Great Minds Think Alike

I had heard of Alexander Movement a long time ago and wondered if it had any commonalities to Bohm’s Artamovement. 

No, no correlation - David Bohm didn’t know or study Alexander Technique. He should have, because it would have helped him with depression. AT also specialized in the study of proprioception, which Bohm loved to discuss. Any similarity comes from both minds studying human nature and seeing similar characteristics in operation. Great minds think alike!

it was interesting that when you spoke of the “non-absolute characteristic of our ability to recognize sensory differences”, this seemed almost like what I call error. To me, absolute truth is also of little importance. That’s because I think we can know when things err from expectations or from desired ends (negative knowledge) even when we can’t know > anything positive about a situation. This sounds to me like your “recognizing differences.” Erring seems to me almost a synonym for “differing”, for it originally meant something like “moving away”, “straying.” 

 It’s not “error,” or at least I don’t think of it as error. It’s a built-in characteristic of the way humans are built to register differences and to adapt to circumstances. Brilliant design, actually, but any design has limitations. I see that you seem to have glorified “error,” but I think that’s the long way around and it is slightly confusing.

Paradoxes, I believe, are what we should seek. “Should” in the sense that it’s fun to find them. They reveal all kinds of “differences”, errors, in the movement of thought. The paradox of choice, for instance, reveals to me the sense of personal agency on one hand — my autonomy seems represented in the fact that I “make” decisions. But on the other hand, there is the sense that when an insight occurs for the first time, it occurs without “me” being engaged (again, depending on our definitions of “me” and “engagement.”). It can get very confusing very fast. But I think the facts, the truth, the actuality, sometimes busts in on my assumptions and rearrange them against my will even. Often, my discoveries of error are certainly not discoveries I’d have chosen. I sometimes resist them to the last minute.

 Yes - a paradox is what emerges when you are learning and what you expected isn’t happening to plan! The way I like to describe it is that insight comes from the unknown, after the habits stop insisting things “are” certainly familiar old same things and there is no necessity for anything new to intervene and rock the status quo. Habit seems to insist on its own usefulness and ultimate importance - quite an overwhelming resistance, depending on the investment someone had to put out to install and use a particular habit. It’s a story of what someone does when confronted with the obvious discovery that they are mistaken, made an error or didn’t know it all - as you point out.

For instance, I believe I’m moving mindfully, but the fact is I constantly bump into one thing or another. The bump is actuality, is error, is perhaps a “sensory difference.” It might signify to me directly that I’m moving without mindfulness. And this very perception is a moment of proprioception, of seeing that my typical reaction — “Yes, of course I know how to move correctly, don’t be so foolish!” — was only a reflex assumption, and wrong to boot.

 Well, we don’t know everything, and we’re not responsible for everything that occurs - it’s a childish notion that because things matter to us and are so constantly referenced to the self, that YOU are in charge of everything that happens. Shit happens, people grow up and circumstances change and we must get used to wielding bodies of a different shape and size, for instance - then we have to figure out how we are going to respond once we find ourselves in the circumstances at hand. A friend of mine once expressed this in the quote: “The only thing we HAVE to do is die. There’s always another choice.” Another example of that was noticing my stress level going up after having been traveling for two months. I decided when traveling in other countries, the point of traveling was to get myself lost and then have a good time learning where I was located in space.

What you’ve continued explaining is fascinating! All this without knowing how similar A.T. is in examining and dealing with these ideas. The way I like to describe it, given my experience with A.T., is that a habit or routine buries it’s existence into an innate sense as its nature. That’s how habits are designed, so they can become second nature and relied on so you can add another habit on in a chain of skill building. As you “bump into” stuff you didn’t expect, it’s a signal that a habit or assumptions exists or that you don’t know everything. Rather than reinforcing the need for the habit (as you narrate the urge to do with a “reflex assumptions,”) now that you are reminded the routine exists, you can subtract it or suspend it to find out something new by paying special attention - if you are willing and ready at the time for something new to occur. Paying special attention is a skill that needs some practice in most people - but in you, it’s a pretty well-honed natural talent that has been shined up into a skill. A person’s original natural sensitivity to discern more subtle perceptual differences will re-emerge as well as an easier way, an insight or a discovery as you try out your ideas. What happens when you are experimenting may feel “weird” or “unfamiliar.” This is your “spontaneous perception” that you described. So many people dismiss this novelty as meaning nothing and pull themselves back into their familiar, (but stressed out,) habits and attitudes. (Attitude in the sense that some boats may sometimes sit in the water with a leaning attitude that must be constantly taken into account during navigation.) The habitual urge is quite strong and insistent. You are an amazing, rare and keenly observant person to have noticed and have been able to outline these characteristics of discovery by yourself.

And what do we choose? I think we choose the preconditions, not the actual insight. Yes, I think I can remove excess baggage from the ground — prepare the ground — for insight. I could learn what it means to sit quietly for instance, with a silent, alert mind. But there would have to be no effort in that, or even any conscious will. For will and effort ARE forms of thought, however subtle. Thought would have to stop, without “stopping” thought. It would have to be an action that isn’t “Mine”, therefore. Not the “mine” that I typically imagine as “me”, as the Chooser. So I tend to think that something choiceless has to happen in an insight.

In Alexander Technique, we call it “inhibition.” Essentially, the choice to prevent (to stop) habits from running the show and coerce all possible outcomes. What emerges as we stop the habit is a sense of “do-less-ness,” a feeling of lightness and effortlessness in our quality of motion that is a signature of the experience an AT teacher can show you.

 

Print your post out and give it to your teacher when you get around going for a lesson. The missing piece for you will merely be the discipline of how to bring these ideas as an example into your every movement, which AT can provide.

 

My long term experience in having used AT is that the “me” in this body of mine has become more of a fitting Director of the dance, so to speak, rather than a Dictator or insecure Reactor. Almost as if my artistic side that creates meaning has just as much influence as the talking, organizing side over my decisions that influence my life. The “I” in me knows that it is a fictitious name, in some way - that the “real” me is the choices I make. With the integration, the whole that is me, I am now somehow able to notice and connect the meanings of my smallest choices, accounting for time of arrival much more elegantly. In a sense, my choices, now made with more of the whole of myself being present in a sort of simultaneous state of all points awareness, the me that is I has become more artistic, more symbolic, more spiritual and more coherent in my expressions. Every moment counts now, because I’m able to be more “in the moment” and flit back into the more linguistic, articulate side that seems to want to run the show when I want to, rather than only having that one bag of tricks.

Recognizing Meaning

How would a person recognize for their own benefit a larger important change or fulfilment that may be taking place moment-by-moment? This skill seems to be related to the ability to select important points that is most commonly used in today’s culture as the ability to tell an interesting story. For instance, a movie will be made up of important scenes that drive the storytelling forward.

How would a person gain the skill of correcting for time of arrival for the important pieces of the puzzle that could be creating personal meanings? It’s curious how some people feel they must tell each and every detail of their experience exactly as it happened, while others seem to possess the ability to select for important points that stand out and make personal meaning universal, artistic and fascinating.

I’m interested in how and why this can happen. It’s probably in the brain, the way we’re wired or trained. Certainly the ability could be practiced and/or learned, as I have come to learn it myself. I used to be a blow-by-blow storyteller, and now I’m not - ah, so much. At least I think I’m not as long-winded as I used to be.

It seems to me that the moment-to-moment ability to recognize change isn’t very precise. People need more practice at self observation. In some people, their sensory ability only feels differences that are significant - and notable as determined by the person experiencing it. In others, the original sequence is paramount, and they seemingly can’t do it any other way.

Significance that is gradual, (change that happens over time) doesn’t seem to register very well on the sensory system. Alexander teachers prefer gradual progress because it tends to sneak underneath habits without making their routines trigger. Meaning or specialness seems to be determined by the relative sensitivity of the person experiencing it; also a factor seems to be how “jaded” a person has become to sensory information. So, in learning Alexander Technique, a student is asked to endure that which is boring, when the personal significance for the student is really adding up to something that is exciting!

F.M. Alexander used to call this phenomena of “jadedness” Debauchery - which to him described how the usage of a habit encourages a dulling and eventual shut down of sensory discriminatory ability. This word is now an old word that has fallen out of modern usage. It was used to describe someone who has lost all joy of life and has descended into bitterness, sarcasm and possibly, addiction. Modern researchers today term the same principle in the field of behaviorism “sensory adaptation.” Besides “jaded,” young people use terms such as “burn-out” to describe a similar state.

Perhaps the level of unreliability depends on how many habits someone has trained themselves to deal with that are suffering from burn-out. Opposing habitual directives seem to flood or shut down the whole sensory system. Of course, the more habitual and automatic the programs in place that have been trained over time, the less new sensory information is actually available to be sensed. This is why things become so boring and depressing. If frogs can die without noticing it’s just getting a little bit hotter in the eventually boiling pot - why should humans be that much different?

Approaching Pervasive Habits

This article was written in response to a question posed on the Alexander Technique Email Discussion Group. Although the question is about piano playing, the issue it raises applies to just about any activity. In this answer, there are some useful suggestions for any student of the Alexander Technique who is working on their own.

I had a series of lessons on Alexander Technique some time ago. Lately I have consider progressing with Alexander and taking out my old books. I’m a piano student and I have noticed that as I play I raise my shoulders a lot or keep them raised all the time. This of course creates tension and eventually pain in the arm. In an effort of becoming aware of this, I realized that I do this all the time. I raise my shoulder when typing, when writing, when speaking at the phone, when eating, when walking, when walking, when reading. What does should raising mean in relation to the primary control and the head-neck unit? How does it is solved? Thanks, Davide

I’m going to offer some (hopefully useful) perspectives about some of the philosophical challenges present in stopping, avoiding or using substitution strategies in your unique situation of having noticed an all-pervasive mannerism.

First, it’s really a great observation that you did notice something so global about your manner of moving entirely on your own. The first thing to do is to realize how much of an achievement that is in itself!

It can be daunting to realize the extent that a habit such as this has crept into your life. Be encouraged that you can change it! Of course, this will definitely take some time. If it were possible to completely stop this habit now, it would take about three weeks before it would “go away.” Unfortunately, this isn’t possible without constant attention and someone or something to offer constant feedback. People seem to have a certain tolerance for experimentation that will be worthwhile to extend. I’m sure you are familiar with this challenge concerning the process of learning new tunes and piano techniques in relation to playing what you have already learned.

Since you have a habit that has crept in everywhere and has become a mannerism, what you may usefully do now is to note slight improvements that may be celebrated right away. Strangely enough, celebrating small successes as if you were a two year old, (such as “how many moments or minutes can I go without intentionally raising my shoulder?”) makes for faster progress than groaning in anguish every time you notice the targeted objectionable shrug. (Most handy for this is a sense of humor.) It’s all too tempting to demonize a habit!

Remember there are many ways for shoulders to be raised - and what we’re after (at least, by using A.T.) is to “free up” the ability of your shoulder to be raised in every way appropriate to a specific situation. You would want to avoid, sidestep or stop the raising of your shoulder in a PARTICULAR, HABITUAL way instead of moving your shoulders uniquely in response to any changing situation.

In fact, in a way it’s useful that you have a predictable, repeating habit. This is very handy because you will want to repeat it in order to make some observations about so you can use it as a starting point. In experimenting, scientists always establish a “control,” meaning, a ground zero. You might want to even write down and date observations to give you a chance to note how much you have changed as you proceed. Perhaps make a video of yourself in action for a starting point comparison?

Asking some questions with observations concerning relative location would be useful. This would be so you may answer with your observations such questions as: How far are you already going with this shoulder-raising? You might want to establish additional criteria of “how far” by measuring distance in relationship to some observable condition.

For instance, how far in relation to your nose as you turn your head to the side? How far would your elbow move if you raise your shoulder in relationship to your leg while sitting down? How are the wrinkles in the neckline of your clothes affected by a particular frozen shrug? Perhaps choosing time-sensitive effects that you could describe would also be useful. …As in how long does it take until your piano playing seems limited and how is this affected by possible experiments aimed toward improvement?

The more of these answers and questions you have to orient yourself, the more useful your evaluations and comparisons will be for you as you make changes designed toward improvement.

You seem to have already answered the question of “Do I need to raise my shoulders?” Obviously not, but maybe that’s an assumption that would be worth asking on a routine basis, even if you cannot answer the question now. Because for some good reason you put the habit in place long ago. As an Alexander teacher, I don’t believe people train routines for themselves without a reason. (It’s just that the need to repeat them can be short-sighted when they can’t be turned off…as in the Disney Sourcerer’s Apprentice cartoon.) It would be handy to know when that happened for you personally. So you could make a different choice at the source, that would be a short-cut bonus answer to your quandry that would pay off big to be able to trace.

Alexander teachers find that timing is an important relationship helps clarity of observation. The questions including “when” are a very useful ones - When do I raise my shoulders? Can I pay attention and observe myself about to raise my shoulder in response to what stimulus? When do I bring my shoulders down? When do I notice my shoulders are up? Can I notice that I have already raised my shoulders sooner?…and so on.

There is a secret in using whatever you have remembered learning in A.T. to improve things for you, and the secret is this: As you observe and describe yourself before you have changed anything about yourself by experimenting with A.T. - you will find your habit. Observing and describing yourself AFTER you have moved or experimented with a new direction using A.T. head/neck relationship or any other experiment - you may find out something new. Simple as that.

Let’s say your original goal is to improve your stamina as you play the piano. You have correctly assumed that a starting point concerning timing would be handy to establish. When does this habit start? When you raise your arm? When you walk over to the piano seat? When you think about playing the piano?

The tricky part about changing habits is often that a gradually escalating standard for success may put the bar higher each time, keeping up with your ability to improve. You seem to have discovered this paradoxical stumbling block. To stop this sneaky perfectionist tendency which can discourage, it’s important to establish and seek what exactly constitutes progress. For this you need observations - VERY specific observations about the nature of the “shoulder-raising.”

Contrary to what you have observed - (since raising your shoulder can be done more or less of a vengeance!) it is possible to work with an intention to lessen the intensity of raising your shoulder less (rather than more) at the piano by working it into your practice time - perhaps each time you put your hands on the keyboard or each time you move your hands to a new location on the keyboard. You could parse for frequency - how often you have the urge to raise your shoulder? Location is also a useful parse: How far you seem to want to raise your shoulders? Then you’d reward yourself for raising with less height and also, sensing yourself doing the raising of your shoulders less often. (Because if it’s the sort of habit you describe, the doing of it is buried within the rest of your piano-playing routines.)

Since you have observed that this shoulder-raising starts during walking and many other common activities, nipping the urge to shoulder-raise in the bud by experimenting with it as you begin to walk or use the phone, etc. would be a useful long-term strategy. Since you’re having a problem with this issue, you won’t know where your shoulders should be. So don’t “put them” somewhere, where you imagine they “should” go. It’s most constructive to just stop interfering with them so much - so often - so far. You’ll know you did that by allowing your shoulders to “feel a little weird” (but easier) by “un-sticking” them and letting them go where they want to go, without settling your shoulders in a certain location.

What I’ve outlined here are merely procedural tips that anyone may use that follow along the lines of some of the principles of Alexander Technique. Hope they’re useful to you and that you can come back to using them often.

Why Are Habits Hard to Change?

It should be possible to recognize a habit - specifically enough to be able to undo it, stop it or substitute a better response. Why is this so challenging?

Within the intention of making a habit useful is the design for habits to become innate by disappearing. Then the next habit can be chained on, to build really complex skills. It’s hard to change what you can’t sense.

Also, the only tools we have for noticing a buried habit on our own is the desire to improve a skill and the ability to notice and ask questions constructively. Questions tip some people into a state of indecision and self-doubt. This is not a very comfortable thing to be doing for many adults, who are used to knowing a little. Spotting hidden assumptions in what is missing is a sophisticated and somewhat rare thinking skill.

Often the results of experimenting are unfamiliar and elusive to notice. We must use the feedback of our own sensory abilities, which may be rusty from disuse or absent from being over-stimulated. We don’t have many constructive examples of wisely and effectively interpreting results.

If things are going OK, what reason is there to mess with trying to improve something that’s not completely broken? People want comfort, and learning is challenging, (even though it’s exciting,) most people want what is predictable - and habits certainly are predictable. People aren’t used to noting gradual progress. In fact, instant and convenient results are preferred. People have to be sold on the value of patience and a desire for lasting results. It’s discouraging when success is not complete and immediate. Most people don’t really know why or how things work when it comes to the way they move. Most people would rather have something that sort of works than nothing at all and once you open the door on new perceptions, you can’t easily close it again. Some are a little superstitious that examining or analyzing will tear apart the wholeness of an ability, like a millipede who began to think about their legs and tripped over themselves. The kinesthetic sense is not even in the list of the five senses!

All these concerns are very good reasons why people find it tricky to change their own habits of movement. Habits are in a sense, addicting. There is a seductive cost to using habits: routines dull the need for noticing subtle distinctions. By using a habitual response, the skill of noticing the feedback of the senses becomes unnecessary and, like any unpracticed skill, it gets rusty.

I’ve practiced this skill quite a bit because I teach Alexander Technique. I have some experience in how to deal with these problems that I’d like to share with you.

A particular strategy that seems to be an effective and fundamental solution for me and my students has been to look for the original decision or thinking strategy behind designing a habit. This approach has the potential to globally change at once the many (physical) features that make up the habitual response. As the original justification or source of the need why the habit was trained is uncovered, you may practice substituting, eliminating or updating specific features. It works best if you practice on trivial points to groom the skills for the important features. This helps you to determine what would really improve things for you, and to dare to do it when the rubber meets the road. A.T. is so useful and unique because it can be used during performance. Using A.T. will steer you somewhere new and creative, allowing you to use your potential on the fly.

Once there, you may change more of the whole response pattern in one fell swoop by making a fresh decision to address the pivotal goal in ways that answer your now more sophisticated concerns and priorities. You now have a new ability to groom, sharpen and shape a “pretty good for Rock’n'Roll” skill. Or perhaps it’s called how to install and train a flexible habit that can be easily updated. Maybe you can now get free of a pervasive, insistent response pattern that always steers you off your best game.

Until you can remember or relearn exactly what that decision was, (and timing is often a factor,) it’s much more complicated to undo and change the many sophisticated and complex responses tied to your buried habitual response - because the habit just “goes off” like a good dog should obey.Changing this or that feature of how to move, as taught by Alexander Technique, seems most useful to bring yourself to face the moment of the original decision or justification for the habit’s existence. Subversively undoing the whole pattern without firing off the habit is what an Alexander teacher can provide their students. Once free of the habit, even only temporarily free, it’s possible to actually sense the moment of exactly what you are doing as you go back into the habit - when before it was all-pervasive and impossible to sense. It’s at this moment when you may kinesthetically or situationally remember what encouraged you to put the habit in place and know part of what happened that you have forgotten.Making sense of what you are facing and being able to interpret the results takes some serious, strategic thinking and trial!

Other ways that I have been able to do this by myself has been to note and watch for the stimulus that encourages me to use the trained response. While paying attention, it paid off to notice the habitual program going off, all the while suspecting if there really is a need for it to be done in this way. My objective is to spot the maybe mystery original decision at the beginning right before the habit engaged. If that happened, the decision was made in the distant past will be obvious; a more elegant solution might be obvious also. I’m then free to try it! I can always get the old response back if it doesn’t work. If I figure that I still need to use the old faithful habit, moving out of the habit after the (supposed) need for it is past is also important to remember.

New Alexander Class Starting Feb. 25th 2008

I’m happy to announce a new Alexander Technique class through through www.waimeaeducation.com that will be starting soon. It’s starting near the end of this month on Monday evening February 25th at 6pm and continuing on Thurs evening at the same time for three weeks - six classes. These classes are a real deal if you have never studied Alexander Technique before for reasons of the cost of private lessons which cost from $65 - $100 each; these introductory classes are only $10. each! Because Alexander Technique takes some time to learn, required attendance is for at least three weeks of class, (six classes.) So for less of the cost of one private lesson, you can get six classes in Alexander Technique! What a deal!

The location is in Kamuela, Hawaii, (in a town with two names because the “real” name of Waimea gets confused with a Waimea on the island of Oahu.) The Waimea Education building is across Mamalahoa Hwy. from the Parker Ranch Square main entrance.

This class is specially designed for seniors and their possible needs and pacing. If you have any questions about the classes, please feel free to ask your questions in the comments section. I’ll come up with some answers and we can put them together…just like last time.

Need Some Sources for Quoting - Have ‘em?

For an article I would like to write on Alexander Technique, I need some footnotes and quotes from reputable scientific or book sources, as well as quotes from books that have been written on Alexander Technique.
My library has been packed away in storage in Calif. since I assummed my books would only be ruined if I brought them to the tropical wet climate where I am now. Unfortunately I assumed this information would be available on the internet if I needed it…but now that I need it and am looking for it, it’s not available.

In particular, I remember some time past in the STAT newsletter there was a report of a scientific finding about porters in India, who carry weight on their backs for a living (in “monkey” because the ability to carry more weight means more pay.) These porters were x-rayed (I believe this report was made by a chiropractor) to determine the condition of their spines at 40 as a group; the extraordinary finding was that 3/4 of them had no spinal degrading that starts in pretty much all westerners after age 18. I wanted to be able to verify in this article I’m writing that our bodies may be used in challenging ways without wearing out, to the extent we are motivated to use our potentially most efficient physical coordination following structural advantages. Of course, it’s an advantage to carry more weight if you use your body efficiently.

I’m also interested in a finding about how adults studying Alexander Technique may gain up to an inch of height. I know that we’ve discussed that happened to many people here anecdotally, but has anyone heard of this hypothesis being part of a “real” study?

…and I’m also looking for the exact source mentioned in Gelb’s books about John V. Basmajian’s work at Emory University where Basmajian connected electrodes in people’s forearms to an occilliscope and an audio amp. The finding was that most people were able to train themselves to play complex rhythms &, once connected to tone, even play specific tunes, without the audio channel present once learned - merely by thinking about these tunes. I thought this was a verification that Directing works the way A.T. teachers intend it via it’s recommended use in Alexander Technique.

Also, is there any statement in some book of how long it took Alexander to form his Technique and that F.M. did, in fact, discover or invent the use of direction, Primary Control, inhibition, debauched sensory appreciation & his ideas about the force of habit?
I’m assumming that the best sources would be tracking down the first mentions of these things that were verified by other fields of science that post-date Alexander’s writings about it. I know about Coghill verifying primary control in invertebrates; but does anyone have other sources at hand?

You may also assume that I’m probably indefinitely looking for such sources to add to my own collection of such, even though a long time may have passed since my asking here.

If you have these sources handy in your own collection, I’d be most happy to list your work on this as a source in the article. I know that www.alexandertechnique.com has been a great resource, with links and articles that I have saved. Thanks, Robert Rickover!

Notes on Teaching Kids

If I were presenting the principles of Alexander Technique to kids, I would start with basic thinking skills of revealing assumptions. I would teach what is an assumption as being a habit of a ground rule in games. I’d outline some basic thinking strategies as strategy in game play. I’d go through some common decision-making processes about the best ways to play a game. After I covered those, I’d go on to how to creatively generate ideas and apply them to problem solving of how to win a game.

As a template, I would probably use the work of Edward de Bono in his CORT thinking skills that he designed to teach children in Venezuela in the 1980s. The first situation that I would set up would be Edward de Bono’s basic thinking strategy of outlining the disadvantages, advantages and interesting ideas that do not fit as three basic sections to help explore a topic.In the case of the kids, I would use how to win at playing a game as the topic. Following the process of Alexander Technique, we would first have to play the game to experience what it would be like to be inside the situation. Then we could observe and think about how and why the winning strategies worked - and what these winning strategies were.

Making a list of this sort involves going through a process of brainstorming and “lateral thinking” activities - a term de Bono coined that has since made it into the dictionary. Lateral thinking would come under the heading of “interesting” ideas that do not fit the other two categories.

Most kids are already familiar with brainstorming, thankfully, even if they do not know what to do with the list of ideas. If not, I could show examples of what is brainstorming; I like to think of it as the ability to make a list to preserve every idea before we decide if we want to do anything about any one idea. So the first skill I’d be teaching would be making the ideas, so we can deliberately choose which idea to act on later from a list of possibilities. Separating the activities of noting ideas without deciding if they are good or bad judgment is teaching suspension - which is a major feature of Alexander Technique.

Many skills build on previous concepts. For instance, we can’t understand circumference until we experience what a circle is and how long it actually takes to go around a circle. Learning has the sound of a surprise, an “aha!” Things do not turn out as we expect when we make discoveries.
From my own observation, when they begin to establish what is criteria for themselves, people favor two major ways of sorting: people tend to match for similarities or people compare to reveal differences. As you direct your line of questioning in each of those two directions, each of these two strategies will give you wildly differing answers. Some of us seem to be wired to notice novelty and also we are motivated to retain the status quo; so each of these two abilities are useful to purposefully be able to use in their respective differing situations. In this teaching situation, we can sort the group of people into two sections depending on whether they think they are kids who like new, exciting experiences or kids who like things to be predictable, easy and comfortable.

It strikes me that playing “red light, green light” would be a fun way to learn these features. For those who do not know about this game; it is where one child stands a ways away from a line of children with their back to them, and the objective is to get close enough to tag the child who is “it.” This child can turn around to spot the line of people moving; they can send anyone who is moving when they turn around back to the starting line further away.

It is a way of getting kids to experience how there are two basic strategies someone can use to win that game. Of course, combining these two means works the best. The two strategies are is to inch forward so gradually that the person cannot see you moving to get closer and closer. The advantage to using this strategy is you can easily stop on a dime each time they turn around to look; because they are moving so much faster than you are, they never notice you are moving. The other is to make a mad dash when the person is not looking and tag them by getting into their blind spot, which is determined by which way they choose to turn around. After the experience of the game was played until these two strategies were revealed, then I would note the mystery advantage of suspending the urge to madly dash for the goal, noting that each strategy has advantages, disadvantages and points of unrelated features that make them curious or interesting.

Then I might ask the kids to make a list for themselves as homework over a few days, “What are the disadvantages of being a kid?” I would have them interview adults, I would have them observe their own reactions to how it feels to be who they are, and I’d have them act out and role play their objections to being kids in the classroom. Essentially, I would have the kids tell to someone else the secret of how they think is the best way to win the game.

It seems to be in our nature to sense disadvantages. To compete in a game structures a very clear priority. So, in some ways, we are wired to notice what does not match - in this case whether we are winning or losing. After we have a list of why it is a disadvantage to be a kid and what are the limitations of childhood compared to being an adult, this list will tell us what the advantages are, point by point. Advantages are much more difficult to reveal than disadvantages. Why is that so? The nature of an advantage is that it is almost as natural as a fish noticing it is in water, so it is tricky to notice what you take for granted.

My motive in asking this question of kids is that the guiding feature of what makes kids different from adults is adults get stiff and tend to resist learning new things; kids learn very fast and are flexible.

Habits and How to Know What You Desire In Spite of Habit

Alexander Technique addresses the ways people come to notice the need for problem solving. It also has something to say about the ways people deliberately choose and design exactly how they might move to respond - as opposed to the actual content of these thoughts. Sometimes content is important, but only to the extent that some of our choices narrow and prevent other choices. Using a habit and holding certain assumptions may prevent us from perceiving other possibilities that may be more practical and useful to us.

The first thing on the list of Patrick MacDonald’s synopsis of his understanding of the Alexander Technique is learning about the force of habit, how it works to set up habits and how strong habits are in the face of new possibilities. Also implied in recognizing habit is recognizing when a discovery or insight arrives that is not consistent with established habitual ways. The ability to recognize when something new has happened allows us to note and use these new discoveries to our advantage. Part of the difficulty in doing this is that habits prevent new experiences from happening, and the use of habits dulls our innate sensititivy to sense that something new has happened. Use it or lose it!
It seems from this comment of MacDonald’s that humans are set up to see disadvantages first. The nature of a disadvantage is it shows us an objection that “sticks out” or emerges in a gestalt that “rises to the top” of our attention in similar ways that figure/ground relationships emerge in a visual field. In many cases, we only notice that something is wrong because we feel pain or stiffness.

In our Western culture, we tend to pick out the “important” activity or thing that is going on in a visual field rather than notice all the elements in the picture at once. We tend to favor the use of a searchlight instead of a wide beam field of attention. Our culture sells to us the value of immediately determining the goal and ignoring what does not fit the goal. Who gets to determine the goal is not so often questioned, so the question of “by who’s standards are we selecting for?” is more often already determined for us.

So the ability to match for similarities is more prevalent in our culture than the ability to compare and “scan” to reveal important factors that may be determining subtle differences. Desires would tend to disappear as a person accepts outside influences to be the most important ones. As you practice a habit, by selection the opposing activity will die off.  The ability to “scan” and compare is more useful when revealing subtle differences, internal desires, thoughts and ideas that do not fit the priorities of others. If you do not use this ability, it will die down because there is less and less of a need for using it.

This motive comes from how our culture values goal setting. Goal-setting drives an imperative need to install the skill of goal-setting so it can become innate and disappear into our ability to command it as soon as possible. Many people are satisfied after they have successfully installed their first answer to what they have determined the goal is. They do not go on to seek for the next step in learning until something else jumps forward to demand their attention. “Good enough for Rock and Roll” is their philosophy.

Part of the beauty of habits is that we are able to add additional next important steps onto it in a behavior chain. We are able to refine a habit to pick and choose which parts of it we want to retain and which parts do not serve us as we learn to tell crucial difference in quality. The disadvantage is that our standards can escalate as we learn. We cultivate perfectionism and get caught in the bind of not being able to live up to our own standards that go just beyond our own reach.

I have observed that this problem comes from putting our objections before our ability to make a move in a new direction. We use our observations, sense only our habits and become discouraged that nothing new can happen before we have gone anywhere or anything else. Our habits trap us and we do not know how to get free.

It is in our human nature to sense objections and desires that do not fit, and also in our nature to ignore what does not fit or match. Sometimes what “sticks out” needs to be addressed and could benefit from some adjustment, and sometimes it is to our benefit to note them and put them aside, and sometimes merely expressing them is satisfactory. The ability to put an objection aside and the power to choose to do something to accommodate an additional desire - or not - is one of the signs of maturity.

As anyone in a certain situation understands and can become aware of what sorts of characteristics exist to their advantage, it is possible to work within these advantages and have quite a bit of power and influence that will answer their desires. So it pays to know what your desires are as well as how to be patient enough to choose a suitable means to get what you want.

We are rarely taught how many possible ways there are to come to a decision concerning what to do about our personal concerns and desires. This ability to think for ourselves is not to the advantage of those who see the need to control us. Adults want kids to go along with the program of what adults want kids to do. The adult justification for this is kids need to obey because they need to be protected from the consequences about what to do. A kid’s objections, criticisms or urge to rebel against the status quo needs to be controlled for their own benefit and protection. Adults cite the need for this because kids often can’t see ahead to the eventual result of their bad choices, although many kids still retain the ability to sense what they want to do. It’s also within the nature of kids to have a built-in bullshit detector that determines how much adults are trying to protect them so they can go beyond those limits that are imposed by adults. However, by doing this, kids force adults to compensate for their lack of foresight so this is a virtual question that kids and adults are engaged in constantly as the kids mature. Often adults run into a blind spot in the gradual eduation of kids when kids reach the teen years; so this is why a strategy that worked for awhile no longer works indefinitely as circumstances change.

Noting My Style of Writing Down Ideas

Since I’ve been spending time with an eight year old lately, I’m beginning to think about how I would teach her age group Alexander Technique.

Since I’m writing my ideas that follow on the fly from here on out to get them down, I’m going to apologize in advance for the disconnected way these ideas may be presented. The first part of this is far and away my philosophy of why chose certain means to teach more flexible mannerisms of choosing to respond. My own innate way of organizing my thoughts for the purpose of communicating to others requires me to go back and compensate for the time of arrival of my ideas, even choosing which sentence follows the next sentence. My ideas innately usually do not follow a presentation sequence that makes sense to other people when these ideas first emerge, so this may be a little confusing to read. I will do some editing to group my ideas together, but it may not be enough. Please tell me your impressions.

Addiction and Emotional Reactions

When I first began to study AT, I was living with a person who was in Frank Ottiwell and Giora Pinkas’ first training course named Kenneth Feld. Kenny used to live in Chicago and had lessons with Goddard Binkley; Kenny told me that Binkley dealt with addiction, anger, etc. by encouraging students to shout reactive phrases while he worked on them with A.T. I assumed it was so the student could refuse the reaction while they were doing the activity, but later I realized that doing this uncovered assumptions for the student about emotion at an alarming rate! At the time, I thought that Binkley wanted his students to shout the words emphatically without the associative reaction behind them, but I wasn’t sure. So I decided to try this some time.

When another visiting AT teacher came out to Bolinas to visit us, all of decided to try this idea out. The way it transformed the point of view of the emotion sort of sucked the obcession out of the act and made the shouting devoid of the usual emotional motives, content or certainty of righteousness in a way that must be experienced to really be believed.

Since the comments shouted out in this manner were entirely void of the stimulus for becoming angered, hurt, self righteous or defensive, many questions from experimenting in this way followed.

What am I up to here and how does it work?

I seem to be making a jump into reacting despite there being no external stimulus; when does this jump happen and what is going on with my wanting to do it?

Is there an assumption I am making underneath the sudden need for the reaction?

Do I know where, the history or why this particular reaction come from in me? Do I need to know the history first in order to trace it back to when it happens and sense what is going on with me there at that moment?
It was also sort of a scary experiment; freeing up the expression of reactive anger, for instance, made a person seem to those witnessing as really, really crazy and unpredictable and actually angry. As in acting, there were many other things going on that nobody could guess at, proving that there is no way to determine projections without checking with the person who is their own only authority on the subject. You can often witness how most people have some part of their reactions under control, even though the anger is poking through uncontrolled. Take away that degree of control by providing ways to free expression as Alexander Technique provides, and the power of the raw emotion comes out first.

This practice allowed me to “show my anger” when I had deemed it to be effective for a certain communicative purpose without being trapped by the loop of the emotion itself shutting down my abilities to problem solve and observe on the fly. I was now also able to drop the anger at a moment’s choice.

Can Alexander Technique help deal with addiction issues?

There is only an indirect connection between Alexander’s ideas and those that specialize in dealing with addiction. Certainly it would be worth exploring, but I don’t personally know any Alexander teachers would seek out working with alcoholics as a group by choice yet. Let me know if you do.

Thinking about the connection between addition and Alexander Technique, what comes to mind is there was a bumper sticker on Marj Barstow’s car that said “Easy Does It.” I think that saying that came from AA, but when I asked about it, she said she came by it purely because of what it said and it didn’t imply that she had a connection to AA. …But you must remember, people who are connected to Alcoholics Anonymous are sworn to uphold privacy for other members, thus the name.

There is a reason that people who studied with Marj Barstow had a reply when asked about how they used Alexander Technique in their own lives - whereas those who were trained in the UK only could think of doing another lesson with their teachers. Marj Barstow made her students think about how people used language - when they were talking and thinking to themselves. She also made you remember how responsible you need to be when you gave orders or directions to other people. She was the first teacher to regard speaking and putting your experience into words as the beginning expression of the first part of mindful action on your own. Marj believed that thought is the first part of movement. Previous to Marj, talking was pretty much ignored as a vehicle of teaching A.T… and even A.T. teachers would merely point at Alexander’s books if you asked any questions about ideas. Marj would answer your intellectual questions if you didn’t pull your head and body down while you asked them. If you did pull down, she’d consider the manner closed and it was time to change the subject until you were ready and willing for the next challenge of doing better at taking on these challenges at another time.

Describing Relationships for Alexander Technique

Describing relationship is an honorable goal, because it is in relationship that AT shines. The structure of English is very tricky to maneuver to articulate relationships. I think misunderstandings come as we try to make a generalization specific as we explain. Getting English to describe relationships is not quite suitable to its natural structure in sequencial sentences. It’s also very tricky to use metaphor or map-like activities to explain AT concepts. In fact, it’s so tricky to use language in concert with AT to explain it at all, that for many, many decades, Alexander teachers did not use language at all! Somewhere in the eighties some teachers began to be able to talk about Alexander Technique… I believe this has mostly been a positive change. It’s an interesting question that since we ultimately agree once we work it out, why do we seem to disagree and misunderstand each other to start with? So it pays to observe there are some built in dead-ends in common usage English when it comes to describing relationships.

Briefly, I’ll give a couple of examples - very common ones of why language makes it tricky to describe A.T. concepts.

The first is the common use of oppposites as examples. In our culture, we have a number of assigned opposites that have been set up for this convenient purpose. However, these are not absolutely factual opposing characteristics, (because they can exist concurrently) these characteristics have merely been defined as opposites by our cultural association & habits.

There is a place for opposites which is in inhibition; as a person makes a particular choice, they may leave behind in the dust all other choices that they could have made. Choice can be done in a way that precludes and prevents all possible other choices.

There is a more process-oriented way of describing this choice-making; by articulating some of the opposing characteristics of how a person’s specific awareness can “stretch” to encompass two ends of the same system working together. In some ways, this is a much better usage of the idea of opposites, because it is much more likely that a choice will also include some of the “opposing” ends of the other possible choices mixed in it. We can be clear to which direction we are intending to go - and we will go there as time passes as we sustain our intentions to do so.

This of this not as exclusive of each other, where you pick one and not the other, but as the extreme ends of the same stick. Much of how MacDonald deplored the degraded usage of the word “concentration” which used to mean a focal point around which other characteristics clustered or supported as compared to the definition that blotted out all other possibilities and held up the one tunnel-visioned ideal.

Another instance, I’ve noticed that concerning relationships, such as those in AT, people often use an “if…then” structure to describe these characteristic relationships. I just did it in my explanation above, disguised as “as…may.” It’s very handy: the motive is the “if…” part sets up a circumstance where “…then” is the case to be saying something about. So, using language in this way, I’m “parting out” and creating a sort of fictitious opposition.

In this structure misunderstanding is likely. Because the “…if” example is often too radical or oppositional. Or the “…if” situation doesn’t have a subject, it is a passive situation that came about somewhat magically. So this is why I tend to shy away from the more literal “if…then” constructions when talking about relationships to illustrate AT concepts. I do this by softening and making more voilitional their construction by using the “as…may” example as a substitute.

Perhaps we are attempting to get a rather mechanistic language of English to describe relationships that are more like Quantum physics than the parts of Neutonian mechanics that has been the paragon of our culture?

An interesting book I’ve been reading on this subject has been: Leadership & the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe by Margaret J. Wheatley. 1992

Responsibility Assumption

An idea of “ultimate responsibility” in Alexander Technique fascinates me. It strikes me that this idea of how Alexander regards responsibility makes his work unique. Wondering about this assumption is interesting, because most assumptions are the act of intentionally setting up a given characteristic. Assumptions work like axioms; they branch off and lead down a very specific pathways of action, pre-empting all others.

It seems Alexander jumped to an assumption involving a person’s ability to direct their own actions. This assumption states the person is ultimately responsible for what he does, no matter how it feels internally after routines have been adopted and feel as natural as breathing. In Alexander’s world, there is no subconscious, only divided consciousness or undivided wholeness. Sometimes I wonder if this is one of F.M. Alexander’s mistakes.

We do not really know all of the sophisticated responses that are put into motion in a single order we have given ourselves. Because humans are adaptable, we forget the routines we have installed or been conditioned to repeat as the “standing orders” from our past experience. Are we meant to know the ways they are carried out? Alexander thought we should know, that we need to bring our choices into awareness, but I am not so sure.

To undo the order, it seems more efficient to trace it back to its origin and change it there, rather than to piecemeal the change directly by messing with the whole system. In some ways, it’s tempting to mess with the system as you become capable of doing so. But all these adjustments are merely compensations, …until you find the originating order and the subsequent directives. You would usually only want to bother because these directives have not worked so well to solve the problem, or the circumstances have changed. Once you find these directives, then you may update them and choose different ways of responding, …and the habit is completely and totally transformed; no looking back. This is where an ideal of “insight” or even “enlightenment” comes from - which I believe is deserved.

I wonder why Alexander did not put together that we are always falling and always uprighting our bodies; I guess he did, but he didn’t spell this one out very specifically either. I imagine by the time someone was able to gain this secret for themselves, their coordination was so completely re-sensitized that it was a moot point.

For this reason, I think this assumption of “ultimate responsibility” is very much worth exploring.

How are we responsible for the ways we respond to a desire? How does knowing and responding to a desire work in particular, in me?

How is Primary Control Taught?

How does a person who is trained to teach Alexander Technique actually show people how to learn Alexander’s principle of “forward and up”? This may only make sense to you if you do already have some experiences with Alexander’s work, but you can also see what happens as you read and try this out for yourself.

A really interesting link on the web that teaches some of this information in a different way is the flash program at: http://www.uprighting.com

First off, I might get a student to tilt their head nodding “yes”, (or sometimes I’ll ask them to slowly look up and back down) while I’ll tell them we’re going to be experimenting with noticing how moving their head affects the rest of their balance. I explain how I’m going to use my hands to “steer” the quality of this motion so they get the idea what I mean directly by joining with my ability to move in easier ways that I can do for myself, introducing the term “guided modeling.” I came up with the idea to do this because I can have a much easier influence on the quality & direction of where and how a student can move if they are already in some sort of motion. This way, I give Direction to a moderately difficult or clueless student who has gotten set as they stand there, waiting for me to “do something” to them.

As they are standing nodding their head “yes,” their balance will most likely “come loose” as their head rounds the top of the arc of the nodding motion. Or if it doesn’t, I can give their body a slight push back and forth in space to exaggerate the increase of ease just at the crucial time to help them notice the more overt ability of their body to move as it is balanced during the top of this arc of nodding forward. Most people are able to notice that it takes much less effort to move their whole body at this moment, once their attention is put to noticing it; it’s a much more rare person who does not.

Then after we do this, I get them to merely think of making the nodding movement forward around the top of the arc of balance by thinking of doing this movement with their head… without actually nodding “yes.” I get them to merely think of agreement and giving themselves the mental suggestion of “yes.”

This shows how purely the thought will most likely make their body “come loose” just as well as intentionally moving to be able to notice it. if it doesn’t, I put hands on and walk them through how to word their thinking. I explain how this is called “faded signaling,” which where you first make a more overt motion and then note the same effect with a much more subtle form of perception and movement. I give the example of a music director or conductor using this ability, giving them the idea their thinking conducts into their ability to move.

I talk about why we focus on such slight motions in AT. It’s because how we influence the sorts of very subtle motions we do automatically that repeat over and over have a cumulative effect on us. These kinds of movements are usually underneath what most people think should matter, but as dripping water will wear down stone, they matter quite a bit over time. This is the essence of “strategic prevention.”

So, at this point I’ve covered what I’m doing with my hands, why I’m doing it and how subtle of a motion we’re talking about; and how and why thought is connected to and influences quality of movement.

Now I’m going to illustrate what to use this sort of thinking for - to go into motion, to initiate it. Sometimes I make my hands into a cradle to illustrate the shape that the skull is in whre it is joined to the neck, (like rounded sled runners,) while I describe the movement of tilting forward and back as the easiest move the head and neck can make. I interpret the advantage of knowing this information to mean that this makes this movement the easiest way to initiate tiniest amount of movement. I might use an illustration of a fern growing in the shape of the beginning of a whip action to sprout if we are moving slowly, or an egret moving its head forward and up out over the water as it is getting ready to see and strike a fish under water. Or Michael Jordan floating up to bag the basketball, Pavorotti singing, or Tiger Woods making a golf shot, or whatever the person can relate to at that point as an example.

Sometimes I have to deal with people closing their eyes. I might have people do an experiment that proves that it is easier to judge location by having them close their eyes and touch their face with their hand. Then have them do the same thing while their head is moving. For the reason that being in motion gives us more information about where we are, it’s easier to touch the point you are aiming at while you are moving. Closing your eyes makes this more difficult, but moving makes it easier.

The two points I attempt to get across is this sort of thinking about movement is a way of initiating movement, and it’s very precise and tiny of a motion - so tiny that only a thought will put the movement into action.

I also have the person looking for the effect of increased ease as the evidence their experimenting worked as they intended…which of course, most people cannot yet sense. But they usually do feel the effect somewhere else in their body; and so they can put together that something is happening differently than the usual.

Then I might show how it is possible to think of this motion rhythmically in the context of walking, expanding just as the foot steps onto the floor and the motion of balance begins to transfer the weight onto the foot. If they can’t handle that yet, I have them merely shift their weight from one foot to the other to understand this dynamic first, and build up to taking a step to walk from there.

I’d love to read how more Alexander teachers teach “forward and up” if they can articulate that sort of thing in words.

Explaining How Habits Can Be Undone

Lately, I’ve had great success explaining that the Technique is about the behavior chains of building habits, which is how we adapt and learn. Building habits are what makes skill possible. Trouble comes when a person forgets the habit is there, or trains a short-sighted building block of habit, which is a “pitfall” built into adapting & learning. The building blocks of skills are usually designed to disappear and become innate. If things aren’t working out as intended, people assume they need to train themselves to do another thing “opposite” to an already innate habit they forgot that they’re already doing, instead of training themselves to stop. With repeating a nuisance, most people see how handy it would be to stop, but they don’t know the first things about how to stop.

People also do not realize the problems that old conflicting habits can create over time. People know whatever a person practices, they’ll get better and better at doing. In this case, a person can be practicing unintended habits that pull themselves apart.

A.T. shows a person how they can change the way they practice and learn, as opposed to having to give up any particular troublesome activity. How useful to know how to subtract what is in the way, without habitual conflicts running the show.

So when beginners want to describe A.T., I have them describe it as something that teaches how to uncover and undo innate, out-of-date habits that have turned into self-imposed limitations. Most people who hear that immediately remark how useful that would be to know. There are many innocent situations where a need to unlearn habits becomes obvious:
1. The self-taught who get into doing counter-productive foundation habits from learning without a proper teacher, or a lousy teacher;

2. Those who learn skills or movement compensations with built-in pain, fear or stress from a challenging teacher, situation or skill;

3. Someone with pain who sees the need to train themselves to temporarily compensate for it; after healing, they then find what was intended to be temporary becoming permanent.

4. A kid who never figured out their unique size and shape, or how that shape changes during growth.

I’m sure you can think of more of these situations!

Franis Engel

>
> — John Coffin wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, trying to describe the Technique
> in language the non-student will find attractive is
> an immediate paradox. How do you interesting someone
> in changing something they don’t know exists, and
> whose influence they cannot imagine?
> >
> > John Coffin

Class on A.T. in Kamuela, Hawaii starts Sep.24-Oct.8,’07!

This old guy in the picture here is the guy who invented Alexander Technique. Mr. Frederick Matthias Alexander was his “Nicholas name.” Merely the initials “F. M.” was his nickname.

In these past few weeks, I managed to make it down to Hilo, (about an hour and a half drive) to trade work with the only other Alexander Technique teacher I have met on the Big Island named Michael Joeseph. His work with me was very much like Patrick MacDonald’s work (MacDonald was one of the last students of Alexander’s, he was nicknamed “the mechanic.”) Michael Joeseph had never actually met either character, having been trained after the death of both of them, but one of Michael’s other talents was in mechanical engineering. Because of this, it is very curious to me to experience how the quality of Alexander’s work is being passed on so accurately.

I’m happy to announce that near the end of the month starting on Monday evening Sept. 24th at 6pm and continuing on Thurs at the same time and place, I am teaching ten twice weekly classes on Alexander’s principles through www.waimeaeducation.com The classes are a real deal if you have never studied Alexander Technique before for reasons of the cost of private lessons which cost from $65 - $100 each; these introductory classes are only $10. each! Because Alexander Technique takes some time to learn, required attendance is for at least three weeks of class, (six classes.) So for less of the cost of one private lesson, you can get six classes in Alexander Technique! What a deal!

If you have any questions about the classes and ended up here, please feel free to ask your questions in the comments section. I’ll come up with some answers, we can put them together and we’ll see if they work for you!

How Far Is Too Far?

Morning yoga routine. Had a realization that I may have been
holding my body in a tense position for many years. Tried to
concentrate on relaxing as I went about the day. Noticed when I
did that, I could feel stretches much more keenly. As I said, I
have a lot of work to do in this department.

Obviously you have realized that learning how to undo what you ave probably been doing to yourself for a long time is a process that will take some time to undo, as you’ve figured out. I can offer some hints about how to proceed faster and safeguard common mistakes.

This hint is based on the fact that proprioception of the body is a relative sense. Meaning, you will feel a change in relationship to whatever and wherever you have been, rather than any factual truth of where are you and what is happening. So in the light of that, when you feel yourself out of balance and you make a change to “improve” things, you must be careful to evaluate on the basis of the question: “Is it easier now?”

The other tip that you may find even more useful is how to interpret the feelings of “stretches” you describe. I do not know what exactly is happening for you here from your comment, so you’ll have to be the judge of this yourself! Tricky for me to tell how to interpret what you say you are feeling without being there with you - which is a key element in working out what might be constructive to do about it!

I do know that as my students begin to unwind their habitual twistednesses, they may begin to feel areas where they didn’t know they were holding and tensing. Is this what you’re experiencing? What often happens when someone successfully lessens the tension and holding for some part of themselves in piecemeal, is they will feel some other part of themselves that is not easily moving along because that part of the body will complain further down. Is this the “stretch” you are talking about?

If so, the remedy would be to include that part of your body just below where you notice “stretching” because you are leaving parts of yourself behind in the thought and intention of the moves you are doing. The ’stretch’ is there because you are not moving that part of you along with the rest of you. You’ll know you succeeded because you’ll feel easier, or you’ll feel a complaint somewhere else in your body! Which again, is an indicator you’re not moving part of yourself along with your original intention, etc. It make take quite a few repetitions of this clarified intention for it to have an effect, because you may also not be able to acertain if you did what you intended or not. So repeating the intention is the way to go - and feeling easier and sometimes a little strange or unfamiliar is the indicator that you are succeeding.

Or, are you commenting how during the act of yoga that you could feel the yoga movement stretches much more? It is true that by paying attention to your quality of movement throughout the day, you will enhance your ability to pay attention when you also focus on your movements in a special time set aside to do so.

However, again the same principle works well: If you feel a stretching somewhere in your body during a yoga move, this is an indicator that you are leaving behind some part of your body in the context of the yoga movement you are attempting. If you do the yoga movement in as the form was intended, (the interpretation of the form will obviously depend on the skill and observation of the yoga teacher with whom you are studying,) it will feel as if you are “doing nothing” special. Masters of a skill make it look easy, right?

In fact, if you do feel “stretching,” sometimes you are feeling muscle fibers breaking! I can’t say this because I don’t know how far you are taking yourself during yoga and if it is ‘too far,’ (and some yoga teachers will encourage students to go too far which I know to be counter-productive,) but generally, you should not go as far as you can push yourself, but only as far as you can move without pushing. It works best to figure how far that is, and back off and clarify what you want to do; and then experiment to see how easily you can do the yoga motion in question. You’ll notice that you can move farther and enhance flexibility over time more constructively that way than pushing and pulling against yourself and resisting - and damaging muscle fibers and then having to recover from the damage you caused yourself.

Let me know how this turns out for you!

Asking Really Great Questions

As a topic in general, good questioning has many examples in every field. It pays to study the process of questioning as a separate subject, as if you were going to design an FAQ for your skill. Not only can it make you a better learner, but a better teacher.

If you are a teacher, you know there are multiple advantages about encouraging questioning from the start. Questions from a student show a teacher their student’s range and style of thinking. Questions point in the direction of the answers. In fact, questions can imply a limitation of what kind of answers that are possible to find. Better questions open up a rich field of personal discovery.

How do you ask a really good question? How can a teacher encourage learners to ask great questions?

As a student, you can ask any question to get started. Sometimes the first questions that come off the top of your head aren’t the most appropriate, but everyone has to start somewhere. Most teachers understand this.

As a learner, to ask a really juicy question, you first have to listen carefully to learn any “lingo” about the topic. So the best questions to start with are often about the specialized use of terms being used.

The other skill that’s good to develop as a questioner is being able to tell the teacher the best way that you learn by indicating acknowledgment you are following them. It’s useful for the teacher to know when the student is on “over-load, please change tactics now” or “I’ve got it, go on” to the teacher.

At first, even in a private lesson, most students seem to want a teacher to “lecture” them. They want to let the master talk. The teacher saying something to preface or frame a lesson might be appropriate in some cases. But what if the teacher doesn’t really want to go on about the topic; what if they want their student’s involvement from the very beginning?

Some teachers address this desire by doing the asking themselves, and then answering their own questions. They hope that the students will get the idea of what kind of questions to ask and starting to ask questions themselves. However, students can misunderstand that questions posed by the teacher and then answered are merely rhetorical ones; that the teacher is asking these questions to show off their knowledge. The students may imagine that the teacher would never ask a question that they don’t already know the answer to. What to do when the teacher finds that students resort to parroting or restating the teacher’s questions with other motivations such as to gain approval?

Some learners believe some kinds of questions might be insulting or too challenging for the teacher. How can a teacher encourage learners to get past their misconceptions that particular issues, communications or questions are somehow “forbidden” without losing ability of being able to direct the class? Part of being a teacher is the skill of pulling together the attention of the group. There are some assumptions that create problems with encouraging this activity in learners related to respecting the teacher; especially in a large class situation. What to do when students seem to believe that they are being encouraged to deliver certain questions that cross the line of impolitely questioning the ability of the teacher to teach?

It’s very tricky to ask a question that will point in an entirely new direction. Questions can imply that there is one answer, rather than a multiplicity of answers. It’s also easy to think that just because you have come up with an answer to a question - that this one answer is enough of an answer.

Fantastic and personally meaningful questions sometimes need quite a bit of personal experimentation to adequately explore their potential. Sometimes this kind of question can become a sort of “virtual question” that many actions of exploration are continually answering during the course of life.

• How can you encourage your students to ask really good question of the teacher?
• How can a teacher get around student’s misconceptions about the nature of authority, for instance, without inviting disrespect? (We’re talking about adult learners here.)

Instead of my lecturing, here’s an account from many years ago about a teacher of mine who I considered to be a master. In this case, she was teaching Alexander Technique, but this relates to asking questions concerning any skill.

My teacher was in her late eighties here. She’s almost five feet tall. Classes could be huge; sixty to eighty people in one room. The advantage was that the workshop lasted for weeks. The disadvantage was that people figured it was too early in the workshop to dare to risk anything in front of everyone else.

My teacher was too polite to be overt about what must have been some frustration beyond kidding the group, “What do I have to do to get some questions and thinking out of more of you people, do a jig?” Most often, laughter, but no daring questions. The humor did have some effect to loosen people up.

The experience of feeling a new perceptual assumption that Alexander Technique delivers is unsettling to many people. A master of an art can sometimes come across as frightening or magical. In this case, people were both attracted and intimidated. This little old lady could shake people’s foundations; pull the carpet out from underneath their very sense of self. So the group treated her with “respect.” For some people, this turned out to be a kid glove sort of unquestioning loyalty and agreement.

This little old lady named Marj Barstow hated that. She had a number of ways of dealing with it. One was to invite different people to get up in front of the class for a “private” lesson with her… with everyone else watching. While working with someone she would ask, “So you see that little difference? Can someone describe what they see?” She wouldn’t go on until someone described it.

That’s how she taught us to see very subtle indications of motion or a lack of movement. That also taught us to ask ourselves what these indications meant in each specific situation with each different person. It was also how she embarassed people, and then showed them the way out of the crippling emotions of stage fright, embarassment and being completely tongue-tied.

She might ask the group to move in slow motion to illustrate a crucially pivotal point that influenced that entire outcome of what someone was trying to do. Then we learned how to integrate the special points with the whole, normally speeded action again.

These examples of techniques to encourage questions are, (or should be) commonplace to any teacher. The one I’ll tell you about next surprised me, because I regarded it as being positively sneaky.

My teacher took me aside and told me that she appreciated having me and a few other people in the class. She said that it was because we’d pipe up with questions that nobody else would dare ask. She then told me a story about how she didn’t understand when another student accused her of putting them on the spot by singling them out, inviting their participation. This is what made me realize that she was asking my permission to deliberately put her “on the spot” by bringing up what may be forbidden as defined by the group of students. This little old lady had some unusual ideas in her field about how her skill should be taught. People seemed to be avoiding asking her specifically about what made her ways different. I decided that she wanted me to break the ice, so to speak, for the rest of the class.

Essentially, she gave me license to be planted as a sort of “sacrificial fool” in the forbidden questions department. People would stare at me with open mouths and shocked looks on their faces when I’d fire off these questions that nobody else would dare say.

It pleased the teacher and myself immensely - I felt as if we were conspiring together. After those kind of questions were in the air, class would get much more interesting. Other students would then started to ask the questions that were very important to them personally.

So if you are a teacher, don’t be above encouraging one of your students to act as a ’secret plant’ in the classroom. Certainly - if you’ve got any comments or questions to ask me - please speak up now!

Ideas Without Ego, Questioning Motives

Quite a few people imagine that removing a person’s habitual ways of moving amount to the experience of losing the ego. A.T. lessons often result in a feeling of “do-less-ness.” Some people think of that as an experience of egolessness. So somehow they get the idea that Alexander Technique is all about minimizing the ego.

It’s an interesting idea, the possibility of operating without an ego. I’m curious to explore what value does it have to present and communicate without ego attachments? Being able to differentiate between “so and so’s idea” and an idea that has lost any designation as coming from someone can be an exercise in an “objective” sort of intellectual disassociation. As time has gone by, I have come to suspect its usefulness. Used to see its value, but now I don’t imagine it’s particularly useful to think of ideas as standing on their own, although it’s interesting to imagine that this is possible as a curious intellectual entertainment. There is even a word for it: memes. I’m open to it being useful in some way to me. Which means, I’m open to having it mean something more to me personally. But let me tell you how I came to change my mind about this.

For me now, it’s important that someone experienced an idea directly, observed it, thought about it. Because of looking for my motive underneath my desire to remove my habitual mannerisms of talking, I have uncovered my own hope that at least some of us might go somewhere new beyond repeating the same mistakes of human nature is definitely part of what drives me to communicate.

Some of us have held up the value of egolessness being suspended from our David Bohm style Dialogue experience as well as our experiences with Alexander Technique. I’m curious; why is this disassociation of an idea from who it came from is considered valuable?

The way people in the Dialogue I was a part of would express this agreement of the value of idea over ego was to try to talk about ideas without claiming ownership. They might attribute the idea to some author, etc. as if they were not related to the idea personally.

Why they wanted to bring the idea to the group was seldom mentioned, because that would reveal a sort of “ego” or attachment to the outcome of the conversation…which was supposed to also be suspended, according to their interpretation of Dialogue ideas of suspension. So we had this Dialogue for a long time which was every sort of name dropping. Or people would use a little shorthand for mentioning one idea after another by mentioning one author after another as a way to dump out the ideas, as everything went by fast and furiously. It wasn’t very satisfying, because our conversations didn’t go anywhere new. It seemed people were merely holding up one idea, without saying anything much it, and holding it up to another idea. Sometimes they would say how they were different or similar, but if you didn’t know the two ideas that were being compared, it was hard to follow the conversation.

Then we talked about this experience, and eventually agreed we wanted to make the group conversation less of a name-dropping event. So now each person who wanted to mention someone else’s idea would most usefully offered an outline of what the related idea was for those who had not read the book by that particular author. In a way, it was sort of like providing the bibliography during the conversation. So that made us quite practiced at short book reviews, dragging out the dictionary, etc. We learned some history and some author’s ideas who went to the trouble of writing a book, but still - that wasn’t so interesting because it didn’t go anywhere new because the authors were not present to tell us their fore-thinking ideas. It was an information dumping experience that could be sort of interesting, if you preferred learning about the topic in a scolarly way. But that’s all it was.

Finally what we came to was we decided to to just drop the quoting, the book reviewing and dare to claim the idea as ours - where ever it came from. Then from that point, talking about where our values came from became very interesting.

Then we didn’t have to go to some length to separate the “idea” from the person who is forming it. We began to learn from each other why any particular idea was valuable to a particular person and also, why a person who was present would be bringing it to the attention of others now in the group.

We even got to the point where we learned some of the core experiences from where these values sprang. That’s when we began to really appreciate some of the Conative (motive-style) thinking strategies of each of the participants in the Dialogue that were often quite different from our own. The effect of all this was gradually, we completely stopped questioning the validity of whatever someone said, along with many of us stopping the urge to convince, explain or defend ourselves when questioned by the group en masse. This was pretty amazing to see, as it evolved.

Someone said that they began to imagine how each of us was a sort of archetype. So whenever anybody said something, it became  as if the person was representing “me and all those people who think the way I do who have shared in common some of the experiences I have had.” From a conversation about birth order and the psychological points of view it created for people, this even led me to actively search for people who had some of my own rare unique experiences as a child in common with those as I had as the youngest sibling by eight to ten years - and the results were fascinating for me personally.

Yes, leaving out personal pronouns is part of makes what an author says sound authoritative, scholarly and encyclopedic. So no matter what other motive you have for leaving out personal pronouns, authority is the cultural impression you’ll be cultivating by writing or speaking like that. We observed that putting pronouns of “I” into your speaking and writing style reveals personal meaning and motive. Using the “you” pronoun can make people feel that you are ordering them around.

So, now that I’ve said that, related to the effect of the personal pronouns, names, attributes to a person, etc. I’m going to ask a question. What I’ve just written frames this question in a certain way from the fact that it follows sequentially. If I ask, “why do you write so often about a particular idea? Where did the value of that particular idea come from in your past experiences? What does that intent to write without personal pronouns mean for you personally?” What I also want to know is, why do you think I’m asking these personal questions?

I’m not asking this string of questions in any punative way, or with any emotional intent attached to them.  Although I realize asking a string of questions implies anger in some cultures, I can say that am intensely interested to read your answers. It’s pretty easy to flip the motive for suspicion or connection, by not knowing why someone is asking such a string of personal questions like what I just asked.

We ask many questions during Dialogue and while learning Alexander Technique. We might observe that the person we’re asking “favors” using personal pronouns whenever he answers a question, or we might have watched the new habit of someone who is trying to respond differently by using Alexander’s ideas. Our reason for questioning is not to attack. Certainly, that sort of a “personal” question can come from a positional attack with a motive of dissection or discrediting, or from a position of genuine curiosity and interest in who the person is and how they put the world together into thinking the way they do.

With email, it’s difficult to tell the difference because there is no body language to add to meaning along with the question. So that is why I believe that stating motive is helpful in writing, because it frames the intent of why the question is being asked and what the asker is going to do with the information before it is disclosed.

What do you do when you notice an assumption?

What do you do when you notice an assumption?

Part of the challenge is to notice what you usually do. An indicator of something that is “sticking out” that may eventually become some sort of problem is a signal. Usually when people notice this, it more often means they must “shore up” or “justify” the need for their conclusion or assumption, reinforcing the circle and reapplying their “remedies” that are really keeping the circular problem in place.

Because their focus is on the content as being more important, they cannot see the larger picture of how they are caught in a repeating pattern. They only experience that some part of the pattern is working in the ways they intend, when it is really an out-of-control pattern that MUST repeat whether the person wants it whenever the trigger is pressed for the habit to “go off.” I would say that there are “endorphin squirts” that occur in pressing the trigger originally, but often the experience of the squirting may not register any more because it, too has become habitual.

If you take away the need, I believe our systems “self correct”. You do not have to “do” anything but experience the lack of need, then just wait and watch yourself. What happens next will tell you quite a bit about everything you have been experiencing. If you just get the familiar justifications for your habits, just stop again and wait. Each time you stop, your senses will wake up a little more as you take the next layer of the habitual assumption off. It seems that people are naturally sensitive underneath layers of habits.
That’s why stopping yourself when you would have normally started talking is such an effective technique in a David Bohm style Dialogue group - or in any conversation. Listening will tell you more than talking, for obvious reasons. You merely interrrupt yourself right when you found a need to say something and watch what happens in yourself. As you question your motive of wanting to talk, there will be usually be feelings and needs underneath the assumptions that could be a surprise to you.

So if you don’t know what these feelings are or they don’t surface because they are the submerged part of the iceberg, you can find out what they are by stopping yourself from going into the habit repeatedly. My experience has told me that there is often more than one need/motive/justification. Sometimes these are tricky to uncover, because the remedy of the assumption is trying to cover it up by answering the need. So this is where your own persistence comes in. You put yourself in a situation where this issue comes up again and again, without getting discouraged - and you watch what happens in yourself each time you notice the old same reaction.

Why are A.T. teacher trainings 3 years long?

Why are A.T. teacher training courses 1600 + hours? I believe the time sequence was set at the first round of training courses by F. M. Alexander himself. When he accepted his first round of trainees, he didn’t know how long they would require to learn what he had to offer. The first graduate was Marj Barstow, who set the limit for the fastest learner because she already had great natural coodination as a dance teacher when she joined Alexander’s first training course. (I’ve seen movies of her from that time.) Basically, to practice and teach A.T. takes so long to learn because of how habits of self-preservation seem to need to be soothed from their necessity to freak out when these habits discover something completely new that transforms the status quo, and sometimes completely eliminates the need for the somewhat self-important habit to be there at all. It’s a sort of backlash feature built in to protect the species from going to far, too fast and risking all with disasterous results. Dryly put, it seems to work for learners similar to bureaucracy, which can so completely take on a life of its own as soon as bureaucrazies are created. Perhaps evolutionary wise, the people who preferred safety and security had the chance to pass on their genes alot more commonly than those who took chances and learned faster. I believe that the most effective way to learn AT is to attend an every day residential workshop intensive that lasts more than three weeks and offers attendees at least a mini-lesson every day. I have read that somehow the three week period is a golden duration of time that significantly breaks the urge to repeat the cycle of habitual repetition. I do not believe that an AT workshop exists that lasts that long now since 1996? when Marj Barstow has died who used to offer them. Her legacy of the many students who she trained to continue her approach still do a summer workshop, but the duration only a fraction of what it used to be. Given the results of this study about how long it takes to form new habits, I think this length of time of classes is important to respect. Franis Engel

Learning Alexander Technique Without A Teacher Can Be Thorny

People write to me and ask how they could learn Alexander Technique on their own. You can always learn some on your own, but it is much faster to use an Alexander teacher, or any teacher, for that matter. By working with the Alexander principles, you can improve your own ability to observe yourself. The going will be slow - so be patient and persistent with yourself because habits can be fast, tricky and insidious.

In addition to some of the other resources mentioned on the alextech list, I’ve got some resources on my website that might be useful to the two of you. In particular, see “ideas” about what some of the principles are and how they work may be of use.

Alexander Technique Simplified

Without a teacher, you may not be able to figure out what to do about what you notice about yourself - your situation if you haven’t had any example of where to go to create a new possibility. Knowing that, you can experiment.

Generally, when working by yourself without a teacher, you want to avoid crafting more habits, (even if you think they are “better” ones.) Instead, just subtract what you can perceive you may be doing that could be unnecessary. These changes might involve moving, but try to detour adjusting yourself to where you think is a “good” place for your body to be. Instead let yourself move, allow or discover where you might want to go to move away from what you know you don’t want. If you have a sucess, go back to the steps that got you there - rather than trying to recreate or re-live the success.

The other problem without a teacher is deciding on how you’re going to measure success. Sometimes you can be doing better, but because of an inability to sense differences that might create an improvement, you get stuck. Principles of AT suggest a new possibility: Measure the results of your experimenting by