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

Curiosity Recaptured

A few years ago, before blogging became prominent,  Mornum Time Press published a book of short essays centred on people's experience of the Alexander Technique -AT. I am not sure whether Jerry Sontag, who edited the book, came up with the title or someone else did, but whoever it was, in choosing 'Curiosity Recaptured', they chose well. For 'Curiosity Recaptured' says something about an attitude to life and to others ,that we can consciously choose, whatever life throws at us. It allows us not just to be curious but to wonder.

I was reminded of the book today, during a conversation with an senior psychotherapist about how they see their work. They described their work with couples, as helping people to make the most conscious adult choices possible, through being curious about the other. It was a nice simple explanation of where dialogue begins, where what Kelly called sociality starts.

Sociality is something that distinguished personal construct psychology back in the 50's. Now psychologists and other psychotherapists are catching up, as they talk about theory of mind and mentalization. Their contributions are all illuminating and helpful but lack something of the clarity of Kelly was getting at. Namely, that in order to play a role with regard to somebody, it is helpful to be able to predict them by being able to 'stand in their shoes' so to speak. The extent to which we can do this helps determines the type of role that we can play.

At a very simple level, this occurs every day while driving or walking along the pavement. Sometimes it goes wrong, as today when I encountered someone walking towards me. We both did that dance that sometimes occurs, with each person trying to step one way and then the other. In this case, our anticipations went astray, we both went the same way and collided. Thankfully this is rare, particularly when driving!

In work and at home we play more complex roles and have to navigate not just relationships with one other, but amongst groups. We need to make sense not just of the individual people involved but of the multiple relationships that exist between people, as well as the relationships horizontal and vertical that exist between the group and the outside world.

Personal Construct Psychology - PCP has some lovely ways of working with these that have been developed by Harry Proctor in the form of Perceiver Element Grids, PEG’s for short. I have used them with both therapy clients and pupils to help them think about the various relationships in their families and most importantly, help them suspend, a PCP word, or inhibit an AT word, old constructs, a PCP word, or conceptions, an AT word.

Whichever words one chooses, whatever theory one starts with, both refer to the same ability of stopping, looking and beginning to see the situation a fresh - as I blogged about last week. It is always a matter of finding our sense of wonder, our sense of curiosity, possibility, no matter what assails, no matter how troublesome a situation or a relationship is. As it is the freshness of being present, that presents the future with new horizons, new vistas, ways forward, whether together or apart.