Meade Andrews' Preparing the Receptive Field

I am very fortunate to study under Meade Andrews.  She has taught at many of the Alexander residential workshops I have attended and also visits my school, Chesapeake Bay Alexander Studies.  She was teaching us this past November and walked us through what she calls "Preparing the Receptive Field".  This is an activity that she leads groups through at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the conference.  The idea behind it is that is an activity that helps unite the group and focuses the individual on their Self and their surroundings.  This activity has taken various modes - but whatever the awareness activity, it helps our sensory receptors to wake up and look around.

This past weekend, we started with the "sacred circle" which means the group stands in a circle (not an oval, not an ameba but an evenly spaced circle).  We enjoy that environment for a moment.  Next we turn around so that we are facing away from the circle.  We check in with our own backs.  After we have our own back we sense the backs of everyone in the circle and then turn back in to face the circle.  It is amazing how much the energy of the group has changed by this point!!  We were really cookin' that morning.  Each of us have our own back and we also have the support of the collective back of the group.  We take a moment and with no one indicating, we take one step into the circle.

After this introduction, we walked about the room sensing the dynamic of our own back while in movement.  We would pause occasionally and come to stillness.  Our partners were then allowed to put a hand on our back or shoulder while we paused in space.  This symbiotic connection was pretty darn cool.  No matter if I was the one with the hand on my back or if I was the one with my hand on the other's back, we both were sensing one collective back.

Another really cool thing that happened was that Meade was explaining this type of connection and she offered her hand to me.  I took her hand as if to shake it and I completely felt a wave go through my body.  Sounds a little crazy, I know.  But what it boils down to is that whatever we have in our hand - be it a pencil, fork, violin etc - we automatically map it to our body.  So if two people are aware of this mapping, then one of the results may be this type of tangible wave or energy flow.  All we were doing was connecting hands while thinking through our use.  Pretty amazing!