News

In a world where fashion often feels synonymous with extravagance and high glamour, the concept of casual chic offers a refreshing perspective. In a recent article titled “Casual Chic: Elevating the Everyday with Effortless Style,” the author explores the art of blending comfort with sophistication, proving that style doesn’t have to be sacrificed for comfort.

The article opens by acknowledging the allure of casual attire and its ability to provide both comfort and ease in our daily lives. From cozy knits to relaxed silhouettes, casual wear has long been celebrated for its practicality and versatility.

However, what sets casual chic apart is its ability to elevate everyday looks with subtle touches of sophistication and refinement. Whether it’s pairing a classic white tee with tailored trousers or adding statement accessories to a laid-back ensemble, casual chic allows individuals to effortlessly transition from day to night without compromising on style.

Moreover, the article emphasizes that casual chic isn’t about following trends or adhering to strict fashion rules. Instead, it’s about expressing personal style in a way that feels authentic and effortless. By mixing and matching pieces in unexpected ways and embracing individuality, anyone can master the art of casual chic.

Ultimately, “Casual Chic” serves as a reminder that style is not about what you wear, but how you wear it. Whether you’re running errands or meeting friends for brunch, embracing casual chic allows you to look and feel your best without sacrificing comfort or practicality.

So, as we navigate the complexities of everyday life, let’s remember to infuse our wardrobes with a touch of casual chic. Let’s embrace the beauty of effortless style and celebrate the joy of looking and feeling good in our own skin. After all, true style is about confidence, creativity, and the ability to make every day a fashion statement. 👗👠

In a world that seems to constantly demand our attention and energy, it’s easy to forget the importance of slowing down and appreciating life’s simple pleasures. In a recent article titled “Everyday Escapes: Simple Pleasures in a Busy World,” the author beautifully explores the significance of finding moments of respite amidst the chaos of our daily lives.

The article begins by acknowledging the relentless pace of modern life and the toll it can take on our mental and emotional well-being. From hectic work schedules to the constant buzz of notifications, it’s no wonder that many of us feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

However, amidst this hustle and bustle, the article reminds us of the importance of carving out time for ourselves – time to pause, reflect, and savor the little moments that bring us joy. Whether it’s enjoying a quiet cup of coffee in the morning, taking a leisurely stroll through nature, or simply curling up with a good book, these small indulgences can serve as much-needed escapes from the stresses of everyday life.

Moreover, the article emphasizes that these moments of relaxation and rejuvenation don’t have to be grand or extravagant. In fact, it’s often the simplest pleasures that have the most profound impact on our well-being. By tuning into our senses and fully immersing ourselves in the present moment, we can find beauty and serenity in even the most ordinary experiences.

Ultimately, “Everyday Escapes” serves as a gentle reminder to prioritize self-care and mindfulness in our daily routines. In a world that glorifies busyness and productivity, it’s essential to remember that true happiness often lies in the quiet moments – the moments when we allow ourselves to slow down, breathe, and appreciate the richness of life.

So, as we navigate the complexities of modern life, let’s not forget to seek out our own everyday escapes – those simple pleasures that bring us back to ourselves and remind us of what truly matters. After all, in a busy world, it’s these moments of stillness and connection that nourish the soul and replenish the spirit. 🌿✨

In a digital age where screens dominate our attention and busyness often feels like a badge of honor, the idea of unwinding unplugged might seem like a distant dream. However, in a thought-provoking article titled “Unwinding Unplugged: Rediscovering Joy in Casual Moments,” the author beautifully explores the importance of disconnecting from technology and reconnecting with the simple joys of life.

The article begins by acknowledging the pervasive presence of technology in our lives and the impact it has on our ability to truly unwind. From constant notifications to the pressure to always be available, our digital devices often leave us feeling more stressed than relaxed.

However, the article suggests that true relaxation lies in stepping away from the screens and embracing the beauty of casual moments. Whether it’s spending quality time with loved ones, enjoying a leisurely walk in nature, or indulging in a favorite hobby, these unplugged activities offer a sense of joy and fulfillment that can’t be found online.

Moreover, the article emphasizes that unwinding unplugged doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. In fact, it’s often the small, everyday moments that bring us the most happiness. From savoring a home-cooked meal to laughing with friends over a cup of tea, these simple pleasures have the power to rejuvenate our spirits and nourish our souls.

Ultimately, “Unwinding Unplugged” serves as a gentle reminder to prioritize presence over productivity and to cultivate a deeper connection with ourselves and the world around us. In a culture that glorifies busyness and constant connectivity, it’s essential to carve out time for quiet reflection and meaningful connection.

So, as we navigate the fast-paced world of technology and information overload, let’s not forget to unplug and unwind. Let’s rediscover the joy of casual moments and embrace the simplicity of life without screens. After all, in a world that’s constantly vying for our attention, true happiness often lies in the moments when we choose to disconnect and simply be. 🌼✨

Half baked? A pie, earlier today

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What was Liz Truss going on about when she told Laura Kuenssberg we need to grow the size of the pie? Let’s be honest here, most of us are too thick to understand clever economic stuff like this. But really, it’s brilliantly simple.

You see, since 2008 too many British people have been stuck eating supermarket own-brand fun-size pork pies, which are mostly ground up snouts, trotters, sawdust and chicken feet. Yeuch!! But now, thanks to her tax cuts, the rich can buy lots more massive Venison and Partridge pies from Harrods. They won’t be able to eat all their pie, so they’ll share the leftover pie with the upper middle classes. The upper middle classes will get really full, and they’ll share their Waitrose responsibly sourced Organic pies with the lower middle classes.

The lower middle classes can then share their Sainsburys’ pies with the working poor… who will then share their pies with people on benefits, and so on. Eventually, the rich peoples’ pies will become so big, even the poor will be eating Venison and Partridge pie very day!

Here’s the really brilliant part though – none of us will need to pay for heating because the pies will be really, really hot! And nobody will be homeless because the crusts will be so big you’ll be able to live under them, and not pay any rent. As Liz Truss says, the solution is to grow the size of the pie! Thank you Prime Minister. It’s so obvious now.

Oh, and just in case that doesn’t work, remember it’s all the fault of the Bank of England, all those City remoaners, Keir Starmer, and probably Jamie Oliver, for not baking a pie big enough to go round.

In a world filled with constant hustle and bustle, the idea of relaxed living might seem like a distant fantasy. However, in a soul-stirring article titled “The Art of Relaxed Living: Finding Bliss in the Simple Things,” the author beautifully reminds us of the importance of slowing down and finding joy in life’s simple pleasures.

The article begins by acknowledging the pervasive culture of busyness that often leaves us feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. From packed schedules to never-ending to-do lists, it’s easy to get caught up in the chaos of everyday life and forget to take a moment to breathe.

However, the article suggests that true happiness lies in embracing a slower, more mindful approach to living. Whether it’s savoring a cup of tea in the morning, taking a leisurely stroll through the park, or watching the sunset with loved ones, these simple moments have the power to nourish the soul and bring a sense of peace and contentment.

Moreover, the article emphasizes that relaxed living isn’t about escaping from reality or avoiding responsibilities. Instead, it’s about finding balance and learning to appreciate the beauty of the present moment, even amidst life’s challenges and uncertainties.

Ultimately, “The Art of Relaxed Living” serves as a gentle reminder to prioritize self-care and mindfulness in our daily lives. In a society that often equates success with productivity and achievement, it’s essential to carve out time for rest and rejuvenation.

So, as we navigate the ups and downs of life, let’s remember to embrace the art of relaxed living. Let’s slow down, breathe deeply, and find bliss in the simple things. After all, true happiness isn’t found in the pursuit of perfection or the accumulation of wealth – it’s found in the moments when we pause, connect with ourselves and others, and truly appreciate the beauty of being alive. 🌿✨

(reading time: 6 mins)

2019 was a particularly bad election to lose.

This country has more food banks than MacDonalds (fullfact.org). The Tory majority coupled with Brexit gives them carte blanche to finally dismantle the NHS, politicise the courts and introduce voter id across the country, a Republican strategy to discourage the poor from voting. Then there’s Tory indifference to climate change and income inequality. We could be looking at a very different country in 5 years time.

There is no way losing 43% to 32%, 365 to 203 seats can in any way be considered a moral victory, or something to build upon. The Labour party needs to own this failure.

I want more public spending and more taxes on the rich. I support sensible rail nationalisation and an end to private sector involvement in the NHS. I am a long-term centre left voter. I want this country to move to a Norway or Sweden style economic model. I am not a Blairite or Red Tory, or a Woolly Centrist (Ed Milliband’s 2015 campaign was uninspiring). I voted Labour this time. But I can understand why so many did not.

Yes, Brexit and media bias played their part. But it is a loser’s mentality to pin it all on any combination of Brexit, the BBC, the pollsters or the right wing press. These cannot account for the scale of the defeat. The left have always believed there’s an untapped pool of voters who will turn out for an authentic socialist offering, if only the media was fair to them. Worst of all they believe any working class people who don’t agree with them must be being brain washed by mass media. But the media is a two way street. Right wing papers thrive in this country because enough working class people are quietly right wing.

And it’s a depressingly familiar failure. In the Thatcher days I ran into a school mate in town selling The Socialist Worker. The talk was all of brotherhood and unity and togetherness – until I disagreed with him of course. Without a trace of irony he then said “You’re either for us or against us”.

That self-defeating Peoples’ Popular Front of Judea spirit was reborn in Momentum. The hard left created an atmosphere where any criticism of the party’s direction or leader was evidence of a media conspiracy. Anyone who questioned Corbyn’s political genius could be dismissed as a Red Tory or Blairite. The difference in politics now is that thanks to social media, those ideological bubbles become absolute.

Media bias is not the real reason the Tories can get away with empty promises in their manifesto. It’s because every floating voter knows when it comes down to it, the Tories will cut public services instead of raising taxes. As a result, Labour manifestos must account for every spending promise. Tory ones don’t.

The British media has always been right leaning. Which means a Labour leader has to be a more skilled politician than a Tory one to even start on a level playing field. That’s why people like me were dismayed when Corbyn became leader.

It was obvious a party leader who isn’t prepared to use Britain’s nuclear arsenal would be considered soft on national security by many floating voters and immediately lose vital support for Labour. This was a major factor in Michael Foot’s defeat in 1983, a similarly disastrous election.

So here’s a mantra for Labour 2024…. Floating voters decide every election. Floating voters, not party members. Floating voters, not activists.

Floating voters, not social media bubbles.

Image by pixabay.com/users/emilyalp

(reading time: 3 mins)

If you’ve been wondering what happened to the Republican party under Trump, look beyond 2016 and look back exactly 30 years. The Republicans’ wholesale abandonment of some many core values, to the point where elected members now spout deep state conspiracy theories that contradict the CIA and FBI in order to stay on message with their president, has not been an overnight process. However the event that triggered it, the fall of the Berlin wall, was.

When the wall fell, hawks like Condoleezza Rice apparently wanted president Bush Snr. to get to Berlin as fast as possible, in order to dance on the grave of communism. Bush Snr waited nearly a year before visiting Berlin, and not just because schadenfreude wasn’t part of his character. He knew his presence there could make things difficult for Gorbachev domestically and reduce the chance of a smooth transition to democracy in the Eastern bloc. The USSR had after all been telling its people America was interfering in its affairs for decades.

Although Bush Snr. was right to hold back, traditional Republicans couldn’t hold back the hubris that grew in their party. I believe November 1989 was the moment the Republican party began slipping away from traditionalists like Bush and John McCain, because it was the moment the free market right became convinced of its absolute right to govern.

For most outside America, Francis Fukiyama’s declaration of the ‘end of history’ in the summer of 1989 was easily dismissed as passing self congratulatory American hubris. But to the right, the dismantling of communism’s most physical symbol was irrefutable proof that they had won, and – perhaps ironically considering their evangelical base – proved they had a Darwinian right to govern from there on in. That hubris led to the disastrous Iraq war, and financial deregulation that ruined the world economy in 2008.

Sure all parties have their idealists, their pragmatists and those who value staying in office above all else, while faking fidelity to their party’s values. And the Democrats too have had their moments of hypocrisy.

But since 1989 Republicans have re-ignited their passion for fiscal conservatism only while Clinton and Obama were president. Under Dubya and Trump deficits spiralled. Once a party acquires the habit of selectively applying its principles – be that valuing the independence of government employees, respecting the rule of law, fighting against foreign election meddling, or seeing America as a place of refuge rather than a fortress to be defended by punishing poor children – it gets easier to let all the other basic principles fall by the wayside.

The Republicans acquired a potent background narrative after November 1989. A narrative that the right has the victor’s authority to exercise power no matter what. Some in the GOP believe this gives them continuing moral authority, despite enabling the most openly amoral president in US history. But no party can so neglect its guiding principles behind without losing its identity. The narrative that winning is all that counts, was acquired when the Berlin Wall fell, and is now the main force driving the Republican party.

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I do around 2000 miles per year by car. To further reduce carbon emissions and air pollution I’ve been filling up my Golf Tdi mk4 with recycled food oil biodiesel. Crops grown for Biofuels compete with food production for land and water. However recycling food oil into fuel should not be dismissed as it reduces carbon and generally burns more cleanly than standard mineral diesel.

In use I’ve found no loss of power and the engine runs as smoothly as before, if not slightly better. Because biodiesel contains more Oxygen and cleans deposits from your fuel system, it’s recommended to change the fuel filter after the first 1000 miles. My 2002 Golf Tdi is well suited to running 100% biodiesel. Cars from around 2004 usually require a 50/50 blend to protect the particulate filter, but with an older diesel I can use either bio or mineral diesel as needed, the engine management system adapts to these in any proportions without modification. A major selling point of biodiesel is price, around 30% cheaper at 86p/litre.

Diesel engines can use fuel from a wide range of sources – vegetable oil from Lidl can work in some cases! But modern turbo diesels have complicated engines so I buy EN14214 (EU standard for biodiesel) because having something properly filtered and made to a specific standard should minimise risk of damage.

Recycled biodiesel does have a slight food-oil smell, which is only as strong as the mineral diesel smell I was getting before (and so far I’ve been free of cravings to stop at the nearest chippy as I’ve been driving along). The only real downside is that my car does give off some white smoke (unburnt diesel, likely caused by a leaking injector seal) on starting if the car hasn’t been used for a few days. This is more visible with biodiesel, as it’s slightly thicker than mineral diesel.

The good and bad of biodiesel

Bio-fuel useage is quite low in the UK compared to some European countries, for example 85% of Stockholm’s buses run on biodiesel. More widespread adoption of bio-fuels has been tarnished by the misguided addition of bio-fuel to all UK petrol/diesel around 10 years ago. This created an instant demand, and the horrifying effect of developing nations ripping up rainforest and replacing it with monocultural palm oil plantations to power our school runs and weekly shops¹.

Deforestation means some Palm oil biodiesel may have created 3x more carbon than mineral diesel. Even the sustainability of German made Rape Seed biodiesel on existing agricultural land is lower than was originally thought, possibly as low as 30% sustainability.²

However biodiesel made from recycled oil shouldn’t contribute to deforestation and 30% sustainability is better than 0%. Apart from the provenance issue, another reason the UK government hasn’t promoted biodiesel is because it can produce more Nitrous Oxides (NOx) up 8% according to a 2016 Defra study³, and NOx is a key measure of EU air quality standards. However the same report estimates Carbon Monoxide and particulate matter are lowered by a third, and Hydrocarbons by two thirds, which is a significant pollution reduction overall.

The UK government is now considering toxin taxes in a complete reversal of policies from 2001 that promoted diesel. One workmate angrily told me the government knew diesel was dirty and lied to us, but ministers have admitted their mistake. Governments are subject to lobbying and I suspect the motor industry would have favoured more diesel because few manufacturers had seriously invested in hybrid and alternative fueled vehicles in 2001, but they all knew how to build diesel engines. Diesel is a very efficient fuel per mile, so the government believed they had a quick fix for meeting Kyoto protocol Carbon targets, and that better engine design and exhaust filtering would create a new generation of ‘clean diesel’ – something we know doesn’t work in the real world.

Time to go electric?

It would be great if in a few years time I can preserve some of the energy invested in building and maintaining my car by replacing its diesel engine with an electric motor and batteries. There’s something of a cottage industry going on in Mexico City, converting petrol and diesel cars to electricity.

However I’m sure the motor lobby will site safety, and lobby the UK government for scrapage schemes and make buying entirely new vehicles the only option.

If you’re running a business with mostly local mileage, an electric van is a viable option now. I know of one landscape gardening business who ditched their unreliable diesel van for an all electric Nissan e-NV200.

Range is just over 100 miles, so it needs charging every 2-3 days. But per mile fuel costs are less than half the diesel fuel. It always starts, is road tax free and the purchase qualified for a 35% grant from the government. It should also be good for the long-term as the electric drivetrain has fewer moving parts than any petrol or diesel engine to need expensive maintenance once it’s out of warranty.

Cleaner vehicles are essential to our health as well as meeting targets, but there is a quality of life gain too. Friends of mine recently visited Tokyo and were surprised by how quiet and clean a city of 13 million people can be, due to high air quality standards and the large number of hybrid and electric vehicles – even on busy streets they could smell flowers by the roadside. The technology is just around the corner to cut pollutants and in so doing make our cities much more enjoyable places to live.

endnotes:

1. Unintentional damage from bio-fuel
2. New biodiesel sustainability below 30%
3. Tables 4 and 8 show lower pollutants with biodiesel in this Defra report

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I voted for Marvin Rees in 2016 and consider myself a Labour voter by default, who sometimes votes Green or LibDem. I have never voted Tory and never will. But with bookies suggesting Bristol’s city mayor contest is a two horse race between Labour and the Greens, I will be voting for Green candidate Sandy Hore-Ruthven, not Bristol’s current mayor on May 6th.

Labour voters assume Greens can’t get elected and that Labour will always be more Green than the Tories anyway. But I would argue Marvin Rees’ environmental record is worse than a Tory mayor would have been. Here are three key issues.

Firstly Rees has supported more road building at Western Harbour, and supports turning the abandoned railway line at Callington Road in Brislington into a relief road for the A4. Strangely Labour have even argued this extra road will reduce pollution. For some reason they don’t understand the basics of road building – extra roads always fill up with more traffic, traffic jams and pollution follow. More roads only aggravate this problem.

Secondly Bristol Labour now sides with the fossil fuel companies. Yes seriously! In July 2019 there was a Green and LibDem motion before the council to have the Avon Pension Fund divest of its fossil fuel company investments. Labour diluted that motion and voted with the Tories for ‘active engagement’ with fossil fuel companies instead. ‘Active engagement’ is not a serious policy, it’s a lobbyist’s dream. Bristol Labour are staggeringly naive if they believe a local council might actually have some influence on multi-national oil companies – taking pension money out of oil and gas is the only way to exert influence. Even as a purely financial decision, fossil fuels will become increasingly risky for a pension fund, because fossil fuels have no long term future. In the next decade or two fossil fuel investments will lose value rapidly once renewable technologies reach a certain threshold (renewable power generation is already cheaper than fossil fuels). It’s the most bizarre decision from Labour, and the opposite of what I thought Labour were supposed to be about – opposing the predatory self-interests of the wealthiest.

Third was Rees’ response to the cancellation of a second runway at Bristol Airport by North Somerset council, in the week that Greta Thunberg visited the city in Feb 2020. This is how the interview went with Matt Frei of Channel 4 news;

Surely the only reason for a second runway was to increase the number of flights and the number of people flying? I’m not aware of Rees expressing any public opposition to a second runway, until the decision had been made and Greta Thunberg came to town. If he believed the economic benefits outweighed the environmental risks, he should have stuck with that position. But his response in that interview was clearly a politician suddenly hoping to distance himself from a controversial issue.

I will say during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests Marvin Rees did strike the right tone after Colston’s statue was (rightly in my view) finally pulled down. Other than that I’m struggling to think of much that’s positive from his five years in office. I didn’t vote for George Ferguson in 2012, but at least Ferguson had some clear policies associated with his tenure – parking zones, 20mph limits in residential areas, and pushing for a Bristol Arena in the middle of the city, which is the natural place for it. With Rees though, there are no signature policies.

There is also the question of why Bristol City Council kept wasting council tax payers’ money to prop up failing Bristol Energy www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol… and concerns about the political culture inside Bristol Labour www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-councillor-joins-greens…

I don’t see much leadership from Marvin Rees. As far as the environment goes, the leadership he has shown has been heading in the wrong direction. Labour voters who care about environmental issues should not make the mistake of assuming Bristol Labour are somehow ‘Green-Lite’.

Disclosure: This is my personal view written in my own time. I am a Bristol City Council employee in a non politically restricted post, and as such a member of the Avon Pension fund.

(reading time: 8 mins)

I took up tennis last summer, taking lessons and joining a club, finally shifting from being an armchair expert during Wimbledon fortnight to becoming another learner mis-hitting balls at the local courts. Wimbledon on TV is one of the great markers of an English summer, and the televised sunshine on the courts of SW19 can be more inviting than actual sunshine on the garden outside. Television seems to access those day-dreamy brain waves just as fire did for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, as if our brains are preprogrammed to be hypnotised by a pool of flickering lights close by. Is TV the technological world’s camp fire, or was the Stone Age camp fire just television at the concept stage?

But as I struggled with my topspin forehand under unforgiving floodlights one blustery Winter evening, I wondered if my physiological response to the incoming ball wasn’t something else I had inherited from my hunter-gatherer ancestors?

As a beginner, get on a tennis court against even a slightly better player and you’ll likely be doing most of the running around, while your opponent plays the entire match from an apparently much smaller court, moving at most a couple of steps to wallop your best shots back with added speed and bounce. Because we lack the experience to recognize the path and pace of the incoming ball, beginners prepare too late and do too much in response when the ball arrives. Muscular tension, meeting a challenge with willpower rather than well timed technique, is a problem for many performers. As a result actors, musicians and athletes often turn to the mind/body awareness Alexander Technique (AT) to improve their game.

Alexander Technique in tennis

Alexander Technique is concerned with recognizing and inhibiting our small unnecessary muscular efforts, which can snowball into poor posture and muscle tensions. These not only waste energy, but people frequently tense muscles which work directly against the movement they are striving for, even creating a “this is really hard. I can’t do it!” self-fulfilling prophecy. In the tennis class (tennislessonstoday.com) I recognized my teacher was using similar principles to improve our game – for example having us serve using a racket without strings to get a feel for literally swinging through the ball, instead of tensing in anticipation of the moment the racket makes contact.

Working on the forehand on that wintry evening, when the teacher asked us to largely forget the outcome of the shot, and instead focus on the ends of the Clavicle bones below the neck, to observe the temptation to close the chest and surround the incoming ball, I wondered if that surrounding and enclosing intention wasn’t one of several basic reactions humans have to the physical world? Reactions either directly inherited as instinctive behaviour, or as cultural habits copied subconsciously and passed down through the generations. On the outside the movement is so slight, they go unnoticed because they are so common they are regarded as natural. i.e everybody does it.

Often in an Alexander technique class, when the teacher makes the student aware of their redundant muscular tensions, it’s news to the student even when it requires significant effort. The student will often say “Why am I doing that?!” and the teacher answers “I have no idea”. Unnecessary muscular tensions could be a by-product of modern living. But I think it’s possible some movements are not entirely the product of a more sedentary lifestyle, but are in part distortions of natural inbuilt ways of moving and reacting to the physical world – movements which once served a purpose for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Hunter Gatherers are 90% of our make-up

For 90% of human evolution we lived as hunter-gatherers. Our physical bodies carry a number of evolutionary left-overs; the appendix, the tailbone, wisdom teeth, which Darwin described as Vestigal organs. Some of these wouldn’t even have been that useful to our ancestors. So wouldn’t some of our behavioural patterns be evolutionary left-overs too? The ‘Fight or Flight’ response is an obvious example, often not the best way to respond to 21st Century stresses – if I’m on an aircraft in difficulty I’d rather the captain makes decisions based on training, experience and the best information available from the whole flight crew; rather than based on adrenaline, sweaty palms and a dry mouth.

Modern life is best lived being aware of but in control of these instinctive behavioural patterns. It got me thinking – perhaps we could identify three broad intentions in our reactions to the physical world, less noticeable because they are far more subtle than ‘Fight or Flight’ – what I’m going to call Surrounding, Bracing and Avoidance. And a fourth product of the human as social animal, Reaching.

Four intentions

Surrounding – Imagine yourself as a hunter-gatherer, chasing your dinner 50,000 years ago. If you’re trying to catch some prey getting your whole body around your dinner quickly means it’s less likely to escape. Our ancestors needed this for hunting and later farming. Then fast forward to a tennis court. In the class the Surrounding instinct was definitely there as I moved towards the ball. As this was the first time I’d observed it, I was probably reacting this way from day one of my lessons. And it’s actually fairly easy to resist once it’s been observed and logged.

Bracing – On a potential collision course with an object, isn’t there a natural tendency to tense up and brace for impact, whether or not it’s helpful? Your experience and intellect might tell you a tennis ball won’t do much damage on impact, but your more primitive brain is seeing an object speeding towards it, which could be as hard as a rock and potentially fatal. Your brain’s ‘prime directive’ (to borrow from Star Trek) is to preserve the life of the body it depends on. Your reason and experience can overrule that instinct, but to do so you first need to observe the different situations in which it occurs.

Avoidance – Apart from shielding yourself with your arms*, another way of dealing with a potential collision is avoidance, to pull back enough to avoid or at least reduce any impact, especially if the head might be in collision. This happens more frequently than we imagine I believe. My first experience of Alexander technique was an afternoon workshop for musicians at the excellent Jackdaws music trust near Frome. The workshop started with a partner exercise. An object was placed on the ground, a cup or a car key, something light requiring minimal effort to lift. From standing one person reaches down to pick up the object, while the partner keeps their palm on back of the first person’s head, behind the ears where the skull joins the neck. Reporting back, most found their partner pulled the neck back starting towards the object, and usually again as they closed in on it. And here’s a spoiler alert if you’re about to attend your first Alexander technique class – this unnecessary pulling at the junction of skull and first neck vertebra is probably the single most important observation in AT. The junction of head and neck has the greatest degree of mobility of any vertebra, so the Alexander technique theory is inhibiting this can negatively effect the entire alignment of the spine and the functioning the nervous system passing through it.

None of those three reactions are especially difficult to inhibit once you’re aware of them – although they can easily return in a match situation where the tendency is to get caught up in trying to win the point. And in other sports i.e on a cricket or baseball field where the ball is effectively a rock capable of serious injury, these evolutionary intentions still make some sense.

The interesting thing about tennis is that it is a physical game where the extra tensions and movements are largely unnecessary due to the low mass of the ball. Yet even the slightest additional tension can have a huge impact on the outcome of the shot. Being a fraction of a second late or early as you swing your racket could change the angle of the racket face by a degree, and by the time the ball reaches your opponent’s side, that one degree translates to say a foot wide of the tram line, instead of 6 inches inside it. A tennis court full of beginners could almost be a lab for identifying redundant movements and tensions, which almost rise to the surface with the very physical, but relatively safe nature of the game.

Reaching – The idea of a fourth intention was observed in that same musicians’ workshop. For the second part of the session each of us performed a piece and talked about any difficulties we had with it. The performance of one lady in her seventies really stuck in my mind. She chose part of a Mozart Aria and did a decent job singing cold in front of a group of strangers. There was a little strain in places but hardly surprising given the demands of the piece. Afterwards the teacher’s main observation was that she was compressing her neck down while pushing her chin forwards to the rest of the group, reaching towards her audience especially on the difficult passages. It was a slight movement, maybe bringing the face forward an inch at most, something you wouldn’t notice unless you were expecting to find it. To correct, the teacher made a couple of slight adjustments to her head, neck and upper back. Then he placed another member of the class behind the singer and gave the simple instruction; “Forget about us. Just sing to her. Behind you.”

The singer repeated the passage and the transformation was so startling, even she looked surprised. The improved quality of tone was obvious from the outset, staying clear all through the previously difficult phrases. It was almost a different voice.

The technical explanation is that in resisting moving the head forwards she was keeping her airspace open, allowing the complex muscles of throat and mouth to produce sound without any inhibitions. From an artistic point of view, that extra poise and clarity drew us into her space, into her performance, rather than her trying to reach towards the audience and convince us she had something to say. And that’s hardly surprising. In general those who reach forwards too much can be off-putting, whereas those who know when to hold back, those who appear comfortable within themselves draw people to them.

Does posture matter?

So does it matter if I do pull back my neck or collapse my chest? It’s still a small movement even if it is mildly detrimental to my health? The Alexander Technique answer would be yes, because those small tensions are compounding into poor habits, negatively impacting your performance and potentially creating chronic and preventable health problems.

The question though is not does it matter absolutely, but does it matter to you? Before my Alexander technique teacher will work with someone, she asks them “Is it okay if you change?”. If the answer is no, she leaves them alone, even when there are obvious postural improvements to be made. If however there’s something you want to change about how you carry yourself in the physical world, perhaps it’s worth considering if your inner hunter-gatherer is always leading you down the right path.

footnote

Note above I’ve not mentioned shielding yourself from potential impact, i.e. throwing up an arm or leg quickly to protect yourself. This is apparent enough in any physical activity, and like ‘Fight or Flight’ something most of us are aware of. The three intentions, Surrounding, Bracing and Avoidance I’ve described above are worth considering as naturally inherited behaviours which go largely unobserved. They aren’t noticeable because they don’t become fully fledged movements, like raising a limb in protection. They are small and subtle but can still have a great impact on posture and performance.