From the category archives:

Directions

Sending Presents

December 22, 2011

By Stella Weigel

Having eaten cake which caused her to grow to a tremendous height, Alice exclaims:

‘I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can; —but I must be kind to them,’ thought Alice, ‘or perhaps they won’t walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I’ll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.’ And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. ’They must go by the carrier,’ she thought; ‘and how funny it’ll seem, sending presents to one’s own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

(Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

I recently learned at an anatomy lecture that during embryological development the skin which sits underneath the first vertebrae (atlas) redistributes to form the skin of the soles of the feet. This helps to explain why the receptors in the soles of the feet, provide such a good feedback to orient us in space and alert us to when we are going off balance. Raymond Dart, anatomist and anthropologist, wrote, “In the human squatting or standing (or orthograde) positions, the dominant segmental skin information concerned in human head balance is probably that coming from the sacral or hind most body segments to supplying the soles of the feet, especially the pads of the toes and heels” (An Anatomist’s Tribute to F. Matthias Alexander, 20 March 1970, reprinted in Skill and Poise). Alexander lessons encourage us to think of our feet being in touch with the planet, the pads behind the toes and the heels going back and down.

Due to a fear of falling, our common immediate response when we feel off balance is to stiffen; if this stiffening becomes habitual, then our fear response will become more or less a constant. The possibility of any movement will lead to a perception that we are going off balance, and the fear response is therefore heightened. This is a vicious circle.

No small wonder then that having developed a habitual fear reflex, I also developed a fear of heights; due to habitual stiffening, my feet were, quite literally, never on the ground. I also sat in chairs that were too big for me, which caused me to stiffen as much I could. As an undergraduate I avoided the paternoster lift at all costs, preferring to walk up twelve flights of stairs in order to reach the teaching rooms.

Dart continues, “Man is the creature of fear! In other words, he is the most fearful (in every sense of that word) just as he can and has become the most fearless of all animals. This is because he has become the most nearly tip-toed of all the two-footed, or bipedal creatures. His walking is a constant precarious process of saving himself from falling. So the primary fear to overcome is his fear of falling.”

The Alexander Technique teaches us to release and soften rather than to stiffen when being taken off balance, to experiment rather than to control, and to be aware that we do indeed possess a choice, either to topple over in a stiffening response
to gravity or to stand in dynamic equilibrium and stability, with gravity as our friend.

Alice sent presents to her feet. But F.M. Alexander sent presents to us all. He handed down the directions that help us experience standing on our feet as a pleasure, moving with them as a joy. Take a moment to think of your feet softening, spreading and enjoy being on the ground. It is a kindness to yourself.

Merry Christmas!

Guest Blogger Stella Weigel lives in London and is an Alexander Technique teacher trainee at The Constructive Teaching Centre, the world’s oldest and largest Alexander Technique training school.

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Alexander’s Primary Control in Action

May 26, 2011

Giraffe Birth on YouTube

It takes less than five minutes for this animal to adjust reflexively in gravity. Notice the HEAD LEADS, then the partial or secondary patterns follow (first with the forelegs then hind legs) becoming reflexively coordinated. The reflex travels down from the head end to the tail and co-ordinates the entire animal. There are some Alexander Technique “teachers” who actually dispute that the primary control even exists. This is because they are badly trained. There is no nice way to put it. But here is the principle of it for everyone to see for themselves.

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Width

October 21, 2010

by Stella Weigel

What do you think of your shoulders? I only ever thought of mine as being ugly and rounded. I loathed seeing them in a mirror or in photographs, and tried to conceal them from display, not wishing to draw attention to them.

I was asked to push my shoulders back and I tried to do this with the best will in the world. This didn’t help. In fact it just increased the amount of tension I already had there. On top of all that, I generally carried around a heavy shoulder bag full of books. I was aware that my shoulders were not as they should have been, yet until I took Alexander Technique lessons, I did not know that I could help myself by thinking of them widening away from one another.

I now know that the shoulder girdle is only attached to the spine indirectly, at the sternum. It is a very basic aspect of our anatomical design, but for me during the third term of training, it was a revelation. I was holding onto my shoulders, thereby causing an inordinate amount of tension, when in fact I could just as easily think about releasing them and letting go. The shoulder pain, which I had had for quite some time, disappeared when I thought my directions.

I continually need to think about asking for more width across my shoulders, to think of my shoulder blades hanging, and of all the weight flowing down through my hips, knees and ankles, those major joints. Last week I experienced this as I was practicing putting hands-on. My teacher encouraged me to think of a “Y” shape at the front of my body and an inverted “Y” at the back, and I was struck by just how free and released I felt.

Instead of hunching, narrowing, and generally, pulling down, see if you are able to think of that all-important width, as well as height.

Guest Blogger, Stella Weigel, is a fifth term Alexander Technique student at The Constructive Teaching Centre, London, the world’s oldest and largest Alexander Technique training school. She had Alexander Technique lessons from 2006-2009 before embarking on her training in April 2009. She lives in the city of London.

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The Alexander Technique: A Means to Clear Thinking.

July 20, 2010

A new means whereby we may become masters of ourselves.

This is the fourth in a series of posts on “directions.” To recap here, first, to really become wonderful at doing anything, we have stop the self-sabotage and subconscious and semi-conscious habits (of thought and action) that derail us. Therefore, we have to see clearly what these habits of thought and action are. We have to become fully conscious of these and it will be an amazing and often emotionally charged process. It can be slow but it will never be boring!

Then we must not try to fix things or become right. We have to just observe and stop. This is all-important because we spent years and years getting into a mess and we can’t just “fix” it up in a day or two. Keep in mind that everyone would like to change others but are loath to change themselves. But it is only yourself you can ever change. And believe me, that is quite enough to accomplish.

Alexander Technique lessons will teach you an entirely new way of thinking and acting. We will use the dumbest silliest things such as sitting and standing from a chair, or flexion at the knees and hips (we call this one “monkey”) walking, and a homework we call “constructive rest” or lying down and there are others.

In all of these you will be practicing your new improved self-directions and gradually these will start to become your new way of being. Your old subconscious habits will be replaced and worry and fear disappear. Stiffness becomes suppleness, rigidities become flexible, grim determination becomes joyful ease. Sleep is deeper and better, aches and pains subside and your overall manner of use (remember that blog?) becomes one of easy going happiness and efficiency.

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Alexander Technique Teachers: Offering A Fresh Approach to Obtaining Skills.

July 15, 2010

In learning to do anything there is always an amount of worry and fear about doing it “right.” In F.M. Alexander’s teachings that question never comes up. In fact Alexander Technique teachers want you to be wrong. Alexander Technique teachers want you to not strive and to not work at things in your habitual ways (Non-Doing).

Teaching the Alexander Technique

In learning anything or learning to do anything, we usually go to a teacher whom we regard as someone who knows how to teach us. We want to learn this skill and become free and masterful at it, not tenth rate. Nobody goes to a driving instructor who had his license taken away four times and routinely barely misses hitting other cars or people.

Then we expect that this teacher will show us what to do in order to learn to drive. We can expect that our teacher will be courteous and pleasant and will tell us when we are going wrong and he will point out all our mistakes. Since nobody likes to hear that they are wrong, our teacher will probably have found a way to give us this information without belittling us. And in this way we expect that sooner or later we will master driving.

But this is not what we do as Alexander Technique teachers. In fact Alexander Technique teachers are not about to say you are wrong at all. This is because we are, all of us, “wrong;” and all of us get even more “wrong’ by trying to end-gain and go directly to being “right.” This ludicrous state of affairs would be very funny if it were not so painful and frustrating.

Just think about this a moment. If you could go directly to doing the right thing, why wouldn’t you just do it?

With her hands and with her explanations the Alexander Technique teacher gives you the feeling of a new ease as you learn freedom from the old habits of thought, striving and forcing that always ruin the joy of learning anything new. Fear and all the associated tensions and efforts melt away and you will see that as F.M. Alexander said, “the right thing does itself.”

Related posts: Directions #1, Directions #2

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