Deep Inhibition. Freda.

Freda

I stand at her door with my habitual “push” to do something that will be useful.

Then I re-mind myself.
Only from the space of the unfamiliar and unknown can an authentic lesson truly emerge.

My theme, if there has been one, is to glean more from our bones.
To employ our understanding of skeletal support so as to minimise unnecessary muscular effort.
Very relevant for whatever age, but especially so when you are approaching one hundred.

I start by talking about my evening with music students. I notice my voice is a little croaky and admit to feeling a little sheepish.
Freda has a distinguished career in singing and teaching.
I also say how when I come to her door, I never quite know what is going to happen next.
With her inimitable twinkle she replies “well we don’t DO much, do we?”
Thirty years of Alexandrian inhibition is not lost on her.

(Inhibition is a word that in this context means a deliberate pause between the thought of doing something and acting upon the thought. It gives a space in which to take a moment to consider the easiest way to proceed and at best can involve a subtle reorganisation of the musculo- skeletal system, which in turn allows for greater freedom of movement)

We investigate the heel.
How the back of the foot extends behind the ankle joint to assist stability.
How a standard lamp base would be ineffectual if it was L -shaped.
That beneath the front of the ankle, the foot rotates to allow for uneven ground.
That mobility here …. I roll and mobilise her foot…. can softly echo through to her hip and from there to her pelvis.
She begins to become more energised.

Often I will take one leg at a time onto my lap in a kind of modified semi-supine, (it is no longer practical to do table work) but today I am drawn to move directly to another locus of bony support.

The sterno-clavicular joint.
Just as the hip transmits connection from the foot into the pelvis, so the clavicle transmits weight born through the hand and arm structures, via the ribcage to the spine and thence to ground.
A kind of upthrust met by weight.

I ask her to lean through my hand as though I am a walking stick/chair arm and with my other hand, tap the inside of her collar bone.
“Could you feel the connection?”
“Not at first, but yes the second time”

At one time as quadrupeds, I could imagine our collar bones’ connection to the manubrium as miniature hip joints…. fore limbs, hind limbs.

I ask Freda if she had ever dreamt of flying.

I have become used to Freda’s memory travelling back through time. A long time.
A long, timeless pause for recollection.

I am convinced that in tapping her collar bones I was knocking at the door of her memory.

“I don’t think I had ever seen an airplane before I went, but I flew to Africa and stayed there for 20 years.
It was just as television was starting. When I finished at the Royal College of Music, my teacher had organised an audition for me to work with a well known baritone, but I was too tall, so although they liked my voice, and on radio of course it wouldn’t have mattered, but it was so important for television and I didn’t get the job.
I continued getting work with the BBC radio choir, but once you had signed the contract, it meant being committed for all the rehearsals and so it was almost impossible to accept other work.
A friend of mine had been offered a job in Rhodesia, but had had to decline as her husband had been dreadfully injured in the blitz and so she couldn’t leave him.
Would I like to go in her place?
It was all arranged very quickly and so I went.
I was teaching in schools in the week, music theory classes at the weekends and giving private lessons to adults.
We also used to go out into the copper mining communities to teach the children and their parents who worked in the mines. It was really very interesting.”

“What did your parents think?”

My poor mother. As the youngest by seven years, she had had me to herself throughout my childhood and I knew she would miss me. She was wonderful. Both my parents were wonderful.
As it happened, on the same day that I left, our cat died and so she mourned the cat.
I always felt very grateful to the cat for diverting her attention”.

Freda has grown in her chair. Expanding to fill the room with her life.

I invite her to create the shape of a wide bowl with her arms. Shoulder blades in the back. A slight outward rotation of the arms so that the inner surface of “funny bones ” lead slightly.

A gesture of offering that directs the arm weight through the collar bones and to the spine via the sternum.

The heels stabilising a very old lady, a  beautiful vessel containing a complete and magnificent life.

We didn’t DO much. Did we?