Service with a Smile
I am continuing my studies and consider myself very lucky to be finding wonderful teachers along the way.
My skill set is being enriched and deepened and I have the happiest feeling that I have again found work that resonates with the deepest part of myself.
In this post I want to explore the roots a little.
I was fortunate to be brought into a loving family….. Where my earliest memories of myself are of simply loving and being loved.
Whence came the first instinct of caring and longing to help?…. Seeds sown by adoring my maternal grandfather “papa” and wanting to comfort him….. A little 2 and a bit year old, taking his hand as he led the way to my grandmother’s grave…. Trying to restore his love.
Oh yes and tears of joy…. Not understanding why I would cry when he stepped out of his old Wolsey on his visits from Surrey.
My mother had the perfect explanation “tears of joy darling”
Yes, the intensity of young love.
The kind of intense compassion that flowed when as a 7 year old I cried over the devastating pictures of Christ crucified and the appalling thought of his mother as she witnessed his suffering.
It was beyond comprehension but it nevertheless stirred something and is probably why I am so affected to this day by Easter.
(I don’t feel as though I am at all religious, by the way)
I’m looking back, because I’m curious about this ingrained desire to be in some way of service to love and healing ….. When/where did it all begin?
I remember a childish whim to be a nun or an evangelist and serve “God “….. I’m glad that didn’t last very long.
Fast forward to my cycling trip around Europe with Beethoven as my muse…. He too had an immense love of humanity and placed himself in service to mankind…. Over and above his near suicidal despair with his loss of hearing.
I wanted to share that love for humanity and Beethoven’s extraordinary ability to express it thorough his 3 last great piano sonatas.
In the 19th century they were considered to be the most spiritual music of their time and anyone who played them was awarded an automatic knighthood!
I began to get the feeling that as a stranger, the people I met had the freedom to be their most gorgeous.
They were liberated from the usual expectations of the “known” (their familiar patterns of relationship) and so could simply be who they really wanted to be. I would guess, just simply themselves without their habitual garments of constrained behaviour.
The next logical step is to see that to simply be oneself is a great gift…. A gift that runs in every direction.
I was on the receiving end of great generosity and kindness.
The people who offered it, received themselves in their naturally good and generous state. A moment of release and mutual joy.
I think I’m in the perfect job.
Isn’t that the essence of our Alexander work?
To bring about a release from ingrained patterns that interfere with what is and always has been naturally there?
The kind of self awareness that grows out of working together and brings a person closer to themselves.
I worked with a monk for a day or two.
We had many profound conversations on the human condition.
He had become stooped as though each time he knelt in piety he never quite returned to the vertical.
This was while I was traveling and only weeks after I had completed my training. I found myself in a magnificent chateaux in Sweden,
that had been gifted to a Koptic community.
Somehow, while my hands guided him outwards from his stoop, the words came “the more available you are to yourself in your natural well-being, the more available you can be for service”
It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to him.
His whole life was dedicated to service and his face spread with joy.
So if I’m going to be “evangelical” about anything (the word makes me squirm with Billy Graham connotations, but that’s not at all what I mean) I guess I’m going to joyfully promote the work I do and the work I so respect in other wonderful Alexander teachers as being a force for good in the world.
The more available I can be to myself, the more available I am for service.
I have gifts to share, as do you.
