“Grow taller”

 I finally understood “lengthen your body”, “get longer”, “grow taller”, “think up”. I guess not 100%, but I have made some breakthrough! So my tango teachers have always told me to lengthen my spine, but upon hearing that, I always just arched my back or my neck backwards instead. Now slowly from Alexander techniques, Qi gong and stretching, I understood the feeling of pulling my limbs out. By understanding I mean, I can sense it the moment it happens and once I know how that sensation should feel like, I was able to encourage it and even make it happen. I guess I bring it under my conscious command and thus gain some control over it. I only realize now that in the past, when doing forward fold and dangling, I have actually been tensing and restricting my movement. Once I have learned how to consciously create this sensation of letting go, the forward fold actually pull my upper body out of my lower body, thus lengthening my height. It felt magical. The same thing happens with other stretches. I guess I have been stretching incorrectly, resisting the stretching instead of letting it pull my body out and create space?

In bringing things into conscious awareness, I have created a button, a knob, a controller, a toolbar, to be able to adjust the specific sensation. 

Now though, I need a way to maintain the relaxation and space. When writing and reading, I often unconsciously fall back to my bad habits of gripping, tensing, contracting and thus create a lot of pain.