Merry Christmas Everybody

This is the last blog for three weeks, as I take a well earned rest and it is a short one. below are three clips embodying different types ways of celebrating the season. The first, as I was forced to admit recently, I remember from first time round in 1973 and it everybody is having fun - they are also pulling down, interfering with their poise and balance. From an Alexander point of view this is not the way to go about things but I remember it as fun at the time.

Fun is important, but how you embody it well that can carry a cost or it can be joyful and uplifting, as with the following two clips. The first involves Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers and is here just to prove that you can have fun, joy, poise and balance at the same time. The second is there, to illustrate a different way of being, one that is also poised and balanced.

So, finally the third clip, it is there because it is Christmas, it features my favourite painting and most of all it remind's me of my mum, who died just over three years ago. She always used to listen to the Kings College carol service on the radio and the opening verse always sends shivers up my spine, stills me and tells me Christmas has started, even though she is no longer here.  

What ever you have planned for Christmas and the New Year, have fun and if you can, be poised and balanced whether your are dancing your socks off or singing your heart out with some carols or hymns. Many of which invite you to open your eyes, lift up your heads and open your hearts and the questions is as always, how to do this. Merry Christmas Everybody and a Happy New Year to all when it comes. 

Going Up Stairs 2 - The Steps

How to go up stairs – which of course need to be laid out as step 1, step 2 .....

Step 1: Is to stop at the bottom of the stairs and give yourself a few moments.

Step 2: Is to notice how you probably want to lean forward into the stairs you go up and push off your leading leg. The leaning forward is really a pulling forward that starts with the neck.

Step 3: Keeping your neck free here means not pulling forward, it is an act of inhibition, that if carried out successfully interrupts all previous patterns, it is part of what makes the use of the neck and the head in relation to the torso the primary control. Carried out successfully you will probably feel your weight shift to your heels; do not try to shift your weight directly.

Step 4: Allow your eyes to focus on where you want to go. This is really important, most people go wrong here either by attending directly to themselves, or by concentrating which really just involves holding your breath.

Step 5: Make sure you are carrying out steps 3 and 4 while carrying out any subsequent steps.

Step 6: It is useful to imagine a horizontal plane, one that will move upwards with each step. It is useful here to remember what the old Scottish shepherds used to say about going up hills, which is not lean in to them, but just imagine you are walking on the flat. The horizontal plane is one that you want your forehead to move into. Now rehearse the idea of your forehead moving into the horizontal plane, all the time taking care to make sure that you maintain the step 2 and 3 of not pulling forward with the neck and being focussed, as well as not actually moving the forehead forward. Experientially if you get this right then it usually seems like it is impossible to move without tightening your neck by pulling forward.

Step 7: Now it is time to just allow yourself to go up the stairs and it is important that you accept, that as you move off at the beginning, you will probably pull forward a little bit. That is not only alright but helpful and necessary, as it allows you to build up your awareness of what you need to inhibit and you can improve it next time, until going up stairs becomes easy. You will be using yourself better anyway if you have stopped and thought through the steps outlined above.

Finally, remember as I said last week if you lack Alexander experience then this is something that can generally be quickly and easily taught – just get in touch and we can arrange something. Most of all remember not to take this too seriously, play with it and have fun.

Going Up Stairs

I ran into an old pupil this week, someone I had taught a few years ago. Although he recognised me, he could not immediately place me, what had remained with him was what I had taught him, he had it as an ingrained habit when it came to getting out of a chair or going up stairs. His appreciation of being able to go up stairs easily, echoed a conversation with  a web designer who I had been talking to a couple of days before. They too had, had lessons, although not from me and had found it most useful for going up stairs. Something that Edinburghians can  get a great deal of practice with  in tenements and the various sets of steps that exist across the city. If you add in Edinburgh's various hills, it is a useful place to know, how to easily go up.

In order to change how you go up stairs, to move from it being effortful to easy, you have to change your conception or understanding of the 'how' of your use, and the act. This is constructive conscious control in action, and involves a movement between the understanding or conception and the ability to enact a co-ordinated use of the self.

When it comes to going up stairs, this is what Alexander would have called a physical act and the standard of functioning achieved for him would depend on both the conception of the act to be performed and the ability to then carry it out with a co-ordinated use of the self. Or much more simply and what I tell pupils is that before we act, we need to prepare, and then we need to act. Action, has two stages and the first determines the qualities and standard of the second.

That first stage is when we can start to re-educate ourselves into a different use or co-ordination of ourselves. It is where we need to first, stop or pause, to exercise conscious control for our process of conceiving of what not to do, as much as of what to do. Conceiving  though depends on how we are at the time in ourselves, in other words, on our use and co-ordination, which in turn depends on our conception. We are a ‘strange loop’ moving between phases that we think of as mental and physical, with each always dependent on the other. We are as Alexander said ‘pyscho-physical’, we are as cognitive scientists are saying embodied.

Next week as, I'll give detailed instructions as to the practical steps to going upstairs, which will be easy to follow, if you have some Alexander experience here and can easily and quickly be taught if not.

The Use of The Self

Understanding Alexander’s work in its fullest and deepest sense takes a life time because his technique is a technique for living and conscious control is something that has to be lived. As one goes further, the limits of the known become more obvious and unknown possibilities beckon, to be faced, to be accepted, to become known in themselves.

‘Reasoning into the unknown’ is how one of Alexander's pupils described his work. It was a phrase he picked up on and repeated in one of his books. Books which are anything but easy to read and to understand, which is in part down to Alexander’s style and in part to the need for the experience of constructive conscious control, as a lived experience over time. Otherwise one moves off down the wrong track missing the import of Alexander’s thought and work.

In other words understanding Alexander’s work is not just to be understood intellectually but practically, and in saying it is to be understood practically that means it is to be understood intelligently as well. Intelligence and practicality go together in understanding and the development of ‘Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual’ and ‘The Use of the Self’, which are the titles of Alexander’s second and third books. These are difficult, abstract phrases, which when understood, are simple, functional enhancing one’s well being and general standard of functioning, as they are experienced and understood.

It is worth spending some time on understanding what Alexander means by these phrases and today as I have previously blogged on ‘constructive conscious control,’ I want to look at the use of the self.  For it is here with this simple phrase that people often go wrong turning ‘the use of the self’ into the ‘use of the body’. It is a common enough error among new pupils and totally understandable and pardonable if you are starting lessons with a view to helping back or neck problems. It is less pardonable when it is repeated by a teacher, which unfortunately sometimes happens, or as also happens, someone purporting to understand Alexander’s work from reading the books.

The reason it is less pardonable is because Alexander is very clear that he has no wish to separate mind and body, they are for him a psycho-physical unity. Which again is another one of his phrases that is easy to pass by, as too difficult to understand. Yet, it is rewarding in the end, as one begins to appreciate the scope of his work, in its reach, its application to everything and in its potential primacy in everything, as discussed last week.

The feature of psycho-physical unity which is pertinent here is that instead of thinking of the body as something separate to be commanded, we must think of all of our different mechanisms, systems and realise they are part of something whole, something whole that is our selves. The self for Alexander encompasses everything, he does not initially differentiate it into separate systems, which is not so very different from where some modern psychologists start and I’ll return to this soon.

In the meantime I want to close with a simple practical thought as to why the difference between thinking of the use of the self says something different to the use of the body, and it is this, because the self brings with it not just the use of the eyes but the ability to direct attention, which is a basic feature of conscious control. And practically speaking without understanding about the direction of attention and the use of the eyes it is hard to proceed with learning Alexander Technique. Again more on this soon.