Change Your Intention, Change How You Move

Can changing your intention change the way you move? What happens when your whole body becomes part of what you're doing?

In this gentle Alexander Technique exploration, we'll look at how your intention affects tension, effort, and movement in everyday life.

If you're a former dancer, you may be very familiar with the intention to get the choreography done, get the movement right, or get to the end of the phrase. Those habits continue into everyday movement. We'll experiment with simple movement and explore what happens when you shift your intention from accomplishing the task to including your whole body in the activity. This practice is especially useful for highly sensitive former dancers who want to move with more ease, awareness, and choice without adding another complicated routine to their day.

If you’d like to go deeper, I offer free consultations in which we can discuss what you need and how to apply this work to your body and your movement.

A transcript of the video is below if you’d prefer to read rather than watch and listen.

Hello, friend.

Today we're going to explore how your intention affects the level of tension in your body in your daily life and specifically in whatever activity you're doing. And we're going to play with how to actually shift that and how that affects you.

So for most of us our intention usually when we are performing an activity, when you are dancing, when you are going through your life, when you're picking up a glass, when you're doing the dishes, when you're opening a door, brushing your teeth, the intention is to do the activity and get it done.

And that's fine. It's just not always useful because if I asked you to get something done and I didn't give you any more instructions on how I wanted it done specifically, you would just have to do it in whatever way made sense to you based on your past experiences.

And maybe that would work, but maybe it wouldn't work or maybe it wouldn't work so well.

And that's what happens in our bodies as well.

So, especially for highly sensitive people or dancers or were dancers. Many times our intention that we learned was to get the choreography done, learn the choreography, do the dance. And there's a lot of information coming in.

So we just do it as best we can and that gets built into your body. And so if the intention remains to get something done, your body will just do it based on its past experiences. whether or not that actually works well or feels good kind of just keeps going that way.

So, we can refine the intention and actually change the way you use your body and use it better with less effort and less tension.

Doesn't that sound nice?

So, let's play around a little bit.

Let's take raising the an arm doing a little port de bras. So if I ask you to raise an arm, well the intention is raise an arm. Clear enough?

If you just do it, your body will do it in whatever way you've developed over the years. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

But let's refine the intention.

So, if I ask you to raise an arm, I'd like you to pause and wait a minute because that initial intention is too broad.

First, I'd like you to come back and remember you have a body, you have a head,

you have a spine,

you're sitting or standing.

Now let's refine the intention to say I'd like to raise an arm knowing that I have a whole body and that I'm sitting.

When we move, when we use our body to perform different actions, even just to raise an arm, it tends to work better. The activity tends to go better, needs less effort, less tension when you allow your whole body to be part of the activity.

That may seem obvious, but in practice, it's not.

So, if I ask you to raise an arm, pause a moment. First, I'd like you to remember you have a body. I'm talking about your arm. So, you come back. Remember, you have a whole body and you are sitting or standing. And then the intention becomes to raise an arm knowing you have a whole body and to experience that as your arm rises

and as your arm lowers. The intention has become a little clearer and a little greater than simply on raising the arm and getting it done. Let's experiment with that again. Going to ask you to raise an arm and you pause. Wait just a moment. Remember, you have a whole body. You have a head. It's very easy to forget you have a head. You have a spine.

You're sitting or standing.

And you'd like to let your head, spine, and your sitting, your whole body be a part of the activity as you raise an arm

and as you lower it.

You may be wanting to know more about what that means or what it will be like. What does that mean to let my whole body be part of it? Well, it might not make sense at first. If you're not sure what that means or what that will feel like, what the experience will be, yeah, that's exactly where you need to be. That means there's a little space where something you're not used to can come into play. That means you're letting go of what you're used to. Something new can appear. That's what we want. So that we're not just doing things the way we we are used to doing them. So, I'd like you to do today is choose an activity, picking up a glass, taking a drink of water, picking up a leg, opening a door, whatever resonates with you, that's the most important. And then see what your intention is in the activity. I can almost guarantee the intention will be the unconscious intention will be to get it done. And I'd like you to stop and shift the intention by first bringing attention to your whole body

and shifting the intention to allowing yourself to have a whole body in order to do that activity. And notice how it changes you. How it changes the way you move, how it changes the level of tension you use. Notice what happens.

And if you need a little help with that, that is what I'm here for. Please reach out if you'd like to go a little deeper, explore this personally for you. And if you enjoyed this video, please let the mysterious algorithm know by commenting, liking, subscribing. And until we meet again, take care.