What Feels Right

Recently I was very impressed with an interesting neuroscience TED talk.   http://is.gd/4ZZmI1

I wish I could just highlight the portion I’d like to discuss.  Daniel Wolpert “The Real Reason for Brains,” documented the phenomena that people tend to exaggerate whatever they repeat, without realizing they are doing it in his experiment.  I’m referring to his results of his research with the jagged upward results  - that came from his children declaring the other person hit them “harder.”

So, now it’s a fact that anything that repeats will disappear perceptually from our awareness. People tend to add more effort, assuming that’s required to do the job. We tend to forget that repetitive practice automates the routine and trains a habit. We may not know that establishing a habit also disappears the sensation of performing the action.

This idea is also related to an excellent blog post by Jennifer Schneiderman at http://is.gd/rTk67A

There’s nothing wrong with any position, even slumping. Getting stuck in a self-imposed limitation can become a problem, over time.

Whenever a student tells me they have a pain, I always wonder if they are doing something to themselves repetitively in an everyday action, such as walking. Sure enough, when I observe them walking, there is some little extra thing they are habitually doing that they can undo that will address the issue.  Turns out that Alexander Technique teachers are a bit like a human gait laboratory, (without the recommendations of surgical solutions!)

Inside of us, our judgement of limb orientation and required effort feels like truth – it’s perceptually deceptive. But it’s this same “deception” that allows us to learn and adapt. There’s pleasure in being able to do something reliably. Of course, everyone knows how to slump! People go into the same sort of slump each time, and this is gratifying that you can get what you want in a reliable way.

Habits are designed to become innate, so we CAN have the pleasure of relying on them and add more new skills on top. With a chain of turning small abilities into habits, that’s how we build a complex skill.

That’s why consistently using Alexander Technique feels like such a threatening challenge – because it takes us into the unknown. Most people find it uncomfortable to not know what you’re doing, or how to do it. Later you might learn that the unknown is cool and fun. But it does take mental effort – because learning cuts new pathways in the brain.

Movement is what the brain is evolved to learn!

Strangely enough, our judgment of effort is a relative sense – although it feels like truthful fact. Moving in a way that is more efficient and constructive using Alexander Technique feels strangely unfamiliar, but it’s …easier. Extend your tolerance for welcoming the unknown and get somewhere new – now!

 

Attractiveness

Learning A.T.  made an interesting change in my sense of my own attractiveness. At the time this happened for me, I was attending daily teacher-training classes. I was learning to see postural expressions of qualities of thought and mannerisms of character in other people. I suddenly realized that others had been seeing and responding to my own postural attitudes too!

Even if they didn’t know what my body language meant in as much detail as I was learning, I had to admit that my own body language expressed who I was on the inside of me – not just my external appearance. As I realized that people were probably responding to what was expressed inside my internal character and sense of self, (as well as the fact that I was a tall, young woman at that time,) my whole picture of attracting attention from men I needed to consider in this new light. Even if these guys who wolf-whistled at me were not conscious how they could discern this information of attractiveness, that didn’t matter. I had to give them credit, whether they knew exactly what it was about me that was attracting their attention or not. I realized they were noticing how I was acting as I walked down the street – where my attention went, how I walked and moved. As I understood that, I began to be able to “turn it off” and on – so that when I did not want to attract attention, I could control being available. The broadcasting of attractiveness and charisma can be deliberate, not accidental.

I don’t think that most men really know what it’s like to get unwanted sexual attention from strangers. Perhaps if a guy is hetrosexual and finds himself getting sexual attention from homosexual men, it is a bit similar. Pretty much, every young woman must figure out how to deal with getting this attention from an early age, and it’s difficult. My strategy was to wear baggy clothes and hide as best I could, but it did not really work. Knowing more about what and how my body language projects the way I am inside made a big change for me concerning this challenge. Getting this sexual attention that I was forced to deal with because of being born in the culture was difficult for me. But with this new insight, it suddenly became an insight. I realized that attention from strangers was happening because of how I moved, how I paid attention, instead of it being an accident of birth and physical appearance. For me at the time, it was quite a turnaround.

Unfamiliarity Land

Let’s say that the medium is movement, how an intention translates into physical action. The challenge or proof that you’re doing as you intend could be to use less effort, more mechanical advantage, perhaps even an ideal economy of applied physical energy during motion.

Maybe you have a goal in mind, a purpose about why you are wanting to improve the way you move. Now there is also another challenge about how to interrupt one’s own routines.

I’ll explain what I mean by that last sentence. One direction will, theoretically by default, “cancel out” the other. At the moment when you direct your whole self to go physically in one direction, the other possible options are de-selected. You can’t go two places at the same time.

If you try that theory out by putting  a new improvement into action – what happens is your old routines have the power to run interference on the new things that you really want. Your habits do this as if it’s life itself that is at risk. What’s unfamiliar and new is totally threatening to most people. Granted that some people can leap… but in order to leap, they need a complete conviction that they don’t want the old same thing. Another way around that is to go bit by bit to reassure yourself, and the imperative protective alarms never go off. There are obviously more ways to make the unfamiliar less scary too…

It takes a clarity of intent to gather one’s sense of purpose and direct one’s whole self. But, maybe that’s not what it takes. For instance, people used to tell me that I was patient when they saw the detail in my artwork. But for me, in an experience of absorption, an experience of being patience didn’t exist because my attention was fully engaged.

This ability to direct one’s attention has many qualities – some work with your goals and some don’t so well.  The one that work the most flexibly are ones that don’t focus on the goal – strangely enough. The admonition to “Just Do It,” will likely activate what is most familiarly trained and ingrained. This works fine if you know how to do what you’re trying to do – like a music conductor who only needs to give the signal at the right time.

But how to practice to train a flexible habit?

Strangely enough, the best route is indirect and paradoxical. It is a brand of surrender or suspension of desire. It even works to use a brand of trickery: refusing to mentally say the “action word” and instead stick to the new steps of what you imagine might improve things. It takes at least sixty-eight times to train a new skill!

As a skill, it turns out that “taking out the complication” of the habitual routines is all that’s necessary. “The goal does itself” as the hindrances or complications are removed. This happening is a strange feeling of effortlessness – something you might need to get used to experiencing.

It’s worth it – you figure that out by doing what you couldn’t do before. The land of unfamiliarity is where all the new discoveries are.

Directing

Let's talk about "directing" or "giving orders."

“Directing” is an action of thought that recognizes & demonstrates how intention is the first part of any movement response. Tricky to describe in words, it is often experienced differently by each person.

Essentially, Directing is a thinking directive about physical action, done before any action happens. But Directing is purely thinking Directions, without any overt action or movement attached to it. In Alexander Technique, what you’re thinking while directing often contains a sort of living anatomy template about how easier motion can happen. Direction is a series of orders in words, designed to undo extra effort usually present in movement preparation.  In a way, it is similar to visualizing, but it is more specific. Goals and actions are not involved, only present tense awareness.

As an example, here’s an off-shoot of Directing, called Posture Release Imagery, invented by an Alexander Technique teacher named John Appleton.  http://posturereleaseimagery.org  This is a very specific practice of imagining one’s own body to be a different shape than it really is, and noting the results.

 

Why would it work so well to undo extra effort by thinking of doing something without actually doing it? Because thinking is connected to response. Something happens as a response to pure thought, but it happens often below the level of the person’s ability to sense it. In fact, from brain research, we get ready long before we consciously know we’re doing anything. What we have is “veto power.” Moments right before we are going to do something, we can stop.

The point of Directing is to reorganize how to “get ready” to make a move in an easier way, beyond the clutches of habit and expectation. In a way, Direction is a strategy to take away the need to get ready, to expect. By interrupting the overt “call to action” that the habit is usually in charge of doing, other internal responses of getting ready for the action will occur anyway….but without the habitual preparation. Directing reorganizes thinking to get ready in a non-habitual way. Then when you do stuff after Directing, the most appropriate way to move can be spontaneously selected, using improvisational means.

So how do you know what happened, if so much went on underneath your conscious awareness? You can use your other senses to offer you feedback, in addition to your internal sense of movement and location in space. You can use your environment.  External feedback – such as a video camera or a mirror is handy.  Or they can cross-reference their other senses, which may result in an odd sense of synesthesia.  For instance, one musician described Directing as being a symphony conductor who is using a sort of inner moving x-ray skill to bring a present-tense all-points awareness to bear on the way he was about to do a suspended goal. Then when he did that goal – it happened in a new way, without the unnecessary habitual preparation that was unrelated to the goal anyway.

Just Undo

There is more of a reason to have no reason to change.  So how do some people want to change? I’m really curious how people stumble on the realization that they are inappropriately coping with their situation.  Guess that most people wait until they can’t avoid the truth of pain. A person most commonly gets used to their own habits of movement so completely that the sensation of doing these habits completely disappears into a sense of their own identity.

There’s a survival benefit for preferring what is certain that will preserve the status quo. If you try to move differently, your body will tell you that it feels so unfamiliar. You will avoid moving in a new way because it will feel as if you’re  “not you.” So it’s more likely that you won’t allow yourself to continue doing what is new. People are wired to prefer what feels familiar. For most people, pain is the only obvious signal that something is wrong with the way they’re moving.

On the other hand, there is also a survival drive towards the desire for doing something new, but it’s not as strong. If the daring think less of consequences and they happen to guess wrong, they probably died more often  – before they could pass on their daring genes.

Adapting is a human feature that allows skill development & learning, as well as compensating to mitigate external circumstances. When learning, we design a habit so the building blocks of a skill so it can become innate and later can be used as if the whole behavior chain were second-nature. If we get injured, we’re capable of changing the way we do things long enough to design a compensation habit to avoid pain to make it easier to heal.  Adapting is mainly regarded as a human advantage, because it’s what allows us to learn skills a piece at a time. This feature allows us to train a new habit to add onto the previous habit, without needing to get overwhelmed by having to sense what “standing orders” our previous trained habits are already doing. Habits become innate because it works for humans in skill building and coping with circumstances.

This blessing of being able to adapt is oddly also a built-in feature that backfires on us. Performing a habit will dull physical sensation. This means the more often we do a habit, the more often we don’t know how or what we are doing. Entrainment is automatic – which is both an advantage – and a disadvantage.

If we add habit onto habit, without undoing the previous possible conflicting habits, it can get confusing – even painful. As people get older and have a larger “bag of tricks,” it’s all too common to pull our own body in conflicting directions, without knowing how we’re contributing to our own often painful limitations. This can also happen at an early age, if we tend towards extremes.

The ways around this conundrum involve deliberately disassembling habits previous to training new ones. Actually, that’s also a skill that improves with practice. Surprisingly, it seems to work best to not have a new habit in mind to replace what you’re intentionally subtracting. If you just remove what seems to be in the way, your natural ability to respond more appropriately will resume – by itself. The way you balance and move seems to be self-correcting – to the extent you can get previous unrelated and unnecessary routines out of the way.

I learned these secrets from people who had studied with this guy, F. M. Alexander.

Aphorism

Let go of the wrong thing, and the right thing does itself.          – F.M. Alexander

This Zen-like aphorism doesn’t make much sense until it’s been experienced. It says something about the effect of a strategy used during Alexander Technique practice.

This functional strategy is clearing out unnecessary routines, and then noticing what happens. An easier way to go ahead has a chance to run the show, once the interference is gone. But this useful, easier way doesn’t always come forward reliably. This is because unintended “helpful” interferences tend to jump back into control.

The experience of suspending customary routines and patiently noticing what is going on afterward is a skill that takes practice. The default ease of the Primary Control principle that can emerge is not another trainable habit replacement. Instead, the move a person can make without routines is always a slightly different attentive response. The advantage is it’s a response that can be most appropriately tailored to the suspended goal at hand – and this can indirectly result in a discovery, a consolidating insight or a sense of Flow.

To tolerate this lack of predictability, a student could use a bit of reassurance that “there is a method to the madness.” It is OK to hang out and pay attention, without knowing what’s going to happen next.

Insight On Purpose

It is not a very common skill to be able to undo a habit. It pays off to think a bit about the wisdom of this design of a routine to answer a need on the front end. We create a perceptual assumption by training a habit. As we train them, routines are designed to disappear underneath whatever our level of sensory ability happens to be.  The advantage is that it becomes handy to meet a stimulus without having to design our response anew each time. We can focus on other things that are more important.

The disadvantage is that our sensory ability is dulled by the use of habits. Habits become innate by design. The danger is we no longer register a successfully trained habit on our radar as an activity.  You can no longer sense what you have trained yourself to do automatically. People commonly find themselves doing things thoughtlessly that they did not intend to do or seemed to have forgotten about possible consequences. The habit “goes off” whenever the stimulus is offered on the outside, or the thought is “thunked” on the inside.

There is a significant advantage to this design inside of us concerning habitual routines. We are designed this way so we can add a new habit on top of the previous. This is known as a “behavior chain” and is handy in skill building. It is even possible to train new perceptual assumptions. The more you repeat a habit, the more ingrained and innate it becomes. The saying is: “Practice Makes Perfect.”

Especially with an entrenched routine, sometimes insight is the only way to rid yourself of its limitations; to find a new way to provide for the need or challenge “the need for the need.” Thinking skills by Edward de Bono, making art and using Alexander Technique are the only ways I know to address these significants challenges humans all face in life.

Most people never think of subtracting what is in the way as a useful strategy, just as lateral thinking techniques or other indirect means such as Alexander Technique or art therapy are not usually the first order of preference. People most often assume they must train yet another habit to take the place of whatever routine is not working as intended. Pretty soon we have so many routines, it’s tricky to pick the right one in the right instant.

Thinking skills pop us free out of habitual assumptions if they are used, just as Alexander Technique has the ability to free us from our kinesthetic sensory habits. But we must remember to use these tools to give them a chance to work and gain their advantages. By their nature, these tools of innovation run contrary to habit. However, the remembering must be assigned to be “cued” in some portion of a routine for these tools to be allowed to work as intended. Most of us miss or pass by this instance of optional choice.

In Alexander Technique, the best time to assign it’s use is as you begin to go into action – or right before action. This is because as soon as we think of doing something, we are already preparing for it. Right before action we have a moment of “veto power.” This is a built-in instant to decide the unique means of how we are actually going to perform the action and craft it uniquely to the situation.

In parallel, a useful cue for using thinking skills is before a decision is made or perhaps needs to be designed, or when you hear that “this is the only choice we have.” There is ALWAYS another choice – and perhaps it’s a better one. Usually, multiple routines and temptations are in charge of coercing us otherwise, going off underneath our ability to perceive coercive and manipulative routines at work. It’s similar to a computer that gets overloaded with programs running in the background. If we then attempt to add in our intentional goals there is the danger of losing what we were trying to accomplish in a “systems crash.”

Best to “clear the decks” in preparation by using a little tool such as Alexander Technique that subtracts unnecessary routines and unites our intention – at the start of an action. Or take a moment to use a thinking skill or other reflective advantage.

Supposedly, we have a “right brain” power of non-linear integration skills – and we have “left brain” reasoning powers. What if both of these aren’t good enough? We’ve got insight!

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to purposefully illicit insight, even if you had to follow indirect means to get insights? Supposedly, insights happen “by accident” and not on purpose. Well, that’s what happens with a little creative thinking….and using Alexander Technique…and sometimes other experiences that can put you in a state of “flow.”

Please let me know if there are other perceptual worlds or disciplines which have this effect for you – because I’d love to take them for the ride they deserve personally!

Free Workshop

Coming up on Sat. Feb. 19th 2001 is a free three hour workshop in Alexander Technique at Tutu’s House on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Of course, you can’t learn Alexander Technique in a few hours, just as you can’t learn to play a musical instrument instantly either.  But you’ll be able to get a taste of what the study of A.T. could do for you. You’ll learn some of the principles that apply to daily life, and will get some practice at reading body language as you may have never seen it before.  You’ll also get some insights about self-observation, (which seems to be a rare skill.) It will be a fun time, because some who are coming are professional musicians who will demonstrate their “stuff” during their quest to improve.

You’ll find out about some of the famous people who have studied the Technique, some of the history and various styles of teaching it. You’ll find out who thinks it’s valuable and why.

If you play an instrument or spend time at an art or sport, bring along the props you’ll need for authentic demonstration of the way you move if that’s possible. You’ll learn to do these things easier and with less wasted effort. Sometimes people get a flash of personal insight too.

Some of my current and returning students will also be there, so it won’t just be a total beginner’s class. Hope you can join us!

Here’s the link to Tutu’s House with directions from withing Hawaii. Of course, if you are not, the first part would be “jump on a plane to the Big Island…”

http://www.tutushouse.org/map.html

 

Primary Control

Using the goal to substitute new improvements to develop his vocal skills, Alexander observed himself. It appeared that his own problems with voice loss starting in a backward and downward movement of his head. He observed that shortening the head back or down creates unecessary tension that affects the entire body and its’ quality of movement. This habitual movement was similar to the movement a turtle can make, in the motion of retracting the head towards the shell.

F. M. Alexander concluded that the orientation of the head in relation to the body determines the quality and successful response of how all other intended bodily motion may occur. The head is a steering key to bodily movement. The head moving away from the body allows the whole body to expand in stature, and to be ready to move easier in any direction.

Alexander observed that once this pattern of head retraction went into action, it was very difficult to influence. So he decided to back up and make the improvement with the first motion that initiated action. He traced the origin of motion to a head movement. He wondered if he could solve his voice loss problem by moving in the opposite direction from his usual habitual preparation as he began to speak. In Alexander’s case, this opposite direction of improvement was slightly away from the body and tipping slightly forward, which he described as “Forward and Up.” This sort of movement counteracted what is now known as a startle reflex.

After coming up with some issues carrying his intentions into action, Alexander found eventually that he could counteract his habit of pulling his head down into his neck. Starting the action in this new way alleviated the pressure on his voice. Counteracting habitual self-imposed limitations provided Alexander insights about the qualities of motion related to his suspended goals of being a better speaker.

The eventual success of Alexander’s hypothesis and the commonality of observing this same pattern in other people led him to establish the importance of the head as an axiom about movement initiation. The head moving away from the body allows the whole body to expand in length. Inspired by Rudolph Magnus idea of central control in animals, Alexander called this principle primary control. Primary control works in action – whether for good or otherwise.

Later, other Alexander Technique teachers used additional terms to encourage and mark the importance of this head movement, because specific descriptions can be an advantage. Alexander’s first graduate of this first training course, Marj Barstow, felt it was important to describe quality of motion as being “delicate” and originated the phrase: “The head moves, and the body follows.”

Most of our habits interfere by superceding the primary control response as a special exception. In most adults, so many special exceptions have been put into place that these pull in opposing directions, often firing off simultaneously. The teacher helps the student to become aware of these routine interfering patterns in order to inhibit them and regain control against conflicting automated habitual responses.

The other special action Alexander found helped to undo the coercive power of routines was to “Direct.” This special term of “Directing” means to suggest the thought of a constructive means without overtly performing the action. Through experimentation, Alexander discovered the fact that movement preparation occurs long before the person is aware they are about to move. This agrees with brain science findings done a hundred years later.

The suggestion of thinking about primary control while moving achieves many advantages. Most important, this ‘Directing” allows a minimal tonus of the neck musculature, so that the head balances freely on top of the spine, rather than locked in a certain position. This freedom of balance allows the torso and spine to respond by slightly expanding. That is exactly how and why Alexander Technique has gained a secret reputation for expanding height in adults and preventing height loss during aging.

This is a reprint of a definition of Primary Control I wrote today for the excellent wiki attended by Lutz at:

http://alextech.wikia.com/wiki/Primary_control#

Stronger Brain Fibers

Alexander Technique lessons give practical influence over impulse control. In this post are some brain research tips involving human reactions and habituated impulses and how they work. Rather than being at the mercy of automated or accidentally learned reactions, listed are some practical experiments and suggestions useful for strengthening the ability to deliberately direct response. These work to compensate for the brain’s design limitations.

LOWER AND HIGHER BRAIN FUNCTION

The lower reptilian brain that thinks in images is the first part of the brain to mature. This part of the brain drives self-involved imperative survival reactions – such as sex, avoiding danger, protecting family and clan members. This reptilian brain dictates swift and sure reactions that preempt the slower, deliberate and complex reasoning ability in the upper fore brain area. The advantage of the reptilian brain is it takes over, makes a quick and sure decision that sizes up a situation, hopefully in enough time to preserve survival.

CONNECTING FIBERS: GABA

What brain scientists called GABA fibers are what connect the higher cognitive reasoning function of the upper brain and the survival-oriented reptilian brain. To start out, these GABA connecting fibers are thin, so the faster reactions of the lower reptilian brain are the default. Maturation of the upper brain occurs starts at around twelve years of age and grows until around twenty-five. This growth can be accelerated by the person’s responses to circumstances – along with which external circumstances exist to test responses from integrating advantages from both brain areas.

WHAT COUNTS – AND WHAT DOESN’T MATTER

What enhances this GABA fiber growth is confronting fear and gaining the ability to differentiate meaning from significant vrs. significant evidence. With experience, the person realizes that most apparently dangerous conditions are, in fact, inconsequential, (and which are, in fact, dangerous.) They learn when to act and when to to calm themselves and not allow their “chain to be yanked” unnecessarily. These connecting GABA fibers bulk up, as muscles do, each time this internal reassurance happens. As specific fears are countermanded by reassurance, the growing bulk of these connecting GABA fiber eventually allows the action of the fore brain to happen at the same time survival measures are being taken. The person learns to fight smarter when fighting is necessary, to be coolly calculating to determine this need. Wisdom and reasoning eventually eliminates the need for desperately trying harder at any cost.

Thinking deliberately in spite of (or in addition to) feelings & impulsive reactions gets easier with practice – even though this foresight takes more time and must be cultivated with accumulated experience. With practice, it’s possible to preempt knee-jerk survival images, fears, interpretations & conclusive suspicions that so effectively run the lower brain entirely.

HOW GABA FIBERS INTERCEPT FEARFUL REACTIONS

Each time reaction is refused or redirected, we send a new electrical response along these GABA fibers that connect the two brains. Each new response makes the fibers fatter, as a muscle grows stronger by exercise. Eventually the GABA connectors bulk up and make it easier for us to stop fear impulses entirely. The GABA fibers eventually act like insulators. The GABA fibers can be described in a poetic way as courage – or “grace under fire.”

INSTINCT, PREJUDICE, OPINION, TASTE

After some experience, the person learns the differences between a gut instinct, a prejudice and a preference that is merely a customary opinion of personal taste. They learn to “choose their battles wisely.” Of course, they often learn from unfortunate lessons that negative speculation & paranoid suspicions are not always a benefit to one’s long-term survival advantage. The reptile brain functions only with a short-term need to survive now.

WHY GROWING GABA FIBERS IS A GOOD IDEA

Not growing GABA fibers has more than a moral danger of a lack of wisdom. The reptile brain manufactures fears and motives that are sometimes self-fulfilling prophesy. If a person never gets the practice of calming themselves and learns to laugh at their unnecessary fears, this ability to countermand and temper the reptile brain does not mature. The person remains at the mercy of their lower brain. This comes out in the roles of suspecting those who are loyal, complaining and creating troll-like “Drama Queen” situations that force polarization, possessing an intense, manic/depressive, trusting/untrustworthy and unpredictably reactive point of view. Along with this come temptations for undue complaints, a lack of commitment, social manipulativeness or outright self-justified dishonesty or criminal behavior.

BRAIN PLASTICITY

Fortunately, this growth toward the maturity of being able to calm oneself can happen at any time in life. The plasticity of the brain can always be reshaped by current usage – and forgiveness. Expressing positive values in action is an effective avenue for change. Keep in mind that because we are talking about growing new brain parts, it takes time and the ability to discern and plot one’s own signs of improvement.

SOME WAYS TO GROW YOUR GABA FIBERS

The practice is exercised by refusing to react & self-reassurance. Many means are possible to put this intent to strengthen GABA fibers into action. This may be practiced in many small ways, in fact, the smaller the better. Some of these ways are:

• by calming ones’ own emotions;
• by changing any new “inconsequential” habit;
• by learning a new skill, which demands being forgiving of mistakes;
• by calming down fear when it arises;
• by releasing physical tension through exercise, massage or other unifying mind-body practice or discipline;
• by deciding not to say what will offend;
• by daring to say what might offend anyway;
• by deliberately changing your mind before you would normally react to do anything habitual or routine;
• by being aware that your thoughts are untrue fears and deciding to not take them seriously.
• by refusing to think about them, using distraction, substitution
• by thinking about something else or distracting yourself.
• by being sarcastic when mistakes are made that word the derogatory put-down in a positive light, such as, “that was a really smart thing to do” (instead of cursing, attacking or accusing when a mistake is made.)

PERSISTENCE IS GOLDEN

If these don’t work, some people get out concerns that are whirling around in their head by

• using de Bono thinking skills,
• writing down these thoughts in descriptions,
• talking about them to a person who is not involved and will not react,
• making art and allowing symbolic imagery to process them,
• exercising and doing physical things,
• doing mundane but productive activities, using them to re-direct your energy with the intent of leaving past, irrelevant concerns in the past where they belong and going in a positive direction -  such as taking a shower or by changing one’s external environment.
• originating strategic, practical plans to get yourself

Perhaps if these methods do not work in isolation, they might work together in a certain sequence.

Many wise people have advice what will work in this situation; perhaps someone else or a religion will have different advice that will work for you. It’s best if the advice has a simple practice to show the expressed values that are advised. Philosophical advice is not worth much unless there is a practical means to carry out the ideas that cultivate new abilities as a skill.

HOW THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES IT

Using one of the principles from Alexander Technique, physically refusing to react can be practiced during any movement. For instance, before any motion, our body has already prepared to move. If we do not stop it, we will continue and complete the motion. We have only 1/64th of a second to refuse or change this motion as we begin to go into action. If we do not use this time, we lose this time to refuse to react. We must act as we have prepared to act. Once started, a routine is much more difficult to interrupt or re-route than it is to intercept it at the beginning window of opportunity.

WHY IMMEDIATELY BEFORE YOU BEGIN IS A GOOD TIME TO CHANGE YOUR MIND

Brain science says that whenever you make a move, your expectations have composed themselves into preparing for the move you are about to do long before you know you are going to do it. You can still “veto” this preparation by changing your mind right before you are about to move. You have only 1/64 of a second to change your mind, otherwise you will continue to perform the action in the way you have prepared to do it. Each time you change your mind, you strengthen these GABA fibers between the upper and lower brains by refusing to act habitually.

REFUSE THE DOMINANT PARADIGM – PRO-ACTIVELY

Practice can occur now. Merely change your mind right before you are about to make a move – any move, such as moving a mouse or typing on the keyboard. Decide to do nothing or to do something unrelated instead of doing it in the usual way. (Plead to your impatient objections that you’re practicing in case of injury. You can say you are interrupting a tiny mannerism that has been identified to be gradually causing you cumulative harm.) You do not even have to determine that an action or idea is “harmful” or potentially harmful. (This is the familiar logic style of of “put-out-the-fire” thinking.) Instead of waiting until something is no longer useful at all to improve it, you can be pro-active.

From Literal to Concept

Language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Words and concepts become established at a period of relative ignorance – which each period must be, compared to the subsequent period. Once the perceptions and concepts are frozen into the permanence of language, they control and limit our thinking on any subject because we are forced to use those concepts. – “I Am Right – You Are Wrong” by Edward de Bono, one of his 80+ books on creative thinking

How do you go about extracting concepts from literal experiences that are “stuck” into a already-assembled package?

Decades ago, before I had really learned to write, I was assigned the job of describing Marj Barstow’s new innovations about teaching Alexander Technique to groups. It was quite a difficult job for many reasons. Learning Alexander Technique occurred on many levels for a student – everyone was located along a continuum of the learning process – but this process of learning the subject was not linear…and everyone followed a different pathway.

To complicate this, my teacher was also quite literal, very specific and a superb editor. She was so much of an editor, she couldn’t write for herself. There was something wrong with everything because it didn’t contain the whole. So my job became to write, write, write and allow her to cut up whatever I had written to shreds…and go back and write some more, undaunted. To complicate matters, nobody else but the founder had written about his own driving conceptual & innovative principles, although everyone acknowledged their importance who had experienced the power of his teaching. It was a little like daring to describe what nobody else would touch.

Since I knew that compiling was a much easier job than the simplifying of concepts that I really needed, I started out by collecting selected “impressions” my teacher’s students had written to her. There were interesting quotes from people that I selected, assembled and grouped so they “flowed” in topic. The sequence of the topics were arranged to match my teacher’s introductory presentation sequence – because they had to posses some sequence. At the time, it seemed to be an arbitrary selection of deciding what quote should follow the next. The learning process and application of the skills of Alexander Technique was so subjectively circular. What organization would be best for introductory teaching?

My attempts were widely distributed among her students for feedback. The acknowledgment came back from her more experienced students: the sequence I stumbled on was the same one they had been effectively using in action to teach others. So, now I had a sequence to present content (that I had arranged so “arbitrarily”) and it had turned out to be in agreement with what others who did not write had learned.

Now I was ready to write a “concept synopsis” where each topic changed into the next. To simulate the out-of-sequence form of learning, I split the conceptual chapter headings from the raw quotes and added some experiments for examples. The idea of a tri-sectioned book emerged to allow the information to be read out of sequence as well as in sequence.

the cookbook style thing, divided in three separate books bound together into one book was funny to read in practice. It frustrated people who wanted to read it in sequence.

So – that was how I took one very complex subject that didn’t have a conceptual organization and simplified it.

Hope that my story from my experience in Alexander Technique inspires for you how to extract concepts from literal experiences and express them successfully in words.

“Golf Sense” Book Review

Alexander Technique is the foundation that Roy Palmer uses to present a new way learn about golf in his new book, “Golf Sense”. I’m a fellow Alexander teacher that Roy has asked to review his book.

Golf Sense shows off the tremendous effectiveness of what has been reputed to be the trickiest subject to present in writing – Alexander Technique. For those not familiar with the subject, it is a body learning skill from the performing arts field that teaches mastery, effortlessness & how to undo what gets learned by accident. What makes Alexander Technique different from mere philosophy or other motivational admonishments is that it has a physical discipline based on empirical inquiry that works in the incremental moments of actual performance. Golf Sense discusses “being in the moment” as a state of “Being In The Zone.”

Many other books that integrate Alexander Technique with teaching a specific skill merely introduce; falling short of daring to actually teaching the subject in writing. There are two good reasons for this caution: Alexander teachers offer specific tips about what their students do unintentionally that is tailored to that particular student. Secondly, the teacher physically takes students by hands-on guided motion into how to tap the unknown for new insights, detouring accidental self-imposed limitations as they are happening. Because of these two significant benefits, most writers assume it’s not possible to teach the real Alexander Technique with mere words.

Palmer listened to what readers asked for and complained that was lacking in other Alexander Technique books. In doing so, Palmer has originated multiple practical answers to questions that work to educate the thoughtful student who will actually conduct his advised experiments. He doesn’t shy away from the really challenging mysteries, such as:

How come my game gets inconsistent when I know better?

How come analyzing the previous shot seems to spoil the next shot?

How can I avoid or get rid of the dreaded yips?

Why does analyzing what happened after a shot that did not work seem to spoil the following attempt?

Golf Sense is also a book with a sense of humor. The other sense that Palmer communicates exceptionally well about  is an unconsidered sixth sense. This is the often-ignored perceptual sense about relative effort and spacial orientation that is presumed to be  included in the sense of touch – but is not often discussed.

Palmer presents illustrated examples that communicate from many points of view; the frustrated golfer, the beginner, the pressured performer, the brain scientist, the ruthless competitor, the martial artist, even the consciousness woo-woo. Mysteries that don’t make sense about why you can’t get your golf ball to obey will become clear and reasonable by the time you finish this book, as the title promises.

If you actually conduct Palmer’s suggested exercises, (rather than merely reading this book) pretty much this is the closest you can get to having your own Alexander Technique teacher at your back for the price of a book. It’s not too abstract to substitute almost any other skill involving a ball in the sequence of learning that Roy Palmer presents. Because of this fantastic application for any sport, I would suggest this book for any sportsman who is curious to learn Alexander Technique principles – even if you never want to learn golf!

Mirror Neurons

Alexander Technique has been classically conveyed through the invention of a form of guided modeling of motion. Not all Alexander Technique teachers teach using this means, (because of a class situation where one-on-one isn’t always possible nor constructive.) But all Alexander Technique teacher can use their hands in this specialized way because they’ve been properly educated.

The quality is a signature lightness of “non-doing.” An Alexander Technique teacher who is properly trained can use their hands to follow you doing whatever motion you’d like to do, while giving you a suggestion of how to prevent your habitual routines that limit freedom from running the show.

What that means is an Alexander Technique teacher can suggests the direction, timing and quality of motion for the student while the two people are linked hands-on. This happens because the teacher demonstrates on themselves what they want the student to also do for themselves.

What actually happens when an Alexander Technique teacher puts hands-on?

The way it works is a very mysterious process. Through training, most Alexander teachers can be an example for their students much better than they can explain what is going on.

What a teacher is actually doing when they put hands-on a student is applying Alexander’s principles to their own coordination. Then, without interfering, managing to put hands-on the student. IT is this “without interfering” that is the tricky part that takes so long to learn.

The student “makes like a sponge” and emulates the ability the teacher has move beyond their own personal limitations in their own thinking and response. The effect is, both people lengthen their own muscles in a sympathetic concourse – they dance together. The person who is more relaxed encourages the person who is less relaxed to free whatever is in their way of moving easier – or at least it usually works that way. Sometimes what happens is the person who has a stronger ability to choose new ways of thinking influences the quality of thought of the person who’s thinking is fuzzy or indistinct.

It’s been said: “Those who do, work at it – and those who don’t – teach it.” But Alexander Technique doesn’t work unless the teacher demonstrates the principles in their own ability to go beyond their own physical, habitual limitations. You’ll know it’s not working as the student because the teacher’s hands will become heavy and you’ll feel as if you’re being “handled” or are having something done “to you.” An Alexander Technique teachers’ hands feel as if you are being guided; they suggest a direction, quality and means – but the student is responsible to initiate or follow.

There hasn’t been an explanation for why this works or what is going on until mirror neurons were discovered in brain research.

This talk on mirror neurons assigns them an emotional and empathic basis. But the sort of brain power that drives the ability to “learn though emulation” is what drives the Alexander Technique.

Can learning the Alexander Technique give a person additional empathy? Many of us who learn it have imagined so. But having any sort of discipline involving awareness develops the ability to be in charge of oneself and the effect a person has on their actions that effect the world.  To discover and express one’s hopes, dreams & vision for the constructive, practical effects of one’s beliefs – being able to surpass one’s own personal limitations  - this would be a handy skill in anyone’s toolbox.

Many disciplines that offer more control over the various qualities of one’s life give this benefit. The Alexander Technique offers a form of control that includes indefinite freedom to refine, perceive and clear out what is unnecessary. That’s what makes it different. It doesn’t free you up in order to tell you what to do next – it merely frees you to do whatever you want to do next.

An handy ability to have in one’s toolbox of life skills, don’t you think?

Happy to be Wrong

Everyone is wrong because we all have a limited point of view by nature of it’s point in time, to varied degrees. We’re wrong in relationship to it’s point in our lives, it’s point in relation to our experience or lack of it – our ability to carry through on our knowledge or skill and many other factors.

Defining something as “not making sense”, chaotic, divine or magical is usually because we do not perceive or understand it’s organization – yet. This urge to define is both what makes us wrong -and write. Or Right and Rong. Or Rightly Rung.
Edward de Bono, grandfather of lateral thinking, calls being right “using proto-truth.” Meaning, we use the best, most operative truth known for now.
It’s a happy thing to realize one’s wrongness – especially when the surprise comes from a perceptual mistake. Wrong is an education – now you can make it right. Whereas before you could not percieve the difference that made a difference. Or you didn’t care to make it right because right is too costly.
As my mechanical friends tell me: Proper maintenance is usually quite a bit less expensive than repair.

Predicting

How do we predict what is going to happen before it does? We come up with a little routine for what we’ve already experienced, just in case something similar happens again. Then we’re prepared.

There’s a price to pay. Adapting to learn a habit (involving a habit or routine of motion, especially,) will make the sensation of doing the routine disappear. Habits of movement and response are designed to fade into the background, to disappear and run as “installed” routines. These routines are designed to trigger on an “if…then” recognition by the brain of the need for the routine to happen.

Habits and routines are handy to have installed. The reason it is useful for a certain habit to bury itself into the construction of a routine is so other habits, (in the form of gradually acquired skills,) can be chained onto previously learned habits.  You can say, “Go!” and the whole routine should go into action and it will play out, even if the whole sequence is very complex and took a long time to train.

Learn to do something unnecessary by accident, and it will become chained into the sequence of having learned the skill. Tricky to undo those problems – which are problems that you cannot tell are happening from the inside. You’re just doing the thing you learned to do the way you learned to do it. However, since you invested time and energy into training this routine, you don’t bother to revise it in the light of new circumstances. It’s easier to train yet another routine instead. This is one of the drawbacks and a basic error of perception.

We don’t see the need to “uninstall” the old programs and routines. We just forget them. The problem is they may come back to haunt us, because we’re probably still doing them, depending on how a routine was installed and if it was used often.

A basic error of perception is that people assume they know where they are in space and how much effort is required to get them or their extremities from location to location. People often forget that they trained themselves to adapt to some extraordinary circumstance previously. They may be starting from a different location or relationship with balance and effort than they would correctly assume.

What most people do not know is the sense of judgment about location, effort and weight is a relative sense – not an “absolutely true” one. In fact, humans merely are able to register only relative differences in our kinesthetic sense. Most people do not know this fact and believe they know what is happening with themselves because they can “feel” it.

Because of the nature of adapting that humans are so talented at doing, this example is true for how people learn skills and perceive the world to make sense of “how things are,” not just the kinesthetic sense.

Self Control Costs

Have been looking around the web for more information concerning Alexander Technique and timing. Sustained practice in a new skill that challenges one’s abilities to exercise their version of “control” takes a toll, because people thrash around while they are learning and do not apply themselves skillfully – yet. It’s obvious to most people that sustaining a state of “special” awareness is taxing.

Found documentation that proves applying self-control is something that makes people tired by itself. Now we know that exercising self-control is taxing to the brain. http://is.gd/cC5V0

People know this instinctively. If they don’t have experience with how much A.T. helps their stamina, they could imagine A.T. would make them tired because it requires awareness and resisting one’s habitual routines. People who do A.T. know that toll becomes less by learning to apply the skill of learning efficiently.

So, how can those of us who teach Alexander Technique describe how it is different or “better” for this application? Here is a blog reply to the issue: http://post.ly/iPAh

Let’s go a little further – such as “Studying A.T. makes continuing to learn easier” Or “A.T. shows a template for using awareness for noting progress of improvement that increases stamina.”

But HOW do we do this? Certainly part of it is purely practice and gaining the ability through doing it, getting tired, doing it some more and so on. Like any form of exercise, practice enlarges one’s abilities.

There’s an even more selective way to practice that yields results painlessly. My experience in teaching this is to recommend applying Alexander Technique in a very selective way. So, rather than just sustaining a “wide open” sense of awareness with the volume knob turned to “up,” you strategically apply A.T. when it’s most effective. This most effective time to apply some A.T. thinking and directing is right before an activity is begun. How you start something has quite a bit to do with how you may continue to do it. In effect, it’s the “set up.” Then use A.T. periodically as you notice yourself dropping down in a sort of expiration date of timing as the original intention fades out. Once you know what you tend to habitually do, then renew the directing of yourself with a rhythmic sense of timing…

It also works really effectively to set regular break times and stick to using them for a five minute semi-supine lie-down break. This works best when it is regularly scheduled and used even if you do not feel tired yet. As humans we forget to do this until we start to feel tired, and doing so is akin to “closing the barn door after the escape.”  Lying on your back with your knees in the air and some head support for a a five minute break every hours or so is one of the most effective tips the Alexander Technique has to offer. It works!

Timing Evaluation

When is the best time to look for evidence of success?

Evaluating at the wrong time will lead us to make a conclusion about our efforts. This can be discouraging. Evaluating continuously can be a little like constructing a corral in front of a moving herd of cats. This would be constantly comparing the end results of our efforts to how we’re doing. This is fine when we know how to proceed towards a goal, but not so great of a strategy when we’re involved in a learning process.

I”m always reminded of this while on the phone with someone who is having problems with the reception on their mobile phone. If you spend your time on a constantly asking if the other person heard you, then you can’t get on with the purpose of the conversation.

I know when I teach people, I can see students often ask the wrong questions of themselves at the wrong time about the results of their learning experiments. They look for results by using evaluators and criteria for success that are not directly related to the STEPS of successes of what they are intending to do. They only evaluate for the end result, which isn’t possible while the skill is being built step by step.

So – for instance – let’s say I’m teaching someone to juggle three balls. It’s most common that a learner doesn’t really know exactly how they use their perceptions to toss a ball from hand to hand until I point it out what is going on as they are doing it successfully with one ball. They take the skill for granted, because they usually learned to toss a ball from their parent or sibling when they were very young. They may do the skill successfully, in spite of misconceptions they have about doing it.

The role of the teacher to point out and reward a learner’s efforts when it results in incremental progress. Learners might not know what successful results look like as the building blocks of a skill are being formed. Someone unfamiliar with this process of building a particular skill step by step will miss crucial successes. They miss success plainly though ignorance. Instead a newbie often mistakenly looks for evidence they CAN recognize, (which is most often merely what they already know!)

Without the help of a teacher, there’s an inherent danger in learning that people may get discouraged and imagine they CAN’T be successful. ask themselves about successful results at different times, Many learners are too eager to wear the hat of evaluation. Doing this at the wrong time results in using their senses to conclude results while still in process.

So, let’s say the question is, “Is what we are doing working the way we intend it?”

If you ask that question before you’ve made a change, you will only see your habitual routines.

If you ask that question too late, you might miss something important that did happen.

If you ask that question AFTER you’ve run an experiment that really involved doing something new, you might notice that something new that just happened.

Even if you ask the question at the right time, you might not notice something new has happened.  You might need perceptual help from a teacher or another perceptual sense or a sensor that can bring out what did happen. This happens mostly because everything is so unfamiliar that you won’t know what is important to help you direct your attention to it.

Unfamiliarity or weirdness is an indicator that something new did happen. Generally, something new happening is a “good” thing, because it means success in freeing previous routines. This is why it’s important to make experimenting safe.

What I mean by using another perceptual sense is to cross-check with your other senses when you ask yourself what happened. What I mean by using a sensor that can bring out what happened is using a recorder of the event, such as a auditory or video recording, or just using a mirror to get another point of view about what is really happening.

If evaluating directly after experimenting and something new did happen, most people will notice a sense of unfamiliarity if it did happen. They may sometimes be able to go with the flow - meaning,  sustaining the doing of what is unfamiliar. Someone would be motivated to continue doing what feels strange because they might recognize it’s working toward their goals. But most people’s routines are too strong to allow this going with the flow of what’s new to happen for very long a period of time. They find sustaining their tolerance for what is unfamiliar to be demanding and challenging…and sort of scary.

Is unfamiliarity fun, scary or what for you? Is there a customary pattern to when you usually evaluate?

F.M. Alexander Lacked The Words

Frederick Matthias Alexander, originator of what came to be known as the Alexander Technique, was a lousy teacher.  We have it in writing from Lulie Westfeldt, a student of his, as well as from many others.

” One other thing that took place in this first series of lessons was an emotional scene. I was standing up and F M asked me to give the series of head neck and back orders, and to come back to his hands. I did not know whether he meant me to step back, to allow myself to fall back, to think the back back, or what. There were several alternatives as to what he might mean. To F. M. however, the words “come back to my hands” meant exactly one thing: what he intended them to mean, neither more nor less.  …Since I simply didn’t know what F. M. meant me to do, I wavered, hesitated and tried one possible alternative after the other. We had reached a total impasse. I got more and more frantic and he got more and more furious. It both upset and enraged him when he could not get a point over a pupil, and yet verbally he did nothing about it. He kept reiterating his original words  and never attempted a different phrasing. In this instance he kept on saying: ” Come back to my hands,” making no effort to elucidate what he meant or to clear up the ambiguity.”

OK, now, how ambiguous could that “simple” request of F.M’s be?

• 1. to step back, [backwards in space]
• 2. to allow myself to fall back, [the upper back to move backwards? Or falling off-balance backwards from the feet as a pivot point and allow him to catch her with his hands?]
• 3. to think the back back, or what.”
• 4. to turn around and move the whole body to another location that was behind from where the Lulie had been standing,
• 5. to refuse to do anything else except continue to give Directions, and regard the stimulus of “come back into my hands” as an order to be refused
• 6. to change the orientation of her pelvic region
• 7. to expand her breathing into the back, putting more of the surface of her back into his hands, (if his hands were in contact with her back)
• 8. to return to a previous location (as in come back here!)

Reading the above part of the quote, I had assumed that FM was standing behind Lulie, who was also standing when he made the request.  Where his hands were located and if his hands were *on* her was not specified, but I would assume that his hands were on or near her back.

But – does it matter how someone misunderstands? A teacher needs to be able to imagine what is happening from the point of view of the student. The ability to generate many other explanations for meaning and to select alternate or more suitable descriptions that the student understands is the job of teaching.

There is a frustration point that occurs while training animals who cannot speak. For instance, this state is discussed in dolphin training, in a book by Karen Pryor (Don’t Shoot The Dog; it’s about the art of how & why training & reinforcement works.)  There’s a definite moment of frustrating thrashing about when a very smart animal is figuring out what the trainer means. There is not a way to help the situation available by using language. In that situation, it’s good to let the student thrash because it does give them something to think about.

But we have language – why is it so difficult to use it appropriately? Because F.M. was pioneering what he was teaching as he was doing it. It’s actually a good thing that F.M. Alexander was lousy at explanation. Because we have the non-verbal hands-on from him to communicate what he meant instead. Somehow, he managed to teach that very successfully.

What could F.M.A. (or any teacher) have done differently? Once he figured out Lulie didn’t understand him, he could have admitted he didn’t know the best way to convey what he meant. F.M. could have explained why he thought it important to repeat himself. He could have explained why he had chosen those particular, “simple” words. He could have asked for his student to form a question about what she didn’t understand. He should have done his best to think about how to answer her constructively, or, perhaps conduct some experiments about what was the best way to answer her. He should have made her feel less embarrassed that she was not able to read his mind. He could have taken more responsibility for being the teacher and realized that students should not be expected to read the teacher’s mind. Because Lulie wasn’t the first student to react in this manner, he should have imagined he didn’t know the whole thing that was going on.

Instead, F.M.A. came to the conclusion that his students were all “trying to be right.” In fact, they were being quite inventive at trying different responses, (risking that many of the responses were going to be wrong) hoping to hit into the ballpark of where he was refusing to specify.

We know that F.M. declared that to use language only leads to frustration and misunderstanding. From these stories, we get a better idea how he came to these conclusions. I respectfully submit that there are enough challenges in Alexander’s work for a student to think about, without adding these unnecessary frustrations.

These difficulties reveal that the teacher was lacking in the ability to connect language usage to the activity of what he wanted to convey to the student. It was F.M.A.’s mistake for not inhibiting his anger, at the very least. For sure there is a value of the student making this connection solely by themselves. But if the teacher never demonstrates, the student must be an awesome original thinker to make something new happen by themselves.

By the teacher merely repeating himself, the student was reduced to the level of pure animal training and mind-reading. For sure, it is possible, given enough repetitions over time, to learn like this. Balinese Gamalon conductors give their musicians dirty looks when they play the wrong note, but that doesn’t mean that’s the best way to educate. Student successes occurred in spite of F.M.A.’s teaching methods, not because of them.

But, it’s OK that Alexander was a lousy teacher. He was not infallible, he was human. Many people who can do something extraordinary are not talented at teaching what they can so expertly demonstrate and/or invent. Inventors often have no idea why people are so difficult and have trouble being able to do what seems self-evident to them. Many geniuses are peeved and frustrated that people do not understand them. They resent that they must figure out how to reach people and explain themselves over and over, making it so simple that it becomes trite. It’s tedious to keep introducing people who have the same sequence of misunderstandings about what you have to offer that seem to be inherent in the subject. But good teachers wonder about how to get over these challenges – and sometimes, their original thinking pays off.

Obviously, the use of language to teach Alexander’s technique was an area of education that F.M. left to those he trained to later sort it out. …And those he trained did make significant contributions in these areas. It took a long time after his death for these new ideas about integrating language into F.M.A.’s work to come to culmination.

According to my observation of being able to read (all of) the collected published articles on Alexander Technique at the London Society of the Teachers of the Alexander Technique office in 2001, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s or so that writers began to say something in their writing about A.T. beyond parroting F.M.A.’s story narrated in his book “The Use Of The Self”.

Of course it follows that we’re better teachers of A.T. now, because we’ve had an easier time at learning it – and time to articulate what we’re doing. It’s fortunate that Alexander’s legacy has principles rather than merely forms or routines that express these principles. Principles have allowed the work to grow and evolve, and we are still growing. We’re carrying F.M.A.’s work on, building, contributing in whatever ways we’re talented to do. The world needs all the different variations that include easier ways to teach – as these principles are now reaching more cultures, more subcultures.  The world also needs the preservationists, who work to keep the original vision pure. After having withstood more than a hundred years of value, I don’t think F.M.A.’s work needs defending. Certainly, I can say he was it was fortunately for us he was a lousy teacher. Otherwise we wouldn’t have such a well-developed and interesting example of the hands-on method that communicates so far beyond language. “Show me” took on a whole new meaning, thanks to F.M.A.

I think F.M.A. would have been quite pleased in the results of those who continue to integrate the use of language skills to reach students and teach them faster and with less frustration. The lifetime of work that F.M.A. did do was spectacular enough without having to make him into a perfect teacher  – as well as the genius-inventor spearhead of the next step in human evolution.

OK, I know the part about human evolution seems over the top. But I completely agree with F.M. Alexander on his prediction of how important his work is turning out to be. I doubt if anyone will believe what I have to say about it. Even though the field of Alexander Technique had those who are much more eminently qualified than myself say exactly that same thing.

As Nikolaas Timbergen accepted a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973, he praised the value of Alexander's technique.

But I’ll say it again anyway. Most people imagine such a statement is merely the proselytizing of a fanatic’s, because it’s just too grandiose. But they haven’t learned F.M.A.’s work yet. Often I wonder how many other people agree with me, although it’s not a politically correct thing to advertise.

In the long run, humans as a species NEED to think ahead quite a bit more about the cumulative, long-term effect of their actions. In the short-run, if education could offer a practical means to get past the coercive resistance of fear, resistance, defensiveness, self-preservation & self-protectiveness, people could accomplish quite a bit more in the continuous improvement department.

Amazing that a person can learn to over-ride or re-direct one’s own particular choice of response beyond conditioned reaction to ANY stimulus. That is the meat of how this challenge to think ahead can be faced and mastered on the most personal level.

This is what F.M.A.’s work offers. That’s what makes it extraordinary.

Isn’t that enough?

Is Inhibition in Aikido and Tai Chi?

There are always many roads to a similar destination – Aikido and TaiChi, etc. are two of them that are culturally specific avenues to a similar destination in common with Alexander Technique. In fact, I’ve described the Alexander Technique as “The Westerner’s Zen.”

F.M. Alexander never claimed to have an exclusive ownership trademark on excellent coordination or the path to effortlessness and mastery. He merely figured out how to eliminate a nuisance that he had cultivated and trained into an intended habit by accident.

What made his work rare is that he formed his specific solution of voice recovery into a chain of practical principles that could be abstracted for use in other situations. Inhibition was one of those pivotal principles. Those situations would be the usefulness of freeing unintentional habits of movement response. (Which turned out to be pretty much any situation involving movement! But most valued by people who have found Alexander’s work frees performance talent for unlimited improvement, to refresh remedial lack of movement problems & as a study of consciousness and happiness.)

Put yourself in F.M. Alexander’s shoes – how would you describe what you did, as if nobody had ever described the process of inhibition? It’s a squirrelly, tricky challenge for self-observation AND the use of language to describe what happened. All of these things happen step by step and/or simultaneously all-at-once – very quickly – AND they don’t happen the same every time either.

It was an admirable and stunning success on Alexander’s part to come up with ANY way to describe the abstracted principles so they could be applied to ANY movement. Alexander’s work was a brilliant insight in applying creative thinking ability toward a practical discipline of the proof of thought in action. Other philosophers (and religions!) had some similar ideas – without the practical application and proof their ideas worked because it was assembled into a “law” or “principle” as Alexander developed.

If you have experience with Alexander Technique, here’s your assignment: In your own words, describe in language what inhibition is, without going through the blow-by-blow nuts & bolts of how to do it.

Here is one of my attempts:

Inhibition is prevention of unwanted, nuisance habits of movement that have been trained to disappear while becoming innate. Using inhibition prevents long-standing habits from obliterating a fragile, newly intended potential talent. Inhibition prevents what is previously known best to be stopped or suspended, so an unknown potential may emerge well-formed, be practiced and become another reliable skill.

Do you agree with that definition of inhibition? Stated like that, inhibition sounds like the basis of all educational processes, doesn’t it?

So once you do describe inhibition, it is more obvious that it can be used a stand-alone principle. Inhibition may operate quite independently of Primary Control. (Another important principle of Alexander Technique.) Inhibition can be ANYTHING strategically done to prevent, sidestep, re-direct, fake out, detour, put off, distract, bore (the list is only limited to your creative ability to come up with effective variations) lie, cheat, make fun of, bait & switch, etc. that unwanted, coercive habitual reaction.

What I’m saying is that this ability to do all these inhibitive-style things are so useful, that inhibition is inherent in many, many learning processes. Granted that inhibition is rarely spelled-out; I know of no other description for it. (Rarely it has been called deliberate non-judgment or deliberate suspension of short-sighted goals.) So the fact that inhibition is working the way it does remains buried in the learning process. As long as inhibition is buried in this way, it can’t be used, as such – so I agree with you, Chris – when you say…

Chris writes: “…it may well be possible to become a phenomenally good Aikido or Tai Chi
practitioner without addressing the fundamentals of misuse. “

Absolutely! Someone who practices can excel at a sport, but effective teaching is a separate skill. Not many teachers know that prevention – inhibitive techniques exist specifically.  But some rare teachers are able to improvise specific solutions for specific students who are having problems and need help overcoming specific issues. This is the value of a good teacher – to obviate difficulty and prevent it.
Teachers in general often don’t know why what they do works, (or why some students have trouble and others excel.) – Of course, we Alexander Technique people do know why some people excel at learning and some don’t, because we have the Alexander Technique as an example and descriptor.

Most people can only think of teaching the way they were taught. They take things literally and thus, may only imitate content in state-specific way. (This statement of generalizing is not intended to be made in a derogatory way. There’s nothing wrong with being a preservationist – it’s an honorable job! We NEED people who preserve accurately!)

However, the challenge here is to think abstractly to apply principles beyond the specific situation where these principles were learned.

So – what I’m saying here is that anybody may use inhibitive strategies – without knowing that these inhibitive techniques are a separate, defined skill/ability. Mostly people do not have a clue that inhibition is the MOST important key to success in many, many situations. This is because, so often, you must stop what you do not want before you can begin to allow what you do want. Most people merely think of the “doing what you want” part. So they are left to wonder why their intention falls short. Usually they imagine it is something wrong with THEM.

Granted, most people probably will not notice their Primary Control is occurring immediately following their ability to inhibit what they do not want. (We A.T. people all know that inability to recognize what is happening occurs because sensory ability shuts down when an automatic habit justifies a cost-of-goal sacrifice.)

But that doesn’t mean a student’s teacher misses noticing what they want for their student that the student does not know. This depends on the teaching style, insight & experience of the particular teacher. With an effective and intuitive Sensei, (or any teacher) who is practiced at timing & reinforcement in training, coupled with an exacting standard of “effortlessness” as a guiding criteria of success – you essentially have exactly the same result as with using Alexander Technique. It is of no difference that it is not named that particular thing and even that the learning process is described differently.

Almost any skill may become an “art” of life with a valuable teacher.

Inhibition is a short-cut. The recommendations of how these other two disciplines are taught (I speak from experience with both of Tai Chi and Aikido) are the long way ’round and require even more dedication and practice than Alexander Technique lessons. All of them work toward the similar objectives of freedom of movement, pleasure of learning, prevention of unnecessary pain and enhancement of longevity.  Despite the way these objectives are described being quite different because of the culture surrounding it, (IMHO) I see more commonalities than differences.

What do you have to say about other disciplines or pastimes that have the ability to ascend to an art, containing philosophical principles or lessons of life?

If A.T. Was A Religion…

Lutz: Alexander Technique as a way to enlightenment without life-time membership and obligations?

Maybe if the challenge of “En-LIGHTEN-ment” is redefined as Levitation Devotions? Now THAT would be a spiritually transcendent goal! [Have got my tongue in cheek rather firmly here, in case the terminally-serious are reading this, who obviously need more indoctrination in levity training.] Wow, the Alexander Technique principle of Directing IS quite a bit like meditation…

Hey, what an idea!

If someone were inclined, here’s how we could consider Alexander Technique to follow the threats and stern admonitions that are the signature characteristics of most religions. Then the Real Questions are… Let’s see…

At the Hellish Penalty of being a Lousy Example to one’s Devotees, umm, Devoted Pupils, (who inevitably will emulate the example’s affectations… ummm… pattern of misuse if presented with it at an unthinkable momentary lapse of Direction.) The Obligatory Dedication to a lifetime of Directing Oneself…will be required.

OF course, we would need to select members of the Upper Caste. They must deal with the inevitable Continuing Rising Standards of excellence and perfection of the transcendent pursuit of Good Use In Every Moment.

We could extend teacher training to a period of ten years, (re-naming it “The Calling in the WORK”) and redefine all currently trained teachers as Devotees Of Passing On The Work. (Then it would be “Spreading the Good Use Work” instead of doing what is now considered in marketing lingo to be “Branding”….)

Since it takes at least one contiguous month to Improve One’s Use and get it to stick, the identification of A.T. into a religion would be the solution of that sticky challenge of having pupils flake out before they are Properly Indoctrinated. Once pupils open the door on expanded perception, they should not be allowed to slam the Doors of Perception shut again.  Merely require pupils to live together for a month-long workshop in order to Study Properly.

Use Of The Self by F.M A. Proclaimed Heavenly Inspired

It’s already convenient that F.M Alexander’s books ARE suitably mystifying so as to require meta-physically book-study groups… requiring Long winded explanations to decipher AND Experts to Interpret TRUE Meanings…

Deification of those unusual teachers who we now consider “Heads Of Training” as spiritually advanced would also be necessary. And if those people refuse, we can always proceed in the Deification Process after their death, when they have nothing to say about it. Then, in order to assemble a Priesthood, we can ascend certain souls to Highly Enlightened. An example is the rumored Alexander teacher who, after having her house robbed, had Scotland Yard dust her home for the fingerprints of the criminal and found no fingerprints of hers on her possessions. (Who was that? Names Please so we can report her to the proper Board of Ascension. Those around her will be so flattered they know her, ah…humbled, that they will accept the award on her behalf.)

Maybe it would be a better idea to require those advanced enough in our Doctrine to tutor a flock by obligation in exchange for their ten-year training. We could cloister them in subsistence housing for another period of ten years (after the first ten years,) at which end they might be be qualified to be deified as Highly Enlightened after death. Hey, at least they would have a job!

Of course, the manner of death would be a factor in Deification, because, the only preferred spiritual enough cause of death is stroke – and THAT is only acceptable after attaining 90+ years old. Preferably after a previous stroke recovery to prove how effective the Deified Candidate can Carve New Brain Pathways in the example of our En-light-end Hero, F.M. Alexander himself.

Gambling at the equine racetrack could be one of our collective gathering places, (taking the place of church Bingo, obviously)…in emulation of F.M. Alexander, Our Founder, of course…

Hmmmm, if Alexander Technique were a religion, then we could consider membership in the professional societies to be tithing!

p.s: AND converting Alexander Technique to being a religion would allow tax write-offs!

Pausing Intense Emotions

Anger is an intense emotion. Anger is an emotion that most people would not really prefer to keep hold of for very long because it results in fight or flight reactions and if kept going indefinitely in the background as a sustained emotion –  health problems. Which emotion, pastime or action is in force is beside the point. Curious if it’s possible to surpass any intense emotion, intense enough to distract reason.

It’s been proved that strong emotions interfere with creative thinking ability and common sense. Defensiveness and self-protection seems to preclude creative and reasoning ability.

Aside from why it’s not possible, have some people done it? Is it possible to actually think, problem solve and come up with something new if you’re in the throes of anger, defensiveness or other intense emotional self-involvement?

Perhaps it’s the self-deception that is the culprit?

Some sort of brain coercion itself that seems to be operating. Once the activity of a charged emotional state goes into action, the safety of having the wrong idea is suddenly gone. Evidently, it is the “reptilian brain” that is giving all these ideas why something cannot happen. If these two are not congruent, then you get threats which are so seriously ridiculous that they are humorous, such as; “OK everyone, all of you there must be having fun now or I will kick your ass!” Or the common parental declaration: “Stop crying now about nothing, or I’ll give you something real to cry about!”

I know it’s possible to creatively problem solve while also being angry. I’ve done it myself. It happened because I was challenged to do so repeatedly without the usual characteristic of defensive self-preservation being a feature. If I did it, I know it’s possible for others to do so.

From this personal experience, I know that it’s possible to marry precluding “opposing” characteristics so that having and either/or is not necessary. You can have both, and sometimes you can have it all – up to a point.

But here is the conditional deal-breaker: It’s only available if you train the skills that are needed to make it happen in a safe environment. Usually, anger occurs in an unsafe environment. So you need to practice using it in an unsafe environment. You need to attempt to problem solve when you’re actually freaking out.  The old adage: “Necessity is the Mother Of Invention” isn’t quite true, until the pressure comes off. Until there is a pause. “Play is the Father of Invention.” 

The ability to think well while under pressure is unusual because the intensity and the nature of the emotion will shut down the ability to think. People who are angry in this way are similarly blinded. Ego is necessary in threatening situations because it’s primal survival imperative. People can be distracted by being absorbed in any habitual state – emotional, physical, mental. People when they are freaking out get distracted by their status quo expectations and fears. They space out and miss stuff they’re not anticipating that could be useful, because it’s not what they expect.

So – perhaps the ability to STOP, PREVENT or SUSPEND is the crucial one activity that is CRUCIAL to model if you’d like to gain some way to solve a situation during the throes of an intense emotion. Whatever the habit that is in place, in the way of flexibility is the ability to respond to circumstance appropriately.

 A style of coercive assault that accuses, (provoking a defensive reaction) is a dangerous circumstance to resist constructively. Whereas, nobody blames an earthquake or a big wave for being what it is. The relative importance of what you’re getting upset about depends on if you have someone around you who is doing one of these provoking reactions on a repetitive basis that you are, in some way, forced to deal with. It’s certainly challenging and a little poisonous to have to deal with a person who constantly demands attention who is not physically ill or a child. There are many other situations that can encourage someone to go into a panic – reasonably. Earthquakes. Fires. An accident, etc.

One way to practice the ability to suspend one’s reaction to circumstance and choose differently is to learn it and practice it by studying Alexander Technique. I’m very curious to find out if, in general, do people who study Alexander Technique find they are better able to respond intelligently during genuine emergencies or able to problem solve during intense emotions?

Had a friend who lived in Chicago and had worked with Goddard Binkley. In lessons, my friend reported that Binkley would have my friend shout out emotionally charged phrases during hands-on lessons. Has anyone else had these sorts of psychological activities encouraged during Alexander Technique lessons from past teachers?

Mindful Awareness

I just wrote this post, adding to what was already on this wiki on Alexander Technique. It’s released on a Creative Commons license.

This aspect of Alexander Technique comes close to the Buddhist practice of ‘mindfulness’. Alexander’s principles about self-awareness adds additional interesting points to other methods that have the goal of inviting more sensory awareness into your life.

A sign that you could benefit from learning about your awareness by studying Alexander Technique would be surprise at having apparently taken a wrong turn, due completely to habit. Finding habitual routine driving your actions and not your intentional, conscious awareness can be somewhat unsettling.

Habits are designed to become innate in order to become reliable. Once we know how to do things, gaining competence allows us to perform the task ‘without thinking’. Driving a car is a good example for this. Primates haven’t evolved to drive cars without learning it as a new skill. Yet our human nervous system happily adapts to this ‘remote controlled’ movement as we trained ourselves to get used to driving cars. We do this training as a series of behavior chained actions, linked together in a sequence.

Once we know the skill of driving, we are usually much more aware of our goals of where and why we want to go to our destination than about the details of shifting gears or using the steering wheel. Sometimes, on a familiar route, we might completely run on ‘auto pilot.’ Evidence of this is not noticing anything on our way, except perhaps the beginning and end of our journey. So it is quite understandable to become a slave to one’s own habitual routine. Thus, we notice the need for learning a little more about how our awareness and responses work.

What is the difference between a habit that has become innate and effective for a reasonable purpose, and a nuisance habit that we repeat “mindlessly”? (Or perhaps we repeat it painfully, without knowing the cumulative effects of our habits?)

That difference is awareness. We can do a routine skill with awareness and be satisfied with it. Or we can allow and enjoy habit running its automatic program and use our awareness to glide over the top of the skill, only noticing what is unusual or notable. This would allow us to note that the ball bouncing into the street might be followed by a child. Thankfully, we don’t have to use our conscious reasoning to step on the brake in time to avoid the child following the ball – that response would be much too slow! We can use our “RAS” (Reticular Activating System, which is a switchboard activating various brain areas) with an “emergency response needed” general message, without specifying which response might be best. If you go into a panic in emergencies and do crazy, unreasonable things, this means you need Alexander Technique lessons to “refresh” and “zero out” your ability to respond without answering too many conflicting habitual routines. Alexander Technique calms the brain’s RAS, so it automatically and intelligently chooses the more apt survival response in a split second.

Or we can find ourselves doing the routine in a completely mindless way, with no memory of what it was like to learn in the first place. The strength of habit makes it possible to integrate more and more, as the routine fades into the background so we can add another habit onto what we now know how to do. Awareness makes it possible to notice, learn and integrate the next new challenge into the pattern, if we so desire.

The advantage of awareness is it makes us effective teachers, good managers, great parents and compassionate with ourselves about learning new things. Awareness is the secret of being able to articulate describe and communicate what we know how to do.

Our habits determine our behavior, yet we are mostly unaware of them. Brain science says the only 1/6th of our awareness is conscious – the rest is non-conscious and habitual. This can become problematic when non-conscious habits that interfere with our potential for health and happiness by running a program out of our control when it really doesn’t serve us. An example is the Disney Fantasia movie of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” where the character uses a spell to mop the floor and cannot cancel it.

Self-observation and awareness are our pattern interrupts – the canceling spell for an ingrained habit. As we observe, describe and become aware of our habits, we gain the possibility of another way to go. Suspending or temporarily surrendering goals is often all that we need to choose a different way to react to a situation. Even if we ‘give in’ to our habits, we can use our awareness to observe the complexity of them, learning more about ourselves in the process. To the extent that we apply attention before habits get started at the beginning of an activity, awareness will work on it’s own as a turning point for free choice. As long as we can tolerate using our awareness of how we’re doing what we’re doing while in action, we can continue to shape, revise and grow.

A technique to deal with very insistent habits that will not give up control comes from the example of what Alexander Technique teachers call “inhibition.” These techniques show exactly how to effectively subvert and free up routines, usually by running “under the radar” of our self-protective habits.

18 minute A.T.

One thing I’ve learned is that giving people the benefit of the doubt works well to educate. Treat people as if they are smart, and they will rise to the occasion. This works even if they must build entirely new contexts and environments in which to park an entirely new genre of thinking ability.

Respect works wonders. This attitude came from my experience in first learning to write about Alexander Technique in 1980. Before anyone else I knew was doing so, there I was, sticking my neck out in a field where people said “it couldn’t be described.” It was definitely true that I needed some time to learn the craft of writing itself. But I was also attempting to describe a discipline that was subjective and mysterious. I wrote, and then I had people read it, and edited it again and again. Had over 400 people read and give me feedback on what I was doing. When people stopped pointing at the same spots in my writing, I figured I was done. It was very surprising how many people told me, “Well, *I* get what you’re saying, but would others?” They were imagining that the concepts were so new and so advanced that other people would not be able to understand.

I took this comment as a request to simplify what I was presenting. But as time marched on, people began to be able to understand easier what I had been saying all along. Essentially, the social climate changed.

The more people who give you feedback, the better. Listen up if they can articulate better ways HOW to say what you’re writing about. But don’t take their suggestions on what to do to “normalize” the content of what you’re writing. Write about what you know, tell your own story. Ignore their efforts to make what you say resemble what they already know about. Go ahead and be strange. The world will catch up to you eventually, even if you’re “ahead of your time.”

I’m not sure it’s possible to teach the Alexander Technique in eighteen minutes, but I’d be willing to attempt it. Since pictures are worth a thousand words, came up with the idea to make a mind map to help that happen. This actually came from a very successful class series. In only five days, pretty much everyone in this Alexander Technique class learned the ability to come up with their own experiments that worked to uncover their own habits of what they were up to. The most amazing part was they learned how to re-direct themselves to get out of the rut too! Not sure if this sketch will make any sense to someone who hasn’t been to my Alexander Technique class series or hasn’t had Alexander Technique lessons. But I”m willing to put it out there so I can find out what you might have to say about it.

Notice that blank spot under “priorities.” That’s where you fill in yours. Where it says, “What are you routines? That’s where you list your favorite habits. Love your habits, they’re just there to serve you well, (even if you don’t want them any more.)

Hey, if there’s anyone out there reading this, give me some comments on how this mind-map affects you. How does the content compare to what you know or have already learned about Alexander Technique? Talk to me.

Procedural tips on using Alexander Technique

Pass The Rut

Mistakes aren’t so embarrassing during the learning process. But it’s especially humbling when we find ourselves mysteriously doing the wrong thing repeatedly after we’re supposed to know better. We used to do or can envision a hopeful, practical or necessary improvement, but we can’t get ourselves to do it the way we want.

Not A Know-It-All

Being only human also means not knowing it all. Humans seem to be short-sighted by nature. We order priorities as best we can, but often can’t predict the total effect of what might occur over time. Whatever we practice, we train ourselves to do – even if it’s not what we want. Decisions about what we want are made with certain intentions in mind, but sometimes it’s not even possible to imagine all of the factors. How success is defined may need to answer new or extra factors that only get revealed later. As situations change gradually, we might not notice that it’s about to be a whole new game. Sometimes we adapt brilliantly to extraordinary circumstances, but later it’s unnecessary. Sometimes we dig our own hole too deeply from being “once bitten, twice shy.” Trying too hard can cause the littlest wrong thing to go ballistic.

Piggyback Problems

So it’s obviously not merely a matter of motivation to want to do what’s right – or even being clueless. It’s a matter of not being able to get rid of whatever we do while learning that is steering us wrong. By accident what we don’t want somehow piggy-backed onto what we ended up learning.

Alexander Technique shows to undo what we learn by accident. The first step is polishing up your perception. That takes nothing special, just plain old self-observation.

Now, can anyone tell me something about how to notice what is going on with yourself? Any takers on this question?

Celebrating Success

Actually, with a little forethought, unlearning or learning a new skill happens quite fast. Remembering to do these new things often is the challenge. The habitual old ways sort of sneak back in when you’re not noticing it might matter.

Here’s a simple unlearning technique involving an interesting scientific point about the stress of learning. It seems that it’s common that the learning process creates a certain amount of stress. Taking one minute or so breaks during learning before going back to the activity being learned. This will lessen the stress of being challenged.

Let’s say that you are learning or doing an activity that is unfamiliar until you suddenly hit on something that does work. It’s important to stop at that moment for about a minute.

In fact, taking a break to be delighted about your success helps “lock in” the new experience and mark it as special from all other not-so-successful attempts. You might think about what you did or thought that led up to the successful result or step that just happened. You can do something else while you wait for these moments to go by while you are pausing. You might congratulate yourself, clap about your success, pat yourself on the back as if you’re much younger than you really are. It works to do all this, even though you might feel that “it just happened” by  itself, or by complete accident. Imagine it as having happened “accidentally on purpose”.

Then return to the activity and attempt the new skill again; repeat what you did beforehand that was leading up to the success (if you can remember what that was. Especially if these preceding actions, unrelated thoughts or fleeting mood seemed to have ha little or no bearing on the success of the outcome of the skill. You never really know until you try it a few more times what really helped the success happen.)

Self-Improvement Drawbacks

Many of the advantages of “thinking” have been misunderstood. The other day I heard someone say, “You’re thinking too much.”

Perhaps the content of what is concluded by having thought is so often confused with the process that was used to arrive at the result. Content is dazzling; it’s a big appeal that a person can improve. People want to arrive at their goal and don’t see to care much how they get there. It results in not being able to repeat the performance. This focus on expedient content of getting to a fulfilled goal is what leads to the misinformation that there is purely “talent” and not a skill that can be learned. A certain person is merely considered to be “a genius” or has “special talent.”

There are challenges in following a process that may – or may not – result in a discovery. Following a codified process to allow freedom or insight is a not an intuitive combination. Sticking with a new, deliberate process and choosing it over a lifetime of well-worn habit takes a certain willingness to face risk. Paradoxically, doing any practice of these sorts of freeing procedures, (such as learning and using thinking skills,) feels a bit like laughing too often or stretching one’s brain as if it’s a muscle that hasn’t been used in a long time. Giving up outdated mannerisms of thought and action is still a sacrifice – even if the person is certain the old ways no longer work for them.

Not unlike a political or social arena, one’s own sense of self-preservation works a bit like a bureaucracy. Once established, it will react to the possibility of its own demise. It won’t matter that there is a “better” way, because improvements have a cost – the old way.

Reassurance comes from steady, gradual, positive improvement – and sometimes the delight of a leap of insight or the promise of improvement over time. Following a new process or learning the skill of thinking creatively takes some nuts and bolts work – and a learning curve of time invested. It is a challenge to cut some new grooves in a well-habituated brain. In the USA we say: “It’s tricky to teach an old dog new tricks.” In practice, most old dogs are delighted to have something new and interesting to do. Usually, it’s the trainer rather than the dog who acts more unwilling to improve.

The consequences from improving one own ways are many. Those of us who enjoy Alexander Technique have tried to pedal the advantages of it. However, some of these consequences of being able to think and improve are tricky to deal with. They can be personally imposed setbacks that come from an internal fear of jumping forward too fast. Or they can come from how other people react negatively to what happens when people change their ways.

What do you do when you run into these setbacks? Can you describe how you get beyond them?

Easy Conditioning

Conditioning is establishing a program or routine to solve an anticipated routine situation. A question or problem is repeating that seems to require a solution. Using conditioning, the solution is automating a series of actions chained together in sequence. This is termed a “behavior chain.” As the situational routine itself, (the trigger) is recognized, the conditioned routine jumps into play by firing off a previously prepared routine for action. Performing reliably a previously established behavior in response to a “trigger” or stimulus, this describes as a person having been conditioned – or simply someone who has learned to do something.

Being conditioned describes a habitual, static state. The solution of conditioning is often a hope for predictability and certainty. Certainty is the ability to anticipate what is already known. the assumption is that what is known will work to answer this particular need. Conditioning is the answer in a quest for a final solution. Training a conditioned response to answer a need imagines is guessing that this need will remain constant. The objective is to create and practice a conditioned skill before it is needed. It is also used to provide a reliable response for varied practical reasons or uses.

Most people believe that conditioning is necessary because people guess habits are necessary to take care of repeating circumstances. This training happens for everyone, almost automatically, because it is part of how people make sense of how they expect the world to affect them. It’s the human condition to want to adapt. Conditioning is usually the first answer to a human need to adapt to prevailing circumstances. It’s so simple to do – all that is required is repetitive practice.

Thus, being conditioned is regarded to be an advantage. It’s knowing how to do something. A conditioned response is designed to repeat the same way when a stimulus, (the external “need”) is recognized. Recognizing an external situation is the trigger that is experienced as a “need” or indicator that the conditioned response is now supposed to follow it.

In behavioral conditioning and training, the term for rewarding a success is called reinforcement. Reinforcement may be  punitive if it shapes what is to be avoided. Reinforcements are actions used to communicate and simulate consequence beyond words by using actions, images or direct experience. Generally, it is most effective if the ratio of positive reward is at least five times greater that of negative reinforcement.

Who or what circumstance has done this conditioning is not stated, but it is implied. The motive of why there is a need for a particular conditioned routine is not usually examined. Needs seem to be “obvious.” The need for a conditioned response is not often considered, because adding another habitually conditioned routine is so expedient. It only requires a bit of practicing. However, because only repetition is required, developing an “accidental” conditioned response is dangerously likely. Setting into place unnecessary routines learned by accident (along with what is intended) is the limitation of conditioning.

There is another big hole that is most often missing from most people’s “bag of tricks” concerning the training of new skills. It is the zero state of ‘being at ease’. This would be a resting state in between activating one trigger and the next.

Problems come when this capacity for having a ‘resting state’ becomes polluted with too many directives that are “running the background” as a state of being. The person has adapted so often, that they no longer sense how far out of shape they may be pulling themselves. To the extent people continue to train conditioned behaviors, (adding more and more objectives to our repertoire,) bodies become pulled in opposing directions. An indicator that motor sensory distortion is happening are issues with balance, or when all triggers fire off at once, the person is a panic to “do something.” Or we find ourselves offering conditioned responses that have little to do with what might be appropriate for the situation at hand.

Learning Alexander Technique gives people the capacity to return to ‘ground zero’ at will. It is possible to practice ‘undoing’ all conditioning by remembering to pause and learning to lengthen one’s physical stature on purpose. A person can learn to decides to refuse to do anything. They learn to return the muscles that have been previously been busy responding to multiple important habitual directives to a state of lengthened rest. Being ‘at ease’ will allow a clearing out of all conditioned responses that might not be appropriate for carrying out the next intention, before action begins.

This pausing or stopping will work in favor of conditioned responses, as well as helping the discovery process. Having this intentionally set up starting point of being able to be “at ease” is a tremendous advantage.

It is because habits tend to become innate that such an advantage is so startlingly effective. By design, a conditioned response is supposed to disappear so that it runs in the background as a computer program would. Habits are designed to be able to be called into usage, just as a program exists in a computer’s RAM just in case it’s need to run is recognized.

Considering the design of a routine is also good use of forethought. Time frames, purposes, goals and motives are useful to determine. It would be an advantage to have trained a way to undo the routine, or revise it if parts of the routine if they later become problematic. Forethought during training could provide for a flexible, more easily refined or updated conditioning process in the setup phase.

Learning the Alexander Technique is one way to give yourself the ability to be ‘at ease.’ Then the act of training a new conditioned response can be successful, without training “accidental” and unnecessary habits at the same time.

Respecting Patrick MacDonald’s Legacy

I’ve been lucky to have experienced the late Alexander teacher Patrick MacDonald’s work first-hand a number of times. It was because of my having been connected to (and later a trainee of the teacher-training class of ) Ottiwell/Pincas where MacDonald was a visiting master teacher.  MacDonald was the one to personally determine that I was “ready” for the hands-on part of my training. Before MacDonald, I never knew what forward and up was until I got to experience the rachet-like precision in MacDonald’s ability to direct for me. The presence in his awareness was a pleasure; it inspired complete trust from me.

Possibly because my significant coordination problems began before I learned to walk, I had little resistance to following MacDonald’s clearly indicated Directions, even before I became an A.T. trainee. In my first lesson with MacDonald, (probably my fifth A.T. lesson!) he “took me” much farther than I probably should have been taken. He probably assumed my experience level to be much higher than it was, because of my ability to follow his lead. His mistake was that this ability of mine to follow his Direction reflected in my ability to maintain on my own what he could show me. Sustaining a new coordination beyond ten or fifteen minutes was a skill which I did not possess at the time.

But at the time, I did not want to be the one to set him straight! I wanted to kick out all the stops and go for getting what I could about A.T. on the innate insight level. I had experienced enlightenment before and I had complete faith that further enlightenment was possible.  I considered A.T. to be another form of enlightenment at the time. (As a working description of A.T. for a beginner such as I was, “a form of enlightenment” was not too bad of a description.)

I managed to walk out the door of the hotel after this fifth lesson of mine with Patrick, and as soon as I looked down to the descend the steps – I fell down, unable to balance at all! As I sat there, I reluctantly realized that I had to allow my “old ways” to reassert themselves if I was going to get up again – which of course I didn’t want to do because it seemed as if I was “wasting” the lesson. I had intended to go for a really long walk to see how long I could sustain this new way of moving I’d just been doing for the last 45 min. with this amazing master teacher.

If a Danish teacher had not been there to frog-march me to my car, figuring out how to walk after that confusion would have taken me quite a bit longer…but I probably would have gone for that walk even if I had to crawl down the stairs. Perhaps it was better to have help, I might have hurt myself.  I later decided that perhaps MacDonald removed my coping compensations which was how I had learned to walk as a toddler.  But at 25 years old as I was at the time, a person feels as if they can’t hurt themselves.

Fortunately, I knew enough about what had happened to willingly welcome the strangeness of that paradoxical state. I really wanted to rely on my ability to Direct myself, dammit! I had gotten such a clear experience of what Direction was, I just knew I could sustain it.

Later I realized that I had to write off my experience with MacDonald as being a case of what had happened to me in almost every skill I had ever learned:  I would get a tantalizing flash of inspired genius, and then I would have to traverse the long road like everyone else to actually learn the skill from scratch. At the time I had no idea about how long a way I needed to come, as my misuse was congenital and had been set into place when I learned to walk oddly as a baby while tensing the side of my neck from a medical procedure.

Being able to welcome that experience of being taken “too far” didn’t do much to help me sustain it. It really wasn’t until I stumbled into Marj Barstow’s style of teaching that I was able to sustain my tolerance for such unfamiliarity as I could willingly imagine – and do something with my own sense of knowledge that worked for me to continue learning indefinitely without the help of a teacher.

My own later understanding of the MacDonald style is this: In any art form, (and each style of teaching A.T. is an art form) there are a number of objectives that evolve. In classical AT style, (besides being in concert with FM’s principles,) one of the objectives are to prevent a pupil from moving down on themselves for the period of time the lesson lasts.  The idea is that if a pupil can surrender their own sense of “self-control” and allow the teacher to assume control, the teacher can be trusted to fittingly demonstrate what is desired to be emulated by the student. This is motivated from intending the student to directly experience it in their own coordination first-hand. Then with enough constructive kinesthetic experiences, by the time a student learns to Direct for themselves, (not willfully do them,) the experience of moving easier that they had with the teacher will work a state of “do-less-ness” in the student. That’s how the process from 1.) teacher guided to 2.) student self-initiated movement was meant to be practiced via that style.

This plan didn’t work for me, but at the time I thought it was my own shortcoming and perhaps I merely wasn’t done yet on that plan when I ran into Marj Barstow and learned that language was an important piece of my learning process that needed to be satisfied.

Then, I remembered that these objectives were evolved for a somewhat Victorian and British sensibility of culture and educational style, not an American, Canadian, Australian, etc. Times change and cultures are very different. Just because we all speak a version of English gives the mistaken meaning that we are also able to surpass our cultural conditioning of how meaning and conclusions are arrived at.

In fact, MacDonald style does all this in superb ways – and these “strange” antics you see in his style of working are demonstrations of how primary control can be maintained even under odd circumstances of movements that look as if they might hurt. In a sense the teacher is “proving” to the student that they can do extraordinary, inconceivable movements. I remember one MacDonald-trained woman showing me how I could step up onto the seat of a chair without effort…with my “weaker” leg leading the step. That I could do this was unbelievable and “blew my mind” at the time.

After some experience, I believe this ability to Direct oneself works in relationship to how far you have come and in measure of your willingness to welcome and sustain unfamiliarity. Directing oneself clearly is not based on an absolute state of being entirely free or possessing “good use”. This is why someone who is twistedly shaped can “use themselves well.” This is why MacDonald could complain about how bad his own use was, and why he also could make the mistake of taking me “too far.”  Of course, one’s own standards also rise in relationship to one’s own inability to surpass one’s own standards.

This ability to surpass one’s own conditioning and refuse to habitually react is something which I have found to be quite rare out of the A.T. teaching room, even for those trained in A.T. People would rather be outraged at others for inciting or “making” a reaction happen in them …rather than suspend and reflect that their own reactions have valuable information to offer them personally. June Chadwick’s enlightened attitude I see to be a reflection of the spirit of A.T.

The other issue is one of dominant senses. I suspect the classical A.T. approach which MacDonald people have preserved appeals to a “research”  sensibility. The pieces of information in the MacDonald style are assumed to arrive and make sense gradually as the habit stops its control bit by bit. That was not true for me personally. I would become a sponge if I trusted the source, completely soaking up the information whole, without question, and then deal with the issue of figuring out what to do with it later.

For me, my experience of the MacDonald style was that it was as if a house is being built and the pieces of the construction were arriving haphazardly; then once enough essential pieces are present, they could suddenly “congeal” in a sort of insight that here was a “house” that was being built – by finally being able to perceive what all the pieces were. In a sense, MacDonald builds from the ground up new perceptual assumptions that do not need to have linguistic names.

It turned out that I’m naturally a conceptual learner who must integrate language. This may be partly why, (no matter how innately I could surrender my habit,) the MacDonald model worked for me in a limited way. Learning works much easier and more completely for me to have the idea of a “house” structure in place first in the form of any structure that could be removed later (like training wheels.) Otherwise, I have nowhere to put the (kinesthetic) information that arrives out of sequence. No matter how much information arrived, it couldn’t mean anything to me other than in that specific, literal action. I could not hold it in my awareness in the moment using the process of A.T. Partly this was because there was no process in the way A.T. was taught in that era – there is only present-tense awareness in the interaction between student and teacher. The way it was taught in that style was designed to completely bypass language and respond directly to what was happening in the moment, applied in a codified movement actions between teacher and student. I couldn’t apply this example to other movements except by having a lesson using those movements specifically, (in spite of being quite an abstract thinker by nature.) In a sense, I was at the mercy of a “literal” sort of thinking style that relied on rote animal training, rather than an abstract ability to think for myself…which I knew I had, but was deliberately being put aside during A.T. lessons.

For me it was the paradox of “non-doing” that confused me. In A.T. we’re told that this inability to duplicate the results of lessons is a result of “trying to do” (which I knew wasn’t the case with me, because I could readily suspend my “doing” during a lesson with an innate ability I possessed before I knew what A.T. lessons were.) But I knew there was something missing here for me in how A.T. was being taught, so I was intrigued enough to stick around to figure this out. Mystique was the attraction that kept me interested. The answer (for me) came when Marj Barstow taught that non-doing had a very different quality of action with specific, identifiable characteristics that were very different from habitual back-and-down doing. After Marj Barstow’s point of view, feeling was something that was useful and sometimes offered valuable insight about your suspended goal – once you had, in fact,  made a head/body move in a factually new direction as you clearly intended.

I still believe teaching any skill is a “different strokes for different folks” sort of thing. There may be as many learning styles as there are learners and teachers. There is no doubt of the absolute value of the MacDonald style in itself for others, even given its limitations for application to my own learning style. The preservationists deliver that amazing, tantalizing flash of inspired genius that motivates students to carry through the long road of learning – no matter how long it takes. I gained quite a bit from my education in it and I still admire it as a form. The field of A.T. needs it’s preservationists as well as it’s innovators.

Interview from alexandertechnique.com

Had great fun in this twenty minute interview with Robert Rickover. Robert takes care of www.alexandertechnique.com for decades now. He’s published a number of things I’ve written over the years on his website, but only recently he began doing .mp3 interviews of various teachers featuring their personal stories of how they work with the students who come to study with them.

Examples of what Alexander Technique is and how it works

Describing Perception

How do you perceive yourself? Well, you just do it. That’s an inadequate answer, but it is all most people have.

It’s my business to be teaching people to perceive what they take for granted by teaching Alexander Technique. I use the often ignored kinesthetic sense as a medium, rather than the visual or auditory…but maybe here we can cross-pollinate with it. Maybe we can use the same process and apply it to perception in general – say, the visual sense, so it could be communicated in writing.

In Alexander Technique classes, students walk across the room and try to describe how they are walking. They can’t describe much, usually. So I introduce them to categories to help them to form some questions for themselves. These categories function like thinking tools to organize and focus their point of view. The categories are:

• * timing
• * sequence
• * quality
• * direction

What you would do is to ask yourself how each of these affects what you are observing about yourself. Once they have these categories, their ability to describe what they’re experiencing for themselves works a little easier. Their new ability to observe and describe what is happening works so well they can later design, on the fly, inventive ways for getting past some pretty serious self-imposed limitations.

So perhaps we could do this with perception in general. We could make general categories to help people ask themselves specific questions. Answering these questions would give us new perceptual information out of what we usually take for granted.

We’re talking about the raw perception, not the content. So – how we direct attention to say, the visual sense with these categories? If I were to apply the same categories I just mentioned, I’d get something like:

1. * Quality: attention can be focused, like a searchlight, or diffuse like an overhead light.
2. * Timing: depending on when you pay attention, different things will be happening. A frozen image will show you stuff that you would miss in a movie, for instance. Bits and pieces do not have the same effect as the whole. Timing will influence the figure-ground relationship of what you can see. If you’re moving fast while traveling, you’ll have a whole different experience compared to moving slowly.
3. * Sequence: chains of paying attention to one thing after another bring different results; and mixing up sequences actually has an associative emotional effect. It’s easy to mistake sequence for cause and effect.
4. * Direction: Where we are oriented contributes to Point Of View. POV involves your motives about what you want others to do, react and agree with you. Your POV colors how you describe what you see, merely because it has to do with the way you’re facing.

Anyone else want to try one or more of these four categories about perception and apply them? Let me know how it goes…