Teaching, Gratitude, and the Alexander Technique

What does it mean to me to teach with the Alexander Technique? (...or to make music?)

Above all, Gratitude.

I've written about Gratitude before (see this post: Embodying Gratitude).  I do not have enough words to express the All of Gratitude, but here are just a few more.

[Note: You can listen to a beautiful recording of the following writing, read by my dear Alexander Technique teacher colleague and cellist, Jenny Quick, here: LINK TO LISTEN...]

Gratitude, to me, is an experience that feels enormous, huge, wonderful, fantastic, awe-inspiring, essential, and infinite.  Gratitude is about receiving down to generously offer up and out, with endless expansion. It is such a key to the best of everything that I am confounded about why I forget so often to live in awareness of this gift!

Teaching...

to be one who is open to receive, and ready to pour
to be in the presence of one who is open to receive
to see the one before us open to receive, waiting for us to pour
to receive what comes to us from above, knowing that ego has no place here
opening up the whole self to the Grace that is constantly pouring, waiting for us to open up to It, taking off the lid-covering of ego
letting Grace pour down from on high, filling the chalice that we are
letting It stream down through this body that is lived in, dripping through feet to the floor, spreading
realizing that in order to contain this Grace, we must rise up, growing strong, grand, and great
a chalice of malleable gold, with strong, sturdy walls and a very high rim

in order to receive infinite Grace, the chalice must grow infinitely large
ready to pour out a faceless Generosity

Grace - full
Full of Grace

there is no smallness in true Gratitude, because everything is here
no smallness in true Generosity, because everything is given
no smallness in true Humility, because nothing is left

simple awareness of the awe-some greatness, the enormity of Grace that descends
to full-fill the original design, the intended space of the mind-body-person that is lived in

the other side of the sense of greatness is the disappearing expanding space of humility
ego-I becomes nothing, no longer interfering
leaving a chalice, royally and divinely rich with nothingness
empty, clean and pure
ready to be filled and poured again and again and again of eternal Bliss

true teaching must be the receiving and pouring of the most subtle Grace
which illuminates the world
in the instant the teacher disappears