What "self"?

"The use of the self", is one of F.M.Alexander's books on Alexander Technique.
Alexander, had a conception of man as psycho-physical unity, and that is what he meant by "self".

But this psycho-physical unity, cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, if we "were" psycho-physical unities, then there would be no question about mal-coordination.
Coordination is required precisely because we are NOT psycho-physical unities; psycho-physical unity is a condition to be reached.


Many of our activities are mere physiological reflexes, which one could hardly describe as "I did ...", more appropriate would be describing such activities in the passive voice.
Our "habits", which F.M.Alexander dealt with extensively, constitute another kind of reflexes, the ones that Pavlov described as "conditioned".
Both of the above are "subconscious" kinds of behavior; the self, the subject is absent.

Another kind of behaviour is end-gaining: when we succeed everything is fine; but when we fail there arises what F. M. Alexander lucidly termed "a civil war within the self".
In such instances the "I" gets divided into two, one which is felt as "me", and the other as "not-me".

("The inner game of tennis" by Tim Galway, which deals with this issue.)

There is another "I", which as I see it is "the" self that is referred by "The use of the self", and the object of the Alexander Technique.

Use your brain (II)

I have mentioned previously Noam Renen's aphorisms "Use your brain"

"Use your brain" means "Use YOUR brain".

And this is because much end-gaining comes not from being bad or an idiot, just out of being lazy.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein

The opposite of wrong is wrong

This opens Noam Renen’s aphorisms on Alexander Technique, "Use your brain".
Our intellect – that part of the brain we identify normally with thinking – thinks in terms of logical opposites: black-white, wrong-right, true-false, or in general either A or not-A.
Not-doing A, is not the same as doing not-A. Which is easy to understand intellectually, but difficult to apply in practice.
For example "not tensing the neck" is not the same as "freeing the neck" (which is also not the same as "relaxing the neck", but that is another story).

Therefore (because we confuse not-doing something with doing not-something), according to the trial-and-error plan (an end-gaining aproach), we go from one wrong to another wrong.

The right, is neither A nor not-A, nor a balance of A and not-A. This ‘third’ option is something new, outside the known or habitual, which has the attributes of both A and not-A at the same time.
Conscious Control, is not the opposite of Subconscious Control.