Self awareness
Exploring awareness, meditation and freedom from habit
Where you are
Perhaps you sit in meditation, and the stillness is real, but it doesn’t always survive the drive home. Or you’ve spent years understanding your patterns and wish that understanding would change how you actually live.
You’re looking for presence you can carry into your day, not only onto the cushion.
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What the work is
The Alexander Technique is mindfulness in action. It develops awareness of your whole self while you are doing things, so presence grows in the middle of ordinary life.
You learn to notice the moment a habitual reaction begins, to pause, and to choose something new. Alexander called the state this opens readiness: clear, awake and able to respond rather than react.
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The ideas behind it
Alexander called his method indirect. Instead of forcing a change, you create the conditions in which the right action can organise itself.
Awareness here is wide and inclusive: the self and the situation together, the small detail and the whole field at once. Habits feel natural and right, so feeling alone can mislead. The work relies on knowing where you are rather than on how things feel.
Cathy Madden often asks students, “Is it kind?” People change most easily when they are not fighting themselves.
A gentle next step
