This article was first published in "The Power of How" by Daniel McGowan.
POWER OF HOW HISTORY
A SHORT TALE OF A QUESTER’S LONG AND LONESOME ODYSSEY
It was 1946 and, at three years old, I was standing by a pair of huge wooden green factory gates across the street from my little tenement flat in my home town of Glasgow, Scotland. These gates seemed to tower right up into the clear blue sky and to me as a 3-year old they were gigantic. Suddenly a strange feeling came over me and I realised I was a human being on planet Earth. I realised also that this experience was my sense of ‘I’ coming in. I had a feeling of “I-ness”, of individuality, of being me, of being able to separate the ‘I’ from the not-‘I’. I forgot about this event until I was in my late thirties when it came back to me very vividly. I am now 70 years old and can still remember it very clearly. I have asked several friends if they have had a similar experience, but none of them could recall it. Some said they vaguely remember some kind of realisation that they had become aware of themselves in that way, but so far nobody has been able to say exactly when it happened. I am intrigued by this realisation, because all of us at some point must have had a “switch-over” from being in a “baby-mind” state, in which we were caught up in all the stimuli from our environment coming at us, but unaware of ourselves as a separate ‘I’ – that is, separate from our environment and people and things in it. When does the child become aware of being ‘I’? Is this realisation a repetition of the evolutionary process? At what stage in human development did it occur for us all?
Years later, at 25 years old I woke up in the night feeling very strange and felt the urge to go and pee. On my way back to the bedroom I was suddenly hit by a tremendous force that surged up my spine and very strongly pulled my head back. At the same instant all my energy drained away and I collapsed on the floor, but did not lose consciousness. My ex-wife called the doctor and I was taken to the hospital.
Numerous tests were carried out on me, lights shone into my eyes etc. but the doctors could find nothing wrong. I was discharged the next day feeling tired, but well enough. Up to this point – without going into detail – I had been overworking in the belief that I was some kind of superman and because I was so fit I didn’t dream that any harm could come to me.
I did not, however, learn from this experience and continued to overwork, doing long hours at the office. Then, about a year later in 1969, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling very drained. Suddenly, I felt a severe pain in my anus, as if someone was running a red-hot poker around it. My body shook violently. The next morning I went to get out of bed only to discover I could not move. I was so exhausted I could not raise a finger. Strangely, I had no fear despite the fact I could not get up. My ex-wife called the doctor, who examined me, but could find nothing wrong. She eventually resorted to shouting at me to get up, as if I was some kind if malingerer, but I could not. She then decided to move me to the hospital, where I remained about a week, undergoing pathological as well as psychological tests. They offered me pills, including sleeping pills. I refused all medication and again they could find nothing wrong with me. The doctors were baffled and could not help me.
I had about 4 weeks off work after coming out of hospital and spent much time lying around trying to conserve my energy. I had a number of experiences where I started to shake vigorously. The shaking would last about 10 minutes and usually I would clasp my hands on the back of my head. I had no pain and no fear; in fact, part of me would really enjoy it because I knew that when it ended I would have no tension in my body and would fall into a deep sleep. Another outstanding feature of these shaking bouts was that although everything in my body was in turmoil, I could feel my heart like the size of a small marble: it was perfectly still and peaceful and, as I said, I felt no fear. Deep sleep was something I had not enjoyed for a long time. Now – being back at work – I had to go to bed every night at 8 hoping I would get at least 2 hours sleep out of the 11 hours I spent in bed.
This sorry state of affairs went on for about a year or more with no great improvement. The most striking symptoms were the extreme lack of energy and the heaviness of my limbs, and bones, especially my collarbones which seemed to weigh a ton. I could not overstate how strong these feelings were. To walk up a hill took a colossal effort and yet I never felt breathless.
Then in 1971, when I was 28, my ex-wife found Dr. Robin Gibson, a homeopathic doctor and the man to whom I am eternally grateful for setting me on the road back to health.
The most striking part of his treatment was a set of Indian exercises – namaskars – which he impressed on me must be done every morning. I was, however, too tired each morning to do them and did not get past doing more than one. I didn’t think they were very important and I placed more hope on the homeopathic remedies he had given me to take. After a few weeks I went back to see him and although he was pleased that I had taken the remedies, he stressed that I must get on with the namaskars and try to increase the number each day. With new resolve, I performed them religiously every day and to my astonishment after one month I was performing 100 per day and my strength had increased dramatically.
An important revelation that came around this time was when I was describing to Robin that I always knew when I was going to start shaking, because each bout was preceded by an electric shock flashing through my body, starting in the head all the way to the feet – or vice versa. I told him this was very scary and he replied that it should not worry me, because I was made of electricity anyway. This was important knowledge to obtain experientially, because it was the start of the realisation that the body was something other than flesh, blood and bone, something immaterial.
One day, Robin handed me a book, namely “The Secret Path” by Paul Brunton and he recommended that I take up Hatha Yoga. This I did like a duck to water and the combination of reading “The Secret Path” and studying every other Paul Brunton book that came after it, plus meditation, namaskars and the homeopathic remedies proved to be a very powerful combination that brought me back to a reasonable standard of health. There were a few minor hiccups along the way, but I certainly made steady improvement.
I carried on with Hatha Yoga, teaching myself from books – I’m not keen on doing things with a group – and I became very supple, very adroit and proficient at it. I was thrilled with my progress. I gradually became vegan at this time and my morale and confidence were very high. I was slim as a pencil and had also taken up running and played a bit of football to keep fit.
1973 came and at 30 years old I was sitting one morning in a Full Lotus meditating – by this time I was quite good at slowing my thinking – when suddenly this colossal force surged up from my genitals and very dramatically lengthened and straightened my spine. It was an exquisite feeling and I was absolutely ecstatic. This force was irrepressible, and there was nothing I could do except sit there and revel in it. It seemed to have surged up through the floor and I could not exaggerate its power. I sat bolt upright with no effort whatsoever before it started – after about 10 minutes – to recede very slowly until I felt normal again. The same force returned during meditation the next morning, but not so powerfully and not for as long as the first time.
I now know that this experience was a sign of what was to come later in my life through the discovery and practice over the last 37 years of constructive conscious control in the use of the self as expounded by F.M Alexander. All these years of relentless and dedicated practice of his teachings has resulted in the delightful and inspiring experience – at 70 years old – of feeling the kundalini flowing strongly up my spine on rising each morning, keeping it gracefully and dynamically erect throughout the day.
In 1976 I visited Robin about some minor complaint. He said he had found something better for me than hatha yoga and handed me a copy of Dr. Wilfred Barlow’s book, “The Alexander Principle”. I read the book and was mildly interested, but I was so keen on yoga that I was not drawn to explore Alexander Technique. I had been practising Hatha Yoga for 4 or 5 years now, had made considerable progress, and did not intend to give it up now!
A few days later, however, my ex-wife said she had arranged a lesson for me, but I told her I was not interested and asked her to cancel it. She said that this would be embarrassing and she would probably have to pay for the lesson. I decided to take the lesson. It turned out to be very significant that the only 3 teachers in the whole of Scotland were teaching not more than 2 miles from my home!
I had my first lesson with Aksel Haahr who was running a practice with his wife, Jeanne. On entering his teaching room, I was immediately struck by how “up” he was. I could see the power in his back, and his energy seemed to be filling the room. That was the start of me having 4 lessons per week for a month, 3 for another month, 2 for another month and one for another month. Then I attended about once a week or every 2 weeks as I felt necessary.
When I saw Aksel, the first thing that struck me was, “My God, I could practise Hatha Yoga for the rest of my life and I’ll never have a back like that!” After 4 years or so of practising Yoga and despite having become very supple, I was still walking around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, like an old man! I thought back to that morning when the kundalini came surging up my spine and I could see that Alexander Technique was the way to get it to return.
This first lesson was, of course, an introduction to that fundamental requirement necessary for the psycho-physical-emotional-spiritual progress of humankind, namely – the use of the self. I did not know this at the time, but as I studied it over the course of 37 years, I came to see that it was the missing link in all attempts by human beings at psycho-physical-emotional-spiritual progress. It dawned on me slowly that constructive conscious control in the use of the self is fundamental, is central to all human endeavours. It truly is our blind spot in our attempts to improve the lot of humanity. As I said years later in my book, “GOING MENTAL”: – “No matter what your philosophy of life is, you will have to come to this one.”
Constructive conscious control in the use of the self is unknown to the vast majority of the human race. This lack of knowledge is a fundamental reason for us being in the horrible worldwide situation we are now in. Billions of people suffer from psychological problems and physical ill-health. The vast majority of us are spiritual paupers. Of the people I have met, who have sincere spiritual aspirations, a great number set their sights too high and attempt to soar into the spiritual ether without realising they have to keep their feet on the ground. It’s a bit like reading “The Wisdom of the Overself”, which is Paul Brunton’s last book, before reading his first book, “The Secret Path” and every other one leading up to “The Wisdom”: or wrestling with Einstein’s theory of relativity before you know that 1 + 1 = 2. Constructive conscious control also teaches the individual to take responsibility for his or her own health and way of being.
I was so moved by Alexander Technique that I asked Aksel in my second lesson if I could learn to teach it. To my great delight he said that I could because he and Jeanne were in the process of setting up a 3-year training course in Totnes, at Dartington College of Arts. I said I would be there, and in August of 1980 I gave up my job and moved to Totnes with my ex-wife, Jean, my son Scott, and my daughter, Carol-Jane and started the training in September.
From then on the kundalini flowed up my spine intermittently, but getting stronger all the time, until at 62-63 it became a steady force, and now ranges between steady and exhilaratingly dynamic.
As I said, at 70, a profoundly inspiring experience.
This article was first published in The Power of How by Daniel McGowan. You can download the PDF of this book for free here: FREE DOWNLOAD