You Don’t Have to Be Still to Listen

A gentle Alexander Technique-inspired exploration for highly sensitive former dancers who tend to disappear into stillness while listening. Learn to stay embodied through touch, movement, and broader attention.

Using Alexander Technique principles, we explore a spacious way of listening, one that includes your body instead of losing it. Nothing here needs to be fixed. Nothing needs to be forced. Your body gets to be part of the moment.

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 I wanted to offer you an exploration that is related to something that might be happening right now in your body as you listen or watch this video. And that is what happens with your body when you are listening, when you are paying attention. For many of us, as we are paying attention, as we listen, as we watch something, our body somewhat fades into the background and tends to just take on whatever habitual shape, whatever habitual posture, static position that you're used to. So, right now as you're watching this, I'd like you to check in with your body. You can still be paying attention to this video. You could bring a hand to your neck. All right. There's a neck here. A hand to your head. Oh, yes, there's a head.

And if some movement comes out of that, let it come out. It doesn't have to. This work is not about what you have to do.

Some shoulders.

My breath came in when I contacted my shoulders.

Belly.

Legs.

You can see when I start to contact that a little movement comes out. It's not movement that we might have had in the classroom, in the dance classroom, the dance studio.

It's just movement that feels good that can come out when your body is part of what you're doing.

So many of us when we were younger, we were listening, you know, outside of even the dance studio, just in a classroom, maybe not even there. Other places, too. Listening looked a certain way. Someone could tell you were paying attention because of the way you looked, which was often very still, eyes locked on, no movement, very little or very little movement, and that showed you were a good student, that you were paying attention. And if we do that for many years, that can get built in our system without us really even realizing it. And then we can fall back on that when we start paying attention again.

So watch as you're listening, if you're putting so much attention on what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what I'm saying. If you're putting so much attention on those things that your body starts to disappear

can notice if it falls back into this uh pattern. It's often not terrible. If it were terrible, you would probably wake up to it and realize that you were in this awful position that just felt horrible. That usually happens. Like, oh my goodness. Ah, I'm just feel my neck feels so horrible. We don't want to wait till that point. We don't want to disembbody ourselves to pay attention. So this is a different way of paying attention.

And many of us are quite tactile. So that's why I'm inviting you to actually make contact with your body. touch these different areas. The touch is not specific in any way. You're not trying to fix anything with your touch. You're not jamming into muscles or trying to work them out. The touch is a reminder that your body is here, that it gets to be part of you and part of the activity of paying attention, of listening.

You can check in again now. Head,

chest,

breath,

and give permission for the body to move

to connect with whatever movement. Ah, it's just nice in the moment. It's not about being productive.

It's about being you.

I invite you to explore this idea as you watch some of my other videos or as you watch any other video or as you're reading, you're looking at your phone.

See what happens when you let your body start to be part of it and you let movement start to be part of it. It might feel strange at first. It might feel like it detracts from your listening skills, from your attention. And maybe it does. But you're allowing something to shift. You're building a new experience. And you'll find that you don't have to pay attention in this way. It can be more broad.

Play around with it. As always, if you need a little help, that's what I'm here for. Till we meet again, take care.