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).
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