years as penance for my sins, I threw myself into the Patrick MacDonald approach to the Alexander Technique and found this caused great strain on my knees. Instead of being moderate, I sometimes worked to excess and frequently tweaked things, precipitating more trips to Lyn Paul Taylor who put me back together again.
In the spirit of ecumenical learning from other disciplines, I present the highlights of the following podcast: “Diana Rumrill, a Physical Therapist, in Washington, DC, talks with Robert Rickover about ways in which the Alexander Technique can complement Physical Therapy.”
Diana: “Alexander Technique empowers the person. A lot of physical therapy relies on the practitioner. The physical therapist assesses what needs to be stretched and what needs to be strengthened. The Alexander Technique takes feeling better and moving better and puts it into the hands of the person.”
Robert: “There are people who don’t want that kind of responsibility. And there’s no point in trying to force it on them.”
Diana: “Right! It’s just going to end up frustrating everybody.”
Robert: “The medical model in America is that you come to the medical professional and they treat you. There’s not a lot of emphasis on teaching you to take charge of yourself. The Alexander Technique does ask you to take charge of yourself.”
“There are pre-existing conditions where in theory the Alexander Technique will change over time. The amount of time might be many reincarnations long. You’d be better off to resort to physical therapy.”
Diana: “Musicians tend to have gotten where they are because they’re intelligent and focused and ready to put in long hours of practice to reach an ideal of sound. Those same characteristics can set them up for strong ingrained painful habits.”
Robert: “Musicians can be incredibly knowledgeable about their instrument but haven’t thought through some basic stuff about their body, the instrument that plays their instrument. They can get focused on their instrument and lose track of themselves.”
Most Alexander Technique teachers can’t teach family members. They can’t teach their spouse. They can’t teach the kids. There’s too much emotional baggage.
But some can. Why? What enables some teachers to teach their lover? What makes some relationships open to this kind of learning?
In what things, are you open to learning from your spouse?
I’ve had a lot of girlfriends. Many of them have been open to learning from me in some things and many of them have not.
The ones who aren’t open to learning from me invariably have contempt for me (and for any man in their life).
If you’re not open to learning from your spouse, I can’t imagine that you’re in a good relationship.
PS. Here’s where I link to my working with some bloke from my training and then I go on about how my spouse is open to my instruction because we have such a great relationship.
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Most Alexander teachers hate the question, “So can you give me some exercises to do at home to get good Alexander Technique?”
Alexander isn’t so much a set of things that you do as a letting go of needless postures.
Still, there are Alexandrian things you can do at home or in the office or as you drive down the street that will enhance your life.
* When you can, try stopping. Yes, just stop. Think about what you’re doing and then go back to the task without hurrying and without unnecessary body tension.
* Stop telling yourself to hurry. Stop rushing. Stop telling yourself there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it. Instead, tell yourself, “I’m going to do what I can in the time available.” If you refuse to rush, you’ll likely get more done with more quality and less muscle tension.
* Listen for every separate sound around you. As your ears perk up, the rest of you will likely perk up with them. You might find yourself moving up as you let go of the needless ways you hold yourself down.
* See what’s to the corner of your right eye and to your left eye and everything in between. As you notice all before you, you’ll likely start moving up.
* If you keep some awareness of the world around you, the sights and sounds and smells and textures, you’ll be less likely to compress into the task at hand (such as sitting at the computer and writing brilliant blog posts).
* Ask yourself, can I do what I’m doing more easily? With less tension and effort? Can I be more gentle with myself? Can I be a good friend to myself?
* Slowly say the word “Boston” and notice how the second syllable — when fully articulated — sends your jaw down and away. If your teeth are coming together, it’s usually a dysfunction. Most of us carry way too much tension in our jaws. Saying the word “Boston” brings your lower jaw into its physiological rest position (so that it is neither being held or pushed).
* Ask your forehead to release unnecessary tension by thinking of your face widening. Bring your attention to your eyes and see if you can let go of needless muscular holding around your eyes and around your lips. Can you let go of facial and thinking postures and instead be alive to the moment?
* Notice the thought constructs you use that increase your body tension and diminish. Typical ones include “I’ve got to be perfect” or “I’m not good enough.”
* Lie down with your head gently supported and your knees up. Alexandrians call this “active rest.” It’s an exercise for letting go of needless tension.
Fewer than one percent of the world’s Alexander Technique teachers teach the Technique full-time (more than 25 hours a week). Almost all Alexander teachers have fewer pupils than they’d like.
Alexander pupils are scarce and therefore particularly precious to the teacher. So it hurts when you lose one.
So why do Alexander teachers lose students?
I suspect the primary reason is that we make the student feel wrong.
It’s easy as a teacher to start pointing out to the pupil things he’s doing badly. Let’s say he holds his breath when he gets in and out of a chair, tips his head back, tightens his neck, compresses the torso, locks his knees and generally acts like a right wally in this daily task.
Telling the student, “G-day mate, you looked like a right wally there” generally does not create a lasting student-teacher bond.
The teachers who make a go of it with Alexander Technique make their students feel amazing. Julia Caulder and Michael Frederick are a couple of masters of this in Los Angeles. I want to be more like them.
I come from a background that gloried in pointing out to people where they were wrong. I’ve always enjoyed taking the mickey out of folks. It kept them at arm’s length.
As I head into my dotage, I’m trying to let go of my scathing ways. I want to help people, not hurt them.
As a teacher of the Alexander Technique, I assist people in noticing how they respond to stimuli and I show them various ways of letting go of responses that don’t serve them. Instead of telling them where they’re going wrong, I try to activate their thinking so that they can see themselves more accurately and not need a guru to point things out.
A familiar and painful emotion I feel frequently is shame.
It got instilled in me early in life that I was bad. That I didn’t measure up. That I was a real rotter. I was letting everyone down. I was selfish and slovenly.
I learned to talk to myself in this harsh way and to others.
Surprisingly, that didn’t make me popular. It seemed that most people did not enjoy it when I turned my scathing sensibility on their weak points.
After a lot of age, a lot of failure, a lot of psycho-therapy and Alexander Technique, I’m starting to talk to myself in a more gentle way.
I notice that some of my students beat themselves up continuously. It’s a stuck pattern of self-abuse. They don’t lack for good advice but all the imperatives they’re hearing aren’t enabling them to live on a higher plane.
Jennifer Mackerras, an Alexander Technique teacher in Bristol, England, writes:
In my teaching room, I have a cupboard. It has two main uses. Firstly, it stows my computer away out of sight. This is its practical use. But it has a far more important function than that.
It stores all of my students’ sticks.
Sticks? I hear you ask.
Yes, sticks. The sticks they beat themselves up with.
Mental sticks
Obviously I don’t mean actual physical sticks. I’m talking about something far more insidious, though just as damaging. I am talking about the things that people believe about themselves and say to me during their lessons.
“I have such terrible posture.”
“I sit really badly.”
“My right leg is okay. But my left leg is really bad.”
“I know that my walking isn’t good, but there’s nothing I can do to make it better.”
“If my furniture at work was better, I wouldn’t have this neck pain.”
I was talking to a group of psycho-therapists the other day.
I said every emotion requires a particular alignment of the body. Lose that alignment and you’ll lose the emotion.
For instance, when you take up your full space in the world, your full height and width, it’s hard to be overcome by the disabling emotions of depression, contempt, anger, disgust and the like. Instead, you’ll likely feel tranquil.
If you want to feel anger, you’ll have to tighten and compress your neck and pull down and in to that emotion.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling anger when it serves you, but we’re better off not getting stuck there.
“So we’ll feel better if we sit up straight?” asked one bloke, who pulled himself up.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “If we pull ourselves up straight, we’re likely to increase our body tension, and that does us more harm than good. It would be more effective to sit or stand like you’d just received good news. If you were feeling happy, how would you sit? Go with that emotion and lit it ripple through your body.”
Before I studied Alexander Technique, I always had bad posture and my dad would always get on me to sit up straight. That advice does no good. You can’t sustain it. It feels terrible. And when you do hold on to it, you’re increasing your muscle tension and doing yourself more harm than good.
If you want to go up, there are more effective ways than pushing up. One thing you can do is to listen to every sound around you. As your ears perk up, the rest of your kinaesthesia will likely perk up too.
If you’re a visual person, you might move up more effectively by seeing everything in front of you by paying attention to what you see to your sides and then taking note of everything in between.
Anything you can do to wake up your senses and to come in to the present moment will likely result in your torso untangling and your head moving to a poised position on top of your lengthened spine.
* Is the Jewish soul different from the non-Jewish soul? If so, is a Jewish life more valuable?
* I walked a few blocks with a friend the other day and the blocks passed by so much more quickly than when I walk them by myself. It made me sad to think about how much of life I’ve walked on my own.
* When you pray next to people you like, davening goes by much quicker. Church and religious services at Reform temples are much more solemn than going to an Orthodox shul. Much of what goes on at a purported “religious service” or “prayers” at an Orthodox shul is socializing. Because Orthodox Jews frequently pray at shul every day, it is much more informal than services at a church, where people typically gather for “religious services” just once a week.
I think converts to Judaism take varying amounts of time adjusting to peoplehood. They might be like those “strivers” at work who don’t take time to talk to people and to make friends. They’re just working. Sometimes you’ll find converts and penitents (baalei teshuva) primarily using prayer time for prayer rather than catching up.
It’s not uncommon for “prayer” time at an Orthodox shul be used to make a business deal, to get a job, to find a match for marriage, to find a new apartment, and the like. These mundane matters of life are just as holy and just as important as “prayer”.
My lack of social skills has caused me at least as much trouble in Orthodox Judaism as my lack of morals and holiness and knowledge of Torah. If you’re socially skilled but religiously lazy, you’re likely to have much more success in Orthodox Judaism or Jewish life generally than if you have the opposite tendencies (religiously skilled but socially inept).
Much of the conversion program is simply about weeding out those who are not socially skilled.
* Is it wrong to download movies illegally on places such as ThePirateBay.net if you were never going to buy them or rent them in the first place? Or if you don’t reduce your buying/renting movie habits but only supplement those habits with illegally downloaded entertainment? If nobody is hurt, what’s the big deal?
* I got asked on Shabbos if I was married, and if not, was I looking? I am looking. It made me happy to be asked and to be sought after. You’re not really part of a community unless people try to set you up for marriage. You’re not really part of a community unless people talk about you behind your back. What are other signs of belonging?
* I don’t like bar mitzvahs where certain tables are reserved for family. We should all be family. It’s like those parties where there are two tiers. The elites stay behind the ropes in their own section.
* I had a friend in shul say to me on Shabbos, “I never see you pray.”
We’ve been davening together for years but yeah, I do prefer to study Torah than to pray.
* In this week’s parasha, you have the Urim V’tumim (breast plate). Do you think most people face a greater challenge in detecting right from wrong or doing right from wrong? Converting to Judaism has helped me clarify right from wrong but my biggest trouble is doing right from wrong, not knowing right from wrong.
* I just did my taxes. Complicated tax codes with lots of deductions and high marginal rates just encourage cheating, just as the movie industry’s lack of easy ways to watch movies online encourages piracy. I’m not happy with any of the tax plans of the Republican candidates for president. None of these plans are bold calls for a flat rate with no deductions.
* Rick Santorum is tired of the press always asking him about birth control. So what does a politician do when he doesn’t like the questions he gets?
* Rabbi Wein writes: “The light of Torah is dependent upon the moral purity of its source. Just as dregs and pulp contaminate the oil and prevent a steady light from emerging, so, too, grave imperfections of character and behavior weaken the teachings of Torah to students and to the masses of Israel.”
When I know that a rabbi has had some scandal, particularly a sexual scandal, it’s hard for me to take seriously any of his Torah teaching, even if he’s brilliant.
If you’re a rabbi and you’ve been caught with bad stuff on your computer or you’ve plooked a sibling or a congregant or somebody’s wife, you should sell insurance or do some other job. You’re sunk as far as teaching Torah in my eyes.
I guess I advocate a zero tolerance standard for rabbis for sexual sins and anything else that gets people talking. Sexual sins may not be worse than other sins, but they cause people to talk more than other sins usually do.
Dennis Prager said he did not become a rabbi because people expect rabbis to say certain things and he wanted the freedom to say what he wanted. That’s the same reason I did not become a rabbi. I’d rather write about my sins than urge people to righteousness.
Years ago, somebody offered to tell me about some shanda my rabbi of the time had committed in exchange for my telling him all about the shanda of another rabbi. I told him to keep quiet. I didn’t want to know anything bad about my rabbi. This is remarkable because normally I want to know all the gossip.
When I was first plooking, I wanted to know all about the past of my partner in this respect. Has she ever been abused or raped or an adulteress or a ho or that sort of stuff. After my third partner, I realized this was a bad idea because I could not get those images out of my head, and after number three, I stopped wanting to know things in this department. As I’ve aged, I’ve realized there are many things I don’t want to know.
When I learned about Andrew Sullivan’s gay cruising and personal ad placing, it pretty much killed him for me as a commentator. I no longer was interested in his views on politics or anything.
As New York wrote wrote: “In Sullivan’s case, he was exposed for something that he discusses freely. He cruises. He’s proud of being well known in gay bars across Washington. Before you know it, when you’re with him, he’ll be talking about leather stuff. He’s written, too, about unprotected sex between HIV-positive partners — he’s in favor of it and has a strenuous point of view about its relative safety. He’s not keeping many secrets. Of course, his enemies argue that he’s intellectually dishonest — but that’s different from being actually dishonest.
Still, the in flagrante delicto Web pages, which were enterprisingly saved and reposted by his detractors, are a fleshy corpus: “killer muscle ass that loves to milk loads with my power glutes.”
* I have no expectations for the moral behavior of politicians. I don’t care much. All in all, I’d prefer to be represented by somebody who acts honorably rather than dishonorably, but it is not important to me.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: Clothing plays a great role in current Jewish society. Certain sectors of our society identify their closeness to God and tradition in terms of the clothing that they wear. There is no doubt that clothing makes an impression upon those who see us and upon those who wear it. Research has shown that schools that have a dress uniform have an ability to deal with problems of student discipline more easily than the free and open schools of casual, whatever you like type of dress.
But there is a responsibility that comes with wearing special clothing. And that responsibility is to be people of “honor and glory.” The Talmud states almost ironically that he who wishes to sin should travel to a place where he is unknown and to wear “black clothing” so that his behavior will not reflect on the whole of Israel.
There are differing interpretations of what “black clothing” means in this context. But it is clear that it means a type of anonymous and casual clothing that will not reflect upon the Torah community and Judaism generally. One cannot wear the garments of “honor and glory” and behave in a fashion that contradicts those values. Wearing garments is something that should never be taken lightly. For with the garments come the responsibilities and challenges as well.
* Rabbi Wein writes: …from the time of Moshe onwards, Jews attempted to dress distinctively, albeit always within the confines and influences of the surrounding general population.
“Jewish clothing” was always meant to be modest, neat and clean. It was to be an “honor and glory” to the wearer and the Jewish society. The Talmud speaks very strongly against Torah scholars who are somehow slovenly in the appearance of their clothing. Poverty was never allowed to be an excuse for stains or dirt on one’s garments.
* I notice that the way Reform and Conservative Jews dress, including their clergy, is indistinguishable from the goyim. I’ve seen LA’s most important Conservative rabbis walk around Pico-Robertson in jeans.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “…the tzitz became a statement of the Jewish dedication to the service of God and man and the pursuit of holiness in human life. But again, a tzitz worn by a person who is otherwise improperly clothed is of little value.” I guess when I go around in shorts or a mankini or sweats with my tzitzit out, what the heck am I thinking?
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Clothes that are provocative, that are vulgar and insulting to others, that are physically immodest and meant to attract anti-social response, are all frowned upon by Jewish tradition.” That’s why I didn’t want the t-shirt that read, “Stay in yeshiva and stay off the crack.”
“You should make up testimonials for your Alexander site,” said a friend over lunch.
“I have five real testimonials up there already,” I said. “Including one from you about how my Alexander lessons helped you overcome E.D. I put your name, address, phone number on it. I hope that’s ok.”
“Alexander helps with ED?” he asked.
“It helps with everything,” I said. “I praise you for your courage. Not many young men would be willing to go public with their ED problems. You’re an inspiration to us all.”
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
