The Ready List | The Developing Self

Using The Ready List

We practise The Ready List by applying it to transition points. These are moments when we transition from one activity to another.
This can be in relation to any specific activity such as a sport, a hobby, playing an instrument, sitting in front of a screen, in fact anything that you can imagine.
Transition points also regularly occur in our daily lives.
Your teacher will explain all this to you in detail and help you to find one or two transitions that you would really like to work with.
Over time you will be able to apply The Ready List to more and more aspects of your life.

Learning The Ready List

To learn The Ready List - especially to learn how to expand into soft and tall - it is essential to have some lessons with a qualified Alexander Teacher.
The Ready List is taught by verbal instruction and by gentle indications from the hands of your teacher.
Touch is the clearest way to convey the principles and is an important part of the teaching.
Alexander Teachers are trained to use their hands in a thoughtful and safe way and are regulated by a professional body and a clear code of conduct.
For these reasons it is best to have some lessons with an Alexander Teacher to get you started.
Lessons are for adults and children and can be taught in the context of any activity that interests you.
Online learning is also possible where direct contact cannot be arranged. The world is changing and Alexander Teachers are increasingly finding new, creative and effective ways to teach.

Active Meditation

We are hard-wired to seek safety
Our behaviour is not always a product of our intention
Most of us have a dysregulated nervous system and this determines how we perceive the world and how we respond to the world
Peace is our baseline state but it can be difficult to have an awareness of peace if our nervous system is out of balance.
More and more of us are grappling with anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, eating disorders and a range of mental health issues. Many of these conditions are behavioural rather than pathological.
Often it is true that we are not ill, we just need to learn how to regulate our nervous system. We need to change the way we behave and thus rewire the brain.
There are many approaches to dealing with extreme dysregulation and The Ready List alone may not be enough. However, everyone can benefit to some extent by learning how to work with The Ready List.
The Ready List helps us to change any unhelpful habitual behaviour in order to balance our nervous system and to bring a sense of peace into our lives.
In this way we can experience a state of being in activity that we more usually associate with sitting in meditation.
We become very aware of how we are functioning in the world in the moment but can, at the same time, maintain a peaceful sense of detachment from the dramas playing out all around us.