From the category archives:

Stress Reduction & Emotional Wellness

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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An Education

August 5, 2011

by Stella Weigel

Alexander could not have been clearer: “In those cases where the psycho-physical mechanism is imperfect and functioning more or less inadequately, we cannot expect the best results in the conveyance or the acquisition of knowledge.” (CCCI)

My own education paid full testament to this in providing me with all the necessary tools of a confirmed end-gainer; I developed poor psycho-physical use in a most expert fashion.

My late father struggled to obtain his education. He grew up in war-time Germany and was called to military service on the Eastern front while still just a boy. He eventually studied chemistry and became a chemist and academic lecturer. 

The overriding memory I have of my own education is one of struggle, but of an entirely different nature than my father’s.  My education was designed to improve my intellect, but there was never any attention paid to my condition of use, or the reasons for my reactions, or any observation of the link between use and reactions.

All the groundwork for what was to continue throughout my entire education was laid as early as my primary school years; “worried” and “anxious” are words used frequently in my school reports.

Further, it occurs to very few [parents] to consider whether, in this process of “education” (i.e., in certain specific directions), the child’s fear reflexes will not be unduly and harmfully excited by the injunction that it must always try to “be right”, indeed, that it is almost a disgrace to be wrong.  (CCCI).

I attempted to obey instructions, achieve results, and meet the ever increasing demands “made by people who (were) guiding themselves by an unreliable and delusive sensory appreciation.” (CCCI).  This all took its toll.  The evaluation, “could do better,” became all too familiar and seemed to constantly announce my unfulfilled potential.  I dreaded sitting any tests or examinations, convinced that in spite of all my hard work I could only fail, that I had already failed.

There was little hope of taking my time to think.  Just the idea of taking an exam was the panic button inside of me which, once triggered, led me to rush and think all too quickly.  I was no different than Alexander’s golfer who failed at every attempt to keep his eye on the ball.  Time and again I would try to do my best, be left disappointed at the outcome, and lacking in self-confidence.

…every attempt on the part of the child to do something new or to acquire knowledge makes a psycho-physical demand, and (…) the child’s efforts, when judged on a general and not specific basis, will always be in accordance with the standard of psycho-physical functioning of its organism.  (CCI).  

I also remember a loving father who helped me with my schoolwork as much as possible, especially when he saw me struggling.  He educated me during our summer holidays, when we would travel to more remote corners of Western Europeand to marvel at its beauty: the landscape, culture and history.  My father taught me respect, curiosity, an enduring appreciation of the arts, and the importance of human relationships and communication.  He encouraged me to discover a desire for learning and questioning.  He taught me the importance of determination for when the going got tough.  Above all, he wanted me to live my life to its full potential.

My fear of failure was a subconsciously self-imposed response to expectations of achievement.  The awareness of my father’s educational and academic achievements, no doubt, provided me with a strong stimulus.   But I was not taught to STOP and question whether in fact this fear-response was based on reason, until I studied the Alexander Technique.

The Alexander Technique offers a unique opportunity to begin to observe, question and learn to consciously control one’s physical and mental reactions in relation to stimuli; to attend to the “means whereby.”   Lessons provide a non-judgemental, non-end-gaining environment in which to develop this practice.

My father’s specialization, chemistry, is the physical science of matter and the changes that matter undergoes during chemical reactions.   I believe my father would have been absolutely delighted to see how much my physical matter has changed as a result of changes in my own reactions and vice versa. John Dewey states in the introduction to CCCI,

Mr Alexander has found a method for detecting precisely the correlations between these two members, physical-mental, of the same whole, and for creating a new sensory consciousness of new attitudes and habits.  It is a discovery which makes whole all scientific discoveries, and renders them available, not for our undoing, but for human use in promoting our constructive growth and happiness.

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 Technique for Kids

May 12, 2011

We seem to be more and more nervous, mentally unbalanced and muscularly unfit. Our children are fatter, becoming less motivated and more entitled, showing all the signs of ill health (of course diabetes, but also many are emotionally maladjusted) and they seem to have all the signs of a terrible life ahead of them. They don’t move, or play. They sit at computer games and go online, connecting to sites that are mostly a waste of valuable youth. Some of these sites are criminal and dangerous. They don’t use this time to shape themselves for their futures. And nobody is guiding them either!  They take all manner of drugs and many are addicts before 15. Others are fixated with celebrity and they want recognition as a validation for themselves.  This alone shows a total lack of values and the power they should be developing to make a life in the future. They can only become shallow, angry adults without a shred of the wherewithal to face life.

Seeing such children lumber around deformed and unhappy, I ask myself Why is this? How can it auger well in the future for all of us if these young generations are already so dysfunctional and delusional? Everything about them screams out at the casual observer and these are the young that will run the governments, make the policy and shape the way our world is run.

We adults seeing this, seem incapable of lifting even one finger. So I decided to offer either free lessons or nearly free lessons to some children who I believe need this work. They fill all these criteria of need to change their ideas of self and life. I can’t change the world but I can help one person or even two. Maybe it helps them and maybe it falls on deaf ears, I don’t know, but I am doing this because it is the heart and core of Alexander’s principles to work with the individual. One child at a time.

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No Easy Fix: Part IV

February 21, 2011

In his book The Use of the Self[1] Alexander writes, “Everyone will agree that for accuracy and efficiency in diagnosis, the medical man needs to possess not only a high standard of sensory observation and awareness, but also the ability to link phenomena together, to form sound judgments and to take a wide outlook, especially in the presence of unfamiliar conditions.

“It has never been recognized in medical practice that sensory appreciation, the human compass, has become more and more unreliable with the advance of civilization, and that in proportion there has come about, a growing misdirection of the use of the human being.”

 Alexander goes on to say that all medical students should be taught his technique so they may direct the use of themselves consciously for their own benefit.  But also their lessons would enable them to spot poor general use in their patients, yielding greater diagnostic skills and also aid in prevention of further deterioration. Then if a specific part needed to be treated directly, the doctor would be doing so within the unity of the entire organism.

This of course flies in the face of our beloved idea of separation of the self into various parts.  This old concept is at the root of many of our erroneous ideas about well-being, health, and functioning in general.  It pulls us apart and creates false compartments, so that our various ailments are labeled as physical’ or ‘mental,’ or ‘emotional.’  How did we get this idea?

Here is my hypothesis.  In the caves some 60,000 years ago, when life expectancy was perhaps 30 at most, people died of wounds and infections or in childbirth (if no animal ate you).  I doubt they died of diabetes and heart trouble due to eating fatty fast foods, pizza pie with too much salt, coffee, donuts, and drinking at the Pub.  They didn’t take street drugs, they didn’t stay up all night watching TV or going online surfing for porn sites and they didn’t grow old.  When they had an illness, someone in the clan knew some herb, root or berry to deal with the condition as best they could.  They didn’t get ulcers from overwork at the office, and they were so close to nature and so free from our sorts of pressures that I doubt that they had faulty use of themselves.  In the case of Cavemen, I bet the quick fix was just fine.

So why aren’t we able to see that this idea of separation of self is limited, irrelevant, and misleading?  Perhaps as Alexander thought, we have developed too rapidly and have not been able to keep up with the speed of all these changes.  Certainly most people believe that their lives have become too complex, too stressed, that they “must run faster and faster to stay in the very same place” (as The Red Queen said to Alice).

We are being pulled apart by so many aspects of modern life.  We must “specialize,” we have more and more deadlines and time pressures.  All these factors (and many more) influence our perception of life and ourselves.

This is a very interesting chapter in a very wonderful book. I urge my readers to pick it up and read for themselves the story of how FM came to his discoveries and “faced a difficulty that always put him wrong, and dealt with it differently.”

[1] See chapter V Diagnosis and Medical Training

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Stress Reduction and Emotional Well-Being

August 19, 2010

We all get stressed.  And often, it seems as though this stress is imposed on us from the outside.  But the Alexander Technique helps us see that this is not the case.  Stress is really not something outside ourselves. It actually is all about how we are reacting to conditions, whether the conditions are created by the outside world, or by ourselves.  We create habitual reactions to conditions by the way we think.

Seen from this angle stress can becomes manageable. We can take full responsibility for stress or non-stress because we can manage our reactions.  We can learn via Alexander Technique lessons to respond but not react to whatever the stimulus may be.  In doing this we can behave in a lucid reasonable manner in the face of what used to be a disruptive negative situation for us. 

Let me give you an example.  Let’s say that I have a history of conflict and disharmony with someone in my family.  He is not stressful.  I react with stress. This person may be indeed very difficult but I cannot change him (Lord knows I have tried and so have all the other family members, let’s say).  So I have to change myself.  I have to focus on my response and refrain from reacting and getting stressed.

I must like who I am when I am with others and if I can’t find any way at all to do that, then I better not be around those people. It is never about them. It always comes back to being responsible for how I myself behave. This is how we build character. And this is the really deeper meaning of the Alexander Technique. And yes, your posture and your attitude toward yourself and others will definitely improve.

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