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.

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

Stopping, Looking and Seeing

Today I start with a quote from the opening paragraph of art historian John Berger's, 'The Art of Seeing' – something I wish I had written as it expresses beautifully, something fundamental, not just about the work that I do, but about life and what it is to be in the world.

 'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.'

This quote resonates with me so much, because when I am working I often make a distinction between looking and seeing, listen and hearing, feeling and touching, and for that matter feeling and being touched. Of these, I place the most emphasis on vision, as when we begin to allow ourselves to stop look and see, our relationship with all our senses changes, improves. We experience the world differently, we see the world differently, we hear the world differently and we can touch and be touched by it differently.

Use in effecting function, as Alexander noted affects ourselves, how we see our possibilities, whether we have can have hope. Hope in our darkest hours is a light that can lead us onwards, finding a way to a new future. We do not have to ‘paint ourselves into a corner’ as George Kelly observed and to free ourselves we need not just words but the ability to see a situation differently, to see the alternatives. Only then do we have a choice where we can weigh up the implications before committing ourselves to action.

Stopping which I blogged about last week, involves a commitment to look at a situation, to see it, to become focussed. The experience of which, is a coherence not just towards the situation but within ourselves, as it includes us, as we release, lengthen and widen, breathe, prepare. This reflects the fact that most of our experience is both pre and non verbal – words giving the handles that allow for patterns and sequences to be identified, thought about, and communicated to others.

Stopping also allows us to look at others, be with them, be alongside them and I will be blogging more about this aspect of my work in coming weeks. For the use of the eyes and the facial muscles involves our earliest habits, habits that link us to others in an inter-personal world, an inter-personal world that is sometimes hidden, but always there. This world, the world of love and attachments is the source of our deepest anguish, profoundest sadness, as well as moments of immense joy, happiness. It is a world to be understood, that in our being with others, we can take a conscious stance towards.

Which brings me back as always to the Primary Control its importance in organising not just ourselves but our experience of the world, whether we want to better understand others, perform better or simply free ourselves from aches and pains that interfere with everyday living. The Primary Control is the means through which conscious control can become established and constructive – it is what makes Alexander’s work unique and it is freely available to anybody who knows how to stop, look, listen, become aware of themselves and allow themselves to begin to see and hear the rhythms and patterns of their lives, their worlds.

Freedom For Living

A New Year and a new beginning, and the New Year resolution for this blog is to find video clips of people, other than Fred Astaire, who have what, Alexander would have called good use. So expect clips of various actor’s and sports people who have had Alexander Lessons such as Judi Dench, William Hurt, Helena Bonham Carter, Sebastian Coe, Greg Chappell and Mathew Pinsent. Today, there is a clip great Don Bradman, someone who never had Alexander lessons but whose use, Alexander very much admired. He like Astaire, in his chosen field exemplifies good use through his own technique.

Good use, or if you like, good co-ordination in physical activities, is always founded on the principles of poise and balance, which no particular method, technique or activity has a patent on. Alexander himself worked out the principles in his chosen field of using his voice as an actor. What makes him different from people who have worked out the principles with regard to dance, rowing, horse riding, fencing or martial arts, was his realisation that it was possible to be aware of his use in everything he did and to gain a conscious control of himself.

Alexander writings about conscious control are somewhat inaccessible to a modern audience for example, when he writes about conscious control as being ‘Man’s Supreme Inheritance’ – the title of his first book. Yet, in his last book ‘The Universal Constant in Living’, another somewhat inaccessible title, Alexander writes about his work as a practical method for changing behaviour and concludes about the importance of having ‘freedom in thought and action.’

‘Freedom in thought and action’ implies poise, balance and true relaxation, not the state of collapse that people often mistake for relaxation. ‘Freedom in thought and action’ also implies the ability to choose how we go about doing things, the attitudes we take to situations, events, others and ourselves. These are all deeply important if conscious control is to be achieved in its fullest sense. The freedom each person seeks for the most part depends on what is important to them and their individual life histories. For people who seek mastery of a particular activity like the sportsmen and actors named above, it is about both a freedom that helps prevent injury and improves performance.

For my pupils this week, it has been the ability to put one’s own coat on, or to run for the bus without pain injury, simple things yes, but simple things that if you cannot do, leave you with a reducing quality of life and often a narrowing sphere of activity and enjoyment. With other pupils and clients it is a freedom from past behaviours and habits formed in their earliest years, that stop them from being free to be themselves with others. Freedom is always important. The freedom to be, is what makes life worth living and allows people to transcend the most difficult of situations and circumstances – Alexander Technique and PCP are both different ways for seeking the same path and end of a better life, squarely and fairly faced.

Alexander Technique – A technique for what?

The question of what Alexander Technique is a technique for is something I often introduce at the beginning of a first lesson or a workshop. People often find it difficult to answer and I usually go on to suggest an answer in the form of how Alexander might have answered it. The suggestion I give is that it is a technique for developing Constructive Conscious Control and I might add of the Individual, which would give us the title of Alexander’s second book. That leads to a second question, or perhaps set of questions, regarding what is Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, what would it look like and what difference would it make? Well, keeping it short and simple, an answer might go something like this. We all have patterns of moving in the world which are deeply tied up with how we experience and think about the world and ourselves. Those patterns of moving in the world are not something that our bodies do separately from ourselves; they are us, involving our attitudes and everything else that we are. They exist at the core of our being and are so familiar to us that we are unaware of them, they are part of the background – a background we can only see when we move differently. The difference creates a gap we can cross over and, like a bridge once we are over it, we can look back and see where we have come from, where we have been, while holding out the prospect and possibilities of where we have come to be now. The Alexander Technique is a way of crossing over, a bridge to the possibilities and potentialities of a freer way of moving in life, an easier way of being. It helps us become aware, become conscious of the ways we habitually control movement, attitudes and emotions by stiffening our frame, carrying ourselves tightly, suppressing our emotion, rushing at things and generally making too much effort. It invites us to suspend these habits and explore what it would be like to move freely. It offers a choice in how we control ourselves in thought and action, a choice that leads to freedom in movement, and allows us to explore and develop those habits that allow this and which lead to the improvements in posture, back and neck pain that often bring people first to Alexander’s work. These improvements are what make conscious control constructive and follow on from learning to be free of our own habits and reactions, with which we stiffen and tighten – so that in the end, we are, for Alexander, free IN thought and action.