Going concave

Here are two stories of #aging. The first of a good friend, who, catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror, pronounced herself “concave.” She was, in my words, not hers, pulled inwardly centripetally, toward her solar plexus, that sun of our selves that sits just below the diaphragm at rest, where thorax meets abdomen. It serves us so handsomely in our vigor and so poorly when we begin our descent into concavity. Resist!

The second story is a new one, a lady in her late sixties, who traveled a couple hundred miles for a lesson. Why? To get help in resisting the effects of “aging, that seemingly inevitable descent into concavity, in her words, her “go(ing) gently into that good night.” She was extraordinarily receptive and in an email today, already experiencing the benefits of a little upward mobility. She’s coming back. That’s what we do in Alexander Technique, convert the centripetal and concave into the centrifugal and expansive, actively thinking together about possibilities counter to habit. That sun of our selves can be enlivened at any age. The Alexander Technique is for every body.