Is a decision something we think about, plan, or predict? Or, is it the thing we actually do? I take the latter approach. A decision is something we do, something our body chooses to do, which can only occur in real time as physical movement. But what is a choice? It’s the same thing as […]
Category: Psychology
My “Things Not-To-Do” List
My Things Not-To-Do List, otherwise known as my Anti-Goals exercise, is a practice much like making a regular To-Do list. It goes like this: Make a three-column table putting titles at the top of each column as below. In column one, make a list of everything you hope to accomplish exactly as you would […]
Can You See Yourself in the Room?
As if you were a painter, observe what is in the room you are in. Now add yourself to the scene, your weighted self on a surface among other objects of matter, as if someone were painting you. Be sure to incorporate your head with the rest of your body in the same way you […]
Life in Real Time: What We Are Doing
Hello, I don’t usually self-promote on my blog posts but today I would like to share this description of the practice I have developed called Mindful Reality and encourage anyone interested to read one or both of the books I have written (they are short), which you can find under the Book section of this blog! […]
Just Like Now
At any given time in the future, it will be just like now. My body will be where it is, in some specific activity, giving its weight to some specific surface (a piece of furniture, or directly to the ground), my body parts moving about in some busy-ness, attending to their immediate environment. My life […]
Feeling Pressure to “Do” Something: The Physical Reality Principle
When I am feeling stressed, whether it be a result of guilt, worry, sadness, anger or fear, I feel like I need to do something to make things better. When weighed down by this pressure, I tell myself very directly that doing something is a physical act that requires the use and availability of my body. If my body is […]
Why We Don’t Make Decisions
I can see what I am doing next, as next is already here now. My body is sturdily in its activity, its weight on a particular surface and the rest of my parts in their specific movements, while the clock moves automatically (Earth rotating on its own accord). This is our only action, ever, our […]
The Issue of Fragmentation: The Mind-Body Connection
Notwithstanding the innate harmonization of the body, many of us still perceive ourself to be fragmented. The mind, for one, is commonly thought of as other than the body, and it is this misperception I would like to address here. The universal phrase “mind-body connection” reflects the impression that the mind and the body are […]
No Effort
As an Alexander Technique teacher for 20 years, I have been in the business of illuminating how muscular effort is an extraneous phenomenon in our life. Generally, in an Alexander application, this pertains to walking, talking, sitting, standing, and moving through our everyday activities (for example, we don’t need to tense our neck or back […]
Action
Excerpt from “The Myth of Doing” I define action as the body’s existence in space, in any moment, in the configuration it is in, in relationship to its environment. Action is simply a person’s natural state of being; it is not something other or additional to that status, as our mind imagines. So even if […]
Jill Eng 