Unwinding Patterns

Recently while sitting outside a cafe, I watched an elderly lady walk to her car. She had a walking stick and when she needed to step down from the kerb, she used one hand to hold tightly to a signpost and the other the stick. Very slowly she negotiated her way from the footpath to the road. A challenging and fraught journey, one which many of us may take for granted.   However, we don’t need to be elderly to hold ourselves tightly. We see it all around us each day. Young and old, walking and moving in ways that do not flow freely, that are constrained and constricted. This may be for many reasons — injury, illness, trauma, pain, fear and loss.   For a number of years when I lived with chronic pain I lived like this. I learnt to distrust my body and myself. I held myself tightly, constantly fearing pain that seemed to grow and move around my body as time went on. I was like a tightly coiled spring unable, for a long time, to trust that it could be possible for things to get be...

"We need to  engage  with this massive problem in a new way, give people the resources to  recover  and find the best methods to  prevent  persisting pain" Professor Lorimer Moseley, University of South Australia One in five people in Australia live with chronic pain, which can be debilitating and for many disempowering. Of these Pain Australia says Referrals to pain specialists occur in less than 15% of GP consultations where pain is managed, medications are used in close to 70% of GP consultations. One in 100 will receive multidisciplinary care. Pain Australia also reports that best practice does not support long-term use of medication for chronic pain management. So where does that leave many long-term sufferers? What of those who have already had surgery and/or use medication and continue to experience long-term pain? Or indeed, those like myself, who are told after many months of increasing pain, that there was no longer any tissue dama...

Lao Tzu said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It is often only with hindsight that we can see how many steps we have taken to achieve a new way of being. Wellbeing can come quietly each time we make a new decision; each time we become aware of and curious about our thoughts, sensations, pain patterns and emotions. Over time we may come to see that who we are is not who we were or thought ourselves to be. Life can become richer. A while ago, I had a wonderful opportunity to reflect on my own journey to a richer and fuller life. On a very wet Melbourne morning I set out on a walk from Belgrave in Melbourne’s east to my home, some twelve kilometres away. I enjoyed the beauty of the bush in the rain and seeing parts of the local area I had not seen before.   Ten years ago, this would not have been possible. Due to chronic pain, intense anxiety, and depression I believed I would never do that. At that time to walk for ten minutes was a feat. I remember sitti...

At Alexander Technique workshops it is common that participants living with chronic pain speak about messages they have received from relatives or teachers. These messages have become part of who they are, and continue to exert an ever-present influence on how they hold and experience themselves. They speak of old messages, about sitting up ‘straight’,   pulling back shoulders, and to stop slouching.   As parents and adults we often wish the best for our children and for those for whom we are responsible. While these messages are well-intentioned they can have long-lasting and sometimes, negative consequences. I myself remember being told as a young child, “You can’t sing”; I believed it and it deterred me from singing for a long time. (In recent years I have joined a choir.) As my colleagues and I gently work with these participants, helping them to experience themselves in more balanced and easier ways, releasing excess effort, faces soften and pain decreases....

Many years ago I worked with a wonderful man who inspired me and many others. At his retirement he said something which at the time puzzled me. He went through his working history and as the story unfolded, he kept saying that each job was “the best job he had ever had”. I kept waiting for him to talk about the job which presented him with problems and disappointment. This never came, for each job he was deeply grateful and found many things to be grateful for. It is only in recent years that I have come to understand how this can be so. It was an alien concept in my experience to that point and for a while to come. It was not that I did not have great experiences and work with lovely people but rather that I had learnt at a young age to focus on the difficulties, the problems, the people who “made life difficult or intimidating”. I have come to see that it is the way that we understand ‘our world’ that creates harmony or disharmony with life around us; that it is our habi...

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Jellaludin Rumi, (translation by Coleman Barks) For many years this poem has provided insight and inspiration to me. It reminds me daily of the journey of acceptance. It also points clearly to the unseen potential in our responses which can open the way for sensing or seeing something new and sometimes, unexpected. Some years ago a wise friend opened my eyes to this potential. During a period when I was quietly (and som...

In order to live fully we may need to look deeply and respectfully at our own suffering and the suffering of others. In the depth of wounds we have survived is the strength we need to live. The wisdom our wounds can offer us is a place of refuge. Finding this is not for the faint of heart. But then, neither is life. [1] Rachel Naomi Remen My journey to a greater sense of wellbeing was made possible by compassion.  In my search for a way to understand and find a solution to my physical and emotional pain ( read here for more about my journey ), I learnt that the first step was to begin to meet myself in a more compassionate way. Through mindfulness meditation and the Alexander Technique I learnt to see my habitual responses to life and over time develop a more compassionate response which allowed me to move towards healing. I was shown the way by one person in particular, a Feldenkrais practitioner, who met me at the depths of my pain, some years ago. She listened to my...