January 5th 2016: a beautiful sunny spring-like day. We have started giving our sheep a supplementary feed because it is only 8 weeks until lambing! Thinking about new lambs reminded me of a morning spent with the ‘small shepherds’ club’ I belong to, a few years ago. We were gathered in the lambing shed of a large commercial farm in Surrey: The shepherd was demonstrating how to tube feed a premature lamb, when his ears literally pricked up. He handed the little lamb to someone else, stepped over the hurdles, and made his way through the hundreds of expectant mums to a ewe struggling to give birth. He delivered the lamb, got it breathing and settled, and then resumed his talk without any fuss. He was absolutely ‘in the moment’ – relaxed, and yet acutely aware, ready to respond to any situation.
This state of being is probably one to which we would all aspire, and the Alexander Technique can help you – learning how to recognize when stress is making you tense, and teaching you how to use thinking to bring about a more desirable state, of both relaxation and awareness, like the shepherd, well-oiled and ready to spring!
Tip of the week: sat at your desk, or dining table, notice the effect of your thinking: say to yourself: eyes relax; notice what is within your visual field, and at the limit of where you can see, let your ears take over hearing sounds, so that you have a 360 degree sense of being. How do you feel?
