Contents copyright © 2003 – 2017 Ben Kreilkamp
ISBN 978-1-927437-53-7

All rights reserved worldwide.
Book design and illustrations by David Gorman

This publication is a free booklet but remains copyrighted and protected by the author as above. The booklet may be reproduced and distributed freely to anyone PROVIDED that it is not changed in any way — that is, by way of additions, deletions, reformatting or any other form of change. The contents may not be reproduced or published in any other compilation, book, magazine or other form, whether commercial or not, without explicit written permission from the author. Permission requests must be addressed directly to the author (details at www.learningmethods.com/contact.htm).

Trademarks: The “LearningMethods”, “Anatomy of Wholeness”, “Patterns of the Body”, “The Body Moveable”, “Standing on Top of the World” and “Liberating Performers” names and their respective logos are all trademarks of David Gorman and may be registered in some jurisdictions.

First published in print and on the web in 2003
This ePub / Mobi e-book
version is published 2017 by

LearningMethods Publications

Toronto, Canada

www.learningmethods.com

Other publications by David Gorman (founder/developer of LearningMethods)

– The Body Moveable –

Blueprints of the Human Musculoskeletal System
Available as a colour version and in
two different black & white versions

– Looking At Ourselves –

Available in both black & white and colour print
editions as well as in various e-book formats

– Anatomy of Wholeness –

An online course in 18 parts (almost 27 hours) about
our structure and function – how our marvellous
human system works when it is working well

– Standing on Top of the World –

An online course over 12 hours of graduated
experiential explorations on the principles
and practice of balance and support

A Remarkable Encounter
by
Ben Kreilkamp

This article is also available as a web page:
www.learningmethods.com/encounter.htm

In May of 2001 I had an encounter with a teacher which changed my life in significant ways. The teacher was David Gorman. My Alexander teacher, introduced me. I was reluctant to take David Gorman’s workshop. It was hard for me to spare the money, and I have a natural distrust of authority of all sorts. The workshop involved sitting in a room with a group of people several hours a day and talking with an expert about our problems. That sounded to me like therapy. Over the years I had become disaffected with therapy. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any problems. It was more that I felt I understood my problems all too well and I didn’t see there was much point in talking about them. I had grown resigned to living with them as well as I could.

Thus it was only at my teacher’s urging that I agreed to participate, and I signed up for just two days of a five day workshop. The first of my two days, I sat mostly quiet and watched David work with two different people. My take on his teaching was that he was helping them look clearly in a rational manner at problems which seemed to me ‘emotional’, or ‘psychological’. It looked to me more or less like therapy as I’d known it. It wasn’t at all clear to me that the people had been helped by their talk with him. The next day I brought up a problem that seemed to me unfixable. I’d been living with it for years, and the therapy I’d tried had done nothing to alleviate my suffering. I described my problem as ‘long-term chronic low-level depression’. It seemed the most basic of the problems I faced, perhaps the linchpin of my difficulties in life. There was also some desire to challenge the expert. David seemed so confident of himself. I thought, Here’s something you can’t help. For my part I had no expectation of any relief. My depression seemed to me fundamentally ‘irrational’. I had come to the conclusion that it was a chemical imbalance of some sort, and thus would not be affected by any rational exploration of it. In fact, as I told David, when I was able to be ‘rational’, there was no problem, because then I wasn’t depressed. I had been suffering from these depressed feelings for most of my life, now well into my fifties, some forty years by my reckoning.

David talked to me and asked questions for about three hours. Afterwards all I noticed was that it had been an interesting time, a very interesting time, but I felt no different. We had simply gone over in some detail my experiences of my depression, and sometimes David had questioned my perspectives. It was not at all apparent to me that he had told me anything new, much less that anything had changed for me. Soon enough, though, I became aware that indeed some sort of shift had taken place. As I’ve put it since to others, I was having the same depressing and hopeless thoughts, but my perspective on them had changed. My attitude had also changed. These same thoughts no longer made me feel bad. It later grew evident just how radical the shift was. Over the next days and weeks it became clear that I was indeed no longer depressed. This change was even somewhat bewildering. With my new attitude, I started to feel like a different person. The objective conditions of my life hadn’t changed, and there remained plenty of things that I struggled with. After all, feeling depressed for many years, I’d dug myself into a number of holes that didn’t disappear overnight, but I no longer experienced that generalized sadness that made everything harder to deal with.

Occasionally the change could surprise me. Some weeks later I found myself in the middle of a garden party and realized that I wasn’t ill at ease. This may not sound like much, but for me it was startling. I’d grown used to having to manage something close to panic in groups of people, even friendly people. I hadn’t thought to associate this unease in social settings with my depressed feelings, my general sadness. In the meantime other problems have arisen.

Not surprisingly, my life had been structured around my depression in such a way that I avoided any number of issues that now confronted me more directly. At least one friend has stopped talking to me. I’m not sure completely why of course, but I do know that I’m no longer inclined to carry on some of the sorts of conversations that we used to enjoy together. For my part I can no longer deny certain questions I had left unanswered for years. All in all it has been a very interesting, and more than somewhat unsettling, experience. However, I would never trade this new life for my former existence of trying my hardest to control an uncontrollable sadness. My current life is far more interesting, if not always more pleasant.

Nothing prepared me for the difference LearningMethods would make in my life. I’ve been studying it closely in the time since, with both my own and others’ problems. In fact I’ve made something of a nuisance of myself among my friends trying to get them to tell me about their problems to see how this process might help. As I’ve puzzled through all this, one question has come up more than once. How depressed was I to begin with? It is impossible to say. I do recognize I’ve met any number of people who seem to me more depressed than I was. On the other hand, several therapists over the years seemed to agree it sounded to them like depression, or perhaps dysthemia. One recommended Zoloft, which I tried briefly. Whether we call it depression or not, whatever it was affected every part of my life: my career, relationships, parenting, virtually everything I did. Some days and even weeks it seemed to paralyze me as I cut back on most activities trying to avoid exacerbating the unhappiness. The frustration of living with these feelings led sometimes to terrible anger. Doing even routine tasks could seem overwhelming. I had grown used to living with this sadness when I had my encounter with David Gorman.

At the time, the change I experienced with LearningMethods appeared to me some sort of happy miracle, a mysterious, almost fairy-tale transformation. Now, after quite a bit of study, I no longer find the process so strange. The way it worked for me did indeed feel sudden and even weird, but that’s just the way it worked for me that once. With other problems working on my own or with David’s help, the process has not been at all as sudden. Whether this was a matter of the specific problem or my readiness to be rid of it or whatever the difference was, I can’t say. There is perhaps inevitably an element of chance in how it operates in any given situation. I’ve now seen LearningMethods work in a great variety of ways. Sometimes it operates very gradually. With some problems it has not seemed to work at all, not yet at least. (For instance my sweet tooth still bothers me, even though I’ve seen David work successfully with a similar food issue.) With other problems the change has been so easy and transparent that the person didn’t even notice anything happened. This, of course raises the question of whether LearningMethods did make any difference. It’s all very curious, and for me there’s been no way to prove anything about it beyond trying it out again and again. Pretty soon one can draw one’s own conclusions about whether it’s valid and how. The method itself is both straightforward and highly adaptable. Since all it amounts to is a clear and methodical look at one’s own experiences, it is safe to say that each person will respond to the process in a way unique to that specific person with that specific set of circumstances. Far from miraculous, LearningMethods is a very practical set of tools for freeing ourselves from many of the problems we find ourselves entangled in.

The LearningMethods Process

LearningMethods is David Gorman’s trademarked name for the process he has discovered and developed. The process grew out of his work as an Alexander teacher and trainer. From my experience of the Alexander Technique, which helped me some years ago with a severe lower back pain, LearningMethods seems entirely different. For instance, unlike Alexander work, LearningMethods is nearly all talk with very little hands on work. Once I watched David work with a person whose foot had been chronically injured for more than ten years and he didn’t touch the foot or even look at it closely. His entire attention was on his conversation with the person whose foot hurt. Later, the foot did indeed improve dramatically. As with my case, this healing seemed to me at first mysterious, but over time, as my understanding has grown, it has begun to seem less and less so. It seems the problem with the hurting foot was a matter of how the person was using it, and this information was actually rather easily available in her own descriptions of her experience. One might also add that the crucial information about how she used it was really only available through talking to her. Any number of healers of all sorts could look at the foot with any number of different understandings and treat or train the foot a thousand different ways and still miss the crucial point of what the person was doing with her foot.

The LearningMethods process is designed to look at any personal problem clearly to see what is causing it and may or may not be done about it. Thus it applies to any problem anyone may have, from the hurting foot or strained hand to relationship difficulties or psychological issues such as phobias or eating disorders. The process itself amounts to little more than an extended conversation with the teacher about one’s problem. David works mostly in groups, but this LearningMethods conversation is also possible one on one, or, as one learns its techniques, with oneself alone. It is, by the way, a stated aim of the work to teach each person the process itself, thus avoiding the need for continuing ‘expert’ support. This independence is one of the great benefits of the work which distinguishes it from many forms of therapy. There are therapies which try to differentiate which problems are ‘psychological’ and which ‘physical’, and therapies that delve into one’s unconscious, and therapies that cultivate a myth or explore some sort of mystery, such as the power of one’s dreams. LearningMethods does none of that. In the LearningMethods conversation, one looks at the whole person from the individual’s point of view. One simply looks directly at the single whole person acting in the world according to that individual’s own best understanding of the world. It is a very down-to-earth, plainspoken process, using as much as possible the individual’s own words, and looking very carefully and clearly at those words to understand their significance.

Words can tell us many things. The language a person uses points to the person’s own experiences and also points to the person’s interpretation of those experiences. The differences between these two can be crucial. On the one hand there is what actually happens to a person in a given situation, what they actually do and have done to them, and on the other hand there is the way a person interprets that same situation. The differences between the two can be crucial to distinguish. They can point to misinterpretations by the person that can be important factors in any given problem. That said, the primary focus in the LearningMethods conversation is on the person’s actual experiences of the problem. This is because those experiences are in fact the real life context for the problem. It is also where one must look for any possible solution. The specificity involved in looking at one’s own experiences, often in considerable detail, is an essential element of the LearningMethods process. The point is not to help a person find a new ‘better’ experience, but to look at the experiences one is already having in whatever life one is living and to try to understand them accurately. That is where the problem exists, and also where the very real possibilities inherent in the person’s actual life exist.

The emphasis in LearningMethods is always on those ‘very real possibilities’. There are of course possibilities that occur as dreams, or in any of a great variety of imaginings one might engage in. Then there are these other ‘very real possibilities’. These are the possibilities that are quite connected to, one might say embedded in, the life one is currently living. LearningMethods does not deal in vague or theoretically attractive possibilities. There are many unknowns in the world, and of course one may always win a lottery of some sort, which might solve some problems, but when one looks clearly at what one is currently experiencing, the ground is much firmer for finding an available solution. Paradoxically the solutions one might find in the real life one is currently living can be quite surprising, unlike anything one might have ever imagined as an escape from the problem, better even than winning a lottery. In my own case, one of the great and surprising benefits of my transformed view of the world, is a much more solid and palpable engagement in the world as it exists right in front of me. In my efforts to escape my unhappiness I had spent a lot of energy trying to imagine a better world, using such things as ‘affirmations’ and hopes that were little better than wishes to win some jackpot. As it turns out now, the real world is much more interesting than the ‘possible’ worlds I had been imagining. Looking for escape, I had overlooked those ‘very real possibilities’ available in my real life.

Now, after more than a year observing the process at work in many different instances, I can understand much better what made such a difference to me in that talk with David. Piece by piece he encouraged me to look clearly at how I went about things in those life experiences which I had grouped under my term ‘depression’. As we looked at those bits of information from my life, he brought to my attention various perspectives of mine that affected my ways of seeing and doing things. What these amounted to were quite concrete examples, drawn from my own life, of the conceptual frameworks I used to make sense of the world. Using my own descriptions of my experiences, he helped me see how I was interpreting my life. As it turned out, some of the notions by which I was living my life were in fact simply misconceptions. What David was doing, bit by bit over three hours, was helping me to a more accurate understanding of my own life. When the re-ordering of one’s life turns out to be as basic as this was for me, a conversation that took three hours no longer seems long. In terms of what was accomplished it was quite short, and the transformation since, in the weeks and months following, has seemed sudden compared to the years that I spent suffering from my misunderstandings.

To give an example of my misconceptions, one source of my difficulties was a form of unrealistic idealism. This was the phrase I used initially explaining my problem to David. This unrealistic way I had of looking at things touched on many aspects of how I dealt with life. To take just one of those aspects, I had a belief, often a wish, that life could or even should be easier, better, more pleasant, than it in fact is. Thus when I ran into something unpleasant, such as every morning when I looked at my daily list of tasks that didn’t particularly interest me, I felt bad, because I wished my life were different, better than that. I had, by the way, already studied similar ideas with therapists from Cognitive Therapy. This was one reason I was so surprised at the changes that came over me after my talk with David. In my view David hadn’t told me much that was new. I already knew theoretically that this idealism as I called it was both inaccurate and also that it was one source of my suffering. I already understood, intellectually, that this sort of thinking might tend to make me unhappy. Evidently it was one thing for me to understand such a thing theoretically, intellectually, and quite another thing for this same understanding to have a practical effect on my life in the moments when I was feeling bad. Somehow I needed that understanding in the very moment when I faced that ‘depressing’ list in the morning.

In my case it took David, with his method and the techniques that comprise it, to help me look from a more realistic viewpoint in the depressed moments of my life. First he brought me to a clear understanding that my unhappiness was inevitable given my perspective. If I compared the present moment to a ‘highlight’ of the past, then the present moment is inevitably going to look not so nice. Then he helped me see my perspective was critically flawed. Truly those ‘highlights’ of the past were not an accurate picture of what my life had once been. I was comparing apples (highlights of the past) to oranges (real moments in the present). Finally, and most importantly, his teaching somehow brought this knowledge out of the intellectual or theoretical plane and brought it to bear on my actual life as I lived it. This was why the change I experienced, which was extreme, was not felt until I hit the moments of my life when I would have expected to feel depressed. I found myself waking up to my best understanding in my real life, in those exact moments that used to ‘depress’ me. Progressively over time my misconceptions have more and more been supplanted by the more accurate understandings. As those replaced the misconceptions, the bad feelings simply fell away.

That is only one example of the several ways David managed to unravel my depressive mindset. Also, it sounds more complicated to explain than it seemed in practice. At the time, the conversation simply flowed by for me like a straightforward, if intricate and fascinating, discussion. It was a talk with someone who was curious about how I was experiencing my life. After that, the fresh perspectives he brought to my attention played themselves out in a happier, easier, freer life. Of course not all problems disappear so conveniently. Life is complex and as I’ve described, new problems have arisen for me from the changes this process has brought about, and some other problems have been more persistent. The LearningMethods process remains, though, as a most reliable way for me to deal with the problems I encounter.

Background and Theory

As straightforward as it is, and as simple as its techniques can be to apply, the LearningMethods process is backed up with a lot of knowledge, particularly about human function and design. David Gorman’s research in those realms is quite extensive and elegantly simple in its conclusions. It began, it would seem, with anatomy. Early in his career he compiled a six hundred page study of anatomy, still in print, called ‘The Body Moveable’. This was the springboard for much of what he’s studied since, as he’s moved on from his Alexander work into developing LearningMethods. There are doubtless many other similar theories in the world. I recognize parallels, for instance, with the teachings of Buddhism, Taoism and Cognitive Therapy. To offer one example, David is particularly clear and precise concerning the mechanics of how the ‘mind’ and the ‘body’ have evolved as one self, without the separation implied by those two words we often use. As many others have noted, much suffering may result from the myriad misconceptions inherent in this theoretical ‘split’ between the ‘mind’ and the ‘body’. That split is of course only theoretical. At least that is what it is until someone tries to put that misconception into practice, whether consciously or unconsciously. At the point someone starts to act on one’s body as if it were somehow apart from one’s mind, this mere theory can easily become literally actualized in all sorts of unnecessary suffering. It may become an effort to divide oneself somehow. Since one isn’t in fact divided, this effort can cause real strain on an extraordinarily complex system designed to operate as a single coordinated unit.

This was true in the case of the woman with the hurting foot. Naturally enough from her viewpoint, she was looking at the foot that hurt as the problem. She, along with many healers she sought out over the years, neglected to address how she was using the foot, or if they did ask her about that, they somehow missed the essential information. Somehow the problem remained for her a ‘physical’ problem. Her foot hurt, but she was missing the point, misinterpreting this symptom, thinking the problem was in this foot that hurt. The foot became in her view a ‘bad foot’ or an ‘arthritic foot’ or a ‘weak foot’. This set of misunderstandings, that her foot was somehow separate from the rest of her self, that its pain meant there was something wrong with that part rather than pointing to a coordination of the whole self, all this led to more misuse and more pain. This became a maze for her, and her wandering endlessly in search of a solution reinforced her problem, as her use of the foot kept hurting it. In fact, it’s completely possible that her attempts to ‘fix the foot’ were themselves a part of what kept hurting her foot. For her, it took a conversation with David to point her in the right direction, out of the maze of misuse.

In the LearningMethods model, when problems arise they often come about when we are trying to use the self in a way that’s not the way the self was designed to be used. It seems to be true that each of us is designed to operate as a single coordinated unit. This is one of those elegantly simple premises on which David Gorman’s work is based. This truth, about the unity of the single self, is common among many different teachings. However many know this in theory, though, it proves easy enough to forget it in crucial practical, real-life moments. It may be forgotten, for instance, when someone recommends a treatment, such as Zoloft, intended to treat the body’s ‘chemistry’ as if it were separate somehow from the mind’s ‘thinking’. It is forgotten when someone treats her foot like something separate, a damaged part, not as part of a whole but simply another part among a collection of parts. That can lead to trying to fix the foot alone, as if it were a shoe, say, with a hole in it, that one can leave at the shoe repair shop, unconnected to one’s pants or hat. What LearningMethods provides is a clear and reliable way to determine if it is the design that is failing, or our understanding of how it all works together.

To sum up, the tools developed by LearningMethods to help our understanding of our wonderfully evolved systems are simple enough. They involve looking systematically at one’s thoughts, feelings, reactions, beliefs, responses and all the aspects of our actions and experience as it is actually lived from one’s own perspective. These tools can be learned gradually as one deals with specific problems in one’s life through conversations with a trained teacher. They can be used immediately as one learns them, in a conversation with oneself, exploring one’s own issues and problems. The primary aim of the work is not to cope with a problem but to liberate oneself as much as possible from that problem. All it takes is the willingness to face one’s problems head on and ask the following questions: What is causing this? Is there anything I can do about this? Is there anything I am doing already that helps create or sustain this? After one looks, thoroughly and rigorously, at the problem, the problem will often be solved, but if not one almost always has more information for a deeper exploration. In addition one learns this rather wonderful process for oneself, to apply to other problems, so that one can continue to improve one’s life without any continuing ‘expert’ help. Along with these personal benefits, it is, as one friend put it, ‘plain interesting’ to see how we humans work, to learn how ideas and beliefs inform intentions, how our systems coordinate to carry out those intentions, and how our responses to the world around us are affected by the notions we have of that world. As well as being interesting, it can be surprising and even thrilling to find how many of our problems we can be rid of.

Want to read more about my journey?

The second part of this e-book is another, shorter, article I wrote on the LearningMethods work and how it helped me, called “Just Ask the Right Questions”, which was published in Phoenix, Vol. 23, No. 2 (February 2003).

How to Learn It

David Gorman gives workshops of two sorts: those that are ‘open’ for anyone to come and learn about their problems and his process and ‘teaching’ workshops, for people interested in teaching this process to others (see Teacher Training page). There is another sort of workshop he calls Anatomy of Wholeness, in which he lays out his understanding of the structure and design of the human being (now available as an online streaming course), and applies that understanding to a variety of contexts, practical, pedagogical and otherwise. So much of the LearningMethods work was developed with performers of all sorts, and so much of David’s background is in the study of anatomy, this study of human structure and design is a natural companion to the problem-solving applications of his LearningMethods process.

Now there are a growing number of licensed LearningMethods Teachers (see LM Teacher List) who also give workshops (including myself and others in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area), work with people privately and teach in various universities and conservatories (see list of where the LM work is taught).

Just Ask the Right Questions
by
Ben Kreilkamp

Reprinted from The Phoenix, Vol. 23, No. 2 (February 2003), page 10, 13

This article is also available as a web page:

www.learningmethods.com/just-ask-the-right-questions.htm

Also available as a downloadable PDF file:

Just Ask the Right Questions

In May of 2001 I attended a workshop by David Gorman on LearningMethods, a process that he developed for creating positive personal change. This encounter changed my life in significant ways. In a single talk of about three hours, he managed to change my, perspective on the depression I’d suffered from for some 40 years. This change in perspective eventually resulted in a happy miracle–an end to my depression, and I have since learned how to apply LearningMethods to create changes in other areas of my life.

LearningMethods grew out of David Gorman’s discoveries from his work as a teacher and trainer of the Alexander Technique (a widely-taught approach to efficient muscle use) and other independent study. The LearningMethods process consists of some very simple techniques. Its underlying premise is that we are born with built-in abilities to solve any problem that arises in our lives. All that is needed is a process for looking quite closely and clearly at the exact experience of the problem itself.

In Gorman’s workshop, I described my problem to him as “chronic low-level depression,” and I told him about the sadness I suffered from and how it affected my life. Gorman used the LearningMethods process to help me clarify my thinking, mostly by asking simple questions. He explained some of his techniques as we went along and I have since come to understand and use them on my own.

One of these techniques is completing a word or phrase. There are many words we use which, in effect, represent incomplete thoughts. We use the words, and we know what they mean in a general sort of a way, but a lot is left unsaid. What’s unsaid often contains some unexamined misconceptions which can lead to unconscious behavior. Completing a word or phrase that we use can help us understand what exactly we are thinking and check it for accuracy.

For instance, when I said I was sad, Gorman asked me to complete that word (or thought). He asked me, “Sad about what?” I told him that everything seemed to make me sad. I added that, because the problem was so pervasive, I had concluded that the cause was an imbalance in my body chemistry. I told him that, on the advice of a therapist, I had tried the antidepressant Zoloft briefly. Gorman said that it was possible that some chemical intervention might prove necessary but he suggested that first we took to see if there was something in my own actions or beliefs that might make a difference. That sounded reasonable to me and we continued.

When I told Gorman I was sad about many things, and how that could at times “paralyze me with sadness,” he asked me for a specific example from my life. It is another technique of LearningMethods to look at a specific experience. This was how Gorman’s process brought our investigation and analysis out of the realm of theory, where I had stalled so often in my past efforts at therapy. Since any problem exists only in the experiences of actual moments, that is also where any possible understanding must be sought.

When Gorman asked for a specific example of my sadness, a very common experience of mine came to mind. When depressed, I would wake up and feel sad about the list of tasks for that day. These could seem quite overwhelming. Gorman asked me if, in fact, the list itself was overwhelming. I admitted it wasn’t, nor was anything on the list. This was precisely why I called myself depressed, because I couldn’t explain why ordinary things should overwhelm me so.

Gorman then asked what made the list seem overwhelming. The best I could answer was because I didn’t want to do the tasks on it. Gorman asked me why I didn’t want to do them. I answered that it was not an “attractive” list. It was quite “humdrum.” For Gorman, these words I used about the list presented opportunities to look for more information about how my depression worked. He asked me what “humdrum” meant. I have never experienced quite the level of clarity about my own experience as I achieved with Gorman’s method of questioning me. Through his very simple techniques (completing words, filling in the content of vague terms), I became aware that my sadness might not be due to a chemical imbalance but rather to something I was doing unconsciously — comparing current “humdrum” moments to past moments. I was judging present moments of doing tasks on my list — such as making phone calls for my job–as inadequate compared to past moments of satisfaction or great joy.

This realization is what came out in David’s questioning of me, and it is easy to see why any such comparison would be bound to make the present moments look bad. It was an unrealistic comparison, like apples to oranges, but until my encounter with LearningMethods, this fact had managed to escape the scrutiny of my consciousness. Veiled as it was, this comparison could make me very sad, even to the point of the paralysis I experienced.

As I write about this conversation now, it is somewhat embarrassing, as depression often has, been for me. From talking with various therapists and from my readings about cognitive therapy, Buddhism, and Taoism, I had long understood that my suffering was due to something I called unrealistic idealism, but it had remained only a theoretical understanding for me. What was eye-opening, even thrilling, was the amount of difference this one conversation with Gorman has made in my life. What he managed to do, with his LearningMethods process and the techniques that comprise it, is to bring these pieces of realistic wisdom into actual relevance within my own life.

The results of this new awareness continue to unfold as I’ve applied the process in my life since. At first the changes were surprising and even bewildering, as I found myself no longer seeing the world through my accustomed filter of being “depressed.” For instance, some weeks after my conversation with Gorman I found myself enjoying a garden party. It hit me suddenly in the midst of conversing with friends that I’d felt no discomfort at all at this party. This may not seem like much, but I’d grown quite used to something close to panic in social situations, even with friends I’d known for some time, and this feeling had disappeared.

LearningMethods is designed to address any personal problem, from a hurt foot to psychological problems or relationship problems. The main point when studying LearningMethods, however, is not so much to solve a particular problem, but to learn the tools for how to solve any problem that comes up.

Learning this process is a matter of studying with a trained teacher. All it takes is a willingness to address one’s problems directly and a curiosity about how humans are designed to function. There are certainly problems that seem intractable, but it’s surprising and interesting to discover how many problems arc within our own built-in powers of transformation.

The first article in this e-book is a longer and more complete version of this session with Ben and his liberation from depression: A Remarkable Encounter.

Appendix

About the Author

About the LearningMethods work

Find out more about LearningMethods

More Information on the Alexander Technique

LearningMethods Publications

About the Author

Ben Kreilkamp has been an actor, playwright and director. After the session he describes above, he became fascinated with the LearningMethods work and decided to enter teacher training to learn how to help others escape from their problems.

Ben is now one of the six certificated and licensed LearningMethods Teachers in the United States. He lives and teaches in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area of the USA.

Ben Kreilkamp

www.BenKreilkamp.com
E-mail: ben.kreilkamp@learningmethods.com

About the LearningMethods work

We are the most amazing learning creatures on the planet. We have a wonderful in-built intelligence, an exquisitely sensitive awareness and a wealth of experience. Yet we still suffer from so many chronic and completely unnecessary problems.

Why?

Because only a few people have moved into their full heritage as humans and learned how to bring their intelligence to bear on their experience to understand and solve their problems.

How do I know this?

I see it every day in my teaching. Once people learn the simple yet incredibly powerful tools of how to unravel what’s happening to them they can change far more easily and quickly than they dreamed possible.

How can this happen?

Because everything you need is already within you — the only thing missing is learning how how to use it.

LearningMethods teaches you how to use your intelligence to explore and understand your daily experience, to make sense out of your issues and problems, and how to change them. In other words, LearningMethods gives you the set of tools to navigate your life successfully — to find your way back to your natural wholeness and presentness; to be free of chronic tension and effort; to be more effective and stress-free at work and to be more at ease and in harmony with others — in fact, the tools for solving any problem that’s solvable.

It is not a far-off dream — it is in your very human nature to be able to learn from experience and liberate yourself from problems. It is your birthright to gain wisdom about life and to feel at home in the universe. And, there is no time like the present to start !

David Gorman, founder of LearningMethods

Find out more about LearningMethods

Studying and upcoming workshops, finding teachers, reading on-line articles, publications and online store, teacher training and professional development:

LearningMethods homepage — www.learningmethods.com

What is LearningMethods? How it can help you; what you’ll learn
— www.learningmethods.com/lm-engl.htm

The principles of the work How does it operate? What is it based on?
— www.learningmethods.com/question.htm

How do I study it? How LM is taught and the various ways to study it
— www.learningmethods.com/lmstudy.htm

Finding a Teacher List of LM teachers and apprentice-teachers
— www.learningmethods.com/lmteach.htm

Quotes and Testimonials How LM has helped people and what they have said
— www.learningmethods.com/lmquotes.htm

Online Library of Articles Exploring and solving various problems
— www.learningmethods.com/lmarticle.htm

Online Store Buy printed publications, e-books, audio and video recordings
— www.store.learningmethods.com/

Professional Development Online learning and professional development for teachers, practitioners or performers
— www.training.learningmethods.com/

Training as an LM Teacher What’s involved in becoming a LearningMethods or an Anatomy of Wholeness Teacher
— www.training.learningmethods.com/

More Information on the Alexander Technique

Information about the Alexander Technique on the Internet

The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique is a good general Alexander Technique Internet resource with many resources on the Alexander Technique — articles, audio and video recordings, podcasts, interviews and more: www.alexandertechnique.com

Alexander Technique Professional Organizations

Here is a listing of the current Alexander Technique professional organizations beginning with ATI, the international professional body with branches in 12 countries and members world-wide. All these bodies have a mechanism for assessing the competence of teachers and for granting Teaching Certificates and/or Teaching Membership. All have a Code of Ethics to which all Teaching Members subscribe.

Alexander Technique International (ATI)

Web: www.alexandertechniqueinternational.com
E-mail: office@alexandertechniqueinternational.com

Most of the other Alexander Technique professional organizations are local groups comprising the teachers in separate countries. As of the publication of this book these national organizations can be found at: www.alexandertechniqueworldwide.com (this link is to the web site of the UK-based STAT).

LearningMethods Publications

For a complete list of LearningMethods Publications:

– books & booklets – downloadable e-books
– audio recordings – video recordings

visit the LearningMethods Online Store: www.store.learningmethods.com

– descriptions of the publications – details of costs and shipping
– secure ordering by credit card – instant downloading of e-books

Here are a few examples of what is on offer:

The Body Moveable — A detailed study of the structure, function and dynamics of the human musculoskeletal system with thousands of beautiful illustrations and clear and detailed text. See sample pages at link below.

First published 1981, now in its 6th edition. Size: ( 8.5” x 11” / 21.6cm x 28cm )

In three different formats. all with the same content:

— Single-volume Colour hardback (above left) - ISBN 978-1-927437-01-8

— Single-volume B&W hardback (above middle) - ISBN 978-1-927437-00-1

— Three-volume B&W hardback set (above right) - ISBN 978-1-897452-90-5

All versions have a laminated hardcover for years of long-lasting use.

Full details, sample pages and ordering at www.bodymoveable.com

Looking at Ourselves – Exploring and Evolving in the Alexander Technique

Print edition: 2nd edition, 176-page paperback (in Colour or B&W)
Size: 6.69" x 9.61" / 17cm x 24.4cm

Ordering: www.learningmethods.com/lmpub-looking-at-ourselves.htm

E-book: (same content as above) for PDF and various e-book readers

Ordering: www.learningmethods.com/ebooks/gorman-looking-at-ourselves-ebook.htm

In Our Own Image – The elastic suspension system

This series of 8 articles is part of the Looking At Ourselves book above, and has been extracted to its own e-book.

E-book only: for PDF and various e-book readers

www.learningmethods.com/ebooks/gorman-in-our-own-image-ebook.htm

The Anatomy of Wholeness – An online course on our innate coordination of wholeness and ease; its implications for daily life, performance, recovery and healing.

Video - Online course (stream to any Internet-connected device), 25+ hours

www.learningmethods.com/lmpub-courses--anatomy-of-wholeness.htm

Standing on Top of the World – Experiencing the Fundamental Freedom of Support and Balance

This graduated series of practical and experiential follow-along demonstrations was developed over the last 15 years by David Gorman to teach the principles of support and balance and how to live them in everything you do. This video course is also aimed at helping teachers learn how to teach this material themselves.

Video - Online course (stream to any Internet-connected device), 12+ hours

www.learningmethods.com/lmpub-courses--standing-on-top-of-the-world.htm

Liberating Performers – Eliminating Performance Anxiety (nervousness, self-judgment, doubt and fear)

A recording of the “Liberating Performers” series of workshops helping performers to see through the misconceptions that generate fear and nervousness, and how to get rid of it permanently.

Audio - Online course (stream to any Internet-connected device), 19+ hours

www.learningmethods.com/lmpub-courses--liberating-performers--audio.htm

Sounds of a Provence Summer – Day & Night

Live recording of the quintessential sounds of the hot Provençal summer – the cigales (cicadas) by day and the crickets at night, plus a summer thunderstorm and soothing rainfall. Listen to a sample of the CD at the link below.

Audio CD, 76 minutes – 1 CD (playable in any CD player)

www.learningmethods.com/lmpub-cdcigales.htm

Free e-books to download — Browse a large collection free e-books versions of various articles. Download, read and send to friends . . .

www.store.learningmethods.com#ebooks

And More Books Coming in the future . . .

Revealing the Obvious – The Anatomy of Wholeness
A new book, still in process, on the coordination of wholeness and ease and its implications for you, the whole thinking responding being. Extracts will be available in e-book format soon.

www.learningmethods.com/revealing.htm

Standing on Top of the World – Experiencing the Freedom of Balance and Support
A book about a series of practical demonstrations that will put you in touch with your own system’s signals about support and orientation so you can be supported, whole and easy, responsive and present in every aspect of your life.

www.store.learningmethods.com

Liberating Performers – Escaping the trap of nervousness, self-judgment, and fear
An upcoming book on why we get trapped in performance and social anxieties, how these fears are based an interlocked series of misconceptions, and how understanding and using your in-built “value register” will liberate you permanently.

www.store.learningmethods.com