Recalling that Alexander's work is about education and unlearning the habits that are getting us in the wrong, let's look at a quote from his first book, Man's Supreme Inheritance.
"The first step in re-education is establishing in the pupil's mind the connection that exists between cause and effect in every function of the body."
Now that's not hard to do, especially if you did yard work all day and have sore muscles all over your body. But what if it's in the area of a sore wrist from too much computer mousing? Or what if you HAVE to produce a big paper/recital/any-kind-of-stressful-project, and you develop a nervous tic in your face?
Alexander simply says, "You did it and are actively engaged in producing those symptoms, so just stop it!"
Fine, you say, what shall I stop?
Just stop.
That's right, stop.
Now for a game.
Decide on a "stimulus" that you react to. Examples include, the telephone ringing, a particular person's way of addressing you, a dog bark, or even your own desire to stand up straignt. Now take a few days to watch how you react to that stimulus. Make notes of what you observe. The more you observe, the more you are going to have ultimate control over how you choose to respond. Do you pull your head back? Do you feel a downward pressure on your ribcage? Do you jump?
Good! Now that you have followed in Alexander's footsteps, you will want to come back to the main controlling issue for vertebrates - stop doing that neck stiffening thing.
It took Alexander about ten years to sort that out. Havinf a teacher helps considerable. Look one up. If you're in the Rockford area, here we are!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Rockford Alexander Technique: Who Can Benefit?
It is normal to wonder about what sort of problems can be alleviated with lessons in the Alexander Technique, or Work as we prefer to call it. There really isn't a definitive answer, simply because problems don't always follow a linear pattern. If I said my hand was hurting because I had been hitting it with a hammer, you would say, "Then stop hitting it with a hammer!" That's an example of a linear pattern. But if you came to me and said, "What can I do to fix the pain in my foot that occurs when I play the piano?", and if I told you to stop stiffening your neck, you would think I'm crazy. It is hard to see the connection between the foot and the neck.
Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the Nobel Prize for his work in animal behavior, discussed his study of Alexander's work in his acceptance speech. After he and two other members of his family subjected the work to scientific scrutiny, he was able to say, "we...notice, with growing amazement, very striking improvements in such diverse things as high blood pressure, breathing, depth of sleep, overall cheerfulness and mental alertness, resilience against outside pressures, and also in such a refined skill as playing a stringed instrument."
That sounds like the process of lessons is actually triggering events that manage essential adaptive functions. If these essential functions are operating well, can you see that nutrition, elimination, oxygenation, rest and self control all have the potential to improve. Does this sound like an overall decrease of stress in life? Are there any problems that people face that don't relate to one of these areas?
Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the Nobel Prize for his work in animal behavior, discussed his study of Alexander's work in his acceptance speech. After he and two other members of his family subjected the work to scientific scrutiny, he was able to say, "we...notice, with growing amazement, very striking improvements in such diverse things as high blood pressure, breathing, depth of sleep, overall cheerfulness and mental alertness, resilience against outside pressures, and also in such a refined skill as playing a stringed instrument."
That sounds like the process of lessons is actually triggering events that manage essential adaptive functions. If these essential functions are operating well, can you see that nutrition, elimination, oxygenation, rest and self control all have the potential to improve. Does this sound like an overall decrease of stress in life? Are there any problems that people face that don't relate to one of these areas?
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Rockford Alexander Technique: What is the Point of Lessons?
If I were a violinist, which I am, or if I were a golfer, which I'm not, I would want to have a coach at least sometimes who I would trust to tell me how I'm doing. So I would play my violin and listen to the coach go, "Eh, you sound like a mosquito..." (which is what Jascha Brodsky used to say, notice I left out the end of the sentence), but then the coach would say something truly useful about my position and stance and help me do better.
So there is to be an actual goal in the Alexander lesson - to do better.
But what?
Raymond Dart, the anthropologist, lectured on Alexander's work in 1970. He had been a student of the work for decades in South Africa, having been attracted to it initially by, in his words, "my consciousness of the imperfections in my posture." Simply being aware that there is a problem is a great starting point, but part of the problem is thinking that it's all about posture.
Dart later points out in one of his conclusions, "We all have the same quota of head and body segments whether we totter about like children, run around the sports field, or perform programs on public platforms or in olympic contests. The way we use them depends on the degree of neural organisation or bodily and intellectual skill attained individually."
So here we have an answer to the question, "What are we trying to do better?"
We are trying to use ourselves better, all the parts of the self, brought together into one whole functioning vertebrate organism.
And here we have to make clear that there really is an end point in the lesson, and it is only that the individual becomes more fully himself as a coordinated person, not interfering with the natural abilities given to the vertebrate.
Now that's a big open question..."what is this natural ability?"
Just watch your cat pouncing and the baby learning to crawl and walk (assuming there is no structural interference with normal nerve system development). It's all right there in front of your face. Take a look at a portrait of the elder Ralph Vaughan Williams hanging in one of the museums in London. You'll see a fine example of a really badly coordinated individual. He didn't look well.
Lessons restore normal nerve system patterns that determine development and control of the parts. Who can be helped? We'll talk about that later.
So there is to be an actual goal in the Alexander lesson - to do better.
But what?
Raymond Dart, the anthropologist, lectured on Alexander's work in 1970. He had been a student of the work for decades in South Africa, having been attracted to it initially by, in his words, "my consciousness of the imperfections in my posture." Simply being aware that there is a problem is a great starting point, but part of the problem is thinking that it's all about posture.
Dart later points out in one of his conclusions, "We all have the same quota of head and body segments whether we totter about like children, run around the sports field, or perform programs on public platforms or in olympic contests. The way we use them depends on the degree of neural organisation or bodily and intellectual skill attained individually."
So here we have an answer to the question, "What are we trying to do better?"
We are trying to use ourselves better, all the parts of the self, brought together into one whole functioning vertebrate organism.
And here we have to make clear that there really is an end point in the lesson, and it is only that the individual becomes more fully himself as a coordinated person, not interfering with the natural abilities given to the vertebrate.
Now that's a big open question..."what is this natural ability?"
Just watch your cat pouncing and the baby learning to crawl and walk (assuming there is no structural interference with normal nerve system development). It's all right there in front of your face. Take a look at a portrait of the elder Ralph Vaughan Williams hanging in one of the museums in London. You'll see a fine example of a really badly coordinated individual. He didn't look well.
Lessons restore normal nerve system patterns that determine development and control of the parts. Who can be helped? We'll talk about that later.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Education of FM Alexander
For those robust readers, here is a quote from Aldous Huxley, who took lessons with Alexander.
"It is now possible to conceive of a totally new type of education affecting the entire range of human activity...an education which, by teaching them the proper use of the self, would preserve children and adults from most of the diseases and evil habits that now afflict them...I heartily recommend this latest and, in many ways, most enlightening of Mr. Alexander's books. In the Universal Constant in Living they will find, along with a mass of interesting facts, the ripest wisdom of a man who, setting out fifty years ago to discover a method for restoring his lost voice, has come, by the oldest of indirect roads, to be a quite uniquely important, because uniquely practical, philosopher, educator, and physiologist."
They all tended to write with very long sentences back then, and you can tell, with a little math, that he wrote this comment about Alexander's last book in 1945.
To summarize, I have shared with you the name of one of Alexander's books. Also, I have shared with you another person's comment about how broadly you can apply principles of Alexander's Technique - yes, it's not just for posture, back pain, Morton's Neuroma, or any other specific problem.
Now for a game.
Place your little finger above your top lip, between the lip and the nose. Opposite your finger, at the back end of the head, is the atlas, the first bone in the neck. That's where your head articulates. Now gently, very gently, tip your head left and right and feel the slight movement in the back of your head/neck. As you go through your day, give this area a thought once in a while. See if you can tell what you have been doing there.
And while you are at it, PAUSE!
...to be continued.
"It is now possible to conceive of a totally new type of education affecting the entire range of human activity...an education which, by teaching them the proper use of the self, would preserve children and adults from most of the diseases and evil habits that now afflict them...I heartily recommend this latest and, in many ways, most enlightening of Mr. Alexander's books. In the Universal Constant in Living they will find, along with a mass of interesting facts, the ripest wisdom of a man who, setting out fifty years ago to discover a method for restoring his lost voice, has come, by the oldest of indirect roads, to be a quite uniquely important, because uniquely practical, philosopher, educator, and physiologist."
They all tended to write with very long sentences back then, and you can tell, with a little math, that he wrote this comment about Alexander's last book in 1945.
To summarize, I have shared with you the name of one of Alexander's books. Also, I have shared with you another person's comment about how broadly you can apply principles of Alexander's Technique - yes, it's not just for posture, back pain, Morton's Neuroma, or any other specific problem.
Now for a game.
Place your little finger above your top lip, between the lip and the nose. Opposite your finger, at the back end of the head, is the atlas, the first bone in the neck. That's where your head articulates. Now gently, very gently, tip your head left and right and feel the slight movement in the back of your head/neck. As you go through your day, give this area a thought once in a while. See if you can tell what you have been doing there.
And while you are at it, PAUSE!
...to be continued.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Posture Control Checklist
Here it is, 2009, over 100 years since FM Alexander discovered not only the existence of the "primary control," but also how to use it well. But who knows about this in the United States?
When I crossed through customs at London's Heathrow airport in 1989, on my way to complete extra requirements for qualification as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, the attendant recognized the area I was studying. "Oh, it's about the back, right?"
My grateful nod of assent was mostly to indicate I was glad someone who could keep me out of the country had a sense of the noble purpose that drew me. I didn't want to engage him in a discussion of the merits of the long-view as compared with the "myopic view." But the question still remains, "What is Alexander's Technique good for?"
Just two years before this, in 1987, George Goodheart, one of the world's most wise, long-lived and knowledgable chiropractors wrote an article about his observations of Alexander's work on a patient. Her foot condition, Morton's Neuroma, cleared when she was "adopting the Alexander posture." Goodheart's article begins with the statement, "Most of us are familiar with the concepts of Alexander...who felt that the postural center is at the base of the skull."
I want to know who "most of us" really was in 1987.
But more importantly to this blog, we can see here another example of reducing Alexander's work to a thing about posture.
So like the customs guy and Dr. Goodheart, we also want to tend to reduce his work to something about a particular thing. Is it about the back? Is it about the posture? If it's about posture, what happens when you are an actor adopting a poor posture to convey character?
Well, as it turns out, FM Alexander's work is about neither, although you can say all maladies can be affected by his technique. Alexander's work is about how you use yourself in activity.
If you call it remedial education, then it is about unlearning poor habits.
If you call it physical therapy, then it is about engaging postural reflexes in a more efficient way.
Whatever you call it, Alexander challenges us to look at what we are doing with and to ourselves, and then to reconsider.
Pause.
Next time, we talk about what happens after the pause.
When I crossed through customs at London's Heathrow airport in 1989, on my way to complete extra requirements for qualification as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, the attendant recognized the area I was studying. "Oh, it's about the back, right?"
My grateful nod of assent was mostly to indicate I was glad someone who could keep me out of the country had a sense of the noble purpose that drew me. I didn't want to engage him in a discussion of the merits of the long-view as compared with the "myopic view." But the question still remains, "What is Alexander's Technique good for?"
Just two years before this, in 1987, George Goodheart, one of the world's most wise, long-lived and knowledgable chiropractors wrote an article about his observations of Alexander's work on a patient. Her foot condition, Morton's Neuroma, cleared when she was "adopting the Alexander posture." Goodheart's article begins with the statement, "Most of us are familiar with the concepts of Alexander...who felt that the postural center is at the base of the skull."
I want to know who "most of us" really was in 1987.
But more importantly to this blog, we can see here another example of reducing Alexander's work to a thing about posture.
So like the customs guy and Dr. Goodheart, we also want to tend to reduce his work to something about a particular thing. Is it about the back? Is it about the posture? If it's about posture, what happens when you are an actor adopting a poor posture to convey character?
Well, as it turns out, FM Alexander's work is about neither, although you can say all maladies can be affected by his technique. Alexander's work is about how you use yourself in activity.
If you call it remedial education, then it is about unlearning poor habits.
If you call it physical therapy, then it is about engaging postural reflexes in a more efficient way.
Whatever you call it, Alexander challenges us to look at what we are doing with and to ourselves, and then to reconsider.
Pause.
Next time, we talk about what happens after the pause.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Learning How to Stop
FM Alexander developed his technique around a demand. The demand was essentially, "Do Something!"
In his case it was the demand to get on stage and project his voice in an acting career. As his voice deteriorated, he learned that what was happening to him was the natural result of the conditions present, and those conditions were being created by HIM. So what do you do? Just change the conditions!
The difficulty here lies in the fact that those conditions have become an ingrained habit...and how do you change a habit? Just stop! The Nike commercial becomes a remedial education commercial with the addition of one word, "JUST DON'T DO IT!"
But then what is a person to do if you're not to do?
Alexander's key was that he stumbled onto the principle in vertebrate physiology called the primary control (his term). Simply, it is the fact that what happens in the head/neck relationship with the back determines how well things work for the rest of the body.
So when FM says "Stop," it means, "stop interfering with the right head/neck relationship."
Just one Alexander lesson can open your eyes to what he means there, but to get it fully, it's a good idea to have a few lessons.
It's not chiropractic, and it's not physical therapy, although it enhances the results in both of those fields. Just remember, the goal with Alexander technique is to help you retrain yourself to avoid habits that interfere with the best outcome.
In his case it was the demand to get on stage and project his voice in an acting career. As his voice deteriorated, he learned that what was happening to him was the natural result of the conditions present, and those conditions were being created by HIM. So what do you do? Just change the conditions!
The difficulty here lies in the fact that those conditions have become an ingrained habit...and how do you change a habit? Just stop! The Nike commercial becomes a remedial education commercial with the addition of one word, "JUST DON'T DO IT!"
But then what is a person to do if you're not to do?
Alexander's key was that he stumbled onto the principle in vertebrate physiology called the primary control (his term). Simply, it is the fact that what happens in the head/neck relationship with the back determines how well things work for the rest of the body.
So when FM says "Stop," it means, "stop interfering with the right head/neck relationship."
Just one Alexander lesson can open your eyes to what he means there, but to get it fully, it's a good idea to have a few lessons.
It's not chiropractic, and it's not physical therapy, although it enhances the results in both of those fields. Just remember, the goal with Alexander technique is to help you retrain yourself to avoid habits that interfere with the best outcome.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
New Hope for TMJ Syndrome
When FM Alexander was teaching in England in the early 1900's, he had a man come to him who suffered with severe TMJ syndrome. After a series of lessons, which at that time took many months, the problem vanished. Years later, Walter Carrington, the late dean of the Constructive Teaching Centre in London, happened to meet this man's doctor who gave him (and us) an interesting followup to this story.
Turns out original x-rays of the TMJ showed deterioration of the articular cartilage (that's very bad). After the lessons and the cessation of the TMJ problem, re-x-rays showed that the cartilage grew back. Isn't that interesting? Too bad this wasn't published as a case report!
Here's what we know about cartilage; it doesn't like too much oxygen, it grows better in an environment of lower temperatures and lower oxygen. From this we can see that inflammation caused by high pressure in the joint will eat up the cartilage. If you can change those conditions, what do you think will happen? Right! The cartilage grows back.
The complexity of TMJ Syndrome requires a thorough exam to find out the cause and determine the best course of action. At Alexander Technique in Rockford, IL, we look at the joints, muscles and nerves to find out the best, most efficient way to restore balance to the system.
Here we are, ready to help! 815-670-0245
Turns out original x-rays of the TMJ showed deterioration of the articular cartilage (that's very bad). After the lessons and the cessation of the TMJ problem, re-x-rays showed that the cartilage grew back. Isn't that interesting? Too bad this wasn't published as a case report!
Here's what we know about cartilage; it doesn't like too much oxygen, it grows better in an environment of lower temperatures and lower oxygen. From this we can see that inflammation caused by high pressure in the joint will eat up the cartilage. If you can change those conditions, what do you think will happen? Right! The cartilage grows back.
The complexity of TMJ Syndrome requires a thorough exam to find out the cause and determine the best course of action. At Alexander Technique in Rockford, IL, we look at the joints, muscles and nerves to find out the best, most efficient way to restore balance to the system.
Here we are, ready to help! 815-670-0245
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