Contents copyright © 2007 – 2017  Elizabeth Garren
ISBN  978-1-927437-23-0

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Book design and illustrations by David Gorman

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First published on the web in 2007
This EPUB / MOBI e-book
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Books and Courses by David Gorman (founder 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

Good For Whom?
A Chronicle of Stage Fright, People Pleasing

and Other Anxious Moments

by
Elizabeth Garren

This article is also available as a web page:

www.learningmethods.com/goodforwhom.htm

Lisez cet article en tant que page Web en Français:

www.learningmethods.com/bon-pour-qui.htm

My heart was in my throat as my turn to take the stage approached. I’d been relatively calm during the first five speakers’ presentations, staying in control of my usual debilitating fear of public speaking. I was last of seven dancers invited to talk about their dance careers at the prestigious Walker Art Center, a contemporary art museum. Speaker number six was half way through her presentation. I was next. What I planned to say was condensed to a pile of notes clutched in my hand. But what was now unfolding on stage threw me into chaos. The poised and articulate dancer, the one I had to follow, chose to punctuate her talk with a bang up slow motion silhouetted movement sequence, accompanied by a hypnotic tribal beat … the audience was mesmerized. When the music ended, she held her pose for a moment of electric silence, during which I felt the life drain out of me. The audience erupted into whoops and shouts. It should have been the end of the show, but little ol’ me was next, with a low-key talk on my cerebral, avant-garde no-music dance experience. I was doomed and I knew it. These people wanted drama, action, passion!  I had to get out of there, but couldn’t move. I was trapped. I knew in my bones my talk was a disaster ready to happen, in full view of my colleagues, family and friends, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it … or was there? In a gesture of survival, I reached down deep, not for courage, but for clarity…

———————

My first instinct, when invited to speak at the Walker was NO WAY! Although honored to be asked, I’d always feared speaking in public. In spite of years performing with a well-known dance troupe on stages around the world, speaking my mind alone on stage was another story. Did I really have anything to say? Would the audience like me? Would I be good? I knew from experience what these concerns could mean: weeks of anxiety preparing a talk, accompanied by the inevitable fear, dread, and possible near panic during the event itself. I’d be exhausted, even sick, afterwards. Why would anyone say yes to this?

But I did say yes. I wanted to see if I could finally speak in public without experiencing stage fright. Over the previous year, I’d radically changed the way I viewed what I had always feared about being onstage: the possibility of being judged negatively by an audience. During all the years of my stage fright, I’d operated under the assumption that other people’s evaluations of me (or of what I say or do) held the key to how good or right or of value I was. Instead of registering my own responses to the world around me, my sensitive antennae were often tuned to what other people were experiencing as good or right, so I would know what to aim for. The slightest signs of approval/disapproval, agreement/disagreement, or interest/boredom in others would shape my words and actions to better ensure I’d be regarded positively. To be clear, I was not aware of thinking or doing any of this. I was only aware of the anxiety or fear I felt whenever everyone’s eyes were on me as I spoke, and there was the possibility of a negative response.

I often had felt this anxiety or fear in my personal life as well. Concern for how I might be perceived has influenced my interactions with other people (often called people pleasing), including my ability to make decisions, to form opinions, to choose what to say or write, and even to know what color to paint my kitchen walls. I can trace nearly every problem in my life, big or small, back to my concern about how my words or actions might be valued or not valued by others. Would I be good? Would I be right?

I see so many people who suffer from the same dis-ease I had, I can almost smell it when I am with them. I see it in my granddaughter already, and she is only seven.

What I didn’t see, in the years of my stage fright, was that I was leaving my sense of identity and worth to be decided by the opinions and whims of other people. I didn’t see what shaky ground I was on, or that fear might be a logical result. I needed help to uncover the specific misconceptions that were driving my fear, and found it in a remarkable work called LearningMethods, founded by gifted teacher David Gorman. During workshop settings with other performers, I learned simple but radical information that shifted the way I view audiences or anyone else who may be evaluating me, positively or negatively. I learned that if and when other people evaluate me, they are defining themselves, not me. Their assessments of me reveal useful information about who they are, what they value, and how they see the world. In other words, they are learning information about themselves, which they can use to actively navigate their lives toward what has value to them. I realized we can all learn about ourselves this way.

What a truly liberating thought this was! And how obvious it appears to me now. How could I not have known this? Alas, I had to inch my way incrementally toward the obvious. For me, the path to freedom was in the details.

I am using my story to share what I have learned in a non-abstract way. Not all individuals who experience stage fright or people pleasing will find their paths to freedom in the exact way I did. Nevertheless, the simple information that has transformed my life should be available to all. Half of my story describes the information itself and how it was laid out for me. The other half describes how I turned that information into the practical clarity I reached for the night I spoke at the Walker.

It all began one day when I brought my stage fright to a LearningMethods workshop, and encountered a simple, clarifying question…

Good for Whom?

In a LearningMethods workshop, people learn tools of inquiry to bring to bear on whatever problems they want to solve in their lives. On day two of the workshop I attended, I brought up a recent stage fright experience, so we could search it for possible clues as to why it was happening. I began by recalling the moment-to-moment sequence of thoughts and perceptions that led up to my first anxious moments. Could we find anything in the way I was seeing the situation, rather than the situation itself, that was fear-making? At one point, when I mentioned my concern about how good a speaker I’d be, the teacher asked me a pointed question:

“Good for whom?”

I remember it sounding like a strange question. I’d never thought to pin the word good onto anyone in particular. It felt more like a free floating kind of good that I aspired to, as evidenced by the audience enjoying my performance. I responded:

“Good for the audience.”

At this point, so early in the discussion, I had no idea how penetrating and pivotal this simple question, and my response to it, would turn out to be. From where I stood then, trying to be a good performer was something I valued, and it had a lot to do with pleasing and satisfying the audience.

We looked closer at my idea of being good for the audience, since it occurred at the same time I was feeling fear. Several interesting observations emerged from this reality check. First, although I was trying to be good for the audience, I had no actual information about what precisely would elicit a good response from their point of view. At any given moment, only they had access to that information. Hmm…

Also, I thought of the audience as if it were a single entity with a single response to my performance. In fact, an audience is composed of a number of separate real individuals, each of whom might have quite different and conflicting ideas about what is good.

Not only that, even if I knew in advance what would be good for each person, how would I go about fulfilling all these different expectations of good at once? What if someone’s notion of good changed halfway through my talk? Let’s say a member of the audience was feeling sleepy after eating lunch, in which case good for that person might mean leaving the room to take a nap. Of course I would have taken this as a negative statement about me.

With all of this out on the table, my desire to be good for the audience suddenly seemed a lot like trying to hit a moving target with blinders on, all to ensure a certain response. Impossible. Yet that’s what I was assuming I should be doing, scoring a bull’s eye on each and every person’s good target with every word I spoke, so I could avoid a negative response from even one person.

But how could the thought of being criticized by even one person hold such power over me? One look of disinterest, one scowling face could suck the life out of me. Real or imagined, the way I saw it in that moment I was not good at all. I would feel defined and written off as boring, wrong, off the mark, and left with no way to recover. Not a good feeling to someone whose goal was to be a good speaker. Given the way I was seeing it, no wonder I feared getting up in front of an audience! There was always the possibility of someone not liking what I was doing, and a certainty that I would take this personally.

But was I seeing the situation accurately? Here was a question I’d never thought to ask myself — about anything!

So at that point in the workshop, we looked more closely at what I feared most: being assessed by someone else as a bad speaker.  We sorted out four basic elements that appeared to make up such assessments of value. These elements were to become a grid of clarity to sort out my confusions, as well as a key to making sense of my fears.

The Four Elements of any Value Assessment

1) The valuer (the person doing the assessing or evaluation)

2) The valued (the someone or something being valued)

3) The evaluation itself (good/bad, etc.)

4) The criteria being used for making the evaluation

Let’s say I am onstage. Someone in the audience (“Jane”) is checking her watch, thinking my presentation is too long (low value), and we’d sort it out like this:

Who is doing the evaluation? Jane

What is being valued? My presentation

What is the evaluation?  Too long, bad

According to what criteria?  ????

Hmm… Good question. We don’t know what criteria Jane is using for what constitutes bad. Only Jane knows that!  She may prefer facts to personal stories and thus dismisses my story-filled presentation. She may be at my presentation through no desire of her own. Meanwhile I presume her clock-watching to mean I am boring her, that my presentation is bad, that I am a bad speaker.  One thing is sure: I am not factoring in that Jane is judging my presentation according to the particular criteria she brought with her that day.

Here is another example:

Picture two friends (Jack and Jill) walking out of a movie. They each have strong opinions about the movie.

To Jack, it was a bad movie, boring, at two hours lasting way too long.

To Jill, it was a good movie, much better than the one she saw the night before, and even at two hours, not long enough.

Was the movie good or bad? If you answer BOTH, think it through. In a factual sense, can the same movie be good AND bad? If it’s good, how can it be bad? The only way to make sense of a movie being both good and bad is to realize that the goodness and badness does not exist IN the movie, but IN Jack and IN Jill as a reflection of how the movie matches their individual criteria.

Since Jack loves action and speed, he was bored… Thus it was a bad movie.

Since Jill is comparing it to the lousy one she saw last night, the movie was good.

But you can bet Jack and Jill don’t realize this. They argue about whether it was a good movie or a bad movie, not factoring in they are each judging the movie using different criteria!  Meanwhile the movie just sits there being itself in all its movie-ness, not taking the conversation personally.

That day of the workshop I didn’t fully understand that every value judgment was inextricably linked to the criteria the valuer was using; it was not a factual statement about the person or thing being valued. True understanding would come later. What I did sense was a shift of focus away from me and how good or bad I was and onto something called criteria — something that was way over in the other person’s court.

Or was it? If ensuring a good time for the audience was an impossible endeavor, and their judgments of me did not define my worth, the ball was actually back in MY court. What did I value?  What would be good from my viewpoint?  Where would I find the answer to such unfamiliar questions?

I had never heard the term personal value register. But it seems we all have one built into us so we can answer such questions. The term value register refers to an aspect of our being that seems so normal that we take it for granted, or never think to name it. It explains the personal nature of our likes and dislikes. It would be the compass that would guide me out of stage fright.

A Personal Value Register

If someone tries a new flavor of ice cream, they usually don’t have to think before they know whether they like it or not.

Each of us has the ability to register our own personal responses to what we encounter in life, be it ice cream, a performer, a movie, an idea, our current physical state, the weather … you name it. These responses can be experienced as positive, negative or just plain neutral, reflecting the amount of worth or value something has for us. If we like something, find it attractive, pleasant, or interesting, we register a thumbs up kind of response, i.e., high value. If we dislike something, find it unappealing, unpleasant, or boring, we register a thumbs down response, i.e., low value. This inner registering of value or worth can be used to navigate each of us through the many choices we are presented with every day. What to eat for breakfast? What section to read first in the paper … what to wear, what to do, how to do it, for how long, with whom … and, contrarily, what to avoid. Imagine a sliding scale of value responses, from high value to low value, with neutral (no particular value being registered) as the steady center.

What most captured my attention about these value registers was the notion that they are absolutely personal to each of us. That is, only I can feel mine, only you can feel yours. Given how my sensitive antennae were usually tuned to what other people were valuing, this was intriguing information. I had been tuning into something I had no direct access to, and as a result I was missing out on what I did have access to … the information from my own inbuilt value register!  This would explain why I wasn’t at all sure what was good for me (except trying to be good for others, which my fear was letting me know was not so good for me after all) … oh, the convolution of it all!

All sorts of what ifs came to mind. What if I have my own value register that lets me know when something nourishes, delights, or enlightens me?  What if I used this information to steer my life as I would use a compass in the wilderness? What if I did all this in the presence of other people?  Finally, what if I stopped trying to get other people’s compasses to register yes when they encountered me, onstage or off? Where would that leave me? Would I be better off? Would I still have stage fright?

All this was almost too much to imagine. I walked out of this workshop session dizzy from the rigor of sorting through and examining my own ideas, like breathing pure oxygen. I knew I had some very basic homework to do. Nothing could be taken for granted. First, I needed to find out on the most elementary level if value assessments could really be sorted into four elements. Second, I needed to find out if I really had my own value register. My everyday life was going to be my laboratory. But I knew deep down that something profound had already been set in motion.

HOMEWORK SESSIONS…

Stacked Dishes

That night I caught my first value assessment in the act. My husband was washing the dinner dishes and stacking them to dry in the WRONG WAY. Heavy things on top of light things, silverware akimbo. I’d have to sort them out like pick-up sticks to put them away without breaking something. Normally my judgment would have registered as a fact about his way of stacking. But I was primed to run a background check on the assessment I’d just made … WRONG WAY … for whom, according to what criteria?

I sorted the four elements, counting on my fingers:

Who’s doing the assessing?  Me

What’s being assessed?  The way the dishes were stacked

The assessment?  Wrong, bad

According to what criteria?  Hard to put away, they might break

So there! Once I’d clarified the four elements of my value assessment, the tables turned instantly. My focus changed from my husband and the badly stacked dishes to me and my criteria! My judgment had just clarified something about myself (I like unbroken dishes and less work). What an entirely new way to experience passing judgment. It made me wonder what my husband’s criteria were for the right way to stack dishes. I sensed all this may apply to more than stage fright.

Miserable Weather

Next I observed other people making value assessments … about food, books, weather, etc. I heard someone say, after three days of rain, “What miserable weather!” Again I sorted out the basic elements: miserable for whom, according to what criteria?  When I asked, this person told me he preferred sunny weather so he could play golf without an umbrella.

Was miserable a property of the weather? Or was it a property of this person’s criteria? Put another way, where was the misery being experienced, in the weather or in the person? It was clear to me that miserable was not a fact about the weather, but a description of the low value experience this person was having, because rain did not match his criteria for good weather.

I sorted through many more such value assessments. The way they were phrased made them sound like statements of fact when they were actually descriptions of personal preference.  Being clear about this helped me in the moment I felt I was being judged by someone. I could see the judgment contained information about them. When I became more clear about that, I felt curiosity about them instead of fear.

But still something was missing. I was letting go of my concern about being judged and my hyper-sensitivity to what other people thought was good or right. There was still the question, how would I know what was good or right for me without peeking over someone else’s shoulder? Did I actually have a value register of my own? Could I discern my responses to the world around me from those of others?

Prairie Grass

I started quietly, walking by myself through a neighborhood, past homes and gardens, along sidewalks and streets. I wanted to see if anything caught my eye, if there was any little bump of interest, curiosity, attraction, repulsion, maybe a house that I particularly liked, or didn’t like. What surprised me was how neutral most everything seemed. But just as I was thinking that, my eyes focused on a clump of wild prairie grass on a manicured lawn. And there, it had already happened … I had indeed registered (that word seemed exactly right) a subtle but palpable stirring within me. It wasn’t neutral, it got my attention … a definite thumbs up response. The prairie grass was beautiful, to me.

Chimayo Red

I didn’t know what color to paint the kitchen wall. As I picked out and tested each new possibility, I was never sure what worked, or if a certain color was right or not. I had never trusted my sense of color before. Now I realized why. As I looked at each new color, any registering of my own response was overshadowed by what I imagined my sister would think, or my daughter, or my niece … all people I thought knew color. They weren’t even in the room, but their voices threw me into doubt. I just couldn’t tell what I liked on my own. No wonder. My criteria for right were based on what Joanne, Sara, or Gen might think. I was seeing through everyone’s eyes except my own.

Then I tried Chimayo Red. Surely too dark (for my sister), surely would make the kitchen appear small (to my daughter), surely not exciting enough (for my niece). I’d be thrown into doubt about the color, was it right, not right, etc., etc. Chimayo Red would be the fourth layer of paint on my test wall. When I woke up the next morning to get a first-thing-in-the-morning spontaneous impression … I LIKED IT!  I felt it clearly; it was rich, soothing, dramatic, and it brought the whole room together … for ME! There was no mistaking the palpable high value bump in my register. This was good. This was fun. I knew I liked Chimayo Red even if no one else did! I finally understood what creativity was based on, and what I’d been missing out on. I was making it complicated when it’s so simple … letting my own responses, rather than everyone else’s, guide me! I went out and bought two more gallons of Chimayo Red.

Jazz

I worked with several jazz musicians early in my dance career and became someone who liked jazz. Thus it was disconcerting to realize, from the privacy of my own register, that in fact I DON’T like jazz. I’d always WANTED to like jazz, felt I SHOULD like jazz, even made myself turn to 88.5 FM in the car. But one day, listening to the car radio, it became clear that I always secretly wanted to change the channel. I felt a moment of shame, like I was now a simpleton or an easy-listener. But it was so freeing to lift that dishonesty off of me that I accepted it. I was a non-jazz lover, plain and simple. Ironically, once I stopped trying to like jazz, I found myself being truly curious about jazz; what were those sounds, and why are some people so in love with it? I was free now to really experience jazz for itself, and like it or not.

By now I was pretty clear what it felt like to experience my own value register right in the moment, within myself, by myself. And to recognize when other people’s voices were hogging the spotlight from my real responses. I wondered what would happen in the presence of an actual other person who had views of their own?

Amy

One day, on a supposedly relaxing walk with my friend Amy, I recognized a feeling of tension in me that felt something like stage fright on a smaller scale.

Amy, who comes across to me as deeply committed to her political views, was talking about xyz. Suddenly I noticed a knot of tension in the center of me. My face was jutting out toward Amy, nodding yes, yes, in agreement with what she was saying. I felt like I was straining to find and agree with what the right opinion was, since I didn’t seem to have one of my own. I remember thinking, Oh, I’m all caught up in Amy’s value register … and then thinking, if hers is over there in her, where’s mine?  The clarity of my question (and my previous experiences with prairie grass, chimayo red, and jazz) was all it took. The knot of tension in the center of me changed to ease and to a sense of heft and intactness, as if a paperweight was keeping me from fluttering back over to Amy. There had been no effort involved in the shift back to my own register … just the clarity that my register was in me, and Amy’s was in her.

I was still walking with Amy, listening to her, but from what felt like an unfamiliar distance. It struck me that even though Amy and I were side by side together, she was looking out from her eyes, and I from mine. We each brought our own backlog of life experiences, mood of the day, and personal value register to how we viewed xyz, or anything else. There was no need to reach out and grab Amy’s point of view of things, because I had my own point of view, which was a good four-feet of airspace away from hers!

I now felt much more connected and comfortable with Amy as we walked side by side, partly because I didn’t have all that tension and strain, partly because I didn’t have to agree or disagree with her. I still didn’t know my exact opinion on xyz, but now I sensed where those opinions would come from, and it was not from abandoning my own register to match someone else’s. The thought of living my life with other people in this separate but together way felt like an adventure waiting to happen.

This walk with Amy reminded me that ideas are tested by how they perform in actual lived moments, because that’s where reality speaks. My experience had shown me the strain and tension of being caught up in someone else’s value system; the relative ease and freedom of operating out of my own. To me, the message was clear: I have no business trying to read someone else’s register! If I really want to know what’s going on for them, I can ask.

Step by step, I was recognizing long held confusions and replacing them with new clarities. I was feeling more pleasure and fun, less anxiety, as I learned what worked for me. Still, I had a ways to go. All of my research had occurred in the relative safety of my personal life. It was time for a new test. Sure enough, one came knocking when I was invited to speak at the Walker Art Center. Feeling confident that I could bring what I had learned into a more public situation, I accepted the invitation. Alas, after an initial few hours of calm excitement, I awoke in the night with a gripping sense of dread inside me. Why had I said yes? What did I possibly have to say, especially compared to all the other speakers, who of course would be more in touch with what was right and good. Fortunately, I was determined to find out how my new insights would work during my pre-performance stage fright. The next day I began to prepare my talk.

Preparing the Talk / What to Say?

Talk about a flip-flop. One moment, with my notes spread all around me on the floor, I recalled a funny story to tell about my dance experience and a glimmer of enjoyment passed through me. The next moment, seemingly out of nowhere, I was flooded with dread and scrambling for reasons to back out of my commitment. What had been a funny story now seemed embarrassing and silly, not funny at all. What was I thinking? How could it change so quickly?

I knew from my experiences so far that such a jolt of feeling most likely did not come out of nowhere, but was a reaction to something. But what?

I searched the moments right before the change happened, as I’d learned to do in the LearningMethods workshop: I’d been cruising along just fine, sitting on my living room floor, enjoying writing out my funny story idea. Suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, the fun had changed to dread. I sat quietly now, waiting to remember … did anything happen in those out of nowhere moments between having fun and dread?

“Having fun” … … … … … “dread” …

(The dotted line represents those few moments I was trying to recall.)

“Having fun” … … … … … “dread” …

And then it clearly came to me … a split-second image had flashed across my mind … of people in the audience judging my story! I hadn’t even registered it. The sense of dread had hit me at that exact moment. Wow!

I sat back in wonder at the power of a fleeting image to set off such a huge reaction in me. Not even a real audience! I looked around at all my papers on the floor. The dread had vanished. Suddenly my situation felt sadly poignant. Inadvertently flipping from my own value register, where my story was funny, to the value registers of the audience where it might not be, had literally stopped me in my tracks. A great barrier had come down. From this place I would never create a story to tell, never share what gifts I might have to give, never have fun being who I really am, except in the privacy of my own living room. And now, not even there! It wasn’t just my Walker Center talk that was at stake. It was my whole life.

I calmly took stock of what I knew. When I was enjoying my funny story, it told me everything about the kind of things I found funny (corny, off beat, simple, personal), not whether my story would be considered funny or not to anyone else. More importantly, when I was using my own criteria for funny I actually had fun planning my talk. The more I went toward what was fun for me, the more I could imagine having fun being in front of an audience, even if no one liked my funny story! It was that simple.

It occurred to me later that if I could bring the clarity I’d just applied to preparing my talk into an actual performance situation, the audience would be experiencing a wholly different person speaking to them. Instead of listening to someone who was scared, tense, and rushing to get offstage, they’d be hearing someone speaking freely from her own passion and interests, curious about but not defined by how good she was for the audience.

I realized also that a person sitting in the audience would have a wholly different experience if that person understood that the value they usually ascribe to the speaker was actually information about themselves. Audience members could then discern what was good for them and move toward what delights them, inspires them, or piques their curiosity as they move through their lives.

I continued shaping my dance experiences into stories and movement for the upcoming performance. My trusty stage fright alerted me whenever I became so concerned about whether the audience would like my stories or not that I’d lose touch with how I felt about them.

Lynchpin

In spite of steady progress leading up to the Walker talk, my daily interactions with people made it clear that something still had its hooks in me. I wasn’t free yet. Right at the moment when I’d be about to express myself in a way that might get a negative reaction from someone, I’d pull back, not prepared to accept the possible consequence of someone not valuing me. What if they walked away from me in favor of someone more interesting, more supportive, more compatible, better for them?  The reality of someone being better without ME in their life seemed too stark to deal with, illustrating just how self-centered a people pleaser can be!

Who would I be in their absence, as they walked away?

I had to accept that, like everybody else, I’d be an ordinary person, to whom some people were drawn and others were not. But this was no longer such a bad thought. I had found a replacement buddy in my own personal value register. Waking up to Chimayo Red that morning and really liking it, then covering my whole wall with it, was such a simple act of happiness. I knew I had something I’d never lose, no matter who walked away. I undid the final lynchpin.

I finally had my speaking notes in order and practiced the phrase of choreography I planned to perform. Now I just had to show up.

Back To The Walker

Every inch of me yearned to flee the auditorium as the audience broke into whoops and shouts for the mesmerizing speaker who preceded me. But I didn’t flee; I reached for the clarity I knew was in me somewhere. Suddenly all the awfulness of my situation sparked a flash of recognition. I didn’t want to live another minute like this. If I were going to have any fun at all in the rest of my life, I had to sort out what I was in the middle of NOW. It was clear to me I’d gotten lost in the dark void of the audience and its applause, and how I wouldn’t meet the audience’s high expectations of drama and passion. I knew I needed to get back to the only thing that would save me. What did I value about my talk?

That’s all it took. I felt the life flow back into me, the ease and heft in the center of me. I was home. From here my connection to my stories came alive. From here I could feel the pleasure I’d had dancing the most fascinating delicious choreography … yes, in silence, unaccompanied by any musical score … in the midst of a provocative avant garde dance scene for small and passionate audiences around the world. I truly had something to say!

My mouth was dry as sand, but I was ready. The applause died down, and I with my notes in hand walked toward the podium. Amazingly, a silly joke occurred to me as I crossed the stage, something about being the last of seven presenters. I sensed no one might get this joke, but I told it anyway. No one got it. IT DIDN’T MATTER.  My connection to the joke catapulted me to the next moment. I recognized some people in the first few rows. I said hi to someone. My stories flowed out, I improvised, I danced. My mouth was still dry, but it didn’t matter. Something quite unusual was happening. I was being myself in front of an audience, knowing that all those in the audience were having whatever experiences they were having, and I was having mine, together with them. Then it was over. Afterward, as people came up to me saying this or saying that, clearly I was hearing about their experiences, not about mine. I’d shared who I am; now I was learning about them. Boy, was I exhausted. Time to go home.

Summing Up

Looking at my situation from the outside, even though I knew I was liked and respected, I nevertheless walked on shaky ground. No amount of praise from others could fill in what I needed first and foremost, the navigational system within myself, the capability to know and value my own responses as a foundation for being with other people. Understanding when I assess others for value, I am learning about myself. When others judge me for value, I’m learning about them. This is simply how it works. I have all the proof I need, at least for now. In this sense my stage fright was my true ally. It kept knocking at my door until I finally invited it in, sat it down, and listened to what it had to tell me. LearningMethods helped to translate. Now that I use what I learned that day in the workshop along with what I learned from all my investigations afterwards, I live my life from a different perch.

I’m not afraid anymore. I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned with my granddaughter.

Appendix

About the Author

About the LearningMethods work

Find out more about LearningMethods

More Information on the Alexander Technique

LearningMethods Publications

About the Author

Elizabeth Garren is a former member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. She is one of four Certified LearningMethods Teachers in the United States as well as being a Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Elizabeth Garren

Tel: +1 612-375-9142

e-mail: elizabeth.garren@learningmethods.com

If you are interested in working on similar issues in your life, contact Elizabeth (or another LearningMethods Teacher) to discuss how you can get help to change. You can arrange in-person sessions, you can attend a workshop, or if you do not live near a teacher, you can also work very effectively in phone or online sessions.

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