About Conditioning

Conditioning solves a need with the ability to adapt. Conditioning is establishing a program or routine to solve an anticipated routine situation. The situation is that a question or problem is repeating that supposedly requires a solution. In conditioning, automating a series of physical actions is the solution. As the situation itself is recognized, the [...]

Read Full Post »

Giving Up

It’s tricky to perceive what’s going on with thought and actions, because everything happens at once – and fast.
You have done it a million times. The most familiar way to suspend what you do not want is to do something else. Fire off another cue and change the channel. Time to go on to the [...]

Read Full Post »

Why Did I Do That?

Do people make deliberate choices for negative reasons?
I used to imagine they do. I used to think I did. But as I have come to be able to watch myself in action making decisions and as I have come to watch my students deal with decisions they have made and habits they have put in [...]

Read Full Post »

Personal Challenges

“how do people respond when confronted with challenges that are personally presented?”
When you think about it, no matter how much experience you have, there is always the next moment when you might discover something new, right?
The characteristics of discovery is partly what AT is about. How to recognize a discovery when it does emerge.
Mostly people [...]

Read Full Post »

Improvisationally Applied Alexander Technique

As teachers of Alexander Technique, it is very deceptive for us to take for granted the assumptions implicit in the teaching environments in which we originally learned. It is sometimes after we graduate and begin to teach beginners that these assumptions come to light. Obviously, it pays big to examine assumptions, making what we have [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Noticing Assumptions

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Opening Up Conclusions About Luck & Timing

The assumptions of cause and effect have some crucial factors that would change “luck” and create “coincidence.” What most people regard as “bad luck” in a brand of fate can be a functional superstition – which is sort of a pre-conclusion with a mystery means or function that self-selects to reinforce it’s proof.
I’ve noticed that [...]

Read Full Post »

Alexander Technique Compared to Assumptions of Psychology

I believe that much of AT does share some similar effects with psychology. The psychological field aims for the effect of being free from problematic patterns of thinking, as does AT. This is often done by offering talking perspectives about the self through learning about others who shared our circumstances, which does happen in AT [...]

Read Full Post »

What Feels Wrong Is Probably Pointing at Freedom

>> If every one did AT, there would have been no world war – true or false?>True, But if everyone did any one of a number of things there would be no war.
I don’t agree. I used to think this about Alexander Technique when Iwas in my twenties, but now I have had enough proof [...]

Read Full Post »

How I Uncovered My Own Linguistic Assumptions

I wanted to write about the first steps I took to identify with and emulate alternate ways of thinking. I didn’t used to think of making new interpretations of how I put together meaning and raw experience; I just did it.
As a high school senior, I happened to really get into an independent study class [...]

Read Full Post »