Comments

The Fork in the Road — 9 Comments

  1. Thanks for this post, Robert.
    Some of us who have been in severe musculoskeletal pain realize, at some point, that we are causing our own pain. Either we realize it on our own, or with the help of an Alexander Technique teacher. In my case it didn’t register with me that my horrible posture was causing my horrible pain, as obvious as it seems now. Once I corrected this perception, with the help of the Alexander Technique, I was on the path to recovering my life. I’m glad I took the Alexander Technique fork.

  2. Hi Robert,
    what a wonderful notes ,and i liked this.

    My story matches with the story.

    I noticed many incorrect ideas
    1. The exercise gives health and muscles.
    But, alexander says the way of doing the exercises bring good results.
    2. Praying GOD gives health.
    But, FM wont accept this phrase and says USE OF THE SELF is fundamental.
    3. People are born with manners.
    But, FM says a manner can be changed , still protecting our own manner .
    4.humans are not machines.
    But, fm says humans are coordinated machines.
    And many more….

  3. Taking the well-worn path can be a way to suppress fear and anxiety that come up when faced with the unknown. I have often found that it has taken me quite a bit of will-power an courage not slip back into the safety net of habit. Fear and chaos can be more of a deterrent than a destructive habit.

  4. Optical illusions are an example of mistakes involving perceptual expectations.
    Not as well-known is the auditory illusion of a tape loop of a voice saying a phrase. It’s a known perceptual science fact – depending on how young you are, you will hear the recorded voice loop saying multiple other phrases as the emphasis in your attention shifts on the syllables of that recording. Ever heard that?
    Of course, our movement sense being relative to whatever got learned is no different. Prove it by crossing your arms and then crossing them the other way. It’s tricky for most people and feels a bit wierd. But do the odd way five times and you’re already practicing it and it won’t feel so strange. Humans adapt. If you did it sixty times, both ways would feel equally “normal,” because that’s how long it takes to train a habit. Training a habit is easier than getting rid of what you can’t perceive.

    Anyway – I know this stuff about misperceiving oneself. When I started studying A.T. (I was 23) I was a noodle with a congenital limp. It made absolutely no difference in feeling to me whether I was up or down – I followed up with an A.T. teacher’s direction just as easily as I collapsed. The only reason I got motivated to do the up instead of the slump was because being up made me feel high, awake and sharpened my attention as if I’d taken some sort of psychedelic. I had no idea that being up instead of down would make me lose the limp. It totally surprised me.

  5. Thanks for that Franis. I also had absolutely no self-awareness when I started with AT teachers but the motivating force for me to continue were the huge, unexpected, changes for the good took place in the first few weeks – even the first couple of days! In a sense I never got to a “fork in the road” – I stumbled upon the AT by accident, thought it might be interesting to explore, and just continued for over 35 years.

    • Thankyou Jack. Having had a quick wiki search to remind myself of the Unforgiveable Sin I came across the Arabic, Shirk (SRK)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirk_(Islam) and realised that this may be the etymology of to ‘shirk’ responsibility in English.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>