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.