Contents copyright © 2013 – 2017  David Gorman
ISBN  978-1-927437-21-8

(see detailed publishing and copyright history at end of book)
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 on the web in 2013
This EPUB / MOBI e-book
version is published 2017 by

LearningMethods Publications

Toronto, Canada — www.bodymoveable.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 19 parts (over 29 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

I Once Was Lost, but Now Am Found

by
David Gorman

This article is also available as a web page:

www.learningmethods.com/i-once-was-lost-but-now-am-found.htm

Have you ever had one (or more) of those moments when you feel totally whole and totally free? When everything seems to be doing itself with utmost ease? When you are totally present and at one with the moment? When amazing skill and coordination is just flowing out of you?

Over many decades of working with people, mostly performers, I’ve explored these moments of “optimal functioning” hundreds of times, and I’ve come to see how almost everything we need to know about good use is revealed in those moments.

Those experiences are one of the hallmarks of Alexander Technique lessons, but of course they also occur in other methods like Feldenkrais, etc., and in moments of performance when a musician is “in the music” or a dancer “in the flow” or an actor “in the scene”, sometimes they occur at intimate moments of sex, or even during a lovely sunset at the beach.

Recall those moments and you’ll note that most or all of the following things are happening, and they are happening all together all at once:

— You experience a wholeness and unity such that you have no parts;

— You experience ease and freedom such that there is no effort and everything seems to do itself;

— Your performance and your ability to express your skill are very “high quality”, some of the best you have done;

— You are present in the moment, so much so that often things seem brighter, more colourful, more 3D;

— You experience an expansion out into the space around you, an openness to, and a oneness with, your environment, the others on stage, indeed, the world; and...

— You feel joy and delight, a sort of yummy appreciation that this is really good stuff.

We’ve all had these moments. No one has to tell us that they are wonderful. We’d like to live more of them. But it’s relatively rare because, while we’ve certainly had the experience, we’ve usually missed the meaning of the experience. To jargonize it, we’ve failed to reliably appreciate the sensory experience we just had.

For instance, in those moments there is an undeniable wholeness — I have no parts, I am just me all the way to the ground and out into the room... And at the same time, I’m not doing anything, everything is doing itself... And it is all happening with total ease and no effort, and with a quality that is a lot better than I manage when I’ve tried to do it...

Of course we like that experience and are disappointed when it begins to fade. And we want to experience it again. So, immediately after that experience fades, what do we do to try to get it back? We go straight back into parts to try to free ourselves, to release this bit and that bit, to tell various parts what we think they should be doing, all guided by the memory of that yummy experience. And we hope that this will get it back for us. If that doesn’t work, we start studying various methods or works in the hope that they can show us how to “have” that experience more often.

Did you ever wonder why those moments are so elusive and seem so “hard” to get back to?  Is it that the methods or the work is so difficult to master it takes decades (it is called the “work”, after all)?  Or is it rather that we have completely failed to understand the significance of the experience we had?

We got the “it’s good” part alright. It’s hard to miss that, especially in comparison to our usual “not so good” experiences. But, we missed the bit that in wholeness there are no parts. And we missed the part where the wholeness does itself without us having to do anything. What could those two together possibly mean but that we ARE whole!  It takes no doing to be whole. Being whole is easy and does itself... It’s right there in the experience, plain as day.

Unfortunately, what keeps us from seeing the full significance of that experience is we are still trapped in the biggest habit which is still invisible to most people. That is the habit of trying to get somewhere better (to get to better use, to being successful, being perfect, being loved... you name it). The habit whispers that we are not where we should be. We could get over there to the promised land where the grass is greener, if only we could work out how. Then we’d be OK and we could relax and just enjoy life.

We fail to see that our own system is showing us every time we have one of those “optimal experiences” that it already knows (and has always known) how to be whole without effort, and that this goes with, and is inseparable from, openness and presentness and oneness.

This is not a far-off land, it has happened to us many times and is available anytime. Of course, it feels good, but we fail to see what exactly it is that our own system is telling us is GOOD. It’s saying to you in the only way it knows how, “Feel this? How’s this for a good way to be? Go ahead, go for it, just live what is happening now — be whole, be easy, be present, be open... And just to make sure the message is clear, compare this yummy wholeness, easiness, presentness, openness, freedom, oneness to that “normal” effortful, horrible way you feel so you can see how you are straining against yourself to do more than you can do, or be better than you are, when you are all parts and tension and reaction to the moment, full of effort and trying”.

The message doesn’t get any clearer than that.

But, of course, with our habitual inaccurate (i.e. unreliable) way of understanding (appreciating) our experiences we miss the real message again and again and default back to the habit of thinking we have to do something (or undo something) to get to that lovely yummy state, and so we react the same way the next time we find ourselves in a present moment which we don’t like. We have already pre-judged that moment to be wrong and we start to try to do something with the parts we are already caught in, in order to get to a better moment we think we will like, a moment later...

It does not occur to us that our system has just showed us exactly how to live in that “optimal functioning”, and how to live it right now. Instead, the habit sucks us into taking the next step in the vicious circle by doing more parts, making more effort, trying more trying, while narrowed to that future better moment about to come. There we’d be happy to stay in that better moment and wallow in its yummyness. But wait, how come our strategy only works once in a while, and when it does, that wonderful moment doesn’t “stick” very long?

What we need is to realize is that the wonderful experience is not the “result” of some path. It is the path itself! It’s not the end, it’s the means!

You, the conscious choosing you, need to lead the way by living what you want first. You cannot “get” the experience and then live in it once you have it. You must make the leap to live it first, and then you’ll feel what it feels like to live it. That is, you must inhibit the habitual tendency to try to “fix” the moment (under the mistaken idea that it is somehow “broken” or a “bad use” moment and therefore needs fixing by you). Instead, learn from that yummy experience and follow the path by starting to live, right now, what your own system just showed you about the way it works.

That means choosing to live the whole you just as you are in the moment of choice, whether you like how you currently feel or not — in other words, start being whole RIGHT NOW.

That means choosing to stop all the doing, releasing, striving... all the stuff whose sole purpose is to change something you don’t like into something you’d like better — in other words, to let your system do itself — be itself — RIGHT NOW. How easy is that?

That means choosing to be present in the moment as it actually is (for the simple reason that it is, whether you like the present moment or not) and fully and willingly accept it RIGHT NOW.

If you think for a moment, this is about the easiest and simplest thing you can possibly do. In fact, there’s really nothing at all to do. It is a challenge, for sure, in the face of the habit, in the face of your feelings, in the face of what you’ve been taught, but it is possible to inhibit your reaction to the moment and follow the means-whereby which your very own highly-evolved system keeps showing you — which is to open up to the present moment, to your wholeness, and to give your system a little bit of faith that it seems to know what it is doing, and that it can do it really well without your “help”.

Remember the part of that optimal experience where everything is easy and seems to do itself? What can this mean but that your system is taking care of everything wonderfully well, and you have nothing to do but to be present?

I can tell you that after you have truly put this to the test for a while you won’t need faith any more; you’ll have the experiences to know that you can trust it. In fact, you’ll no longer be thinking of it as trusting your system or “using” your system. You will BE your system… You’ll just be YOU… in the world... and not separate from it nor from yourself.

The ultimate learning is not that you will have finally figured out how to get back in touch with your system and use it well, but you’ll realize that it was YOU who were lost, and your system was trying to contact you and let you know how to find your way back.

You once were blind, but now you see.

So give a heartfelt thanks that it managed to wake you up and show you the way home and to show you how utterly amazing and capable you are in such a beautiful, seductive, and loving way.

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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