When I first spotted her near Carousel A at the Portland Airport baggage claim she was just standing there...

But there was something totally captivating about the way she was doing it.

She was absolutely grounded like an oak which made checking her email look like meditation or a martial art.

And when she finally did move...

IT WAS STUNNING!

Breezing beyond the empty carousel with an animal quickness and lightness.  

***

How could anyone go from seemingly immovable to quicksilver mercurial in a nanosecond?

How was that possible?

***

When she reappeared with her luggage...

THE MYSTERY WAS SOLVED!

The huge oversized item hanging from one shoulder was...

A SURFBOARD!

Two young women, immediately recognizing her, dashed towards her shooting questions and begging for ​her autograph.

I overheard her saying that she was returning from San Francisco having just competed in the Mavericks, the Mount Everest of big wave surfing competitions .

In order to survive the brutal demands of surfing those monstrous waves , this woman had developed an amazing use of her body.

One that combined complete solidity below the waist, gyroscopic balance and flexible lightness in her upper torso.

She was supple, poised and powerful. Exactly the qualities you need in order to become a world class surfer!

***

Seeing her that day made a deep and lasting impression on me. So much so that...

Right now...

If I close my eyes...

Do some Constructive Thinking...

And really begin to picture her...

I get a whiff of the flow she created as she moved on that day at the airport...

And I can sense its easing influence affecting the way I'm using myself right now.

It's a delicious sense of direction that's stored somewhere in my body/ brain. One that can be evoked on command. 

It's immediately accessible and can contribute to my way of doing whatever I happen to be doing whenever I want.

As human beings we have a unique capacity to intimately share our experience with each other even across space and time.

I call it SubtleMovementEmpathy.
As Alexander teachers, we can utilize it to do two things at once:

1. It allows us to experience how the quality of a student's Use fluctuates throughout an activity and...

2. It's the means whereby a student experiences new movement possibilities 

For me it's the key to 'thinking in activity' and its cultivation is central to increasing my ability to understanding & apply the phenomenal things that Alexander discovered before he started using his hands.

To be continued...