Moving at the Speed of Practice

Plus, George Harrison loosening up.

In my Alexander Technique training course, we had a term for (usually) newer trainees who tried so hard to move ‘correctly’ (i.e. without slumping) that they sat down and stood up like an un-oiled Tin Man. We jokingly called them, “Alex-androids.”

I went through this stage. I remember awkwardly squatting at the water cooler as if a panel of Olympic judges were behind me. I felt a mix of genuine passion and hopefulness for the Technique; I couldn’t believe how much it was changing my body. But I also had an ever-present fear of doing it wrong, being caught doing it wrong.

Many mindfulness practitioners enter a stage where they are trying so hard to hold onto an experience, or not let difficult feelings intrude on their buzz, that they move super slow and act super calm. There is a difference between inhabiting the present moment and trying to control it.

I can certainly understand the temptation to control, to try very hard to get an immediate outcome. Once you get a taste of transformation from the hands of an AT teacher or in a sublime meditation session, it’s easy to get serious and try to make it happen (again).

I don’t do much Alex-androiding anymore, but I do miss the earnestness of the person who wanted to practice All. The. Time. I want to keep practicing as much as I did back then, but without the pressure that I once felt.

That’s why one of my intentions for 2022 is to move at the speed of practice. At about 5:45 PM on a school night, my body might be moving pretty fast. But the intention is to not move faster that I can synchronize mind and body.

The goal is not to be perfect. Not to feel harmonious all the time. But to simply try and keep my activities within my awareness. So I’m going to notice when my mind has wandered elsewhere and bring it back to whatever I’m actually, directly doing right now.

Practically, this means turning off the radio or podcast if I have too many things going on at once. Or noticing if I’m doing a lot of multi-tasking. It means seeing the activities of daily life under the lamp of mindfulness.

Moving at the speed of practice is also greatly aided – in fact, it’s probably impossible without – having a formal or regular practice, such as a martial art, meditation, or the Alexander Technique. The formal practice always feeds the informal.

Moving at the speed of practice – and no faster or slower – is a good path for me because it acknowledges the demands of life but also acknowledges that we have a choice in how we meet those demands.

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“… Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)…”

(excerpt from) “Song of Myself, 51” by Walt Whitman

I was reminded of this quote while watching the revelatory documentary The Beatles: Get Back.

It’s amazing to think that George Harrison, who wrote “My Sweet Lord,” in 1970, later covered a song, “Got My Mind Set on You,” in which a determined romantic realizes that in order to win his lover:

“… it's gonna take money

A whole lotta spending money

It's gonna take plenty of money

To do it right child.”

To me, Harrison’s irrepressibly upbeat cover of the song shows how much we can evolve over time or just contain multitudes. I like both songs. However, “My Sweet Lord” is a plaintive cry from a spiritual seeker whereas, by the time you get to “Got My Mind Set on You”, George isn’t necessarily a cynic (at least, I don’t think), but he’s also not as concerned with purity or calling upon a god. He’s joyful and entirely in the human realm.

(I used to love watching the music video for “Got My Mind Set on You” when I was a kid. Stick around for the backflip.)

((And this is a goofy star-studded modern music video for “My Sweet Lord.”))