Contents copyright © 2000 – 2017 David Gorman
ISBN 978-1-927437-41-4

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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 2000
This ePub / Mobi e-book
version is published 2017 by

LearningMethods Publications

Toronto, Canada

www.learningmethods.com

Also by David Gorman

– 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

Failure is Hard, but Learning is Easy
by
David Gorman

This article is also available as a web page:

www.learningmethods.com/failure-is-hard-but-learning-is-easy.htm

This is the record of a lesson that took place at a workshop early in 2000. It doesn’t need much introduction. I have edited the transcript just enough (hopefully) to explain each step in the process. At the end, Ghislaine describes what she learned and how her life has changed, from the vantage point of a week after the lesson.

The Lesson

Ghislaine:
I have the feeling that I am living in a very superficial way. As if I was living only fifty percent of my life and my possibilities. I have the feeling that when I am living, there is my life and then there is me. I see what I could do, and I see what I do when I stay aside. For example, in drawing and painting, there is a moment when I am drawing and I stop. Here is a moment when I would have a lot of pleasure to go further, but I do not succeed.

David:
I’d like to point out something right away. Notice that you have identified a moment in your drawing that sounds like it is a repeated moment. That is, the problem, whatever it is, has happened a number of times. And you have noticed it. You have here the first bit of information, which is that there is something in this ‘learning nature’ of yours that has the ability to detect problems. And not only to detect that there is a problem, but to pinpoint the territory that the problem is about and even the particular moments when it happens.

I think it is quite interesting when you look at it this way, that you have the ability to identify that something happens right there in that moment that stops you from drawing. Being able to pinpoint the moment of the problem, allows you to look at exactly what happens at that moment when you stop. So let’s look at that now. What does happen at that moment? From the point of view you have at that moment, not looking back from later.

Ghislaine:
I think I am starting with a big fear.

David:
Just to be accurate. At that moment when you stop drawing are you feeling a big fear?

Ghislaine:
It’s before I stop. As if I was losing myself in time. Which means I have to go further… To go over something. It has to do with time. As is if time was getting me a little crazy, or that I was afraid of it.

David:
Again, just to be accurate here. Are you speaking about what you are actually experiencing at those moments?

Ghislaine:
No. This is after, looking back.

David:
Let’s leave that looking-back point of view for now and go to what actually happens for you at the moment when you stop drawing. So there you are, you are drawing or you’re painting and moments go by and then… What happens?

Ghislaine:
I find that those feelings are there. It’s as if it was obvious that I’m not going to succeed, so then I prefer to stop painting.

David:
OK. I’d like to take another moment to step out of the content of what you are telling us and look at the process we are using to explore that content.

There are a number of times in this approach where we need to look at the way we say things because of how it reflects the way we think. When we are exploring a problem that we are experiencing it is essential that we can think clearly and identify things accurately so that we can sort out and make sense of what is happening. To do this we need to identify the ways in which we are not as clear as we could be.

Sometimes these unclear ways are out and out misconceptions and of course we need to catch those. But sometimes our way of thinking isn’t untrue, it just leaves a lot unsaid or implicit and we can easily end up missing the unspoken parts.

We have one of these here. You’ve just said what I call an ‘unfinished sentence’. You said, “…that I’m not going to succeed.” You stopped with the verb, but did not explicitly state the object of that verb. Succeed is the verb, but succeed at what?

We will see as we go on, the importance of finishing these unfinished sentences. Until we can finish the sentence we will not know clearly what we are in the middle of. I point this out now, partly because we need to complete the sentence to move onwards in this piece of work, but mostly so that you can become more aware of these unfinished sentences and this habit of thinking. I’ll point them out again whenever they happen so that you can become sensitized to them and hopefully recognize them more and more as you think or speak.

So, back to the content again. When you say you’re not going to succeed… At any one of those actual moments when you are painting, you are not going to succeed at what?

Ghislaine:
I’m not going to succeed in obtaining what would please me.

David:
In that particular moment with that particular drawing, what precisely would that be?

But just before you answer that, we need another quick process moment again.

We have begun to ‘finish the sentence’. But there are times as we are beginning to make things explicit when the first answer to “succeed at what” goes a little bit further but doesn’t go all the way yet. That is, your answer is also an unfinished sentence, which is “not succeed in obtaining what would please me”. But this raises the question, “What specifically would please you?. So we must finish that sentence too until we get to the actual specific.

In any one of those particular moments with an actual painting what is it that would actually please you and let you go on?

Ghislaine:
That it would be clear that the drawing would be finished. This would be a goal for me and I would be satisfied. On the other hand, I am not satisfied because I have the feeling that it is not finished.

David:
And again we have another question to fully understand what success would be. What precisely would constitute finished for you?

Ghislaine:
For instance in a drawing of a body, that I have got the harmony and all the shadow and the lighting, so that I am not only drawing just the surface.

David:
Now, after these three steps, we have an answer for “succeed at what?” But you originally said, “it was obvious that I’m not going to succeed” So if you know what success is for you and it is obvious that success is not happening at that moment when you are drawing, how do you know that you don’t have this harmony and the shadows and the lighting happening? Is there something happening that shows you that you don’t have that happening?

Ghislaine:
Yes, if I am copying something that already exists, I can obviously see a difference.

David:
I need to point out that we have another unfinished sentence here. Or maybe we could call this an unstated perception. “See a difference” only carries one bit of information — that there is a difference. But we need to know different how. So what precisely is the difference you can see?

Ghislaine:
The same thing. The feeling that the art is not finished. Aesthetically, something is not beautiful.

David:
And now we can continue down the steps with another question to reveal the specific difference. We have another bit of information now. This is that the difference is to do with “aesthetics” and “beauty”. But we still don’t know what this “something” is which is not aesthetically beautiful. So, are you aware of precisely what is not beautiful?

Ghislaine:
It is more that I’m perceiving that this is not what I want.

David:
Another process moment here. As we progress in exploring what is happening, one of the things to be on the lookout for is to find the way we have of seeing things, the point of view or constructs we have. In other words, in addition to the facts of the situation, we also want to see how we have interpreted those facts.

In this light, notice that you are consistently describing that the problem is that something isn’t there. “It doesn’t have a harmony; it isn’t beautiful; it isn’t finished”. So, it appears that your point of view has the focus on what is not there. Are you aware of what, in fact, is there? This is an actual question. In those moments, are you aware of what is happening that shows you what precisely is there which is not beautiful? Or what precisely is there which is not harmonious?

[We paused for a moment… as these questions affected her deeply]

David:
Let’s look for a moment at a different situation, hypothetical situation. What if you were drawing, let’s say making a copy, and your drawing was not very accurate, and not very harmonious, but you didn’t even see that? You didn’t notice that at all, but you showed it to somebody else and they did notice all the flaws? This would show you that you lacked a lot of skills as an artist, but you would not have been able to see that for yourself. This would not be a good situation

Of course, that is not what is happening here. You’re in a much better position than that. You start to draw and your sensitive and perceptive system picks up that something is not quite the way you want. This is a very important bit of information. But it doesn’t help you much until you can see exactly how it isn’t what you want. Then you could change it.

Unfortunately, from the way you are saying it, it sounds like the emphasis for you is on what the drawing isn’t, as opposed to, “What am I just seeing here that isn’t what I want? What actually is happening?” Then you could say, “If this is what I did do, what is the difference between it and that which I want?” To do this you’d need to be aware, not only of what isn’t there (what you want), but also of what is there.

Ghislaine:
I have the feeling that I don’t want to see what is there. I only see what I want and don’t have.

David:
That’s an interesting one. It sounds like you’re saying that you don’t want to see it and therefore don’t see it. And in one sense that is true, since you do not know clearly what is there. Except, notice that you do see it. That’s why you stop. If you didn’t see it, you’d just go right on being very pleased and think the drawing is exactly what you are trying to do. So you have already noticed that something isn’t what you want.

You just don’t know exactly what it is, so you can’t learn about it.

If everything turned out exactly the way you wanted, it would be clear that you would have a certain skill or ability to be able to do that. But that is not quite where you are. From the sounds of it, you love drawing, but you are still learning. And, of course, as soon as there is the possibility that learning is needed, the most important thing is to know what it is that we need to learn. How can you know what you need to learn if you don’t know what is happening?

So, just out of curiosity, at those actual moments when your drawing turns not quite as you want, are you actually thinking of those moments as a learning situation?

Ghislaine:
Yes.

David:
That is, here is a moment where there is something for me to learn?

Ghislaine:
Not in this moment. In general it feels that I am in learning mode, but in this moment I see it as a failure.

David:
That is a very big difference to see that at those very moments I am in failing mode, which is not at all fun on the value scale, somewhere down below zero here. And to be in failure mode doesn’t give you any way to actually change anything because you don’t even know what it is that has happened.

Ghislaine:
Yes, yes.

David:
But if we go back to the facts and see if they suggest a way to look at it slightly differently… You have said that you have an already existing interest in drawing and painting. Interest is good. And you have already registered that drawing and painting has significance and value for you; it gives you pleasure. You already know, in general, that there is learning needed. And from the sounds of it, you are interested and willing to do that. But of course, one can’t learn in general, one can only learn in specific. And if we are going to learn we need specific things to learn.

Which is also a good thing, because, notice, you actually do have specific moments showing up where there is something to learn. And best of all, you do detect these moments. You don’t cruise right past those moments and not even see them. So your awareness and the perception is showing you where the learning actually needs to take place.

Notice that all these elements, in this way of seeing them, are good things and they are actually happening.

It’s just that at that moment, your ‘normal’ way of seeing it comes in such a way that it feels like you failed. You expected to accomplish something and you failed to accomplish it. What if we filled in that unfinished sentence: “failed at what?”

Ghislaine:
A failure of something I wanted.

David:
But the very fact that you see right in front of you that it didn’t turn out that way means your expectation was inaccurate. If you did fail to do something that obviously you don’t know how to do yet, can you really say that was a failure if you have not yet learned to do it?

Ghislaine:
But I have been learning for a while, so it seems to me that I must be quite slow in learning this. I need more time.

David:
Well, quite slow at what?

Ghislaine:
At learning and observing.

David:
Is it possible that why you would be slow at that is that you hit those moments when learning is possible and instead think of them as failures which seems to stop your possibility of learning at that moment?

As opposed to noticing that something here isn’t what I want. And asking what is it that happened? What do I want? What is going on here?

Then, of course, the possibility exists that you could learn specifically at that moment. But that would mean seeing that moment as a very good thing. From this new point of view there has been no failure here at all. There has in fact been a success at noticing that here is a learning moment.

“Well, what am I noticing here that is happening, but isn’t what I want? I must have noticed something that was different than what I wanted, otherwise I would not have noticed it. What is the difference between these two? What is it that I could learn if I could see that difference? If I could spot the difference accurately, would it be obvious what I would need to do to get what I want instead of what I did?”

Ghislaine:
Yes I think so.

David:
Then you would have learned rather than failed and that would be another success. But notice that it is not success at ‘getting it’. It is success at noticing when learning is needed; success at seeing what you need to learn; and then success at actually learning.

What we have uncovered shows that all the material is there that you would need to do that. That is, everything is already there right up to the moment of learning. All that is needed now is for you to learn to take advantage of that moment. As opposed to being stuck in a way of seeing it where you hit yourself over the head with failure at that moment.

Ghislaine:
I can really see the difference now.

David:
Now, practically speaking, at this point there is another step in the process.

We have just gone through the first step. The exploring-the-problem step. What really is happening here? Can we come to a point where we have all the information out on the table and can see it clearly? With this systematic way of looking, can we come to a more accurate understanding of what really happened and therefore why this problem is occurring? And then from that more accurate understanding, does the possibility exist of a different set of choices or pathways down which you can now move that was unavailable to you before?

But it can help at this point in the process to look practically at what this new understanding means. What would I do the next time in any of those ‘learning’ moments when they actually happen?

Sometimes just going over things as we have done and seeing more accurately is itself a huge change in perception and attitude. The impact of these connections themselves can change our ideas or ‘reality’ so that what was a bad thing previously, we can now actually see as a good thing — failure becomes learning, for instance. If the change goes deeply enough, you will be in very different place in those moments and there will be no problem at all. You will see the moment in this new way, as a good thing, that there is something for you to learn here, though you may not know quite what it is yet, but won’t that be interesting and exciting?

Now, this may have already happened for you and it may not. Certainly, at this moment, you seem to see things very differently, as you say. Of course, you will only know when you do arrive at one of those real-life moments with your drawing if there has in fact been a fundamental change in the way you see things.

Unless you have now become a perfect artist and those ‘learning’ moments never happen again, you are probably going to hit another one of those moments where you recognize that what is happening isn’t quite what you want.

But if you should happen to find yourself with the same sort of feelings of failure and reactions of wanting to stop, do you think that those feelings would be tangible enough to wake you up in that moment so that you would be clear that you are reacting as if it was a failure?

Ghislaine:
I think so.

David:
You could then ask yourself, “But a failure at what?” “A failure at accomplishing some expectation that I should have been able to do something that I can now see I obviously don’t know how to do otherwise I would have done it. So that’s not very accurate or helpful.”

But since you did catch that moment, then practically speaking, could you can go back and ask yourself what you did see that woke you up? And will you be able to work your way back from reaction mode to how to learn mode? If you wake up then, would be able to re-engage your interest in what it was that actually did happen? “What is it about this drawing that is not what I want? And what is it that I do want?”

In other words, would you be able to recognize that you were caught in the failure reaction because of your expectation and instead choose to approach it a little differently and more accurately as a learning experiment?

By accurately, I mean this: How can you fail at something you didn’t know how to do? That would not really be an accurate point of view. Especially when you look at what happened.

But it is more accurate to see that something certainly seems to have happened here that is not what I want. That is true. It is more accurate to say that I am not quite sure what it is that happened… yet. That is also true. And it is more accurate to say that at that moment if I am interested in learning, I could bring my attention to exploring and working it out. This is a much more true or accurate way of seeing the situation since it really is what is happening.

You would not only find out if you can learn. If you did approach the situation this different way — in learning mode rather than failure mode — you would also find out if the whole situation would feel different? Would there be a horrible feeling of failure and fearfulness about your ability, or would it in fact be interesting or fun? Of course, at this moment you don’t know, but you would find out…

If we think about for a moment now, would it not be extremely interesting if you do find yourself approaching it differently and it really turns out to be a different experience? Because notice that the situation hasn’t changed. The only thing that has changed is your way of seeing it. And yet if you see it one way, up comes your whole familiar set of reactions, responses, feelings and physical changes. If you go through exactly the same situation, but in a quite different way, and if you found you had quite different responses, then you would directly experience how much our responses are part of the way we see it. It would show you that your experience is not so much the experience of that situation, as it is the experience of the way you see the situation.

Ghislaine:
I was doing a vicious circle… locked… where I was quite discouraged and I couldn’t get out.

David:
Yes, and you have the experience of how each time you went around the circle reinforced the idea that “I failed”, “I can’t do this”, “I’m a slow learner” and each previous time set you up and preconditioned you to experience it the same way the next time. “See, I failed again, I just can’t learn”.

Ghislaine:
I was putting more force on the drawing rather than on the understanding of what I was doing. On the result. That is, I was working at going through it again and again and again, failing each time, rather than figuring out what can I learn.

David:
Can you see now how it works? That if you approach things that failure mode way, it can really slow your learning down. Of course, you can then misunderstand this and start to think that “I am a slow learner”. As if that was a property of you, in stead of seeing that what is stopping you from learning is the way you are going about it. Because the only moment when the learning could happen by continuing is the very moment when you stop. In fact, when you think about it for a moment, those are the only moments when learning could happen.

Now that we have gone through all this, how does it all resonate with your original issue of feeling that you are living only fifty percent of your life and living superficially?

Ghislaine:
Now I can just see my life without the judgement I was putting on my self, a terrible judgement.

David:
When you were caught inside that way of seeing things, can you see that it is almost inevitable that you would have that judgement?

Ghislaine:
Yes, because there is no evolution

David:
And it becomes a circle — a seamless circle. There is no way out of it as long as you stay within that construct’s framework.

Of course, this goes to show us why we need some sort of approach like LearningMethods to get out of these kind of seamless circles.

For instance, someone else who is outside of our way of seeing things can help us break through by showing us what is misconceived about our framework. But if we are looking at how we might be able to find our own way out of our own circles by ourselves, then the simplest and most direct way (and it may also be the only way), is if we are able to use the information that is available to us while we are still caught in that circle. And what we always have is our own tangible symptoms which occur at a certain moment. If we can use these to wake us up, we can then start to look systematically at what is happening.

This is what I just helped you to do. Together, we went over all the little details of exactly what you were thinking and feeling. It is very important here to make sure that it is what you are thinking and how you are feeling at that moment of the problem, not what you think about it when you look back on it. Because those are two quite different things.

Notice by systematically looking at all the things that happened, and noting your ideas and feelings which emerge at the same time, we have a way to get past the unfinished sentences to the explicit details and understanding of the situation. What happens to us normally is that without a way to get past them we just stop at the “I’m afraid that I won’t succeed” sentence. And if anyone listening didn’t see the unfinished sentence either, they’d just say, “Yeah, I know what you mean. Not succeeding. That’s tough”. And that is the end of our ability to understand, though it is not the end of the problem by any means.

But when we can hear that unfinished sentence, “not going to succeed” and ask, “not succeed at what?” Then not be satisfied with “succeed at obtaining what would please me”, but ask, “precisely what would please you,” and so on… We have a way to get right back to the underlying idea which starts to reveal itself and all the details of what happens are also revealed.

With that information it is possible to begin to see what our ideas and interpretations actually are. And to question if the ideas actually match the detailed facts of the events. In other words, is your concept accurate to what happened? Did you actually fail at anything when it can be seen from the details that you don’t really know what happened there yet?

With all the information out on the table, especially a question about the accuracy of our way of seeing things, we can look carefully at the available information and see if there is another interpretation of these facts that is more accurate. That this is instead a moment when what needs to get learned shows up and could be learned.

Without the tools to get at all those details so we can check their accuracy, we are just stuck in the ‘reality’ of our interpretation without knowing it is an interpretation. And each time we go through it we reinforce it again. And in our ‘normal’ way of seeing things we just do not notice the details, nor the ideas; we just live under them. So, if we are to work this out for ourselves it is essential to have a way to get at all this information.

Ghislaine:
Now I can really see clearly those moments where I was not succeeding and instead of asking myself questions I was escaping. It was more easy for me to go with my usual interpretation.

David:
Given the way that you were seeing things, you hit those moments over and over with all that force and emotion. So the response of wanting to escape from them is somewhat understandable. From within that point of view it is quite a heavy thing because there is no way out of it and because the failure is saying a huge amount about you and your ability.

When we see it differently, of course, there is very little charge on it. It doesn’t really say anything about you except show you where you are in your learning which is a very good and important thing. So now there is nothing to escape from. Quite the contrary as this is exactly the situation you’d want to get into so you can learn.

So why escape when it is exactly what you want? You get a further chance to learn. And whatever you learn, you’ll be an even better artist. Each time you live this way and do learn reinforces that these moments are good and that you can learn relatively easily making it all the easier to meet the next learning moment.

Ghislaine:
This is quite a different approach entirely.

David:
This is why it is called LearningMethods!

Ghislaine:
I realize how much the conditioning that I am in, or we are into, is really locking ourselves in and reducing our capacities. In fact it is not real at all itself.

David:
Yes, you are absolutely right. It is a complete illusion when we look closely. Except, that at the moment you are experiencing this it is as real as it gets, complete with emotions, reactions, feelings and thoughts.

Notice an interesting fact about the way these things work. When we are caught in that kind of illusion, there are a lot of these low-quality experiences — failure, fear, frustration, etc. These ‘negative’ experiences go along with the vicious circles of misconception. So it is not that there is no sign that something is wrong with this picture. If we can recognize those low-value experiences as a sign that “something’s wrong”, instead of assuming that “I’m wrong”, or “something is wrong with me”, then we have a wake-up call to bring online our systematic way of exploring to find out what is wrong here, what is happening, and to work out what is unconstructive.

In your case to uncover that inaccurate concept that you failed and are a slow learner. As if you could have succeeded at something that you don’t yet know about. Whereas the only thing you failed at was being further ahead than you actually are. And the way to get further ahead than you are is to take that moment to learn what actually did happen. I realize that I am repeating my self, but I think it is good to go over these things a few times in slightly different ways, so that we can see them from many angles.

In other words, if we put it the other way round, would it be possible for us to be caught in these inaccurate conceptions or misconceptions and not have some sort of symptoms or problems happening to us?

Ghislaine:
So the symptom is the revelation that the moment is not well-lived.

David:
Yes, exactly. We can ask ourselves, “What is this a symptom of?”

Ghislaine:
All of this has the effect of making me feel so much lighter. As if things can be simple. And I can take life at each moment where life leads and not where I wanted it to be.

David:
That’s an interesting one, isn’t it? This idea of how we think we would like life to be. As if that would be a really good thing. And life as it is then begins to seem not very nice compared to the ‘lovely’ idea of what it should be. Which, in turn, reinforces the idea that wouldn’t it be nicer if life was like I wanted.

Except that what we don’t realize is that on the one side here I am having an idea of how life should be. And on the other side there is life actually being different from my idea. And at the same time I’m experiencing all this misery. Of course, what keeps me stuck in this is that I am thinking that the misery I am experiencing is because of the way life is. “Life is hard and life is tough, isn’t it?”

But is it? Or is the misery I am experiencing because I have this ‘lovely’ idea or ‘ideal’?

What we don’t usually take in is that all these elements are happening simultaneously. I am holding this ideal in an ongoing way. At the same time, reality is showing itself in an on-going way to be different than my should-be idea. And at the same time, I feel miserable in an on-going way.

Hmmmm. Maybe they are all part of the same thing? Maybe, just maybe, the experience of misery is the experience of hanging onto an idea which is inaccurate to the way things are?

If so, this supposedly lovely idea is not so much causing all these not-so-lovely experiences. It is all these not-so-lovely experiences. How lovely can an ideal be if the actual lived experience of it is misery? But it is a pretty sneaky paradoxical-seeming one until we can see that as long as I hold that idea, and the idea is different than reality, and it is the idea which should be, then I will experience this misery.

But, of course, the real issue here is that we are just not seeing things accurately. Life is, in fact, showing us all the time how it works. And we are seeing it all the time too. That’s how we know that it isn’t what we’d like it to be, just like in your drawing.

It’s just that the lovely ideal is so seductive and we have invested so much desire into it and experienced so many good feelings while contemplating it, that it has come to seem more real that the real. It is what should be. In other words, the idea has become fixed and can no longer adjust to what is.

Therefore, in those on-going moments when life kindly — and persistently — shows us again how it works, we don’t see it. We take it that life is wrong and we try to change life to fit our fixed idea. It never occurs to us that it would make a lot more sense to change our ideas to fit reality. It never occurs to us to look at these two — our idea and life — and see clearly which one was real and which was not. If we were able to take in the bare fact of what was real, then it would be a no-brainer as to which to choose.

It is an obvious choice because you now have the direct experience of the very high price you pay for this failure to perceive reality accurately. Better yet, it is an obvious choice because you also have the direct experience of what happens when you do see reality more accurately. You “feel so much lighter. As if things can be simple. And take life at each moment where life leads and not where I wanted it to be.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Afterwards:

Ghislaine called the next day to say that she felt so liberated — like a huge burden had been lifted — and she had been painting all day. There had been none of the fear or discouragement at all and while at times her painting turned out different than she wanted, it was no big deal to her and she was easily able to just continue painting and learn. She also said that she was finding big and very positive changes in many other aspects of her life too.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A week later, Ghislaine came back and had this to say about the lesson and its affect on her:

“What I liked about this work is the respect for who I am myself. At no time did David impose on me who he was himself. I really felt that my intrinsic value was not undermined. My sense of value remained stable and it is in my value that the work happens. And I believe that is what makes the work gentle for me. I did not feel my space violated as I have done before. The work has been done in a space that belonged to me with my own experiences, which really allowed me to reintegrate and be totally myself. This allowed me to not be afraid and to stay right there while things sunk in and became integrated. It is through this that I succeed in understanding what is happening for me.

So, I feel I have a lot to learn but today I feel in harmony with who I am. And that is important for me, because without this harmony, I could not move forward. I was completely locked in a situation which didn’t really exist and I couldn’t get out of it and make progress.

In effect, what I realize is that I had all the information about my art and now it comes back to me — all the things I heard during four years of classes but I could not use. Today, little by little as I work, they come back to me and I use them. What seems crazy to me is that I couldn’t use them before. It just wasn’t possible. The teacher could repeat the same thing a thousand times and it wouldn’t go in. I understood nothing. Now, I haven’t seen him for a while, but I must have heard those things because I am able to use them now. It’s just there. How simple and easy it is! I realize how much I couldn’t hear. I heard with my ears, but it stopped there — it was impossible to advance in such a situation. And because I was so frustrated I couldn’t see the essential things.

What lightness! What a relief to be able to say, “Yes, I can do this”.

I am satisfied with where I am today. Today, I find I am not so bad at all. I always felt I was a novice in my work but now I realize that I am not. My abilities are there, it was just necessary to see them and believe in them. It’s incredible.

At the same time, I am sad to think that all these years I have lost time. And, in fact, I was blocked in a situation that was an illusion. I am so much better today, but it is nevertheless a sadness to look back and realize that I did not progress and have lost the time. The truth of the moment is that I have suffered and I wanted to get rid of some of this burden.

Before I felt as if there was a doubling of myself and I was not able to be in one or the other. I was looking to do things without being on one side or the other. And it was what I reproduced in my drawing and in all my life. By being continually frustrated by everything, by being always complaining when I spoke to others. I was in frustration and in complaint about life and in complaint about everything. I never felt myself alive. Like I stayed in withdrawal, there was that I could and that I couldn’t. I was only in ideas but not the realization.

I can see to what extent the ideas can hold me back and make me less than I am. I also see to what extent I would never have been able to find that all alone. I realize, my god, I could have passed my life inside that. I was not able to come into the reality of my level because I was blocked by an idea!

I love figure drawing. It’s my favourite. And my teacher used to say to me, “Look at the contours. Draw the emptiness and the fullness. I used to wonder what he was talking about — it was gibberish. And now I understand. But when he was explaining it to me, I couldn’t see. I can’t explain why. I was in such a closed place that I couldn’t see. I say that and I realize that it has only been a week since the lesson.

There is such a gap between today and all those years before the work with David when I heard without hearing and I believed I was stupid. Today, the most marvellous thing is the sense of new horizons. My goal is to progress, move forward, to please myself more and more even if it doesn’t please others. If it pleases me, it’s already good and this new path gives me great joy.

It goes without saying that I wasn’t only unblocked as an artist. Inevitably, believing in myself as an artist means I believe in myself in life, in relationship to others — in all my life because I am fully there. Now I am more alive than I was a week ago!

To believe in myself is to feel capable of doing something which has meaning for me. Now I feel capable as an artist. It is not a matter of belief but a matter of being. Now I am at the point where I am fully present with what I do. That has nothing to do with belief. It is more about being present. As if I was no longer in the mismatch, beside myself. Now I don’t feel beside myself. Now when I do something I am fully present, fully there. Not one hundred percent — I feel that still have some way to go. But in the space of a week, it’s the difference between night and day!

When I used to go to exhibitions of painting, I would say to myself, “That seems simple. I can make pictures like that.” But when it was necessary to actually do it, I couldn’t come to anything in front of the drawing. There was a gap between what I felt I could do and the reality of doing it. I never understood what happened in this moment. In fact, I no longer saw what happened except that the result was not at all what I was thinking.

Now I see that my appraisal was fair, because today, accomplishing what I want appears to me to be very easy. I don’t always get what I want, but it is a lot closer. It is clear that there is work to be done, but that doesn’t terrorise me now. Now it’s closer to what I dreamed of before.

Before, this frustration made it so that I could not move. My way of seeing things wasn’t reality, but it still prevented me from doing what I really was able to do. I was nevertheless aware that I could do better. But I couldn’t find the solution between the moment when I was conscious that I could do it and the reality of how I could actually do it. It is crazy because I wasn’t far off it at all, because now I am there so fast. With this freedom now, I am a better artist. My standard is higher without having worked.

In the space of a week, it is incredible!”

Appendix

About the Author

About the LearningMethods work

Find out more about LearningMethods

More Information on the Alexander Technique

LearningMethods Publications

About the Author

David Gorman developed the LearningMethods work from over 30 years of research and teaching experiences. He has a background in both science and as an artist and has always had a fascination with exploring human structure and function. In the mid-1970s he spent many nights dissecting and drawing in the human anatomy lab at his local university.

David has been studying and using the Alexander Technique since 1972 and has been teaching since the late 1970s becoming well-known worldwide for his innovations to the work, and notorious for challenging the orthodoxy of the profession. He has been invited to teach all over the world in universities, conservatories and training colleges, at conferences and symposia, and with performance groups and health and medical professionals.

In 1980 he published an illustrated 600-page work, The Body Moveable and in 1997 the first edition of a collection of articles and essays, Looking at Ourselves. David has also been deeply involved in the professional organization of the Alexander Technique. He was one of the founding members of CanSTAT (Canadian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique), chairman of the founding committee of NASTAT (now AmSAT, the American Society for the Alexander Technique), the architect of the Affiliated Societies mechanism for Alexander Technique professional organizations to recognize each other, and the author of the original Sponsorship and Certification process of ATI (Alexander Technique International).

In 1982, his teaching was revolutionised by his discovery of a new model of human organisation with its profound implications of our in-built and natural tendency toward balance, ease and wholeness. He extended these insights into a new way of training teachers of the Alexander Technique and from 1988 to 1997 in London, U.K. he trained 45 teachers. However, further explorations in his own and other training groups made it clear that a huge part of our problems lay not in the functioning of the “body” but in our consciousness and our way of seeing things — our underlying belief systems and how we misinterpret daily experiences and then react to these misunderstandings. At this point it also became apparent that his discoveries and the changed teaching methods they implied no longer could be squeezed in under the premises and pedagogy of the Alexander Technique.

Recognizing the need for a new and effective approach to help people uncover and liberate themselves from these circular traps, David developed the LearningMethods work to teach people how to gain command of their exquisite in-built clarity of perception and powerful tools of intelligence so they can successfully navigate their lives.

Since the beginning of the work in 1997, David has completed the training of a growing number of LearningMethods Teachers, many of whom are now teaching the LM work in universities, colleges and conservatories. He continues to evolve the Apprenticeship Teacher Training Program and since 2010 has added live online video-conferencing as part of the training as well as running online post-graduate groups for Alexander Technique teachers and groups for those who want to learn to use LearningMethods in their own lives and work. He also gives in-person workshops in Europe, North America and Asia as well as writing about the work and raising another young son.

Anyone interested in the work, upcoming courses, training as a teacher, etc. should visit the LearningMethods website for more information and contact details (www.learningmethods.com), or e-mail David directly at david@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