"He goes to the wise man and explains that, although he was okay with life for a while, more and more it has been growing on his mind that he's not happy with the way things are, and that he's really quite sure now that something has got to change. "Could you help me to change?" he asks.
"The wise man says, "Thank you for coming to me. You did the right thing in coming here. And now I will give you my advice: change nothing."
THE END
When I first read this, a part of me thought to myself, "Well, being a wise man seems pretty simple. Maybe I'll take up the profession myself. All I'll have to do is tell people seeking my wisdom: "change nothing" and my exulted place in society will be assured. I might be able to make more money too!
But as a teacher of the Alexander Technique I had to admit that the wise man's advice was pretty profound. In my field I often work with people who have come to believe that the solution to problems with their physical functioning lies in trying to do something different - to just change something.
Take posture, for example. Some people believe, or have been told, that their posture is poor. Sometimes they've been warned that they face potentially serious health risks - perhaps due to the restricted breathing that often goes along with poor posture. Or, for older students, the greater likelihood they'll loose their balance and fall with potentially serious results. Maybe they've come to realize that poor posture just doesn't look good, that their personal or professional lives are being adversely affected.
They want to improve their posture and, more often than not, are quick to demonstrate just how they might go about doing just that. Someone who is a sloucher, for example, will demonstrate "standing up straight" by lifting their head and chest, probably in very much the way they did as children when a parent or teacher told them to "stop slouching, stand up straight".
This procedure was effective at getting the parent or teacher off their back - at least for the minute or so until they returned to their old pattern. But it did absolutely nothing to improve their posture. All that happened was that they rearranged (changed) the harmful tensions in their body into a different, equally dysfunctional, arrangement.
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