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.