We Have Moved

This week the blog "Acting ‘As if…..’ The Importance of Mindsets and Learning How To Learn (Part 1)" can be found at the revamped website of the Edinburgh Alexander Centre . I will keep posting links here to new posts between now and the end of the year, to give people time to adjust to the move. Richard

Using the Alexander Technique to get a good night's sleep

A pupil returned last week and reported how their sleeping had improved as a result of their last lesson - they were getting a good night's sleep and waking up more refreshed. The need to think about how we use ourselves while sleeping, in my experience, is quite common. Alexander thought people’s use while sleeping was often worse than their waking use and, in many respects, this is probably true. What is also true is that as our use in our waking life improves, we become more aware of areas in our lives where we pull down and tighten up, which is something that often happens when to go bed and ready ourselves to sleep. We snuggle up into something that resembles the foetal position, holding ourselves tight, interfering with our breathing in a way that babies do not. Two things tend to result, the first is that we do not sleep as deeply as we might and secondly we wake up not just tired but stiff from holding ourselves tight over a number of hours.

Over the eighteen years I have been teaching, I have developed a simple lesson for teaching pupils how to apply the Alexander Technique to this, which in most cases sorts the problem out. 

It consists of five parts, which I am going to give you today.

1. Firstly, check the pillow height to ensure the neck is in alignment; it changes with whether you are on your back or your side. It's not a great idea to sleep on your front.
2. Next find out, by doing it, whether when you close your eyes, you look down and interfere with your breathing. The correction is very simple, just close your eyes again and this time, after you have looked down, keep your eyes shut but allow yourself to look ahead - you should find that your breathing just releases, if it has been held.
3. If you sleep on your side, then how you get there from your back is very important. Most people put themselves wrong by tightening and shortening their legs to turn - don't. You need let your head look in the direction of travel and bring your arm over your torso to point using your pinkie and the finger next to it in the direction of travel - to initiate the movement. If you know how to move from semi-supine to all fours, this is relatively easy. You should end up on your side, neither pulling everything forward or leaning back. Most importantly your breathing should be released.
4. The use of the arms is where people often go wrong, when lying on their side by wanting to tightly cuddle themselves, to give themselves comfort. To understand this, it is a good idea to lay the top arm on your side to help yourself become aware of what you do. From there bring it down to your habitual placement, if your breathing becomes held, then experiment with finding a way to bring the arm down and round without interfering with your breathing.     
5. Finally, make sure you are not pulling your knees together - they should always be going forward and away even if touching. Once again, if you have been gripping them together, you should find that your breathing is released when you stop. 

To summarise, what you are wanting to ensure is that you are not holding your breath in any way while sleeping. To learn to do this, it really is a matter of learning to put this into practice when you go to bed and want it all to be working in the morning. You will find then that you can gradually adjust over time to a more refreshing and comfortable sleep. If you find difficulties with this, then come along for a lesson and, providing you have some recent AT background, I can show you how to put this into practice in half an hour.

The Importance of Alexander's Work

Every so often I find myself reflecting on what the Alexander Technique is a technique for – it is a subject I have blogged about before. Last time, I addressed the question with what I thought Alexander's answer might be in terms of Constructive Conscious Control. Today I want to try a different tack based in part on observations made over the summer when I was taking a break from blogging. The summer with the Olympics and other things provided a rich source of observations with attendant questions as to the importance of both Alexander's observations and his technique.

Starting with the Olympics, in what I saw, what struck me most was how much better the athletes and other participants were trained in poise and balance, from twenty years ago. Reflecting on this change, which you can also see in football, I am aware of how scientists using video, such as Alain Berthoz, have come to understand the importance of the head, neck relationship in movement. What Alexander saw in the mirror has been captured on film and has presumably filtered down into the training programmes that Olympic athletes are using. That does not mean that they are developing Constructive Conscious Control, it just means that they are working better in terms of poise and balance, which certainly makes a difference. 

If my speculation is right about things filtering down, it has not filtered down further to a more general level, as a recent visit to my local swimming pool made clear. As I was leaving, a group of children was being instructed in the intricacies of the crawl. Their instructor was standing on the pool edge telling them to put their head down in order to crawl, which is dubious enough. What he was demonstrating though was not putting the head down, but pulling the neck forward while raising his shoulder and putting excess muscle tension into his arms. He had no practical understanding and was demonstrating to his charges how to disco-ordinate themselves and to make unnecessary effort that would interfere with their poise and balance in the pool, as well as their breathing. (If you want to understand how Alexander Technique can be integrated with swimming, check out the Shaw Method.)

Continuing out of the pool, I passed the Gravity Studio where three young women were working with weights, allegedly in harmony with gravity except they were not. Each one was pulling their head back, narrowing their back, exercising indeed, but exercising habits that are harmful, which risk injury, interfere with breathing and lower the general standard of functioning. 

So here at least there is a need for conscious control in being aware of both what one is doing and its implications. When it comes to teaching others, a basic understanding of use is necessary to see that others are not harming themselves, not practising disco-ordination whether in the pool, at games or in the classroom. This week is International Alexander Awareness Week and it is focussing on children and the importance of good habits being inculcated rather than the teaching disco-ordination.  Alexander wrote about the need for this over sixty years ago, as well as the need for those instructing others to be au fait with the principles of poise and balance, and to be able to teach and supervise people in accordance with these. The Olympics provides evidence that this is happening for elite athletes; where it is really needed is in schools not just in sports or even the arts but in everyday living – now that would be something. 

Alexander Technique And Sport

With the Olympics starting today in London, it is hard to escape sport for the next couple of weeks. One of the things all the sports on display have in common is the need for control, balance and poise. These are all things that Alexander Technique can help with, as well as avoiding injury, and Alexander Technique has been successfully used at this highest level. 

Rather, than recite a list that would include Olympic show jumpers, rowers, runners, including the London Olympics’ chairman Lord Coe, I thought it would be interesting to find some clips of great sporting moments demonstrating particularly good use. In the end, I decided to limit myself, to a man who was not an Olympian, but is regarded as the best batsman of all time – Don Bradman. Don Bradman was a man Alexander very much admired and in this clip from You Tube you can see why. 

If you watch Bradman demonstrating each stroke at 2.48 you will see that for each stroke he carefully puts lengthens over the leg he wants to support him before stepping forward or backwards with the other leg. The bat is raised as he goes over the supporting leg and is only used to make the stroke once the moving leg has been placed where Bradman wants it. As, he says they are all ‘practically the same.’ It is a beautiful display of control and use.

For those who crave a little Olympic Glory, here are two clips Seb Coe winning the 1500 in Moscow and then the British Gold medal winning coxless four rowing team in Athens where Mathew Pinsett and Alex Partridge are the two rowers who took lessons. They were taught by Caroline Chishom to ‘overcome an almost religious belief in the contracted muscle, an over-trained physique and an immune system on the blink.’ Semi-supine was to help them recover from races better, to prevent injuries and to boost their immune system. They were also taught about the importance of lengthening muscle for making longer more powerful strokes, while using the hip joints rather than bending at the waist. It all helped with all their other training to help them get Gold. 

No posts till September as its the Olympics and then the festival here in Edinburgh. 

Introducing Inhibition

Withholding consent, refraining from doing what one has always done, stopping yourself from relying on old habits, inhibiting, to use Alexander’s word, is the first step in his technique. The second is directing, but that can only come when one has first inhibited what one does not want.

Knowing what one does not want is actually the hard part, for it involves a ‘knowing what,’ that encompasses sufficient awareness of movement, for ‘know how’ to develop. So someone who reads in a book that they want to ‘keep their neck free, and allow their head to go forward up’ may be able to tell you that this is what is wanted without any awareness of what this actually means in their own case. 

Understanding what it means in your own case can be gained in many ways but is most easily done with a teacher.  Teachers, being different, use different approaches to helping pupils develop their own individual understanding. My own preferred ways of working start most often with looking at how pupils move from sitting to standing and how they move from standing into a walk. I use the two activities to help pupils develop a basic understanding of what they do not want, so that they can learn to refrain from starting off the movement, in their old familiar way, by relying on their habit.

What happens in both cases is that people unfamiliar with Alexander work pull forward by tightening their neck muscles, shifting their weight on to the balls of their feet as they shorten in stature. To not pull forward, to not tighten, is to keep the neck free in relation to the desired action of which the movement of coming forward is a constituent part. This is inhibition and the inhibitory part of what were called ‘guiding orders’ or ‘direction’ by Alexander.

There are a sequence of guiding order or directions, from head to toe, that flow in a particular order and taken together form a really good description of what we want and what we do not want in order to let everything flow. It is important to remember that within this positively stated description of keeping your neck free, allowing your head to go forward and up, there is first and foremost an injunction not to tighten, not to pull the head back, not to pull the head down, enfolded within it.

The practicalities of enacting this start with remembering you want to change things and stopping yourself from rushing into action by relying on habit. In stopping, at the beginning you are learning to rehearse for something new, to prevent the familiar from happening, so the unfamiliar can be brought about by wishing and willing. So, in relation to going from sitting to standing or moving from standing into a walk, you must allow yourself to lightly focus on where you want to go. By focussing your attention this way you begin to create the awareness within which you can inhibit what you do not want, the pull forward, the tightening, the shortening. 

From there directions as to what you do want can be rehearsed and at the ‘still point’ which is reached by following these stages, the ‘still point’ where one’s breathing is released, there is a sense for those beginning lessons of it being impossible to move without tightening. Reaching that place allows a new question to be posed of ‘how do I move without tightening, how can I move freely?’ Both are good questions that need to be answered, how you do that requires another blog. In the meantime, getting to the place where the questions have relevance is the task of all Alexander pupils. 

Alexander Technique and Chronic Pain – New Research

Following on from the recent research on Alexander Technique and chronic back pain, new research has been done on giving lessons to help people with pain management at an NHS Pain Clinic in England. While not a full clinical trial, the research evidence further supports the effectiveness of Alexander Technique in helping people with Chronic Pain. The people who took part in the study, while self-selecting, reported improvements in their quality of life and an ability to reduce medication. The pupils who did best were those committed to self-management and therefore learning what they could from the six lessons they were given. The lead consultant commented on the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique as a ‘psychological’ intervention noting that the overall pain experienced remained constant while feelings of well being and quality of life improved.

The number of lessons involved means that it would be surprising if people whose pain was chronic experienced any reduction in pain. If that was going to happen, it would be expected to take many more lessons and for some people the reality is that chronic pain is just going to be part of their daily life. That does not mean, as this research demonstrates, that one can do nothing to help oneself; that one has to live an ever diminishing life – there is still always a choice.
That choice centres on where one places one’s attention. 

The standard pain reaction involves a move from being aware of pain to directly attending to it. What happens in that move to attending to pain is that emergency response mechanisms get activated, the body tends to stiffen, and the meaning of the pain is sought in its implications for the immediate present and then the distant future. There is a psycho-physical response of our whole being. 

Where pain is ongoing of course the habit of attending to the pain, looking for it becomes established. What every parent, with a small child in pain, knows of course is that it is important to distract the child, to encourage it to look elsewhere. So with Alexander Technique and looking at habits in relation to pain, and not just physical pain either. The necessity is to learn to become conscious of where one is directing one’s attention, the nature of that attention and how consciously learning to direct attention elsewhere, in a manner where one’s breathing releases, deepens, changes things, produces feelings of well being, as well as establishing a sense of control as a new habit is established.

If Alexander Technique were solely concerned with distraction and the control of attention, it would not differ from other psychological approaches. What it adds is that in recognition of our embodiment, in its assumption that we are psycho-physical, it encourages people to develop control of their whole response, so that the postural mal-adaptions to chronic pain are lessened through the development of a manner of using one’s self that is optimal in terms of not just pyshco-physical functioning but of physical functioning and psychological functioning, as this research helps further establish. 

Knowing How v Knowing That

I first became aware of Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ while studying philosophy at Aberdeen University as an undergraduate. It is a distinction whose importance I have found myself reflecting on for a number of reasons, not least the importance Alexander placed on it in emphasising the importance of the ‘means-whereby’ we go about our business. Alexander, I think it is fair to say, was dismissive of ‘knowing that’; there are numerous accounts of him turning away from encounters with eminent people, who might have helped him promote his work, on the basis that for him their ‘use’ was obviously, shall we say, not what it might be.

I suspect that while necessary, in some senses to protect the developing use and practice of the Alexander Technique, it has rather isolated the Alexander world from developing its theory, which is there in the writings of Alexander. This is a pity, there is much the Alexander world can learn from others, equally there is much others can learn from us, in what we can observe and teach. 

I was reminded of this at the weekend when I was at Trinity College in Dublin, attending the European Personal Construct Association’s (EPCA) conference. I had the privilege of running a workshop linking my work as an Alexander Technique Teacher and as a Psychotherapist. I will spare you the full title but the workshop focused on how Alexander Technique and Conscious Control can be helpful inter-personally in getting at habits laid down in the early weeks of life. Habits that have a profound effect on how we experience ourselves and then others. 

While I think that not only did Alexander recognise a link and aim to work with it, I think that for many reasons his work and writings here are limited. Yet, they went on to inspire people like Margaret Naumburg who founded Art Therapy in the United States, Fritz Perls who started Gestalt Therapy, and through John Dewey, George Kelly who developed Personal Construct Psychology. Not enough work has been done to trace Alexander’s influence or to develop the theoretical links that would help expand his work in its practical reach.

On the ground individual teachers continue to make a difference, making links and finding people who are interested. Alexander Technique teachers have a lot to offer in terms of ‘know how’ or the ‘mean’s whereby’; we can learn to control not only our behaviour but what Alexander termed our ‘manner of reaction.’ He was explicit in his last book that people who were familiar with his work had missed the significance of his work here. 

Fortunately not everyone has missed it as a welcome bit of news in my inbox today attests to, in that Eric Donnison and Caroline Dale are organising a project to teach AT to the kids, parents and staff of Kid’s Company founded by the truly remarkable Camila Batmanghelidjh. It’s a project one can only wish well to in its proposed undertaking of offering Alexander Technique and its ‘know-how’ to people who have had a very raw start in life. 

Being Alive

Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 this week featured Elizabeth Walker, who at 97 is still teaching the Alexander Technique. She is the last living teacher trained by Alexander and has been teaching for seventy years. The interview contained a number of gems, the importance of taking the work seriously without being serious, the importance of the inhibition and keeping things free. Perhaps the most inspiring thing is, that Elizabeth is still working, not many 97 years old can say that. She is also still getting better at what she does, again how many people can say that at 97. The sceptically minded, who manage to listen, may think this is eulogising on the part of her student, who has come back for lessons. Yet anyone with any experience of Alexander Technique Teacher’s as they age, will recognise not just that it is plausible but it is truthful. Older teachers if they are any good, develop a clarity of intention, by stripping away all the unnecessary elements, to leave only what is necessary. It is one of the attractive features of being a teacher, you get better as you age, that’s what allows teacher to keep going through their eighties, often until ninety, doing what by any standards is a physical job. The secret of course is knowing how to use yourself, keeping yourself free, not tightening unnecessarily – this is not just true for teaching but any skilled activity. Elizabeth also made the case for her continuing to teach. It helps both her and her pupils feel alive. This is as good a reason for doing anything that I know, and it is one that George Kelly recognised as being an indication of successful therapy.

Feeling alive, a meaningful life, comes in many forms not just Alexander work – it comes from having something meaningful to do. The item following Elizabeth Walker on Women’s Hour rather reinforced this for me. It featured Rachel Wotton an Australian sex worker, who works with disabled people. It is a subject that outrages some but then I do not think they really consider the alienation and rejection that people who are disabled have when they find it difficult or impossible to find a partner. I suspect that this come in part from not wanting to think that the disabled get horny and want to have sex - just as much as the next person. 


If you want to think about this more, then a good place to start is the very funny, entertaining and touching French film Nationale 7.  I saw it a few years back and a working both as a Alexander Technique Teacher and a psychotherapist has confirmed the need for an open discussion and meaningful action here. Rachel Wotton made an intelligent case for this on Women’s Hour. Like Elizabeth Walker, her work is obviously meaningful for her and helps her feel alive; while again like Elizabeth she helps others to a better quality of life. Both women demonstrate in their lives what is existentially important, meaning, helping others and feeling alive and should be respected accordingly.

No blog for two weeks as I am away at conferences and training days. Women’s Hour is available on BBC I-Player until Tuesday 19^th June. Elizabeth Walker starts at 11mins and 55 secs, Rachel Wotton at  19mins and 20 secs. Elizabeth Walker is on You Tube here, while the website for a documentary on Rachel Wotton is here. 

Why We Need A Teacher

Alexander believed anyone could do what he did in working things out for himself; he also believed that lessons would reduce the time needed to do so. I am far from certain about the former statement, while being pretty sure of the latter. The problems in working it out for oneself are many, even if you have the excellent guide that is given by Alexander in chapter one of his third book ‘The Use of The Self.’ This account of how he worked things out is undoubtedly idealised, but in his idealisation Alexander lays out a pretty good framework for learning what he knew. 

Within that account the chief difficulty becomes apparent, namely the need to do something unfamiliar, not to rely on habit, not to rely on feeling, to allow something different to happen. All too often at the last second, we revert to the familiar, go with the habit, make our usual choice, missing the new road that is in front of us.

Alexander was well aware of this, as the most recent blog by Robert Rickover makes clear. Alexander’s practical experience of teaching both himself and others emphasised this tendency to revert, to rely on habit, to rely on old conceptions of how to go about things, even simple things like sitting and walking.

In talking of conceptions here, it is worth remembering a belief of Alexander’s, that John Dewey picked up on, namely that experience precedes conception. There are some very deep waters we could get into here about conception and what is going on in general, but from a practical point of view Alexander is right. Only when you have experience can you really begin to know, to have concepts in terms of ‘knowing how,’ which is very different from ‘knowing that.’

Getting the experiences is where a teacher comes in, where the teacher can help you gain in minutes experiences that it took Alexander months to work through. Those first experiences of difference in how you can move, how you might use yourself, are what allow you to begin to be aware of what you currently do, how you currently work, what you might stop, what might be right, what might be wrong in terms of how we function. 

We too often rely on the pre-verbal solutions of our childhood, modified haphazardly or sometimes modified consciously and badly, as our way forward. A teacher can help us correct these by making plain the implications of our patterns of use, our habits, not just verbally but through experience and words, putting the two together so we can learn the concepts for ourselves. As we do so, we develop Conscious Control for ourselves; we can use ourselves intentionally. 

Without a teacher we are liable to lose ourselves, always returning to old habits, relying on old feelings of right, that are wrong; tying ourselves in knots, missing the way forward, repeating old mistakes, following the old ways, that have led us into impasse, always, and forever will do so, unless, we first learn to stop, call a halt. With that a teacher can help, before pointing the way to a new use, new habits that can free us towards a better and more constructive use of ourselves.  

Sciatica And Semi-Supine

Exchanging emails with a friend today they told me of their plan to spend the weekend on the floor in the hope of easing their sciatica. This blog is an open letter of sorts to them about what they might do; how they might help themselves using the semi-supine procedure that I know that they have learned from their Alexander Technique lessons. 

I have a particular interest in sciatica; it was what led me to Alexander lessons in the first place. I was relatively young at 24 to suffer the severity of sciatic pain that I had; it would flair up making it extremely painful to walk and I would have to take time off work to let things settle down – anti-inflammatories after the first episode seemed to have no efficacy. I tried all sorts of treatment and became familiar with a number of different physiotherapy departments, went on the machines to have my spine stretched, even had surgery. The result was always the same, things would get better and I would go back to work; three months of thirteen-hour days (I was working as an accountant in London at the time) saw me off work again.

I only properly understood the cycle after my first Alexander Technique lesson, when I suddenly saw how the way I sat caused the pressure on the nerves that caused the pain. Now Alexander Technique did not cure the sciatica, it does not claim to, but it was the one thing that helped through, giving me control of my use and, through that, the ability to relieve the pressure.

At first, that control was only there, as sometimes happens, when I was lying in semi-supine, later it came when I was standing up, until now when I can get it pretty much almost anywhere. This allows me to live a full and active life, I can say I never cripple myself with sciatica now, if that is not tempting fate. A pain is almost always there in the background because of the way my back is, but to repeat, it does not bother me. I know enough to not attend to it, to direct my attention elsewhere, to interrupt the standard pain reaction in favour of elaborating what works.

And it is this, not the basic instructions for semi-supine (I’ll put them up on the blog sometime) that I want to tell my friend. Elaborate the orthogonal, go for the vertical, do not try and sort out the pain. You will only attend to it directly, end gain and make it worse. It is only when instead of relating to the pain directly by attending to it, that you allow yourself to begin to focus elsewhere, that things begin to work, almost by magic, except it is not magic, it’s predictable, repeatable, if you know about use and the use of the eyes.

If you can find a way to lightly focus on the ceiling, without concentration, without fixing the eyes, it will all start to work; it is a matter of getting curious and wondering. A helpful thought, sometimes, if the ceiling is too boring, the pain too distracting, is to imagine a brightly coloured mobile just above your eyes. If you allow yourself to see it, the same thing will happen, your eyes will open wide with wonder, things will start to work – you have created the awareness within which you can work with the directions. It is always the shift of attention, brought about through leaving yourself alone. When that happens, you start to breathe and things ease off. From experience, released breathing means a back that is working well; a back that is working well means released breathing. It’s chicken and egg sometimes, except in the case of sciatica, where the breathing comes first. 

Psycho-Physical Attitude and ‘The Tyranny of The Should’s’

Lessons this week reminded me how useful it can be to contrast how we use ourselves when we approach something from the perspective of ‘wanting’ to do it, rather than believing that we ‘should’ do it. Both ‘wanting’ and feeling that we ‘should’ do something are, from a psycho-physical perspective, attitudes within which certain uses of the self are embodied. 

With the former if directly expressed we will often come up into an attitude where we are focussed, freer, lengthening in stature, with our breathing released – we are properly speaking more relaxed; we are using ourselves well. In the latter, we respond to feeling that we ‘should’ do something by tightening around our faces, pulling forward, pulling down, making our movements jerky, as we force ourselves into an action, where our free choice is either denied or hidden. 

Whether we choose to do something because we want to or because we feel we should in different contexts, depends on habits that can reach back into early childhood.  Habits that we evolve in relation to how our will and spontaneity were construed by our parents and the culture we found ourselves in. 

Three caveats here, the first is that learning to recognise what we want, we are not always at first skilful at listening to ourselves, we too often carry an external threat with us, which we tighten ourselves against. Secondly, that once we can freely express what we want, it does not follow that we can freely move into carrying it out, we can try and then tighten ourselves. The freedom of thought and action, as well as the freedom in thought in action that Alexander advocates comes from sustaining inhibition through out the entire cycle of expression and action. Thirdly, to recognise what you want, to be able to express it, does not necessarily make for selfishness, egotism and the dominance of individual wishes and preferences. Rather, it allows for recognition of oneself, one’s desires, wishes, wants and the irreducibility of one’s freedom to choose for oneself and not to be slave to what psycho-analyst Karen Horney termed the ‘tyranny of the should’s.’

In developing Conscious Control of one’s own individual psycho-physical attitude here, it is worth remembering that Alexander was explicit in saying that it was not all about thinking about your head and neck, important as that is. What is important is thinking about why you are doing it, even the most unpleasant, unwished for tasks can be transformed by the change in experience that comes from recognising one’s intentionality in choosing to pursue them. A favourite formulation of this comes from Ouspensky via Maurice Nichol. This says that we have a right not to be negative and if you apply inhibition to this in its fullest and most radical sense you will soon come up!

Use – a scientific concept.

A working understanding of ‘use’ is something anybody with an interest in Alexander Technique has to acquire. A ‘working understanding’ involves practice and ability to employ oneself purposefully, and skilfully in any activity. Indeed ‘practice,’ ‘employment,’ ‘skill,’ ‘purpose,’ as well as ‘habit’ provide the etymological roots for ‘use,’ which is the founding abstraction of Alexander’s work.

That ‘use’ is foundational for Alexander work should be clear to any one, that it is an abstraction is sometimes missed, with ‘use’ being taken as something concrete. Where use is taken concretely it becomes common to accuse people with no knowledge of Alexander’s work of misusing themselves. This I think is a mistake on a number of levels, foremost of which is that the practical problem for many people is that they have no concept of using themselves at all. ‘Use’ is how Alexander began to analyse his own actions and how he analysed the actions of his pupils. ‘Use’ is therefore the unit of analysis of Alexander work. To develop a working concept of use, a person has to abstract from his or her own experience - something practical that works.

Doing so they have to abstract the ‘similarity of the difference,’ to borrow a phrase from David Bohm, that the use of themselves can actually make to their lives and the difficulties that they are experiencing. In doing this, ‘use’ comes to explain what has happened and what is happening.

‘Use’ therefore elucidates the subject matter of Alexander’s work, as well as providing the explanatory power and the unit of analysis. These three elements together, are what the great Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, saw as being necessary for the methodological grounding of a scientific discipline. Which is how John Dewey characterised Alexander’s work. It is a scientific discipline for each person that seeks to learn it, like Alexander, to borrow a phrase, this time from Kelly who was inspired by Dewey they are ‘personal scientists.’ 

To view people as ‘personal scientists’ is to recognise the importance of intentionality, of wishing and willing – something Walter Carrington in his published talks stressed as being necessary for success in Alexander work. 

To talk about being a ‘personal scientist’ here is to follow Dewey in ‘Human Nature and Conduct’ in saying that while we rely on habit we must also be able to use our intelligence to review habits and change behaviour as necessary.

Which is very much how Alexander came to see things. The difference between Dewey and Alexander being, as the former, I think would have admitted, is that the Alexander Technique provides the practical way of changing things, turning them around. 

How Do We Know?

This is one of the four fundamental questions that philosophy seeks to answer according to Kant, it is also something central to applying the Alexander Technique to develop Conscious Control. It is a question that most new pupils come to ask in learning Alexander’s technique, as they realise that they can no longer rely on their sense of feeling, it is unreliable, the judgements it contains are not to be trusted. 

Now, if you have the time you can engage with Kant, who has much, that is of use to say; you will hopefully emerge wiser, but it will really do you no good if you are trying to learn the Alexander Technique. In lessons what you think you know is immediately thrown into question when it comes to simple acts like sitting, standing walking, let alone anything else – feeling is not enough. Something else is needed.

One needs a standard and fortunately there is one there – the gold standard when it comes to judging how one is going at any given moment. That gold standard lies not within one’s attention but within one’s awareness of one’s breathing. If one’s breathing is released, relaxed and easy, even while exerting your self, you are going to be going well. You will also find that if you have a back problem for example your back will be supporting you to the best of its ability.

Good support and good breathing go together; there was a reason why Alexander was known as the ‘breathing man’ and it is just this. Now the great thing about using breathing as a standard is that relaxed, easy, released breathing is hard to fake, it is a continuously reliable feedback loop that goes with you over time.  The feeling of standing straight, tall, is too often illusory. We are too good at thinking this, only to be proved wrong, as Alexander students too often find when they start lessons – if you pull forward habitually when standing, straightening up through freeing one’s neck is going to feel like leaning backwards.

There are other answers to the question of how do we know, but this is the best in terms of the on-going immediacy of experience. Longer term we know from being aware of the success of ourselves in applying Alexander’s technique and finding the release in breathing; the lightness in being and sense of well being that go with this, along with an improved sense of balance, as well other indicators of improved functioning. These though are indirect outcomes of aiming for conscious control of our use and not direct attempts to sort out our problems.

Direct attempts almost, if not always go wrong, we need to stop, and when it comes to many complaints it is as an absence of something that indicated our success and achievements in relearning how to sit, stand, walk, talk or understand others. Absence of pain if we are lucky is an outcome, always to be welcomed, it is not something to be looked for; the way markers, are gathered instances of consciously released breathing; developed over time into conscious control of ourselves – which is something worth aiming for.

No blog next week as I am away. 

Alexander Technique and the Inter-personal 4

Hate, like love, is something we all experience. It is part of life and decidedly normal. If you have any doubts about this, then just hang around with some two year olds for a while. Hate like love is always an option. What we do with it, how we control it, how we react to it, how others react to it - are what counts. 

We might be open, as Eric Hobsbawn recently was, in saying that we are 'good haters,' sustaining a particular commitment, by doing so. Or we might be terrified of the fact that we do hate; leaving it unrecognised, to pursue an image of ourselves as 'good' or maybe 'nice.' Where that happens we have often learned to pull down to control our reactions, our feelings and to stop ourselves from saying things, which we fear will provoke humiliation and isolation. We anticipate verbal abuse or perhaps physical attack. We have learned to control our desire to speak and to try to escape from feelings that we have been taught are 'wrong' or 'bad.' Often the understanding that develops here is not that the feelings are ‘wrong’ or 'bad' but that I am 'bad.'

Now, in an ideal world everybody would have a mum or a dad who can cope with his or her child saying 'I hate you' or 'I don't want to do that.' Mum and dad would be able to understand that it is what young kids do, and in their understanding they would be free enough to help their child understand the normalcy of their feeling, freeing them to find a way forward, to return to loving their parent in time, always in a new and more mature way. Where that does not happen on a regular, predictable basis and children are taught to be good, they usually learn to pull their heads down, shorten and tighten, learning to hide their misery, acting a part, sometimes as a 'good,' 'dutiful' son or daughter, at other times as the wayward rebel.

A habitual use of the head and the neck develops, which not only interferes with our organic functioning but plays its part in our psycho-physical attitude, that we are ‘bad’ which we hold towards ourselves, as well as, whatever attitude we adopt to others and the outside world. In Personal Construct terms we are talking about a person’s ‘core role’, the role they play, as if it is a matter of life or death, and a role that is deeply tied to systems of life maintenance. 

To develop Conscious Control here is a matter of developing, if we simplify things greatly, two different stances, one of which is towards those aspects of the self that have been rejected or fragmented which are often tied to spontaneity and feelings of being alive. Practically speaking what we are looking for is the ability to face unwanted and often shamed parts of oneself, by applying the Alexander Technique and learning to face and then understand them, through dialogue, if you believe as I do that at heart we are dialogical beings. 

The second stance is towards others and if I am seeking to illustrate this in an Alexander lesson, I will stand in front of a pupil and ask them to directly look at me. Often what happens is that they pull their heads down, sometimes they want to look away. As I talk them through the process, they find they can engage with me, visibly lengthening, releasing their breathing, improving their organic functioning and establishing a conscious use of themselves in relation to another.

If I am working in my capacity as a therapist, I will invite people to then take this further by allowing themselves to look and see the other, by describing the other and their own experience of the other. With the description of the other including a portrait of how they see and experience the situation and relationship. This allows the development of what Kelly called sociality and is called mentalization elsewhere. Most importantly it leads to the possibility of new role relationships, relationships that are vital for people's well-being and functioning. This leads me to propose that from an Alexander Technique point of view, that if we were to consider what is involved in the highest standard of inter-personal function, there would two conditions, the first concerned with the ability to consciously and co-ordinate the use of ourselves in relationships. While the second following Kelly would be concerned with our ability to understand the other in their terms. 

This rather long blog concludes this series on Alexander Technique and the Inter-personal. To those that have followed it right the way through and sent me comments or talked to me about the ideas contained here, a big thank you. I will be developing them further in time for the EPCA conference in July where I will be presenting them in a workshop format to colleagues from that particular world. 

Alexander Technique and the Inter-Personal 3

Sitting up, standing up, are achievements. We forget this, if we ever realise it, only to take note when we see a baby sitting or up standing for the first time; taking his or her first steps. That there is such a thing as sitting up well, standing well is often missed, unremarked on. The gesture of ourselves to ourselves, to the outside world, too often pre-dominates, to the exclusion of our organic functioning, manifesting itself, in breathing that is held, muscles that are sore, ailments that seem to afflict us, ways of being with others that can terrify us and them. 

That these might be linked escapes us, if we approach them through disciplines that have first divided the human being into physical or mental, psychological or physiological, where psychological is not firmly grounded in the concept of ourselves, as actors in and of the world. Such philosophical and epistemological groundings may seem far removed from the distraction of a bad back, the pain of a sore neck, the blinding migraine that occludes the possibility of work.  Yet, such groundings are openings towards understandings that can free us of habitual pains and terrors; groundings that Alexander struggled with and understood in terms of action and through not dividing but combining the mental and physical into the psycho-physical.

The psycho-physical for Alexander is his way of saying that we are indivisible into mental and physical when it comes to the ‘act of living.’ Acts, themselves, are approached by him, as mental or physical when it comes to, how use, effects the standard of functioning. This is because he lacks better words, better understandings and what is missed, as I blogged about in the first of this series, are inter-personal acts. 

Inter-personal acts require some explaining. In some ways, what I am about to write might seem obvious, but from the nineteenth century which conceptualised people as organisms, to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century conceptualisation of people as information processors, it has been a hard won battle to recognize again that people are people. That we are formed as people by our first relationships; that being understood is often our first step in understanding.  

Understanding first of all occurs face-to-face between mother and baby, it is non-verbal in its grounding with mutual gazing providing respite and calm when anxiety threatens. We are inherently social, our withdrawals and individuality existing only within the network of our personal relationships. To be excluded from the personal realm, in the fullest sense, in infancy, is to face non-existence, a terror and an anxiety that is met with a full-throated cry or perhaps, a muffled sob. 

Lesser terrors exist; lesser anxieties exist, grounded in this greater terror. Our first attempts at controlling them are to look to mum, or are withdrawals that come with looking away or looking down. Each has characteristics of its own; each exists within a network of personal constructs that are all too easily dismissed, as subjective when placed in ‘objective’ frameworks concerning mechanical or organic functioning. 

For some and certainly not all these early habits of control, involving the use of the head and neck to control attention, to control feelings of overwhelm, to control anxiety in the personal realm are what are evoked in Alexander lessons. Early and core elements of experience then are loosened becoming available for reconstruction through a mental act, that is transforming in the present, towards the past and future in new personal acts towards others and ourselves. This allows for the highest standard of inter-personal and intra-personal functioning to be achieved through our conscious understanding and acceptance of ourselves and others, of which more next time. 

Alexander Technique and the Inter-Personal 2

Many thanks to Magdalena for her comments on last week's blog. There is no disagreement I think between us, in taking the aim of Alexander Technique to be 'consciousness, and making conscious decisions as to what and how we want to be and how we want to operate, rather than be driven by habits'. There was and is no suggestion from me that this was new to people deeply interested in the Alexander Technique in its broadest sense. Where there might be disagreement is in how far the Alexander community should be open about this and about how far for marketing purposes we stray into ideas which are deeply problematical, when viewed from the perspective of Alexander's writing. That though, is for another day and blog. 

Today I want to return to what I suggested was new in last week's blog. For this Magdalena's comments provides a welcome point of departure in iterating, what I understand to be Alexander's position, namely the importance of using the stimulus-response model to understand ourselves. While I reject the stimulus-response model, the reasons for which I will come to shortly, this rejection is not the radical break, that I was blogging about last week. That comes with looking at ourselves as persons in relationship and with elaborating how Conscious Control might look if we took ourselves to be persons in relationship rather than simply as individuals. 

To elaborate, what Conscious Control of the person might look like, one must first get past and give up the stimulus-response model that Alexander uses. Magdalena's comment here is most helpful, in that she is open in writing that this is something she 'believes.' I think that this ultimately correct, in that it is a belief, or a model, or even a position and as such we can choose whether or not we wish to adopt it or not. For me the rejection of the stimulus-response model, even when used at its most conversational came from the pragmatic realisation, that it concealed more than it revealed, hides more than it illuminates.

By this I mean that, what Magdalena labels as a stimulus, I have always found to be constructions, interpretations of myself, a situation, another, that are better deconstructed and dialogued with, rather placed within the ‘category of “stimulus”’. In other words Magdalena’s comments exist as comments to me, comments to you that if placed by me or you, within the ‘category of “stimulus”’ hide what they essentially are, namely comments by another person to me and to you. To re-label them or subsume them as ‘stimuli’ is to hide that Magdalena and I, have at least temporarily entered into, which is some sort of relationship with each other. As, such we hopefully exist to each other as persons trying to understand each other, from our very limited communication through this blog, and are not merely stimuli in each other’s worlds.

My sincere thanks to Magdalena for her comment, which has allowed me to, hopefully illustrate, something of what I am attempting to begin to communicate. There will be no blog next week as Easter will be upon us. 

Alexander Technique and The Inter-Personal

Today I want to blog about something very new in the Alexander world, something so new that to my knowledge no-one to date has ever suggested it. Having said that readers of this blog will notice familiar themes, as will anybody conversant with Alexander's work. However what I want to say goes beyond Alexander in very important ways, while looking at ways of fulfilling certain of the promises that he felt his work contained.

In doing this I go against the grain of certain contemporary Alexander trends which emphasise the physical and publicise the Alexander Technique as a 'practical way of improving posture'. 'Improving posture' is often the motivation for seeking Alexander lessons and an outcome. There is nothing wrong in either but as an answer to what the Alexander Technique is, it falls woefully short. My own answer can be found in a previous blog and is grounded in Alexander's writings, most notably the title of his second book 'Constructive Conscious Control of The Individual' - CCI. 

For those that do not have time to read two blog posts in one day, I will briefly break down the salient points for them here. The first is that Alexander Technique is concerned with consciousness, what we can be aware of and specifically it is concerned with becoming aware of how we control ourselves and the implications in terms of functioning in a general sense. Patterns of control can be constructive in that they allows for greater levels of integration and functioning or they can be destructive with poor performance and various difficulties being the result. Normally, now a days when Alexander Technique teachers list the resulting difficulties, they list as Alexander would have phrased it, 'so called physical' difficulties such as back or neck pain. He though, again to paraphrase, included 'so called mental difficulties'. Unfortunately his writing here here is not always particularly illuminating because of his adoption of a stimulus-response model for mental processes. There is one particular observation concerning manner of use and manner of reaction that I will come back to in a later blog that is absolutely key here, in its practicality and usefulness.  

Today though there are four points of departure. Three from Alexander and one from John Dewey. Starting with Dewey, he explicitly refers to Alexander's work as a 'completed psychoanalysis', so it is clear that for Dewey and one assumes Alexander who included Dewey's introduction to his work that 'conscious control' is relevant to the field that psychotherapy seeks to elaborate. 

Moving on to Alexander he explicitly makes 'behaviour' the concern of his work, specifically the change of behaviour. This is very rarely mentioned, if at all in an evolving Alexander literature. Yet, for me this is often what holds out most promise, if not the only promise of the Alexander Technique. It allows us to become aware, conscious of our  behaviour, conscious of it implications and gives a practical procedure for helping to change it. Now behaviour and action are intimately connected and the two final points of departure are Alexander's breaking of the world into physical and mental acts, excluding and ignoring what I would call inter-personal acts. Part of the reason is that Alexander like many men of his time was wedded to a unit of society based on the individual rather than looking to see individuals as persons in relationship - this being the fourth and final point of departure. 

One of the ironies of the last point is that it is possible to trace tentative links through Dewey and McMurray showing how Alexander's work might have influenced the development. What is important to say here and what marks this out as a radical break with Alexander is to note that our earliest habits, habits to do with the use of our head and our neck, habits to control our experience of ourselves are not the result of some stimulus-response mechanism but our active experimentation with being in the world. So that by six months babies have functionally acquired movements of their heads and necks to control their experience before they can walk. That control exists in and evolves in an interpersonal framework and the Alexander Technique can help establish conscious control inter-personally in our relationships with others. To do this we need to recognise a different category of action to the two that Alexander outlines in CCI, that is of of inter-personal acts. Doing so radically breaks and extends Alexander's work into our personal relationships, our being with other's and allows for for links to be made with psychology, psychotherapy. Most of all it allows for an extension of ourselves through understanding of ourselves in relation to others and giving us the opportunity not just to be with others but to play a role with respect to them.

Pulling Forward To Concentrate - A Bad Idea

Regular readers of this blog will know I spend a lot of time writing about how we look and the importance of seeing. The last two weeks have been no exception, looking at the importance of allowing oneself to focus over attempting to concentrate. In these, I described concentration in terms of increasing muscle tension around the eyes and face, as one fixes one's attention on an object. There is another element that is particularly relevant to working on a computer, reading a book, and, as I increasingly see on visits to London, watching films or TV programmes on a iPhone. It is also an element that comes up in inter-personal relations, of which more another time.

This element concerns the desire to pull forward, which in itself is not a bad thing; it is, as in everything from an Alexander perspective, a matter of how it is done - the 'means whereby'. The advantage of pulling forward from a visual perspective is a loss of peripheral vision; it is harder to be distracted, which is often what we are looking for in a busy office or on a crowded train.

If you want, you can test this now by just moving towards the screen. As you get closer, you will notice that your world narrows to the screen and you lose awareness of your surroundings. All too often we take this a step further in the way we pull forward and lose ourselves, if we are lucky, in interesting work, only to be reminded by tiredness or aching limbs of our corporeality, our embodiment. If we find the work boring then the pull forward can involve a collapsing and or a holding oneself in place using excess muscle tension. Whichever way we pull forward, unless we first stop and make sure we lengthen as we go, we will shorten in stature and hold our breath, creating excess tension.

Answers to this vary and include the aforementioned lengthening to go forward. However, when it comes to reading, the answer is often to raise the book higher, so that we do not have to collapse to read it. When it comes to working in an office, the answer is to train ourselves to focus and not be distracted by our colleagues, to train ourselves to be conscious of the micro decisions and acts we make every day, to become aware of the implications of these decisions in terms of our functioning and general well being, as well as certain specific problems that might ail us.

If we can do that then we have a chance to remain poised, calm in the face of whatever difficulties work throws at us, not rushing or straining at it, but allowing ourselves to be at our most resourced, our most resourceful as we undertake what needs to be done.

No blog next week as I am away in London for a board meeting, among other things, so it will be two weeks before I post again. Until then take care and best wishes.

An Invitation to Focus

Most of us I suspect have been told to concentrate at some points in our lives, first by somebody else and then maybe by ourselves, so that concentration becomes a habit, a strategy for coping with certain situations. It is such a common prescription that it is rarely questioned as to whether it is a good remedy and if so for what. In other words two questions are left unasked. The first concerns what situations might we want to concentrate in; the second asks whether concentration is in fact a good thing.

Taking this second question first, is concentration a good thing? Well we cannot answer that until we decide what a good thing might be. So let me offer some preliminary suggestions as to how we might proceed. Firstly, does it tackle the problem in hand and secondly what happens when it becomes a habit that we automatically use throughout our lives. Some of the answers to the second suggestion can be laid hold of quite easily by the following simple experiment. Pick an object somewhere around you and attend to it by concentrating. You should find that you are aware of increasing the amount of muscle tension around your eyes and in your face. You might also be aware of holding your breath. Finally, you might be aware of the narrowing of your perceptual field and the loss of your peripheral vision.

In themselves, as a one off, these are things that happen. Depending how we choose to look at them, will depend on how we value them. If we look at ourselves as organic beings then over time the holding of our breath, interferes with our organic functioning in several ways, including posturally. Over time it can lead to definite physical problems – many of Alexander’s observations here still stand the test of time.  It also effects how we both experience ourselves and the situation. Typically when we narrow attention like this, there is a loss of context and therefore understanding – we think less well. If nothing else because we are getting less oxygen to our brains, so from a functioning and performance level we might conclude that there is a cost both short and long term.

Short term considerations often dominate here, in how we approach the task in hand. In seeking to get things done we ‘end-gain’ in Alexander speak and fail to consider the use of ourselves or the ‘means-whereby’ we do things to continue with Alexander speak. It is in the use of ourselves that Alexander Technique seeks to establish a Conscious Control and the most basic way we approach activity is by sight.

Here the choice is between choosing to concentrate or allowing ourselves to focus. Concentration as noted, has costs, it also brings with it an attitude to life, as does focus. With focus we get to be curious, wonder. We also perform differently as we are able to be released in our breathing, free in our movements, free in our thought and our action. I'll return again to this next week, to look more at individual situations where we might be tempted by concentration and end-gaining - until then have a good week.

Attention Creates A Tension

There are certain constructs, distinctions if you like that are crucial to learning the Alexander Technique and developing Constructive Conscious Control, that are also relevant to any skilled activity. They are often not mentioned or understood poorly, in part because it takes a long time to recognise them and understand them, not just theoretically but practically in the acts of daily living. One such distinction concerns the use of the eyes and where we direct attention, as much as how we direct attention. 

Taking the importance of where we direct attention, it is worth considering Alexander’s practice in teaching. He had a roundel of stained glass in his window that he both intended and encouraged people to look at, according to Walter Carrington.* Although Walter did not have a roundel of stained glass in his window, in every lesson I ever had with him, the invitation was always made to look out his window and engage my attention with a tree or something else. It is a practice I continue with my pupils for the following reasons.

First of all a place we all go wrong, is by wanting to attend directly to ourselves when we aim to do anything. This makes us self-conscious rather than conscious or aware. It is an understandable habit, it comes from wanting to know what is going on and unless we happen to be blind, our primary way of beginning to know is to look first. If we do this though it creates the problem of knowing ourselves in attention, rather than knowing ourselves in awareness. 

What we want as American Alexander Technique Teacher Frank Peirce-Jones** pointed out is an ‘expanded' field of attention. Meaning that we need to be able to both attend to what we are doing and be aware of the use of ourselves at the same time. So a horse rider gets on much better when instead of attending to the horse or themselves they look in the direction they want to go. The horse understands this and will move freely in the desired direction of travel. Or with an actor or performer, they need to be free to attend to other performers and the audience. A self-conscious performer is no fun to watch – they lack fluency, as well as freedom. 

For people in pain short-term or chronic this distinction is of tremendous importance. For pain first arises in our awareness, then we attend to it, tighten up muscularly in the relevant area before starting to construe the implications of the pain and discomfort. Where the pain becomes chronic or lasts for a long time a person can get into the habit of looking for it, thereby continually re-creating the pain over time, further debilitating themselves, and losing confidence. It is worth always remembering that in attending directly to ourselves the ATTENTION CREATES A TENSION. 

What is required is the recognition of the fact that although it may seem like an instinct to look, it is a behaviour and if brought under conscious control, it allows for freedom of movement in thought and action to be restored. As part of this it is important not to be trying to sort oneself out directly before proceeding. What is important is in a phrase Alexander used increasingly used as he got older to ‘leave oneself’ alone, to allow oneself to begin to focus on what one wishes to do next and to create the awareness which goes with lengthening and released breathing. It is an awareness that comes from shifting the focus of attention elsewhere to the task in hand, the person we are with, the thought we need to have. This is a shifting of focus and not concentration, the importance of which I will turn to next time.

* Private communication with Walter Carrington.
** Jones, F.P. (1976) Body awareness In Action. Schocken Books: New York

Best Alexander Technique Advice Ever

Today, while swimming, I recalled the best piece of advice I have ever had from an Alexander Technique teacher. It came from Walter Carrington, who took over Alexander's teacher training course, when Alexander died in 1955. I took a small number of lessons with Walter over the years between qualifying in 1994 and when he died in 2005. In a good year, I would go down to London two or three times for lessons with Walter and other first generation teachers, most notably Peggy Williams. Both were remarkable teachers, from whom I had lessons that I remember and am still understanding to this day.

One such lesson was my very first lesson with Walter, when in the first five minutes, I learned more from his hands, about how things were supposed to work, than I had in my three-year training course. Of course, I needed those three years to understand what it was he wanted to me to know and was teaching me. 

On one visit, shortly before I was due to get married, I explained to Walter that with finances being tight, I did not expect to be in London again for eighteen months. Walter told me not worry and then told me that:

1. If I understood hands on the back of the chair, then I would learn and know pretty much everything I need to know about human mechanics and functioning.

2. That if I understood the whispered ‘ah’, I would learn and know pretty much all I would ever need to know about breathing. 

3. Finally, Walter added that I should read the books, meaning the four books Alexander wrote, and I would have all I need to know about the Alexander Technique and Conscious Control. 

At the time, being of a sceptical frame of mind, I doubted the truth of what Walter said; I thought he might just be exaggerating. Scepticism though has to be tempered with experimentation, so I followed Walter’s advice and come to see the truth of it. So now, if I was asked for advice, I would repeat what Walter told  me, namely that if you learn the set procedures which are 'hands on the back of the chair' and the whispered 'ah' and, more importantly, if you understand them, you have pretty much all you need for whatever physical activity you might be undertaking. 

Returning to the reason I recalled all this today in the swimming pool, well I have been working again with hands on the back of the chair and today I was applying it in the pool. My swimming was easier, faster and more powerful than usual, as I was using myself better than normal. As I still want to improve, I'll be standing putting my hands on the back of the chair again, not just to improve my swimming but to understand the needs of my pupils and help them improve the use of themselves in whatever daily round of activities they undertake and whatever outside pastimes they enjoy. 

Stand Up Straight Now!

If you felt yourself stiffen to the above command then you are almost certainly not alone. It is most people’s first and un-thought out reaction to being asked to stand up straight. The resultant posture involves a fixing and holding of the breath. It was even cultivated for a while as a healthy posture in schools and of course the classic sergeant major pose with head pulled back, chest puffed out is an exaggerated form of it. The fact that it is not healthy, in interfering with relaxed respiration and placing undue strain on the back, was missed until Alexander came along. His work was in part responsible for these sort of exercises disappearing and some of the worst exercises of army drill stopping in the early twentieth century.

However, you just cannot keep a bad idea down as it were, and nearly a century later the idea that we should practice standing up and sitting up straight, as a way of cultivating will power and control is back. It is being promoted by Professor Roy Baumeister and my attention was drawn to his work, through an interesting post on Alexander Technique teacher Jennifer Mackerras' blog.

Now the problem with simply asking someone to stand up straight is that it assumes that they know how to do it. Yet if they did, you would expect not to have to tell them, they just would stand well. It is a point made by John Dewey* in elaborating a conversation with Alexander. Alexander having pointed out to him that people, in seeking to make any change, including one as simple as changing how they stand, believe they merely have to will it and it will happen.

This for Alexander, according to Dewey, is merely a ‘superstition', a belief ‘on a par with primitive magic in its neglect of attention to the means which are involved in reaching an end.’ What is important is an ‘intelligent inquiry to discover means which will produce a desired result, and intelligent intervention to procure the means.’

Without the enquiry into how we might change how we stand, we are most likely, to quote Dewey again, to end up ‘standing differently, but only a different kind of badly.’ This Dewey expands on, to make a more general point that an act comes before the thought, that a habit must be established before we can ‘evoke a thought at will.’

These thoughts of Dewey for me, connect Alexander to George Kelly and his Psychology of Personal Constructs. Kelly was hugely influenced by Dewey and, in his insistence that ‘behaviour is the experiment’, one can see a direct link between the foregoing and his evolution of fixed role therapy. A link that is re-enforced by something else Alexander said, that Dewey reported, namely that we are not simply talking about ‘control of the body’, but the ‘control of the mind and character’. All of these rely on ‘intelligently controlled habit’ and that must be the aim of Alexander lessons or any kind of therapy, such as Personal Construct Psychology, which takes people as active creators of their own lives.

*Dewey,J. (2008) The Middle Works, 1899-1924 ,Volume 14:1922, Human Nature and Conduct . Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press p23-25