Cincinnati Prize-winning Violinist and Life and Artistry Coach for musicians Jennifer Roig-Francolí shares her “The Art of Freedom® Method” and its roots in The Alexander Technique. Jennifer uses her method to help musicians feel better and play better by overcoming physical and mindset hurdles getting in their way. The conversation includes Jennifer’s hands-off process to integrate the mind and body with non-doing. The human organism is a two-way system of mind and body. When we choose to think differently, we can change lifetime habits for greater physical ease and happiness. As humans, we can’t always trust our feelings due to faulty sensory appreciation. Still, by learning how to be consciously curious, we can begin to identify the root causes of blocked energy and creativity and effect positive change in our lives and artistry.
Access the Primal Alexander™ Awareness Etude called TheCyCle™ mentioned in this podcast by visiting: https://youtu.be/aUEKvfPAXS4
To learn more about Jennifer’s services, visit www.artoffreedom.me or join her free Facebook group for musicians: https://www.facebook.com/groups/J30DPC/
Cincinnati Prize-winning Violinist and Life and Artistry Coach for musicians Jennifer Roig-Francolí shares her “The Art of Freedom® Method” and its roots in The Alexander Technique. Jennifer uses her method to help musicians feel better and play better by overcoming physical and mindset hurdles getting in their way. The conversation includes Jennifer’s hands-off process to integrate the mind and body with non-doing. The human organism is a two-way system of mind and body. When we choose to think differently, we can change lifetime habits for greater physical ease and happiness. As humans, we can’t always trust our feelings due to faulty sensory appreciation. Still, by learning how to be consciously curious, we can begin to identify the root causes of blocked energy and creativity and effect positive change in our lives and artistry.
Access the Primal Alexander™ Awareness Etude called TheCyCle™ mentioned in this podcast by visiting: https://youtu.be/aUEKvfPAXS4
To learn more about Jennifer’s services, visit www.artoffreedom.me or join her free Facebook group for musicians: https://www.facebook.com/groups/J30DPC/
Welcome to the spiritual artists podcast. This is Chris Miller. I invite you to join me as I interview artists from a variety of disciplines. We'll share powerful stories and lessons learned while making their art.
Speaker 2:Good morning. This is the spiritual artist podcast, and this is Chris Miller. Your host. I am really excited for today's interview, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about the history behind this, uh, podcast series. Um, I wrote a book called the spiritual artist and it was about my process of creativity. How, how do I connect with a greater power and be in that wonderful state of flow? How do I create an environment and an atmosphere where I'm connected and inspired? And I hear those divine instinctive voices in my head telling me what to do as I paint. But as I progressed, I realized that this skill actually is valid for any creator, not just a painter. It goes all across the board. And when I say creator, I mean, anybody that consciously connects and creates, and that could be building a home that could be raising children. And yes, of course, that can be painting. So as my journey has progressed, I've worked with the mind and how the mind affects the body. And so my first book is really about that. How does my mind, how can I use my mind to get myself consciously connected in the right place? Well, if you don't know this about me, I do yoga and I've done yoga for about six years. Had a wonderful interview last year with Lisa coil, a yoga instructor in Dallas, and she talked about how the body can affect the mind. It was a kind of a twist for me. So you mean your physicality can actually shift and change how you think or how you feel. So I'm so excited today. I have a guest artist here that has, has really enlightened me. She shared a wonderful book with me. It's really about that. How does my mind, how can I use my mind to get myself consciously connected in the right place, Jennifer? Good morning. How are you? Hey, it's so nice to be here, Chris. So yeah, I'm Jennifer rod, frankly. Good. I'm glad you clarified your name. Cause that's, it's, it's really, it's very special for me to be here talking about this specific topic, you know, being a spiritual artist. And what does that mean? It's not something I usually talk about that much, that openly, because spirituality can be such an internal, private, personal, intimate thing, but I really have been enjoying your book and the topic is there's nothing more important to me in my life. So it's exciting to me here. Thanks. That's great. I, I, I am excited to have you here. And like I said, um, a couple of weeks ago, I checked in and, and you recommended this book by, uh, F M Alexander on the Alexander technique and it's called the, of the self. And, and from what reading your bio, I think you have incorporated some of this into your work. Um, first I want to tell you, I love that, that title they use of the self. How do we use ourself? So could you explain it a little bit or share what you
Speaker 3:Sure? Well, actually I'm a certified Alexander technique teacher and I use the Alexander technique as my way to teach the people that I work with. I coached musicians specifically and, um, I do it hands-free, which is a little unusual Alexander technique is usually known as a mind body discipline that helps you do whatever you want to do with more freedom and more ease and more joy. But it's traditionally taught hands on, even though Alexander, who was born in 1869, discovered all these things for himself. He was an actor who had a hoarseness when he was on stage. And that was a problem for him as an actor. It wasn't going to be able to have his career. Um, doctors couldn't help him. Speech therapists didn't see anything wrong with his vocal mechanisms. And so he figured out he decided he was going to figure out for himself what the problem was, what was causing his hoarseness. And so he observed himself in mirrors, which was very unusual at that time. People didn't have full length mirrors and he experimented to discover what he was doing with his thinking. And therefore also with his body, what was he doing to himself that was causing him to get in the way of his artistic expression using his voice. And so he discovered all these incredible things about how we use ourselves. And what's meant by that is, you know, how do you use your mind, your body, your, your emotions, how do you use the organism of being a human being in this world? That's what he means by that. And that's endlessly fascinating to me and I help musicians, you know, figure out what they're doing to get in their own way and how to stop.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I think that's amazing and it's, uh, you're right. I watched some videos online on YouTube and I saw people doing physical adjustments to two performers and I thought, well, how does she do this online? You know, uh,
Speaker 3:Doing it online actually since 2013. And it way back then, there were literally a handful of people in the world who were experimenting with online teaching. And it was, we were kind of like the black sheep in the Alexander world because it was just, so it was the next evolution. And, you know, when people do things that are new and different often there's a backlash. So there was a pretty big backlash against the few of us doing that, even though what we were doing then and what we're doing now, what I do is going back to the origins of the Alexander technique, because Alexander did not have a teacher. He didn't have a teacher putting hands on him to help him. He had to figure it all out for himself. And he was able to cure his physical problems. QR has performance issues, 100% by using his thinking. So he was able to realize how his thinking was causing the problems in his, his body. And he was, he figured out how he needed to think differently in order to get different results. So the hands on and the, you know, more traditional way of teaching Alexander technique didn't come until much later. Most of the teaching he did or all of the teaching, rather that he did in the beginning and decades, or I don't know how long exactly it was, but it was many years. He didn't use his hands on his students. Um, it wasn't until much later when that was introduced, it just made it easier to get the point across when he was able to put his hands on to show somebody. So it, because it was easier. Um, and it feels really good. So it became really popular to use the hands on, but you know, really the hands free, the hands free hands off way of learning and practicing. The Alexander technique is more true to the source, the original,
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's funny. I, I always find this in any, in any discipline. It's very interesting. People want to freeze it. They want to freeze it in time. This is how it works. And then 50 years later, they don't want to move away from it. And I think that's a human insecurity for us, but I think the creative process, you know, I talk about this in the book, but the creative part we're always evolving and, and a technique should always evolve. You know, that leading edge, we're on the leading edge of spirituality. We're always changing. So I love the fact, um, when you talk about touching, it reminded me of being in a yoga class where my instructor would come by and adjust to me, you know, I'm doing downward dog and she addressed my back with a gentle push of the hand. And so, um, now did you, did you come up with, did you look into this because you played violin? What led you to this technique?
Speaker 3:That's an interesting question because actually most musicians have heard of it. People in the arts world world have heard of Alexander technique. Um, and I had tried it when I was back at Indiana university doing my music performance degree. Um, but I didn't find it interesting in the least at that time because I had a teacher and I don't even remember who she was. Um, I went for a free lesson and I really did not like it. Um, I don't, I don't even know if she was a real Alexander teacher, honestly, but I said, Oh, no, I don't like this. This is not for me. And it wasn't until than a decade later where I came across it again. And my second try, I also, it didn't work for me. And third time around, I had neck pain and nothing was helping. I went to the doctor, regular physician care, didn't help. I went to the chiropractor that didn't help. It's like I tried everything massage, just like nothing got rid of this neck pain for me. And I had a dear friend who insisted, she said, Jennifer, you just have to try this thing again. The Alexander technique is amazing. I know you would love it. And I said, Oh no, I don't like that stuff. It's stupid. So she insisted, thank God because I found my teacher, you know, I'm a violinist. And as a musician, you know, musicians know you don't just go to any violin teacher. You don't just go to any doctor you just, but it's the same with the Alexander technique and any technique you want to learn from somebody, you have to find the teacher that clicks for you. There has to be some kind of a chemistry there where you're going to trust the teacher. And also you has to be a good teacher. So I found my teacher and within the first couple lessons, my neck pain had completely disappeared. And I kept taking lessons because all of me started feeling just incredible. And I couldn't believe how much energy I was having and how I was becoming happier. And I remember being in the kitchen and reaching up to a cupboard to open it up and just marveling at how easily my arm was moving through space. And I just was completely taken by what this, what was going on, but I didn't understand it. So I went to the library and got all of Alexander's books and read them all. And I thought, I need to understand this. I understood the books, but it didn't make sense when I went to my lessons. So then I ended up doing a three year teacher training to get certified in teaching it, even though I never wanted to teach it. I just wanted to figure out what was going on. Well, let me, yeah.
Speaker 2:If this, if this isn't too personal, what, how did you walk through that? Cause you know, I've read the book and I should tell you that in a couple of weeks, I'm actually teaching a class on habits and how, how do we, how do we stop a habit? Which is why I find this so interesting because he talks, he talks about a process of when, because habits are sort of automatic. We are, we are trained into our habitual use through, through our birth, through how we're raised or our environment when we're very young. I, I, that's how I read it very much. So, so you have these neck pains. How did, what did she do? I mean, how did she, or he, how did they work? How did he walk you through this process?
Speaker 3:Hmm. So the way that the Alexander technique is taught, whether it's hands-on or hands-off, we, there are certain universal principles that we teach to. And one of those principles is that the mind and the body cannot be separated. We call it mind, body unity and love it. And then another principle is a little more elusive. Uh, we call it non-doing. Now this is can get really confusing here, but I'm going to do my best to try to explain non-doing no, I'm excited. I really look ahead. So we are used to doing things in the world and it's like, you want to move your arm, you lift it up and you do it. You want to go for a walk, you go do it. You want to make a million dollars to try to do it and hopefully do it. Um, but our whole culture is oriented about making things happen and trying to make them happen and working hard to make them happen. The problem is that the way like, and you mentioned habit, the habitual way that we go about doing things is typically using more effort than necessary, more tension in the body. And we have like overall excess tension and we're done. We don't even realize it because it feels normal. So when you go to an Alexander teacher and I'll just speak, you know, you asked about what my teacher did, but I'll just, it's probably easier for me to tell you what I would do. If somebody were coming to me of how I would do this is I help my student to start to really check in with themselves. And it's like, if anybody, you know, whoever's listening here, you know, to this podcast, you can even do this for yourself right now. And Chris, as you're sitting there, you can even just like check in with yourself and ask yourself, what am I noticing about my body right now? And nine times out of 10, when people really stop to do that, they start to notice a little twinge ages, you know, a little pains. Maybe the neck is a little sore, some back pain or shoulder pain, nine times out of 10, there's going to be some experience that's sort of unpleasant or uncomfortable. And then through a process, I help my student discern between parts of the body that have some relative discomfort or tension and other parts that have relatively less tension or more ease. And when you can discern between those two different things in your body, that you get to choose where to put your attention and what you focus on. You get more of, if you focus on discomfort, things that aren't working, things that are painful or hurting, you will perpetuate that and get more of that experience in your life. Whereas the opposite is also true, but people don't think of it because it's not in our habit. So if you can shift to getting curious, curiosity is a key here. If you can get curious about asking yourself, well, where in my body do I noticed, I have noticed just a little bit of easing happening. And then, you know, I teach my students, you know, very, very clear set of what we call awareness etudes that come from a primal Alexander, which is a new way of hands-free teaching that I've been studying for more than five years created by me on Miralis. So it, you talked about evolution of a technique. This is the newest evolution of that, where we have these awareness etudes, so people can practice how to do this themselves. So they don't, they're not dependent on me as a teacher. They can do it.
Speaker 2:It's, you know, w when you talk about that, it reminds me of where I first started noticing my body. Um, and it was in yoga because we would do yen where you hold a pose. And, and I noticed it didn't happen. I noticed how blind I was, honestly, when I first started doing yoga, I was, well, I was blind to my body. And so I started noticing how I tend to punch my hand, you know, like, like I'll be sitting there talking to someone I'll look down and go, you're clenching your hands, where you feel, you can feel it, like you said. So I started doing what you call body checks. You know, like when I'm doing the pose I go through, is the neck released? Am I holding it tense, you know, in, in, in which is wonderful. Cause if you do it wrong, as you know, you can, you can, you know, I'll do downward dog. And then the next day I'm like, why am I having back or neck pains? Because I didn't do it. Right. Right. And so I love what you talk about that, um, checking through those parts of your body and doing a little. And, but how, how, what do you mean by like going into what feels right? That's is something new to me like, okay. So right now my feet feel very relaxed. How, how do I do I just focus on that relaxation?
Speaker 3:Right. Well, so there's a whole sequence. Um, and actually I've put all of my experience as a musician and as an Alexander technique into a broader context. And I call my personal work, the art of freedom method for conscious living and masterful artistry. And so I teach a sequence, you know, very graduated sequence. Um, that starts with what I just shared with you just doing those check-ins check-ins. But actually most of us are, like he said, we start out not aware of our bodies kind of oblivious as to what we're actually doing. Right. Our bodies and our thoughts. And then we start to pay attention and then we're surprised, wow, I didn't know. There was all this tension in my body now, what do I do? And then you start to notice more ease in your body if you have this system of working with yourself. But then actually what we really want is to learn how to bring ourselves up and free ourselves from being stuck in the body. There is like a transcending of the body that happens without excluding the body. And this is actually for me personally, a very spiritual process. Although the Alexander technique is not a spiritual method, but it's a support for my spirituality in anybody who wants to think of it that way, because it supports you to do whatever you want to do better. Right? So when I think of spirituality, I think of the inclusion of everything and how everything is connected and integrated and whole. And so when you think of the body, mind, emotions, spirit, the more we, the less we can separate those aspects, the better. And yet we tend to separate, we're thinking of activities as mental activities. Like maybe what we're doing right now is mental, but now it's also physical. And, and so, but then we think of physical activities like playing sports and we think, well, that's not mental. So we split things up. And then also, and I, I love yoga. I've done a lot of it over my, my life. Many, many years of yoga is I know what you're talking about, but the habit is to go down with our awareness into the body. And there's nothing wrong with that, that, but when your awareness goes down into your body, you're no longer fully present up here in, you know, to get specific the prefrontal cortex, which is the controlling area of the brain, where you make decisions and choices, um, consciously it's the conscious decision-making control center up there. So if your awareness is down in your feet or in your back, you're not fully present to being able to make changes consciously. So what we're learning, and I know this gets kind of complicated, but I want you to try best to simplify it. You're following it really well. It's like the organism is a two way system. Like you have the, you have a brain they're in your head, it's a receptor. So let's say you right now, take your hand and tap on your forearm. If you do that right now, actually, why don't you just go ahead and do it right now? Do you feel that yes. Did you have to try to feel that? No. No. Because your system works, it's designed to, whenever you need information about your feeling now, any kind of, any, one of your senses, it's designed to send information up to your brain and your brain is the receiver of that information. So you don't have to go down to your body to feel anything. You will feel everything that you need to feel just by staying up here in the stratosphere of your brain or even higher. And so, and when you're up there, I think of it as the throne room. It's like, I'm the queen of me. You are the King of you, right? If you can be up here in the throne room, you can receive information from your Mia. You're your minions down there, your ministers, your feet, your hands send up information, right? And then you get to make decisions. If you think, Oh, my my foot is tight or I don't like that tension or that pain or whatever, you can choose to think differently and send different directions up from your brain to your body. But you don't have to go down into your body to make things happen.
Speaker 2:Hmm. So it's in a way it's about being consciously aware a hundred percent about that, of your body. Yeah. Of yourself up here. I love that word. They use of the self, which I, which I really like. So, um, you know, it, you know, when I, in my book on talk about painting, I won. That was a big step for me is to realizing how your thoughts control, what you paint. Um, so I like that you're saying it's a two way street. So you said you go outside above your, there was something earlier you said, I want to follow up on. You said, you go to the training is to be with that, not in your body, but above
Speaker 3:You want to be fully in your whole self. And we are also energetic beings. Yes. And I think that's even, you know, scientifically proven now. And so it's not so obvious where you start and you end, it's not just, we don't end just at the external layer of the skin. There is. I mean, you even put your hand above a person's body, you can feel the heat emanating. And so there is a presence that we have that is not just physical. And if you can also include that awareness, there is, there's just more to who we are then meets the literal eye. And there is some space above the head and around the body. And if you, I mean, this is all the way I teach is by helping my students experiment. They don't have to take my word for anything. I give them experience experiments to try out what happens if you think this way, what results do you get? Do you like it? Great. Keep doing it. Does it give you pain while you might not like the pain? So you might want to think differently. And so usually we're stuck thinking we are in this physical body and that's what you see, what is what you get. And that's it. But I don't that I, I believe there's much more to us than the physical body and the neurons and the electrodes and the electric circuit chemistry. And there's more to us than that. And it's not, that's beyond the physical,
Speaker 2:Right. Well, well, there's a lot of places to go with this conversation. Um, and so I wanna, I, I, I love the parts since it's, for me, it's applicable to habit habits, you know? Um, and I'm going to ask you a little bit about FM Alexander's technique and then how you've evolved it. Um, he says that when, okay, I'm going to give you a real life scenario. So I started, I read the book, I loved it and told you, I highlighted it with my yellow highlighter
Speaker 3:Relevant. You did that. It's great.
Speaker 2:I just, I love it. And I've been talking to a friend of mine about it, and, but I've realized, okay, so we have these natural habits that I think are, this is how I've translated it. We have habits that are born into us, through our family heritage. Well, in my family, we, we complain, you know, when we get together, we sit around it's that East coast mentality and, Oh my God, can you believe this politician? And look at that and can you, how come they decorated the, cut the broom that way? And what's wrong with that couch? You know, it's this horrible habit. And so I thought, okay, so my bad habit is this complaining. And so I try, I'm trying to apply the Alexander technique, you know, his steps, his steps. And I know that we can't cover this whole process in a one hour podcast, but just in, in a simplified, simplified, simplified form. Um, so I stopped. Okay. What he says is when you were in that place. So I walk in, I, I go into a room and, Oh, look, it's raining, comes to my head. So when I see, when I, like you said, when I'm consciously aware, I hear it. And I stop before I say it. I don't say it, but I feel like I want to say it. You know, and what I love about him is he says, Oh, I have to talk to you about this. He says that we're comfortable with things because they are what we were raised with. So for me, I'm very comfortable complaining. It's, it's normal for me. It is what I consider when I consider that I'm in tune and I'm in my I'm being Chris. That's the guy that goes around and makes funny jokes and criticizes everything. That's right. Yeah. But that's not who I want to be. I don't, I don't want to be that. I want to be someone that goes and raises the light and sees, see spirit and God in everything around me. I don't want to walk up and critique your blouse. I want to be real and genuine. So I, but what I love about, he says, it's the hardest thing about breaking habits is that it still feels right. It feels right to be critical for me. That's right. Because that's all I know. It's all fun.
Speaker 3:You know, you've been that you your whole life. So how could you be different? Right? It's like the drug addict who takes drugs because they feel good when they're doing it feels right. They can logically know they're killing themselves over time possibly quickly, but it feels good. So they do it. And that's what we do. Our habits of self, the habits of being who we are feels normal. And it feels right. And it feels good. So we keep doing it because it's not rational. And those habits are habits are basically neurons that fire and wire together. So many times that it's the go-to response. It's it becomes instinctual. It's like something happens. You're triggered you. Do you go down?
Speaker 2:Trust me, it's very hard. It's so hard just for me to stop because my mind, my mouth is open. That's right before I think, you know, I'm like, look at those curtains.
Speaker 3:And this is a quote from Alexander. He said, quote, you can change the habits of a lifetime in an instant if you use your brains, but nobody wants the discipline input. And so, and I have found with my practice of this over many years is that it's a hundred percent true. You can change the habits, any habits that you have instantly in that moment, what's not so easy. And by the way, this technique, I may not, it may sound complicated, but when I actually sit down and teach somebody, it's the simplest thing in the world, and I can teach like all the principles and the whole thing to somebody in a day, or, you know, less than a day. It's so simple. And it's so easy, but what's not easy is to remember to do it and to commit to doing it and to practice it with discipline. So here let's take your example, which is a perfect example. It's it's so good.
Speaker 2:So do you want to experiment with this for him? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:And anybody listening, if you've got something like this, you could just experiment along with us here. So check in with yourself right now and just get curious about what you notice in your body. And if you notice any, I was like, what, Chris, what do you notice right now when you're sitting there?
Speaker 2:Okay. I feel like my shoulders are tense up around my throat. Um, I'm in a chair. That's not ideal. So I'm, I'm held, I'm slouched over a little bit. So I feel a little tension in my shoulders. Um, my feet do feel relaxed because they're on the bar of the chair. So part of me is relaxed and I love this conversation. So in part of me is a little tense.
Speaker 3:Okay, great. So let's, let's actually pay attention to that part where you notice a little bit of easing happening. So your feet feel relatively comfortable or relaxed. Is there anywhere else in your body that feels relatively comfortable or easy?
Speaker 2:Oh, my hands are doing good right now.
Speaker 3:All right. Is there anywhere else that's easing up a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, it's so funny. As I, as I focus on it, I noticed what you were talking about earlier. As I focused on my feet, I could actually feel a sigh come through my whole body like that release.
Speaker 3:So you're starting to notice easing happening overall, just by getting curious about noticing the ease. Okay. So let's continue a little bit. Where else do you notice a bit of easing?
Speaker 2:Uh, my, my ears, my head, my forehead's feels relaxed.
Speaker 3:Now think about something that's really annoying that you would want to complain about right now.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And what happens to your body when you think about complaining like that? It starts in my shoulders interesting,
Speaker 2:Right. In my shoulders. And it goes to my jaw, my jaw tenses. That's really interesting. Yeah. Which is where I would say it. Right.
Speaker 3:That's right. So the first thing, so what we're doing right now is starting to link up how you think and what happens to your body when you think that way. So go ahead and think some complaining thoughts. Again, just go for it. You don't have to say them out loud, but go all, go all out and complain right now. Notice how it feels in your body.
Speaker 2:I feel moved down to my lower back and in my upper legs, not my calves, but my thighs, like underneath my thighs, there's a lot of tension there.
Speaker 3:So would you say that your overall self is going in the general direction of more or less ease when you complain?
Speaker 2:Lessee's I mean, um, yeah. It's it's it's. Oh, how interesting. Yeah, I hear what you're.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And my next question is, do you like going in that direction?
Speaker 2:No. It doesn't feel, it doesn't feel good. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you said before that complaining feels good, but when you really get curious about it and give yourself the chance, it's like, instead of just saying, Oh, I shouldn't complain. I should be different. What happens if you actually let yourself get? I see, again, my work is called the art of freedom for a reason, because I want you and me and everybody to have the freedom to be who they are. So you're free to complain. I give you total provision. Not that it's mine, but you have the total freedom to complain as much as you want. And when you actually let yourself do it and you're get you get curious about what happens to you when you do that. Mia Morales calls that the primary concern. If you ask yourself what happens to me when I blank, what happens to me when I complained, Oh gosh, I didn't have any idea. My jaw got tight and my back and my shoulders. I don't like that maybe. And so then the more you start to pay attention to that, just through observing and getting curious, without trying to change the habit at all, you actually will be more motivated to choose a different way of thinking.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So this is really so, so you stop and then you just reflect, you just feel yourself, you, you, you, uh, feel your entire self and see if it is truly does it, how it feels
Speaker 3:Curious you, in fact here, what is to know the truth about what's actually happening in the moment.
Speaker 2:So there's several levels to this one is you have to obviously be consciously self-aware enough to, to be willing, to look at your own self.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that didn't even take much anybody when you just like, well, what do you notice in your body? Anybody off the street?
Speaker 2:Oh, I see what I was thinking is the habit. You have to be able to see that it's that trick of how do you, you know, for example, we all know it's someone that's goes from bad relationship to bad relationship to bad. And you're like, well, how do they know when, when they first have to stop and recognize that something's not serving them? Yes. And then they have to do this, which I love. And, and, um, I love how you phrase it, where you put your focus and your consciousness into that part of ease. And it does indeed emanate out.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's all about where you put your attention and what your intention is.
Speaker 2:So let me go back to my yoga analogy, what I've been doing right. And wrong.
Speaker 3:Okay. So let me just stop you right there. Yeah. Okay. Even the division into right and wrong. Maybe not the most helpful,
Speaker 2:Ah, good point. It's a very good point.
Speaker 3:And that would just be something you could experiment with too. It's like, how do you, what happens to you when you think you're doing it wrong?
Speaker 2:Oh, there you go. Because I was going to say that I've been noticing where I'm holding my attention. Like I'll notice when I'm doing yoga, where, um, where my, mostly my neck, I'm very guilty of the neck holding tension in my neck or, and, but ideally recognizing the whole body. So, so if I see the tension in my neck, when I'm doing a downward dog or doing the warrior, uh, to recognize the relaxation in other parts and let it emanate out and in verbally into the neck as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You can just get curious and ask yourself this question. And by the way, the words are really important in the process that I teach. Um, and again, this part of what I do is called primal Alexander. And I always want to give credit where credit is due. Uh, but using the exact words that Mia Morales came up with, and it's always evolving. This is the latest iteration because it works the best right. Specific questions. And we call this constructive thinking. The specific question you want to just get curious about asking yourself is where else do I seem to be easing a bit. And then, so if you're doing your yoga pose and you notice a bit of tightness or something, it's like, Oh, well, that's interesting. It's not that I'm doing it wrong. It's just interesting. Wow. I'm curious about that. And I wonder where in my body do I seem to be easing a bit, so then you get curious and you'll find a little ease somewhere and then ask, where else do I seem to be easing a bit though? So the first thing that I teach my students is something called the cycle. It's a two minute awareness etude created by meal Morales. Um, and I have a video of it on YouTube that anybody can go watch. It's, it's just a free two minutes. It's a 15 minute tutorial that teaches you how to do the cycle, where it's kind of meditative. There's not move much movement at all involved, but it kind of helps you develop that new habit. So to speak of asking this question, where else do I seem to be easing a bit? And I always warn people because we're so prone to go into feeling that people 90, 90% of people will change the words and put feel into there instead of where do I seem to be easing a bit they'll substitute the word feel or feeling. And so I just don't do that.
Speaker 2:Okay. I won't use that word,
Speaker 3:But yeah, you can, you can experiment and see what happens when you ask yourself that question, when you're doing your yoga and also catch yourself, and this is not just you, but everybody out here in this world, we are so good at judging ourselves and being hard on ourselves and putting, separating the good from the bad and the right from the wrong. And it, when we separate things like that, it creates conflict. And when you have conflict, you have more tension. And if you don't want that kind of tension, which down the road leads to pain, physical, and emotional, and all kinds of suffering. If you don't want that, then it might be worth getting curious about how to be more inclusive in how we look at things. And, you know, notice what happens when we judge ourselves, what happens to the ease in us? And do we like that? Usually we don't.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I love it because people ask me why I wrote my book and it was about identifying what I call spiritual principles. And that's the spiritual principle of not, you know, don't judge and yeah. Yeah. And, and so I wrote it in the book and my reasoning being, when someone asks me, why did you write the book? It's like, because I forget, I forget these principles. You know, I sit there and I go, okay, right. I'm supposed to be careful about the words I use. I'm supposed to be careful about. But boy, if I don't forget that, sometimes I say, I call it being in my humanness, I'm having a human moment. And, and, and so I look at that book and, uh, and so all these things you're saying, I'm like, yes, I I've talked about being careful with word choice. I've talked about judgment. And even, even I have a chapter on focus on what's working when you're painting. So I talk about when you're doing an artist, focus on the area, see, I spent my years focusing on the rest of the canvas that wasn't working. This doesn't look good, but if you focus on what's working, I think what you're saying is you feel it in on, or it's an intuitiveness that flows through your whole body and suddenly that relaxed state comes out and I can share it with bigger parts of the canvas in a way.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, and as a musician, I mean, we haven't talked about that at all, but because I, I have like this double life, but it's, it's all right.
Speaker 2:It is all connected, but right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:My artistry is in teaching all the things that we've been talking about, but then my artistry is also, yeah. Maybe even more in how I bring myself to the violin and make music that way. And it's just what you're talking about. It's the same as painting.
Speaker 2:So,
Speaker 3:And for me, it's just absolutely incredible and really miraculous to have the skills that I've picked up through out the Alexander technique, those principles and my own personal spiritual practice of course is a huge part of it, but putting it all together and having those tools and those universal principles and knowing how to apply those practically, when I approached my violin, I've been doing it, I'd say I'm seriously is not the right word, but yeah,
Speaker 2:I've been doing it with
Speaker 3:A lot of interest for the last two years on a regular basis. I mean, I've been a violent as my whole life. I've played in Carnegie hall. Four times we've won international competitions, all that stuff. But,
Speaker 2:But if I had known
Speaker 3:What I know now from the Alexander technique, when I was a teenager or in college for music, it's, it's just unbelievable. What's possible. It's like there are no limits to what's possible dependent except, you know, the only limits are what we can imagine and what we intend and what we want. I think
Speaker 2:So in a lot of that, like you're saying a lot of, it's a start in your mind. I mean, you know, being able to step back and look at the whole process and watching your thoughts, I'm sure the same thing when I'm critical of a painting, your credit, you might be playing and critical. Oh, I hit the wrong note or how am I holding that? The instrument correctly, you know, uh, stepping back from that judgment and that harshness, um, choosing softer language
Speaker 3:Very much, right? I like to think of the, the artist freedom method as a subtraction method where I'm actually learning. And this is, this goes for the Alexander technique, of course, as well. It's like, we're learning how to use the mind to get the mind out of the way, because actually inspiration. It depends how you define the mind. Um, but it, I don't think of inspiration with a capital I as coming from my personal little mind with a lower case, M I would think of inspiration more. If we're going to use the word mind, it would be like universal mind or, uh, spirit was another word that I like to use that it doesn't really matter to me so much. What word is used? I like spirit because most people can identify with that. Um, like the spirit of love where creative spirit artists can identify with that, whether they're religious or not, we all know that there's a, a special something. There's a spark, there's a something special that happens when you allow that creative spirit to come through. And I grew up without religion without any kind of an awareness of spirituality whatsoever. And yet I still knew that there was, I mean, it's even in the classical music literature, you're talking about words. I mean, this in Italian is[inaudible] right. That's a musical term. And so as a kid, I knew, you know, we play it with concert, with spirit conspirator, and I didn't think that was religious or spiritual, but I knew that I needed to play it with spirit. So I think we have that innate ability to connect with inspiration or spirit or love, like with a capital L. And we can use the mind to get to the point where we can connect with that. But then the mind has to get out of the way it like takes a back seat. It's not like we're annihilating the mind. It's always going to be there because we are thinking beings, but we have to know how to master the mind, like master our thoughts. We have to know what we're thinking, and then make conscious choices in every moment that we remember to choose the thoughts that are actually going to help us connect and live the way we want and make the art and be the people that we want to be.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. I, I, um, first I, do you, have you written a book about your method? Not yet. I hear it. It's coming. It's coming. I have a,
Speaker 3:My recordings right now.
Speaker 2:I will tell you that my mind, my greater mind just told me she's got a book coming. I hear a book coming, but you got it. You have it in you. I can hear it. And I love it. I love it. And, um, if you just same thing, when you sit in front of the typewriter or computer, just, just snip in and pretend you're talking to someone and you have a book because it's just incredible. Um, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 3:Well, again, it's ideas. There's nothing new under the sun. It's not like I made any of it up. It's all, you know, things that I've learned from various disciplines. And, you know, the only thing that I'm doing is kind of synthesizing these things into my own way of teaching musicians and helping myself as a musician, the art of freedom method, but Alexander was genius for sure. And those units, but he didn't invent anything either. He discovered universal principles and put them into a system. And, yeah, it's wonderful that we have that because we don't have to do all that. Um, we don't have to find it all out for ourselves by standing in front of full length mirrors for years, like
Speaker 2:And said, I thought about that after I read this, I thought maybe I should put mirrors in my painting studio. You know, wouldn't that be interesting just to watch why my body painting,
Speaker 3:But you know what we have video, which is even better because you can go back in time and really see from the outside what's going on.
Speaker 2:It would be an interesting exercise in my next book. Absolutely students do this. Oh, do they? Well, how fascinating they don't have to,
Speaker 3:Nobody has to do anything. Do they
Speaker 2:Actually record themselves? Well, which I, and see, you know, what's funny though, you, you can almost understand that with an instrument. And yet I don't know of any painters that do that, you know,
Speaker 3:Very interesting for you to do that.
Speaker 2:And, and even you think about someone in a pottery wheel, they, you know, what a wonderful teaching tool to watch how their body is holding their hands around that clay. Exactly. Too much tension, too much. Right?
Speaker 3:One of the major discoveries that Alexander made was by watching himself in the mirror, he, after a lot of trial and error over a long time, he finally that he was interfering with the natural design of his movements by, by increased tension between his head and neck. And that's kind of a key place. The neck, it's not the only place because tension is overall. You can't just separate a separate one part of the body, but he discovered that he was introducing a lot of tension into that neck area. But then he thought, well, I just have to stop doing that. And then he felt like he wasn't doing it anymore, but then he could see in the mirror that he was still doing it. And then it got really complicated. Then he had to do a lot more work on himself and experimenting until he finally realized he couldn't trust his sense of feeling. And that's one of the principles of the technique also called faulty sensory appreciation where you think you're doing something, because it feels one way kind of back to what you said before the habit feels right. And so you don't think there's anything wrong with it. You can go around with your left shoulder, three inches higher than the right shoulder and think that everything's normal. And I've seen this. People will look at themselves in the mirror and not notice that there's anything wrong because that's just what they see every day. So then it gets really tricky and why it's really helpful to have an outside more objective source, at least in the beginning, until you learn how to see what needs to be seen. And that's where the teacher comes in to give more objective feedback and a method for how to see what to look for and how to experiment with your thinking.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you just said that again. Cause I think it it's worthy of reviewing because as I was looking at it as the habit of criticizing, um, what, let me ask you something about that publican. Cause he he's, he's wonderfully, um, talented, but his writing is very hard.
Speaker 3:That's actually the easier book you wrote in the Victorian era. And there are paragraphs that are just hundreds of words long. And it's just one sentence.
Speaker 2:I know. I seriously, I like to go through and paint out right now. I like to go pick a highlight now verb, just give me the crux here. But, um, but one of the things I was going to ask you as that when you, cause he said he did have a hard time, he ha he said, it's really hard to break a habit, which we all know. Um, did he suggest that you insert a different habit? Is that, did I read that or so is there, how, how, how out of that? How do you get yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when it comes down to it, the habit, and this goes back to what I was trying sort of successfully sort of unsuccessfully to explain before about non-doing the habit is, and th this will make more sense if you have a, you will, let's say you let's say you notice something in your body that you don't like, maybe your foot hurts or something. Our habit is to try to do something about it, to change it right away. Like we want to change it. And so we're going to do something about it. The problem is, and I'm sure pretty much anybody listening will relate to this. If you've had any kind of pain and you've tried to fix it, maybe you massage it and it feels better for a few sessions seconds, and then it comes back or maybe it feels better for a day. And then it comes back violinists. We raise our left shoulders and squeeze with the jaw to hold the violin there. And a teacher can tell you every week that your shoulder is too high and you're squeezing and you will not be able to let go of that for more than a few seconds or minutes. And then it comes right back. But our instinct is to try to do something and it just doesn't work. It's like, if you try to relax part of your body, you can do that for a moment, but the tension is going to come right back. Right. So then, and what Alexander is saying is like, the definition of stupidity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, and expect a different result. But that's what we do whenever we notice something we don't like about ourselves or about the world around us, we try to do something to fix it. So the only other alternative is to not do something, to try to fix it immediately. And perhaps we can think about it differently, which of course is doing something. I mean, it's not so black and white, but it's doing something radically different by just, you know, like stepping back and getting curious about it without trying to fix it, just gather more information, be a scientist, be a detective of yourself. What's happening to me right now. And it's back to where we started. It was like, what am I noticing? What else is happening? Other than that foot pain? Oh, I didn't notice that my right thigh is also tight. Okay, interesting. No judgment. That's also changing a habit. No judgment. This pain is not necessarily bad. In fact, Alexander said, pain is your friend. How can that be? It hurts. But pain is just your body kindly and lovingly giving you the information. You need to do something different, which is to let go and not do the old thing, which is to judge it, make it wrong, bad, try to make it go away, fix it, change yourself. So the only the alternatives is to just not do just notice, observe, get curious. Wonder, I love the word. Wonder, just wonder about it. But something that, you know, we do specifically in Alexander technique is some, is called constructive thinking. So you can do constructive thinking, which is what I shared with you before ask yourself, well, where is there a bit of easing happening right now? I've got pain there. Yes. Okay. That's part of me right now, but where is there less pain? Where is there less tightness? Where is there less discomfort in my life? And then when you get curious about that, everything starts to shift without you having to do anything about it. And I've had so many students, I can't even tell you who have, like, I can think of two right now that I'm working with, whose doctors told them decades ago, they would always have pain. And what a horrible thing to be told that you'll always have pain. And this is because of, you know, scoliosis, um, chronic fatigue syndrome, um, major, major structural problems in the spine. The, so they believe their doctors, of course, you know, most people do. And yet just after a few months of doing this process that I'm sharing with them, they're pain free. They have no pain left. And if it does start to come back because we are still who we are and there are still going to be residues and tendencies. So if the pain starts to come back, they have tools and they know exactly what to do differently, which is like to not do. And it, you know, do a little constructive thinking and wonder, and they have, um, you know, the daily practices for just a couple of minutes, a day of awareness etudes and the system that I teach them and it works.
Speaker 2:So two, we will leave. You'll let, if you give me that, uh, address for those daily etudes, I'll put that in the bio of this podcast for people.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The cycle is the one that I have there on YouTube, but I will definitely
Speaker 2:Right. Second, I think one of the things I was thinking about what you were talking about is Ecker toll talks about being the observer, um, and, and just being present to it. Um, similar, uh, he, you know, like if you're, if you're upset or in pain, he actually says that. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. The pain bodies is just observe it, um, without judgment and it's, it's a fine, it's a fine line. It's an interesting thing. And it does take practice
Speaker 3:Just stopping there is because there's the negative, which is like, stop. Don't do. But then there's also the positive, it's the yin yang. Right. And there's the pausing, but then there's the constructive thinking that you can do.
Speaker 2:What's interesting. We go, we go back to my habit of being critical. So I stop. And then I just watch, well, isn't this interesting here I am in this room with a bunch of people and I just back and go, I'm noticing, why am I noticing that? And not this, you know, I might even say to myself, why am I not noticing how beautiful the birthday cake is on the table instead, I'm noticing the tablecloth and I don't judge it. I just think that interesting. Interesting. And it's almost like I'm stepping back from the small me, you know, you know, the small Chris that you just mentioned earlier. Cause I love that. I used that a lot and going look how small Chris wants to claim his space or he wants to show that he's in control by critiquing something. And, and, and then almost like the desire itself. It's not that I change it or replace it. It just kind of fades away. Right? Yeah. So you, you shift your
Speaker 3:Effective. Yeah. Because everything, we are infinite creatures, like we have everything in us. It's like you have small Kris and infinite Kris inside you and which one do you want to pay attention to? And if you pay attention to small Chris and do it his way, well, you're free to do that. But do you like the results you get? Usually not. So then you might just consider, well, what would happen? Let's do an experiment. What would happen if I get curious about infinite, Chris what's Inc infinite, Chris, like, and then you might be like, well, I don't know this, but you don't even have to know. It's like just opening up to all possibility and wondering,
Speaker 2:Well, you know, Jennifer, you just clarified, you just helped me understand what he was trying to say. And, and, and, and that imagine the different solutions that you just so you know, very good because now I see what you're talking about. Yeah. Just sit back and go, well, what about this scenario or this scenario? Or what about this? And yeah,
Speaker 3:Actually what you were looking at in that chapter, and this is the chat. I don't have my students read Alexander, except if they want to, I say, go read evolution of the technique, which is that one chapter in the book called the use of the self, which you are reading, which was perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's the hardest one. It's the it's dense, it's dense
Speaker 3:Because he describes exactly what he did and how he came to his conclusions. And so we can do what he did and the thing and what it comes down to is that he realized he only had three choices. We all only ever have three choices. We can, if you have an intention or it's like, you're doing something, you can go ahead and do it. You can not do it. Or you can do something else. And so his process entailed, choosing to not do it and to make it specific. What he wanted to do was observed himself speaking, because he would get horse every time he went to speak, um, performing. So he had the intention, the idea I want to speak, but his habit was, Oh, I know how to speak. So I'm just going to speak. And I do it in the old way. And then I get horse. So if you want to change the habit, he realized he needed to himself from doing that habit. And at first he just needed to give himself the idea of speaking, but then choose something different, which was, do nothing instead don't speak or do something completely different, like do a jig. Right. But don't speak. So, you know, it was a long involved process. And, but it, it worked because he was able to short circuit, the neurons firing, you know, instantly into habit causing hoarseness. He was able to stop as soon as he had the intention, not act on his intention and then she's to do something different. And now we know a very quick and very easy way to do it because we don't have to go through everything. Alexander did. All we need to do is observe, have an intention, watch what happens and choose to do some constructive thinking instead. And that's the system of course, that I teach was which obviously I can't share it all.
Speaker 2:No, I know. I feel like, so there's so much to talk about and I, and I, and we're winding it down and yet there's so much to talk about and, and you know, I, I could go on and on. And when you talk about that, choose something different. What I decided to do is when I feel that impulse to be critical to change the subject, it's just to change the subject.
Speaker 3:You can do that and that can work, but it's even more, it's deeper than that because it's how you do whatever it is that you're choosing to do. So if you, instead of doing the criticizing, you paused and asked yourself where in my body do I notice a bit of easing, that's really changing the habit.
Speaker 2:Oh, good. I'm practicing. I'm definitely going to practice it. So try it and let me know, let me know what I have. And I'm going to listen to this podcast several times and make sure I get this down right. Because I love it. I love it. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. Like I said, it's just fascinating.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's been really fun for me to, I there's nothing. I love more than to talk about this process because it's about taking an idea and getting out of the way and letting that inspiration come through in whatever discipline somebody is in.
Speaker 2:That's the amazing thing you talk about unity here. I've come to this through painting. You've come through it through playing musical instrument and yet look at the, look at the similarities. And it's the same. It's the same. All right.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Chris, for having me, this was such a pleasure,
Speaker 2:Right? Thank you. And I look forward to having you back on after you write that book.
Speaker 3:As I said, I need to work on my recordings first, but I'm hoping to have my, my first professional violin solo recordings coming out in the next, possibly next month. So anybody's curious
Speaker 2:About that. I should be on Spotify, but all right. We'll put the link on the, for your, for your performance as well, because I think it's what we're, we are multi-faceted creatures and we can be both. We can be, you know, intellectually teachers and we can also be artists, you know? Thank you, Chris. This is such a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the spiritual artists podcast, whether you're following the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify or Google podcast, make sure you choose the subscribe button. So you receive new segments when they're released. Plus check out my new book, the spiritual artist now available on amazon.com in the meantime, be still listen and know that you are a spiritual artist.