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. 

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!

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.

Stopping

This week has been a reminder of the need to stop. Stop or stopping carries a very particular meaning in Alexander Technique, one beyond its normal connotation, that to those that who have not applied the technique for themselves, may well be misunderstood. The importance of stop or inhibition is something one returns to, not just in daily life for oneself but with pupils. Who when they come in with a particular complaint have often forgotten the need to stop. 

Stopping in Alexander terms does not mean collapsing or slumping on the sofa to watch TV. It is an active pause, active in the sense that one chooses not do certain things, not go about things in a particular manner or way. Alexander talked about ‘stopping doing the wrong thing and letting the right thing do itself’. 

Of course to stop doing the wrong things, you have to know what you do not want and in Alexander terms this is very easy to specify. You need to stop doing anything that fixes or interferes with your breathing. You need to become aware of the micro-acts, preparations and attitudes that leave you holding your breath, shortening in stature, tightening in the neck. Becoming aware can be a difficult process. It helps if you have developed a physical skill in the past but you still need to know what to become aware of and avoid looking for it. 

Looking for it is where most pupils go wrong when they start lessons, they start to attend to themselves directly rather than looking and seeing what’s around them or looking to see where they want to go or what they need to focus on. Indeed if they start to concentrate, and you can try this at home by concentrating on something in the room, they fix and hold their breath. Focus is different from concentration, it involves maintaining a balance between foveal and peripheral vision and not a narrowing of attention to a particular point. Focus involves attention that is directed away from the self and allows for consciousness of the self to emerge. This is a pre-requisite of conscious control. 

Focus is a solution for mind-wandering, it is also a solution for anxiety providing one knows how to get there and getting there involves stop. In this respect it is somewhat like meditation or the mindfulness techniques that are becoming popular, it is also somewhat different in that Alexander Technique highlights what Alexander called the Primary Control, which is the relationship between the head, the neck and the torso. If we get this relationship right, our breathing will ease and deepen, we will relax without collapsing, we will lengthen and gain an improvement in our posture. Most of all we will be at our most resourceful for action, as we feel energised and light. 

All this comes from stopping shortening and tightening into action, from knowing that we do not want to tighten our necks, pull our heads back, pull our heads down, shorten our spine and various other simple things. In Alexander though when we think of stopping these things we turn what we do not want into something positive. So we think of our necks being free, our heads going forward and up, our backs lengthening. In the first place all these guiding order or directions as Alexander talked about are inhibitory, they are about stopping something and as you do, the right thing does begin to happen, your neck does free, your head does go forward and up, you do lengthen and you can begin to see and focus on what needs to happen, on what you need to do, on what you want to occur. Stopping is the beginning of action, as well as the end. Stopping is the way we begin again, when life assails us and we need to find freedom, freedom in thought, freedom in action.