Alexander joins the NeuroZone

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Marjorie Barstow, 1899 – 1995

Marjorie Barstow, a well-known teacher of the Alexander Technique used to say “Someday there will be a science of human movement that incorporates Alexander’s discoveries.”  (Alexander is F. Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique.)

I was always a bit taken off guard when I’d hear her say this because Marj rarely seemed to have any interest in the future, or for that matter, the past.  She was the most in-the-moment person I have ever met and a statement of this kind seemed out of character for her.  Yet it was a theme she came back to with some regularity.

She never elaborated on how and when she thought this science might develop but she seemed sure that someday it would.

Marj died in 1995.

Now let’s fast forward a couple of decades from the time of Marj’s last workshops.  STAT News publishes an article about studies of the Alexander Technique’s impact on postural tone that includes a photo of this contraption:

It called “The Twister” and I’m sure Marj would have loved it – and probably would have wanted to try it out herself!

it was developed at the Oregon Health and Science University and used by Dr Tim Cacciatore, PhD to measure, among other things, the effect of Alexander Technique lessons on postural tone.  Dr Cacciatore is now a neuroscience researcher at the Institute of Neurology, University College London where he is engaged in a series of studies on this general topic.  He also happens to be certified as an Alexander Technique teacher.  You can see a video about the Twister here.

The first few of these studies have been completed and the evidence is now pretty clear that lessons in the Alexander Technique change the way anti‐gravity muscle tension is regulated, reducing stiffness along the spine and in the hips. You can read these studies here, and listen to a podcast interview about them with Dr. Cacciatore here.

 

Actually, for some time there has been growing evidence of connections between the Alexander Technique and neuroscience.  As Henry Fagg notes in a recent article in STAT News: “Over the last decade there has been an explosion of neuroscientific evidence which is of possible relevance to, even if it is not explicitly about, AT.”  Cacciatore’s studies are the latest, and certainly the most explicit, manifestations of that trend.

***

So how was it that Marj Barstow, with absolutely no formal scientific training, could be so sure this would happen some day?

Certainly it had something to to her over 60 years teaching during which she was always trying out new ways to teach.  She once told me that she had been thinking about and experimenting with Alexander’s discoveries every day since she first read one of his books in the early 1920s.

Marj just knew that science would someday begin to understand the mind-body link that she was living every day of her life.

***

Can you imagine Alexander’s discoveries having an influence on the development of neuroscience?  Can you imagine developments in neuroscience influencing the ways in which his discoveries are taught?  Seems like a fertile field for exploration.

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Technique tip from a Card Shark

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To paraphrase a verse in The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, it’s not a good idea to count your poker winnings while you’re still at the table.  The time to do so after the game is over.  (Because of copyright restrictions I can’t print the exact lines here, but you can listen the song at the bottom of the page. I highly recommend this since the actual phrase is an excellent tool for students and teachers to remind themselves of an extremely important aspect of the Alexander Technique. I use it all the time in my own teaching.)

In a last week’s podcast, I wrote about the willingness to take a chance – a “gambling chance” – that seems to be so much a part of the Alexander Technique world.

Applying Alexander Technique principles in your life can be seen as a series of experiments – you direct your thoughts in a way that seems like it might improve the way you function and sometimes it turns out to be useful.  And sometimes it does not.

It’s almost a cliche to say, as I did last week, that you can learn something useful either way.

But let’s say you “win” the bet and your new thought brings about a change that is clearly beneficial.  For example: You’re experimenting with walking and you say to yourself, “I’m not tensing my neck” as you walk, alternating that with plain old everyday walking.  You notice that your walking is easier with the Alexander directing, perhaps by sensing that your feet don’t hit the floor so hard with each step.

That moment of success can be surprisingly dangerous.

How so?  Because the lightness of you feet is a new and enjoyable sensation and it’s extremely tempting for you to shift your focus to to that nice new feeling. And away from the mental directing that made that nice new feeling possible.  It’s all too easy – and tempting – for something like this sequence of thoughts to take place: “I’m not tensing my neck. I’m not tensing my neck. Wow, my feet feel so light as they arrive at the floor. My feet feel so light.  I’d like to keep that feeling. etc etc.”

It’s the kind of experience that every Alexander Technique teacher and student has had.

And it’s a trap because your intent has now shifted away from process and towards result.

Kenny Rogers’ advice is exactly what’s needed here.  Of course you’re glad about the nice feelings or release just as you’re glad about your earnings in a poker game.  But you don’t want to dwell on nice feelings while you’re experimenting with self-directing since they take you away from those directions   And you don’t want to “count your winnings” while the game is still in progress because you need all your wits to play well.

There’s plenty of time for counting after the game…and after the Alexander Technique experiment.

***

I think it would be interesting for other teachers and students to hear of your experiences with this potential obstacle to Alexander Technique success.

Here’s Kenny’s advice – it’s a great song, but if you want to skip to the key phrase, it’s at about 1.10 minutes:

 

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Take a gambling chance”

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That’s a phrase the late Marjorie Barstow used a lot.  When she was 90 years old, someone she had never met called and asked if she’d fly – by herself – across the country, to a city where she’d never been, to teach an Alexander Technique workshop.  She agreed and when we talked about it later she told me “Well, I thought I’d just take a gambling chance and go.”

Her inclination was always to say “yes” to anything new.  When she was only in her 70s, she was asked to spend two months in Texas teaching the Alexander Technique to groups.  As she writes in her preface to the Centerline edition of Use of the Self, “This (invitation) delighted me as I had wondered for some time if the Technique could be taught successfully to groups of students.  This gave me the chance to explore this idea and I started off alone driving to Texas, eager to be in a new situation (italics mine). My first class in Texas and my subsequent teaching have proven that the Technique can be taught successfully to groups of students and I have found my students excited and happy with their experiences with Alexander’s discovery.”

Actually F. Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique, had had a similar experience nearly eighty years earlier.  As he recounts in his Autobiographical Sketch (Published in Articles and Letters), while in Melbourne, he was approached by the secretary of a theological college asking if he would take a number of his students in class.  He told the secretary that he had “…never attempted to teach a number of pupils together” and that he doubted in would prove successful.  “Nonetheless”, he wrote, “if he and the students were prepared to take a risk on this (italics mine) I was quite prepared to undertake the experiment.”

Reflecting back on the experience he said, “At the end of a couple of months I had reason to be thankful that I had consented to take the students in class…”

Of course, it might be said that Alexander’s biggest gamble was leaving Australia.  In 1904 he boarded an ocean liner bound for England to seek fame and glory in London.  Quite a leap of faith on his part and, fittingly, the trip was financed by a long-shot bet on a racehorse!

Clearly this willingness to “take a gambling chance” seems to be a feature of the Alexander Technique community.

I would even say that it’s an integral part of the Alexander Technique teaching and learning process.  Whenever students experiment with an Alexander direction, or teachers with a new way to convey Alexander’s discoveries to their students, they are “taking a gambling chance”.

It might work.  It might not. Either way, something useful can be learned.

I’d love to hear about some “gambling chances” you’ve taken in your Alexander Technique journey.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Alexander Attitude

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I recently watched a short PBS News Hour piece about the American hero John Glenn.  Fifty years ago, Glenn became the first person to orbit the earth and he was being interviewed about that historic – and extremely dangerous – flight and about his thoughts on today’s space program.

Here’s the interview:

Towards the end, the interviewer asked Glenn – who is 91 years old – a question I’m sure was on every viewer’s mind: How did he manage to keep in such great physical and mental shape?

“A good attitude and exercise” was his immediate reply.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that answer over the past few weeks.  Here’s one dictionary definition of attitude that resonated with me: “position or posture of the body appropriate to or expressive of an action, emotion, etc.”

John Glenn at the time of his second space flight.  He was only 77 at the time.

Interestingly enough, the words attitude and aptitude share a linguistic root. One definition of aptitude is “the state or quality of being”.  Glenn’s “state of being” seems exceptional for a person of his age.

What I find interesting about these definitions is that suggest a physical link to what is usually considered a mental state – that the way you organize your body can affect your attitude.

This is not be at all surprising to Alexander Technique students and teachers – the Technique is all about releasing habitual tensions that get in the way of free self-expression. Many of us have experienced improvements in our general attitude towards life as we’ve freed ourselves from those tensions.

I can still vividly remember a residential Alexander Technique workshop I took in rural England a few months after I started with lessons.  The afternoons were largely free and I would often use that time to explore the narrow one lane roads in the neighborhood.  I was struck by how much easier my walking had become – but even more by how unexpectedly happy I felt.

Here’s a little experiment you might want to try right now: Let your attention go to some situation in your life that concerns you.  Notice your attitude towards it. Then, quietly say this to yourself for a few seconds: “I am not tensing my neck.” Say this without any effort or expectation on your part.

Now let go of that neck-intention for a few seconds and then bring it back, again for a few seconds.  Shift back and forth a few times.

Now, thinking back, did anything about your attitude toward the situation change during your experiment?  And what do you notice about your attitude right now?

I’d love to hear your experience with this

 

Pity Poor Posture…So Terribly Misunderstood

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A British army recruiting poster from the 1930s showing a Sergeant Major’s “good posture”.  You can see why Posture is so upset.

I recently tried to do an interview with Posture for the Alexander Technique podcast, but he’d moved so far from civilization – and good internet connections – that the audio quality was terrible.  But he has an important point he wants to make, so I’ve transcribed part of our conversation here:

Me: It’s good to get a chance to talk to you Posture.  I am curious why you’ve moved to what you describe as an “undisclosed and very remote” location?

Posture: Thanks for asking. I moved far away from civilization because I felt I was undergoing so much misuse. What was once my greatest joy had become a living nightmare.

Me: How so Posture?

Posture: Well I used to love being both a noun and a verb.  That opened up so many opportunities for me to hang out with all my word buddies.  And I thought I was performing a useful service for humans.

Me: Well you’re still a noun and verb…

Posture: Stop right there!  A noun for sure but my use as a verb has almost entirely disappeared.  It now pretty much always has a negative connotation.  Nobody likes someone who’s “posturing” – that’s what politicians do – and who likes them these days?

Me: OK, I can see that, but what about your noun function?  That seems to be going well for you.  I’m always seeing and hearing advice on how to improve posture.

Posture: That’s just what I’m trying to tell you!  When people hear my name today, they immediately think I’m a position and try to get themselves into the right one. Then they talk about their “poor posture” and that they just can’t seem to hold it…they just go on and on and make themselves stiff.  And, worse for me, they’re never happy talking about me, or demonstrating what they think I am.

Me: So what should they be thinking when they hear your name?

Posture: They should be thinking that I’m a process, not a place.  And an enjoyable process at that! If you’re alive and breathing – which by the way is movement – there will never be a right position to hold. You just can’t hold a movement. Trying to do that doesn’t make sense, and it almost always makes things worse.

Me: So you’re saying your always misunderstood?

John Dewey being taught by F. Matthias Alexander

Posture: Not always, thank goodness, but most of the time.  People in your field, the Alexander Technique, get it and some others do too.  By the way, one famous student of your work, John Dewey, totally got it.  But he’s been dead for half a century.  I miss him terribly… (Posture takes a break to compose himself here.) People like Dewey made me feel understood, cared for even.  For awhile after there was still Marjorie Barstow, but then she died, and well…

You know, when I’m feeling really down, I think of something she once said: Life is really moving from one position to another. We never stop and say, “This is right–this is my posture, this is the way I ought to be”. If we do that, we’re stiff trying to hold that posture. It isn’t natural for our bodies to be held in positions.

Just thinking about that helps me remember my glory days.

Me: Well let’s hope that we can restore your verb-ism, if I can use that phrase, to it’s proper role.  Thank you so much sharing your thoughts.

Marjorie Barstow, 1899 – 1995

Posture: Thank you for listening.  You’ve no idea how lonely it is for me here. Nobody knows who I am. There doesn’t even seem to be a word for me here – everyone just is good posture.

Me: Hang in there Posture – we’re going to work to bring you back here where you’re sorely needed!

***

After our interview, I asked Posture if he could recommend some material that would help visitors to my blog better understand his concerns.  He thought for awhile and finally said he thought this interview would be helpful:

Posture has promised to read your responses to this blog – so please, please send him a message.  He’s really not doing well. I had to cut out, at his request, some of the saddest moments of our interview.

 

The Power of Negative Thinking

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Just say no.

You’ve all heard this. Popularized by Nancy Regan in the 1980s as part of the “war on drugs” it later morphed into campaigns against violence and pre-marital sex.

The phrase gained a lot of attention at the time, not all as intended.  I remember the drug dealers in Washington Square Park in Manhattan in the 90s were easily identified by their prominent “Say No to Drugs” buttons!

Today the slogan is generally considered to have been useless at best – in large part because it was making unrealistic assumptions about what people could, or wanted to, change.

Which is too bad because a well thought out “just say no” can be a very effective tool for self transformation. The key is to say no to things you can do, but don’t want to.

Here’s an example which I think will illustrate this – and which you can try for yourself:

Most of us create excess tension somewhere in our bodies.  If you have a pretty good idea where you’re habitually tightening up – could be your shoulders, your chest, your pelvis, whatever – you can use it for the little experiment below.  If you’re not sure where to put your attention, put it on your neck.

Now walk back and forth across the room.  When going in one direction, walk as you usually do.  When you walk in the other direction, softly think “I am not tightening my (neck, shoulders – whatever region of your body you have chosen to experiment with)”.

The “I am not” part of this phrase is very important, but feel free to experiment with other words that mean something like “tightening” – maybe tensing, squeezing, compressing or any other similar word you like.  Feel free also to experiment with other activities you do – speaking, chopping vegetables, whatever.  Simply alternate between your usual way of doing them, and gently adding this self-directing phrase.

And remember a key word here is softly – whichever version of the phrase you are use is best conveyed to yourself without any pressure, detailed instructions or expectations.  Last week’s blog has more information about this.

If you feel you’d like more guidance, or want more information about the usefulness of “saying no”, you can listen an interview on the topic here:

and to several other audio interviews about this precess here.

Have fun, see what you notice and please share your experiences here.

Image: zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“A Little bit of Nothing”

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Marjorie Barstow 1899 – 1995

That’s how Alexander Technique teacher Marjorie Barstow often described her work.  Sometimes, towards the end of her four-week summer workshops she’d say to the group: “Now when you get home, and people ask you what you learned in Nebraska, you probably shouldn’t tell them you learned a little bit of nothing!”

Her “little bit of nothing” was some of the lightest, most delicate – and most powerful and transformative – hands-on guidance I’ve ever experienced.

I think what gave her teaching that special power was a very clear intention coupled with the softest of touch, which I believe reflected the softness and lightness of that clear intent.

I’ve noticed in myself and others that when we focus on something that’s very specific – a book we’re reading, a computer screen, carrots we chopping – it’s easy to add a bit of tension to that focusing.  This can take many forms – a furrowed brow, neck and torso tightening, or restricted breathing for example.

Most of us have much less of that kind of tension when thinking about more general topics – such as “What a nice day it is.” or “I saw a wonderful movie yesterday.”

What we’re not used to, in the West at least, is combining lightness of mental intent with a clear intention about something very specific.  Marj was a master of that and it’s an important part of what made her teaching so powerful.

It’s also what can make Alexander Technique self-directing powerful.

Here’s a little exercise I use with my new students to help them develop this skill for themselves when applying their Alexander Technique directions:

I have them sit in a chair and ask them to tell me the color is a small table in in one corner of the room.  It’s a very ordinary table and it’s doubtful they would have noticed it before.  When they say “brown” I ask them how much of an effort they needed to come up with that answer.  Mostly they say none at all, but I point out they did have to shift their awareness from wherever it had been before to this little, boring, brown table.

I then have ask them to stand up, take a walk around the room and sit down again. And as they do so to have enough awareness of the table that they could easily answer a question about it either by remembering it, or knowing where to look to get the answer. I also tell them not to worry in the slightest if they forget about the table, but when they notice they’ve forgotten, to easily bring it back into their consciousness.

In other words, have a light interest in something very specific they would not have thought about before.

Most students can do this right away with almost no effort on their part.  A few go reflexively into concentration mode and it takes a few repeats and a bit of coaching to get them to let go of that.

Once they’re able to do this I tell them that if they’re using more effort than they just did when they think their Alexander Technique directions, they’re doing too much.

If you’re a student or teacher of the Alexander Technique, play around with this and see what you notice. Then think up some other ways of experiencing lightness of thought and specific intent, perhaps involving sound or some other sense.

If you’re not an Alexander student or teacher, next week’s blog will give you some simple Alexander self-directions that you can explore in this light, easy way.

I’d love to hear your experiences with this procedure.  And I’d love to hear about other ways you’ve thought up to develop this combination of specificity and lightness.

Desk Photo© Alexander Knjazhetsky | Dreamstime.com

Chillin’ with Mister A

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F. Matthias Alexander

That’s Mister Alexander we’re talking about.  F. Matthias Alexander, developer of the Alexander Technique and a pioneer in the field of mind-body studies.

In his early teaching days, so the story goes, his students needed to take a short rest after lessons with him and there happened to be a large couch in his outer office they would use.  Alexander, never one to waste an opportunity, assigned his assistants the job of working with them a bit while they were lying down.

This lying down work morphed into what is now known as Alexander “table work”, often a staple of Alexander Technique lessons.  Along with this development came the realization that  students could benefit by doing some lying down on their own at home for a few minutes a day.

But not just any old lying down.  For maximum benefit, a fairly firm surface is required, the knees need to be elevated with respect to the hips and there needs to be some support under the head.

Over time, it was found that the “Alexander Technique Lying Down Position” could be very helpful even for people who were not having lessons in the Technique. The firm surface provides useful feedback about what our back is doing and the position itself tends to encourage a lengthening of the spine and release of harmful tensions throughout the body.

A great deal more information about this process, sometimes now called “semi-supime” or “constructive rest” is available here. If you feel you’re carrying excess tension in your body, give it a try for perhaps 15 minutes a day for a few days and see what you notice.

I would love to hear your experiences with this method of tension release, whether it’s been for a few days or many many years.

What’s the Use…of the Alexander Technique?

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There’s not a lot of jargon in the Alexander Technique, but the word “use” – as pronounced in the title above – has a special meaning that’s worth thinking about because it relates directly to just about everything we do.

Use, in Alexander parlance, is a kind of shorthand word for the quality of how well, or poorly, we use (rhymes with loose) ourselves in all our daily activities.*  Putting it another way, how efficiently we perform those activities and how little, or how much, unnecessary tension we create while doing so.

Helping our students learn to improve the overall quality of their use is one of our major goals as Alexander Technique teachers.

One of the most important discoveries of F. Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique, is that our use patterns tend to manifest across a range of activities.  For example, someone who over-tenses their neck in order to speak is very likely to doing something similar while walking, or chopping vegetables, or working at a computer.  Helping a student improve their use in one activity often carries over into others.

I’ve found it’s helpful for my new students to be on the lookout for examples of good use and poor use.  Sadly, examples of poor use are all to easy to spot these days – hunched shoulders, shallow breathing, clenched jaws are a kind of modern day epidemic.

What about examples of good use?

My personal favorite is the late actor, dancer and singer, Fred Astaire.  His movies are always available on TV and I urge my students to record one or two and then make a point of watching Astaire in scenes where he is not doing his spectacular song and dance routines – ordinary scenes where is just walking, or talking or doing other mundane activities.

I suggest they turn the sound off, so as not to be distracted by the plot, and gently focus on how he moves.  If you try this yourself, you’ll soon see just how smoothly and effortlessly he carries himself, with absolutely no wasted energy.  You may find, as have many of my students, that just watching him in this way actually triggers a bit of release in your own tension level.  You may, for example, sense your breathing becomes a bit easier or your body feels a bit lighter.

Here’s a nice clip you can watch right now to give this a try.  Notice how seamlessly Astaire transitions from walking and talking into singing and dancing and how he makes those transitions without adding any unnecessary tension to his body:

Let me know what you experience – I’d love to hear from you!

*There’s a bit more to be said about the term use and if you’d like to explore the topic further, What’s the Use is a good place to start.

Devils, Tigers, a Hollywood actor and Alexander

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Quick – what do you think of when someone mentions Tasmania?

For a lot of people it’s the Tasmanian Devil, popularized by cartoons and comic strips.  Characterized by its pungent odor, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding, it’s probably not Tasmania’s best ambassador to the world.

For others it might be the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger or the island’s famous native son Eroll Flynn, a movie actor known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films and his flamboyant lifestyle.

So who’s the Tasmanian Alexander?

Well definitely not Alexander of Macedonia, aka Alexander The Great! India was the closest he ever got to Tasmania.  No, it’s F. Matthias Alexander, developer of what’s become known as the Alexander Technique and one of the great mind/body thinkers in modern times.

He was born in 1869 in Wynyard, Tasmania, the son of two convicts who had been transported to Tasmania from England. Through years of personal self-observation and experimentation, Alexander developed a number of very important insights into human posture and movement, and how we can learn to use those insights to improve our physical and mental functioning.

Alexander’s origins were humble, but over time his work came to be lauded by famous scientists, writers and intellectuals – and by many thousands of other students of his work.  Aldous Huxley based a character in one of his books in part on Alexander.  The famous American educational reformer and philosopher John Dewey wrote the introduction to three of his books.  He was the subject a Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1973.  The Alexander Technique has received numerous other medical and scientific endorsements.

It is my intent to use this blog to help promote greater awareness of Alexander’s work, and of the Alexander Technique.  And to popularize – in the best sense of that word – Alexander’s discoveries, and make them accessible to anyone who wants to explore them.

(I would also love to see greater recognition of Alexander in Tasmania itself.  I was amazed to see no mention of him on Tasmania Top Ten or any of the Tasmanian information sites.  Perhaps an Australian Alexander Technique teacher or student will bring this omission to the attention of the the right people in Tasmania? )

I welcome your comments and suggestions.  You can use the comment form below and/or subscribe to the blog using the form near the top of the right-hand column.

This is my very first blog! I would be remiss not to thank my Alexander Technique colleague Imogen Ragone for setting up the site for me, and for providing much-needed help in navigating WordPress software.  She’s definitely the go-to gal for anyone who wants to get started with social media, a website or anything else to do with the web.