I recently had a chat with someone about the Alexander Technique, not about what it is, but what it is NOT. This person thought that the Technique had to do ONLY with “good posture and standing up straight.” This idea of “good posture,” or standing up straight, implies something fixed, rigid, and set, definitely NOT […]
Continue to Full Post...During his career as a dramatic performer, FM Alexander struggled with vocal problems. He had been to doctors repeatedly to no avail. But he had a fierce determination to understand what was getting in his way and decided he would find the reason for his voice failure, no matter what. This is very rare. When […]
Continue to Full Post...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 […]
Continue to Full Post...Hamlet: Denmark’s a prison. (…) Rosencrantz: We think not so, my lord. Hamlet: Why then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare, HAMLET (II, ii) In the first article on this topic, we looked at some of what Alexander went through, and what […]
Continue to Full Post...“The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. ATTITUDE, to me is more important than FACTS. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or […]
Continue to Full Post...FM Alexander figured out that our thinking shapes our feelings and our feelings shape our thinking, so if either of those two inputs is warped, both will become warped, and lead to a “debauched kinesthesia.” Most people will rely on their own kinesthetic sense as their guide in every decision in their lives, whether it […]
Continue to Full Post...by Stella Weigel 3 December 2010 marked the final day of teaching at 18 Lansdowne Road, Holland Park. For the past fifty years, it has been the London home of The Constructive Teaching Centre, dedicated to the study of the Alexander Technique. This historic turning-point has demonstrated the Centre’s ability to practice what it teaches: […]
Continue to Full Post...I have been writing about debauched Kinesthesia (here, here, and here) and there is an aspect to this topic that rules most of our habitual reactions. Let’s call it the blind spots in our thinking and in our perceptions. Of course we are unaware of the blind spots otherwise they would not be blind spots. […]
Continue to Full Post...In Part I, I started to describe Dr. R and her struggle with back pain (and the idea of a blind spot). Dr. R comes to an Alexander teacher who tells her that her back is not the key issue in her troubles. Dr. R does not follow this line of thinking. When she is […]
Continue to Full Post...I’d like to continue my exploration of Dr. R and her back pain (see here and here). Her problems did not begin over night. She tells her Alexander teacher that in high school her back would get tired frequently, but since the problem would go away, she didn’t bother with it. “But surely, you don’t […]
Continue to Full Post...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 […]
Continue to Full Post...By Stella Weigel The King’s Speech, based on events from the life of King George VI of England, has taken the world of cinema by storm. The film shows “Bertie” struggle to overcome his stammer and find his voice, in order to rally the free world to resist Nazi aggression. The film illustrates how a […]
Continue to Full Post...During my 30 years of teaching I have often observed how disturbing it is for pupils when they come up against a totally new sensation of themselves. They tend to feel odd, misplaced, and peculiar. Indeed, they are often alarmed by the sensations that flood them. Time after time they will try to edge themselves […]
Continue to Full Post...“There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellence that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, […]
Continue to Full Post...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 […]
Continue to Full Post...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” […]
Continue to Full Post...by Stella Weigel In Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, FM Alexander provides the following illustration: A seven-year-old boy was given an aptitude test designed to measure “control.” The test involves an electronic apparatus with holes varying in size. His task was to touch the centers of the holes with a small, pencil-like, metal rod […]
Continue to Full Post...Part 1: The Premise In this first book Man’s Supreme Inheritance, written in 1910, F.M. Alexander argues that we now struggle in all kinds of ways (social, economic, legal, physical, moral, ethical, educational, governmental, and of course personal) because we do not stop and think before we act. (He wrote this book 100 years ago. […]
Continue to Full Post...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 […]
Continue to Full Post...How do we go about becoming more consciously directed, not only in terms of general living, but in the acquisition of skill? Let us select a skill as an example: singing. We want to learn to sing or improve our singing and we have gone to a teacher for help. In Part II of his […]
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