Alexander's Teaching Aphorisms

These 122 quotes from F.M.Alexander's lessons were written down by Ethel Webb, who worked as his secretary in the 1920s and 1930s, sitting in a small office outside Alexander's teaching room at Ashley Place. Dr Barlow later published them in The Alexander Journal (no.7,1972, pp.41-48). They were reprinted in "Articles & Lectures", and a selection appears in E.Maisel's book on the Alexander Technique.

They are at the same time philosophical and practical, general and specific.
For me they are like zen "koans", a source of inspiration, a guide.

Getting in and out of a chair

From a purely mechanical point of view, standing up (i.e. getting out of a chair) is the reverse from sitting down, although as M.Feldenkrais observed, only when the movement is right (i.e. fluid) can this reversibility be attained.
Pushing oneself out of the chair and its opposite, collapsing into the chair, destroys this fludity.

Getting into the chair should be just that: "getting into". Not "falling into", which is what actually happens when one collapses.

On lengthening

The directions "... to let the back to lengthen and widen" are better thought of as implying "un-shortening" instead of "lenghtening", undoing instead of doing.

"Everyone is always teaching one what to do, leaving us still doing the things we shouldn't do"
F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms

Noam Renen

A great Alexander Technique teacher, I learnt a lot with him.

In this picture Noam is teaching me, using a variation of the "getting in-out of a chair" exercise. (Although exercise isn't a proper term for it, I don't like procedure or evolution either)


He often says to me: "Remember this, never compromise!"







There is information on his teaching available online at
http://members.fortunecity.com/noamrenen

Why do we tense our necks?

Referred to Michael Protzel's article, available online at
http://ateducationresearch.com/Why_Do_We_Tense_Our_Necks.pdf

I had the oportunity of meeting Michael once on my short visit to NY last Feb 9th, during which he kindly explained and illustrated his ideas.

While posture is about positions either being good or bad, M.Protzel's "weight commitement" (which resemble F.M.Alexander's "directions"), is concerned with what goes on inside a certain position. But F.M.Alexander's directions are valid in general, either on a static position or in motion.

Moreover, M. Potzel is too fixed on vertical alignment as the only right posture - right position, and that doesn't appeal to me.

I guess this results from Michael's "steering" the body weight downwards, instead of F.M.Alexander's letting the neck to be free, which in a certain way it is "steering" the body's no-weight upwards.

Directing and Moving

"Your work is a repeated combination of preparation, followed by separation. The continuous process of 'all together' is missing."
Noam Renen, Use your brain

Do not "direct" in preparation, to lengthen and widen at your current position, before making some movement.

To give consent

"Doing" is our habitual way of reacting.
To give consent, is to "allow it to happen", or as Alexander said "to let it do itself".

"You ask me to lift that chair. If I give consent that is all I can do"
F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms

Right and Wrong

"Everyone wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right"
F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms

The "idea of right" means, what are we going to judge?
Our habitual "idea of right" is according to results, end-gaining, getting something in return, etc.

A much more sensible "idea of right" is according to our thinking, i.e. our attitude, our intentions.

Overdoing

While end-gaining:

"Thinking" is doing,
"Doing" is overcoming,
and "Non-doing" is to colapse.

"Inhibition" is repressing,
and "Directing" is to move, without thinking.

End-gaining is overdoing, overdoing, overdoing.

Gravity?

Some people, including A.T. teachers, believe that gravity, or in other words, fear of falling is our main conditioning.

Then why we hold a pen with undue tension?

Conscious Control

With subconscious control we do without knowing,
and when we are end-gaining, we do what we know.

Good "use" of ourselves is, when we know what we are doing.

The rounder we go ...

Referred to D.Gorman's article:
( available online at http://www.learningmethods.com/circular.htm)

"The way out of the circle was simply to meet the moment of the symptom which I habitually feel as wrong and not take the next step of reacting to it. As I stop being divided by making one part of me wrong and trying to change it, I become whole"

A symptom is an effect, the problem is the cause. Although they are related, they are nevertheless two different things. Dealing with the symptoms instead of the causes it is why "it does not take long before the symptoms are back".

"When I allow myself to exist in any moment as it is without reaction—in other words, to open more fully to the experience and events of the present no matter whether I like it or not—these tensions and contractions disappear and I become free and whole"

To inhibit the end-gaining reaction is not the same as not reacting. End-gaining is the minimum-effort-path, therefore to take the other one, a conscious decission must be made.

F. M. Alexander says "inhibition and volition are two sides of the same coin".

The Intellect

"Intelligence is the whole, and intellect is the whore of intelligence – the computer, the fitting game: If this is so, then this is so – all this figuring out by which many people replace seeing and hearing what’s going on. Because if you are busy with your computer, your energy goes into your thinking, and you don’t see and hear any more"
Frederick S. Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim

Ergonomics

"I am continually being asked, both by friends and unknown correspondents, for my opinion concerning the correct type of chair, stool, desk or table to be used in order to prevent the bad habits which these pieces of furniture are supposed to have caused in schools. In my replies I have tried to demonstrate that the problem is being attacked from the wrong standpoint.
Suppose, for example, that there is an ideal chair, some wonderful arrangement of perfect angles, hollows and supports that will almost magically rectify or prevent every fault in the child's physical mechanism ... how is it possible for this ideal chair to be miraculously adaptable to every age and type of child?
No, what we need to do is not to educate our school furniture, but to educate our children. Give a child the ability to adapt himself within reasonable limits to his environment, and he will not suffer discomfort, nor develop bad physical habits, whatever chair or form you give him to sit upon"
F.M.Alexander, Man's Supreme Inheritance, Ed.Mouritz pg 93

Actually the "ideal chair" has already been invented, it is the stool. But what they are actually looking for, without recognising it, is a chair to collapse comfortably.

"When people are wrong, the thing which is right is bound to be wrong to them"
F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms.

The body is fluid

"The conventional idea can be stated thus: the body is a fixed frame which is activated by the brain so as to bring about movements of its parts. Now this is only part of the picture; the other part is that the body is continuosly activated by sets of impulses, which determine the tone and thus the manner of its behaviour, i.e. the body is fluid"
P.Macdonald, The Alexander Technique as I see it, pg 63

The conventional idea is that the body is formed by several PARTS, the trunk, the head and the limbs. Those parts are articulated by joints, which make movement possible.
There are several aproaches like "Body mapping" (an aproach within the Alexander Technique), "Feldenkrais", etc., which are based on the hypothesis that bad-coordination is a consequence of a faulty sense of the own body, and that through guided experimentation involving simple movements, that sense can be restored.

That is only part of the picture, like Macdonald says. The other part of the picture is that the body is a fluid WHOLE:
Movement is carried out not only through the visible "active parts", but also through a subtle coordinated, silent action of the rest of the body, which provides support for those active parts and overall balance.
For example in walking, the visible "active part" is the advancing foot, while the other foot must simultaneously take over the support of the body's weight.

On end-gaining

It is our "End-gainer", the one who does the "end-gaining".

Besides making use of our *old* habits, it is constantly creating *new* ones, with two purposes:
1) To strive for the security of the known.
2) To free our mind from thinking, in order to have more time for its favorite past time, mind-wandering.

On tension

"Tension" is produced by the simultaneous exertion of two opposing forces, for example by trying to extend and flex the arm at the same time.

But whenever you feel tensing, you feel only one of them. You take sides with one, as if the other were not-you!!

It is no wonder then, that when you relax this tension (the habitual response), you collapse. You kill your energy, instead of using it.

On posture

Whenever you find your self tensing in a fixed posture, for example you might bend the torso to wash your hands on a lavatory, and your kinesthetic sense sends you information that you are pulling your head backward. In this situation, you may be tempted to "do" the opposite thing to correct your posture, i.e. your "position", by moving your head forward.

There are a good number of reasons to "inhibit" such response.

"The opposite of wrong is wrong"
Noam Renen, Use your brain

When you attempt to correct your posture by changing your posture, it means that you are reacting according to the conception that "there is such thing as a right position". Moreover, your sensory appreciation of your own posture is wrong, so the outcome cannot possibly be right.

"There is no such thing as a right position, but there is such thing as a right direction" F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms

In the example above, instead of moving the head forward, the whole back should be "directed" (NOT moved!) backwards, that is the meaning of the information conveyed by the kinsethetic sense.

By such indirect procedure, you may find your knees freeing, flexing, so that you lower the hips, the torso is directed backward and the head ... forward!!

"The movement, if any, is, in an experienced pupil, so small as to be hardly a movement at all"
P.Macdonald, The Alexander Technique as I see it.

Stretch reflex

When a muscle is stretched, so is the muscle spindle ( the stretch proprioceptors), which send signals to the spine, where those signals trigger the stretch reflex (also called the myotatic reflex) which attempts to resist the change in muscle length by causing the muscle to contract.

It seems likely that in "non-doing", this mechanism is being used to our own advantage, if we "allow it to happen".

Directions

"Directions", are in a way, the kinesthetic sense of lack of tension.

"You can´t tell a person what to do because the thing you have to do is a sensation"
F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms

Therefore you cannot "produce the directions" directly. If you don't refrain nor overdo yourself, that will "produce the directions".

"How can an order be anything but doing -- but not doing as you understand doing"
F.M.Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms

Yoga, Tai Chi, etc.

"The performances of the Yogis certainly do not command my admiration, and the well known system of breathing practiced and taught by them, is in my opinion, not only wrong and essentially crude, but I consider that it tends to exaggerate those very defects from which we suffer in this twentieth century"
F. M. Alexander, Man's Supreme Inheritance, pg 35.

Focusing

I have started the Focusing training course two years ago.
Focusing is a technique developed by E.Gendlin, with sources in the Humanist Psychology of C.Rogers and A.Maslow.

Kevin McEvenue deals, in his article "Focusing and the Alexander Technique"
( available online at http://www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/focusing/)
and a more extensive one "Exchange" magazine, Vol 10 N 1, February 2002.
(available online at http://www.ati-net.com/ati-artl.htm)
with his own aproach, that brings together both techniques.

On walking

There are some specific instructions on walking in F.M.Alexander's book "Man's Supreme Inheritance", Part II, Notes and Instances, pag 172:

"The whole physiology of walking ... it is really resolved into the primary movements of allowing the body to incline forward from the ankle on which the weight is supported and then preventing oneself from falling by allowing the weight to be taken in turn by the foot which has been advanced"

and in "Together we walk", W.L.White (in Curiosity Recaptured, ed J.Sontag). But I didn't find them useful.

There are two issues to consider, the physical and the psychological.

The physical issue is rather simple. We aren't going to teach our legs how to walk, that is inborn. Just don't interfere with it. Keep the body coordinated, which in short means that the head should not lag behind or advance ahead of the feet. Let your neck (and your legs) to be free.


The psychological issue, which is mostly ignored in Alexander Technique, seems to me more relevant. It refers to motivation, to enjoying the physical activity, the view, etc.

Many times, walking is a means to an end, i.e. we are going somewhere, to do something. Then it is mainly how we feel about that "something", what affects our walking.