One-Minute Practice: The Goldilocks Zone

When you re-train yourself to use the “just right” amount of effort necessary in an activity, you experience the activity and yourself as much easier.

Even something as simple as making coffee can be done with bunched up muscles, raised shoulders and a clenched jaw. Or, you can feel softer musculature, free joints, balanced mobility and sensory enjoyment. The former contributes to a state of being that is rushed and tense; the latter to a state of ease and spaciousness.

With complicated activities like playing an instrument or enhancing your skill at weight lifting, you are even more likely to throw a lot of effort and concentration at it. Instead, bring a gentle awareness to HOW you are doing what you are doing and ask yourself, What is the just right amount of effort for this? Not too much, not too little?

This is a core principle of the Alexander Technique, and attending to the Goldilocks Zone is something that makes a huge difference in your experience of yourself.

You can begin to notice how much effort you use for regular activities. Picking up a glass of water? Hands on the steering wheel? Walking the dog? Chopping carrots? Standing in line?

You may be surprised at how much extra muscle you put into simple things.

When you notice yourself using more effort than needed for the task at hand, pause for a couple of seconds and send some messages from your brain through your nervous system to your musculoskeletal system:

I’d like to let my neck be long and easy, to let my head balance be floaty, my jaw be easy, my breath full, my senses lively. I’d like to use the just right amount of muscle tone for this activity, and notice how that makes my joints freer. I’d like to invite a state of non-hurry into my being.

When you’ve practiced this in simple actions, then you can explore in more challenging things. What is your Goldilocks Zone when running? Drumming? Writing at a computer?

Notice that your invitations to yourself are gentle clear intentions to un-do excess effort, not pushy demands to be perfect. Our nervous systems respond best to kindness, not boot-camp style yelling.

You can make up some of your own pleasing invitations to yourself and experiment with little reminders to return to presence and your very own Goldilocks Zone.