Alexander blog

Are you reading my mind, Michael? This newsletter artical was so relevant!  Since retirement I am having difficulty appreciating the time I have to just relax.  My body wants to keep going just like it did when I was fitting tasks around a work schedule.  Come to think of it, I've been doing this much of my life.  I like the idea of telling myself, "I have time."  I am also using the breathing exercise to accompany this new mind-set.  Of course, this is also helping my asthma.  As always. . .thanks! 

Your mom

Every action we undertake in life, no matter how mundane or momentous, begins as a thought, which the brain can implement by ordering muscles to contract.  We can choose to take control of this process of converting thought into action, but much of the time, it occurs beneath the level of our awareness.

It often benefits us that certain of our activities can happen more or less automatically - driving a car or tying a shoe, for instance.  The downside of this unconscious way of responding is that we risk carrying out our actions in a less-than-optimal way.  When we settle for mental "pot luck,"  our responses are influenced by the disorganized and often contradictory miscellany of thoughts - beliefs, attitudes, intentions - which make up our idea of a particular activity. 

At times we may desire to take more control over how we perform our activities, to allow new and better responses to emerge.  To achieve this kind of control, we have to replace our default mental patterns with a consciously chosen, logical, and consistent framework of thinking.

The Alexander Technique provides such a framework.  It is a tool that allows us to organize our thinking.  Those who become skilled in using the A.T. learn to channel their energies along productive pathways, allowing them to avoid creating obstacles for themselves and to use their bodies in a healthier, more efficient way.

I am currently working with a pop singer, Jason (not his real name), who had the intention of breathing fully and deeply when he performed.  Before he came to me, however, this intention was diluted by other thoughts that diverted his energies into counter-productive channels:  His concept of  "good posture" required a great deal of effort, which actually interfered with the movement of his diaphragm in breathing.  Because of erroneous beliefs about how breathing works, he futilely attempted to breathe into his belly (which contains his intestines) rather than into his upper torso (which contains his lungs).  And, paradoxically, it was his very desire to sing well - without any thought as to how the state of his body influences his ability to sing well - that was interfering with his breathing by triggering tension and anxiety.

After some Alexander lessons, Jason has learned constructive thinking that he employs not only on stage, but all the time, to allow for his fullest, healthiest breathing to occur.  He is much more at ease when he performs and feels better on and off stage.

I am teaching Jason the framework of thinking developed by F.M. Alexander during his career of helping people to reach their fullest potential.  (Alexander was a pioneer in exploring the mind-body connection.)  Alexander's technique consists of a set of mental skills - some general, some specific to each individual - that must be learned.  In your lessons, I'll not only teach you the universally applicable aspects of the A.T. thinking process, but I'll also help you to develop customized thinking to address your unique situation.

Outside of your lessons, it is up to you to employ your new thinking as often as possible and as consistently as possible in your life.  A single thought has a slight potential to effect lasting change, but the possibilities multiply when you think that same thought 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times. . . .
Consider how over the course  of many years, a slow drip of water can carve out a deep channel in solid rock.

Here is a self-experiment from my e-newsletter.  Check the comments for notes about my experience with this self-experiment, then add a comment of your own!

Discover for yourself the power of consistent thinking.  To keep things simple, for this self-experiment, you are going to limit yourself to a single thought of the form,

"I allow my ____________ to release." 

Fill in the blank with a part of your body where you tend to store tension - forehead, jaw, tongue, neck, shoulders, hands, low back, feet are some possibilities.  Whatever part you pick, stay with the same part for the course of this experiment.

Think your thought as often as you remember to, both in repose and during activity.  For example, before starting an activity (reaching for your cellphone, getting out of a chair, picking up an object, etc.), pause for a moment and send your thought.  Then proceed with the activity.  See how often you remember to do this.  (And please be gentle with yourself when you forget!)

The kind of thought you are working with is like a wish and is not intended to be carried out.  (Movement may occur as a result of the wish, but it should happen because muscles are releasing, not contracting.)   Remember that any single repetition of your wish is unlikely to bring about substantial, lasting change; the effects are cumulative and will likely accrue more intensely the more you repeat your wish.

Observe what you notice after working with this wish for one hour. .  .then one day. . .then one week or longer.   If you appreciate the results, you may want to keep this wish in your permanent repertoire!

A prospective student recently asked me an important question.  I'm adding it and my answer to this blog.

Q: Do the lessons involve any "homework" or practice at home between sessions? If so, how much time would be involved beyond the actual lessons?

A: The idea of lessons is that we explore how your thinking can positively affect the way you use your body in your daily activities.  It is then up to you to actually use your new thinking in your daily activities.

The more you practice this, the faster you'll change.  For beginning students, I typically recommend making one activity per day your "Alexander laboratory."  For instance, you may decide to practice your Alexander thinking while brushing your teeth....or picking up your coffee cup....or when walking to work. 

Gradually, you will begin to apply the thinking to more and more activities, until it becomes a part of how you do things.

A famous Alexander teacher (Walter Carrington) once said about Alexander students that "the active participation that is required is not muscular activity, but is the active participation of thought and awareness." 

This is what I will want you to practice between lessons.

 

As a youngster, I was a bit of a smart-aleck.  One of my sisters would ask me a perfectly legitimate question: “Do you know where my pink hairbrush is?”  “Yes,” I’d answer, with my characteristic supercilious pursing of the lips guaranteed to drive my siblings insane, “I know where your hairbrush is--it’s in the world.”   I delighted in wasting my sister’s time by providing information that was not specific enough to actually be helpful.

Other than by annoying my little sisters, I liked to amuse myself with nerdy activities like writing out my return address on envelopes in what I fancied to be its properly complete version.  Writing the tiniest characters I could manage, I crammed all of this onto the upper left corner of my envelope:

Mike Hanko
5403 Rolling Rd
Springfield, Virginia
USA
North America
Western Hemisphere
Earth
Solar System
Milky Way Galaxy
Universe

Now I was wasting my own time (and ink), by providing much more information than the Postal Service needed to get a letter to me.  (Not that it wouldn’t serve me in other situations to comprehend my precise place in the scheme of things.)

Most systems--those pertaining to everything from residential addresses to locating hairbrushes to the flow of energy in my body--can be viewed at varying levels of hierarchy.  We have to decide what level of this hierarchy gives us the most useful information about the problem we are trying to solve.

For example, if I have a new student who asks for directions to my teaching studio and I provide a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy with a little arrow pointing to the location of our solar system, I will be waiting a long time for that student to show up.

 

If, on the other hand, I give the new student my address, and then go on to tell her that when she enters my front door she will take six steps to the left and enter the studio door, take three more steps, and then take a seat in the chair that is 3 feet from the window and 4 feet from the bookcase, she will probably seek out a different teacher.  Even though I have given her usable information, it is too precise for the situation.  I come off as an anal-retentive freak.

Let’s say I have figured out the proper degree of positional information to provide my new student, and she’s sitting in my chair, ready for her first lesson.   Now I have to make a choice as to what level of her energetic organization to deal with.

I know that ultimately, all her energy comes down to the states of vibration of the subatomic particles making up her body, but I do not know how to perceive this vibration under my hands.  Nor could I hope to change these vibrations through my intervention, too gross by many, many orders of magnitude.  I might as well try to determine the weight of a sesame seed using my bathroom scale.

Many other hierarchical levels of my student’s structure are beyond my perception and intervention: interactions between her atoms, molecules, cells, even organs.  Though I believe that by working as an Alexander teacher, I can bring about changes at these levels--improving digestion, refining the firing of motor neurons, maybe even tweaking the uptake of neurotransmitters--I am not conscious of directly acting upon her small intestine, her neurons, or her molecules of serotonin.  Thus far in my development as a teacher, these phenomena occupy a level of subtlety beyond my grasp.

At the other end of the hierarchical range, I can err by intervening at too crude a level.  Walter Carrington (a respected teacher taught by F.M. Alexander) warned against this mistake, advising teachers not to attempt to bring their students into visual symmetry or to directly reposition a student’s spine or other body parts.  Into this category of overly crude interventions we can also put such misguided breathing advice as asking our students to breathe into particular parts of their torsos or to breathe in a certain rhythm.

Between these outer ranges of incomprehensible subtlety and brutish over-doing lies the hierarchical level (perhaps levels?) at which the Alexander Technique enables us to bring about change for our students--change that will potentially encompass ALL the levels of a student’s hierarchical structure, from the rhythm of her breathing to the rhythm of vibration of her atoms.

Carrington instructs us that the proper level of intervention for us is our students’ state of “going up.”  Through our hands we can identify when a student is going up and when she is not.  Through our teaching we can then intervene in her thinking to produce changes in her body (and her energy) that we can feel, see, and otherwise experience through our senses.

Alexander has given us a means to indirectly bring about change for our students--real change that permeates every level of their being.  Our entree into this complexity is at the relatively easily perceptible level of postural reflexes.  We mustn’t waste our time--or that of our students--by attempting to intervene at the wrong levels of our students’ systems. 

Have you ever become so engrossed in a book that you completely lost track of time and eventually looked up from your reading to realize that you’re a little achy from sitting for god knows how long in an uncomfortable position?  Or have you ever zoned out into auto-pilot mode while driving home from work and somehow gotten to your destination without any recollection of the trip? 

Lately--under the influence of Missy Vineyard’s excellent new AT book, How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live--I’ve been contemplating this kind of situation, in which my awareness shrinks, leaving me with only a partial picture of my experience. 

What constitutes complete awareness?  I distinguish at least three aspects of any moment of experience which my awareness may encompass: my Self, my activity, and my environment.  While recognizing that my awareness exhibits a fluid, delicately shifting balance among these three aspects of experience, my goal is to neglect none of them and favor none of them above the others.

My Self includes the whole psychophysical ME--my thoughts, my emotions, the level of tension in my muscles, my breathing, etc.  In my moments of complete, expanded awareness, I strive to view my physical self as if from outside of myself, allowing me to see the whole of me--what all of my body parts from scalp to soles of feet are doing.  Habitually, I resort to a much more restricted focus, often becoming absorbed in a particular part of my body that is moving or tensing or experiencing pain. Or I lose track of everything except for my thoughts, which frequently have nothing to do with the present moment.  One recent glorious late-summer evening I was taking a walk to restore myself after a long day of teaching.  A few minutes into the walk, I realized that I was mentally reviewing my schedule for the next teaching day, completely oblivious to the sensory smorgasbord at hand: the clear sky and sultry breezes of this mid-September evening that felt more like mid-June, the passing people with their variety of gaits, adornments, and facial expressions, the flowering window boxes, the joyful sensations of my arms and legs swinging as I walked, the smell of just-baked cupcakes at Billy’s Bakery, the rich soundscape of Eighth Avenue on a warm evening.  How much richer and more restorative my walk became when I came out of my frantic, worried thinking into the actual world of sensory stimuli around me. 

My activity comprises that in which I am engaged as well as any objects or living creatures required for that activity.  An activity could be as simple as standing on the floor or as complex as keeping my Chihuahua from lunging after a discarded bagel on the ground while looking out for turning traffic as we cross 23rd Street, all while carrying on a cellphone conversation with my mother, as I explain why I can’t stay more than one night when I go down for my sister’s birthday celebration.  I find that in general, the activity predominates in my awareness over Self and environment, this effect intensifying as the difficulty of the activity or my interest in it increases.   Wasn’t I even encouraged throughout my school years to “concentrate,” i.e. focus on an assignment while purposefully ignoring all other stimuli?    (I will return to this wrongheaded pedagogical attitude in a bit.)

My environment is made up of concentric fields in space; I can allow my awareness to include as many of them as I wish to(or am able to) through my sensory channels.  At a minimum, I wish to take in my immediate surroundings, such as the space surrounding the chair on which I’m sitting as I type these words.  Depending on my intentions, though, I could expand my awareness to take in the whole room, my apartment, this floor of my building, the whole building, Chelsea, New York City, the United States, the world...up to the entire Universe.  (I am not yet able to take in the entire Universe.)  While I’m typing, it’s usually sufficient to be aware of the room, but if my activity is disposing of a dead battery, I may wish to consider the effects this action will have on Earth’s ecosystems, well beyond my personal space.  (How many problems of our modern world have their roots in someone’s short-sighted awareness, in someone’s failure or unwillingness to consider the ramifications of their actions outside their immediate situation?)

Were you, too, encouraged to assume tunnel vision sometime in your educational history?  Did a teacher ever advise you to shrink your entire world down to the contemplation of an algebra problem or an essay on Chaucer?  (0% Self:100% activity:0% environment)  Did a coach ever admonish you to ignore the signals from your body and run through the pain?  (0% Self:100% activity:0% environment)  Did a voice teacher ever have you so wrapped up in thinking about your diaphragm that you couldn’t breathe at all...let alone sing?  (100% part of Self:0% activity:0% environment)  Did a tour guide ever over-stimulate your enthusiasm to take in the beauty of a work of art to the point at which you bump into benches and slowly develop aches and pains in your poorly-attended-to body?  (0% Self: 0% activity:100% environment)

It occurred to me that--unlike over-attention to Self or activity--people generally recognize the inadvisability of becoming too involved in attention to one’s environment.  “Hey, watch where you’re going!” is how this viewpoint is usually expressed, for example, when you ram your grocery cart into someone’s heels while ogling the luscious hamburger (or other) buns across the aisle at Whole Foods.

But think of how we are taught to be in amused awe of the absent-minded professor who is so wrapped up in his research that he “loses” the glasses that are on his head or forgets to eat.  Or how we lionize our opera/rock/Broadway divas whose uncompromising career focus leaves no room for living normal off-stage lives.

The beliefs underlying these ways of being and approaches to learning are that 1) we will absorb more information by narrowing our focus, and 2) we are unable to process multiple levels of awareness simultaneously.  My experience of teaching the Alexander Technique has proven to me over and over the inaccuracy of these beliefs.  In a future posting, I will outline what I’ve noticed about awareness when I’m teaching and describe some ways you can explore the benefits and challenges of expanded awareness in your own day-to-day activities.

Want to know why people are coming to me to learn the Alexander Technique?  My students are experiencing all sorts of benefits as they progress in their lessons--as am I in mine.

You should consider coming for some lessons of you own if you'd like to

1. Look and feel younger.

2. Breathe fully and naturally.

3. Enjoy improved health.

4. Eliminate your aches and pains.

5. Learn to know yourself on a deeper level.

6. Understand how your body is meant to work--as a coordinated whole.

7. Change bad habits into healthy ones.

8. Become responsive rather than reactive.

9. Increase your energy.

10. Be calm even under stress.

11. Learn to give yourself more time.

12. Have perfect posture without effort or discomfort.

13. Sing (act, dance, play) at a higher level of skill.

14. Eliminate unwanted tensions.

15. Channel your energy more productively.

16. Be stronger with your current level of muscle mass.

17. Exercise safely and more effectively.

18. Unleash your creative power.

19. Walk (or run) more efficiently.

20. Achieve a balance of mind and body.

21. Move more gracefully.

22. Speak with more resonance and power.

23. Enjoy better digestion.

24. Increase your awareness of self, others, and environment.

25. Learn to focus your thinking.

26. Quiet your chattering mind.

27. Learn effective ways to relax your back.

28. Sit more comfortably at your desk.

29. Figure out what you are doing to interfere with your potential...and stop doing it.

30. Be more alert.

31. Stop compressing yourself and allow yourself to take up your full allotment of space in the world.

32. Age vibrantly.

33. Look taller.

34. Prevent injuries.

35. Resolve physical ailments like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, TMJ, athsma, headaches, etc.

36. Learn to get more done by expending less effort.

37. Improve your golf game.  (Or tennis, soccer, judo....)

38. Experience self-acceptance.

39. Become a quicker learner.

40. Cultivate patience.

41. Allow for free emotional expression.

42. Get unstuck.

43. Improve your ability to listen and to communicate.

44. Develop stage presence.

45. Quell anxiety.

46. Practice non-judgment.

47. Allow for the unimpeded flow of energy (life force) within you.

48. Stop storing tension in your muscles.

49. Find non-surgical, non-pharmaceutical ways to heal yourself.

50. Be a healthy role model for your children to imitate.

Many people have the misconception--and I have to admit to my own deeply ingrained version of this misconception--that the Alexander Technique is about relaxing.  Don't we all want to live with the minimal amount of muscular effort?  The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is not really.  At least, not minimal effort in the way most of us mean these words.

There are actually at least two different kinds of effort that we employ as we go about our activities.  One is familiar: it's the effort we expend to perform various actions.  We expend effort to lift a stone, to sing a note, to walk across the room.   The other kind of effort goes largely unrecognized for most of us: it's the "background" effort that supports our bodies in response to gravity.  It takes a certain amount of energy to be upright to varying degrees in standing or sitting or even lying on a couch.  (Dr. Wilfred Barlow, one of the first teachers trained by Alexander, attibutes to him "a vision of a way of life in which the body was to be used well and actively during even the most sedentary of pursuits."  [Italics mine])

I'm beginning to tune in to the inverse relationship between these two types of effort.  It seems that if I expend a little more energy to organize myself into a more dynamic uprightness, I actually need to expend a lot LESS energy to perform the lifting of stones and singing of notes, etc, that make up my daily activities.

Of course, this extra effort has to be wielded intelligently.  Just pulling myself up with blind force creates interference, not ease.  (This is what generally happens when people try to "sit up straight.")  Employing Alexander's principles helps me to invoke the strongly supportive system of oppositional muscle forces in my body--an available resource that it's easy to neglect.  But if this system of forces is not activated, I have to use far more "local" effort to lift things and move.  (Local as opposed to global; I have to tense my biceps, say, to lift a book, rather than letting my whole body cooperate in this effort.)

When I think of relaxation as the goal, I am reluctant to expend the beneficial effort to bring about the oppositional forces that can support me and make all my activities easier.  With this much vitality of energy coursing through my whole body, it can feel as though I am working harder just to be here--and in a way I am.  (Every activity becomes a whole-body toning exercise--I especially notice more engagement of my abs.)  I have to remember that the energy savings will accrue as I begin to move and to do things, which will take less effort.

Sometimes, I do like to let down completely, relinquishing my oppositional energy for true relaxation.  After a yoga class, for example, I may spend a few minutes in corpse pose, releasing as much muscle tension as I can.  But I need to remember to "turn on" my oppositional support system before moving out of this pose, or I risk exerting effort unwisely, putting local strains on my body and potentially injuring myself.

Alexander developed a procedure--which he rather unimaginatively named "hands on back of a chair"--to develop a person's sense of oppositional organization in activity.  (I hope to make a video about HOBOC soon.)  Ask me to explore this procedure with you at your next lesson. . .learn how to tone your abs while you work at the computer!

One of my students came in for his lesson this week with a fascinating account of how he had become aware of a set of habits associated with seeing pretty girls on the street.   This seeing-a-pretty-girl habit pattern included muscular tensions that interfered with his freedom of movement.  We discussed various ways he could address these habits, from removing the stimulus altogether by maintaining a more internal focus--with the unfortunate result that he would not get to see pretty girls--to applying the principles of the AT to the situation, allowing a new kind of response to evolve.

Since this lesson, I have become more aware in walking around the City of having a set response myself to encountering various types of sensory stimuli.  I seem to have developed sterotypical responses to seeing cute dogs, overweight police officers, and trash lying in the street; of hearing sirens, a British accent, and Madonna songs; of smelling pizza, hyacinths, and homeless people.  My habitual responses include physical elements, like forming my mouth into a certain shape or tightening to pull up my chest, and mental elements--these are what really astounded me--like thinking "Oh, what a cute puppy!" or "Mmmmmmmmm" or "Is that policeman really going to be able to help me if something goes down?"

The astounding part is how similar my thoughts were every time I encountered a particular kind of stimulus.  I realized that instead of allowing myself to notice how a new situation, object, or person could affect me, I mentally assigned the situation, object, or person to a pigeon-hole category and called up a stored response from my mental archives.  So before I could experience that pug puppy for what it is, I was running my "Oh what a cute puppy!" program, thus preventing myself from noticing what unique about this particular puppy.   Considering the limited range of response I was allowing myself, I might as well have been seeing the same puppy over and over. 

As unfortunate as it may be to not experience a puppy or a hyacinth for what it truly is in the moment, how much worse to stereotype a person, whether it be a chubby policeman, a sexy athlete in tight running shorts, or a mother pushing a stroller.  And yet I find that I have a set response to all these "types" and more.  I find it unpleasant to recognize that I have distilled an entire person into a body weight, or a uniform, or a nice set of abs, or any other characteristic.  And I find it unsatisfactory to not allow myself an authentic range of response IN THE MOMENT to all these stimuli.

How much of my life has been half-lived by recycling old responses?

To create some change, I have been exploring applying the principles of the AT to my walks around the neighborhood.  INHIBITION has been particularly helpful: if I (initially) withold consent from having any response at all to seeing a person on the street, I can block the habitual response from arising long enough to enable the current situation to register authentically on my whole system.  When I go through this process, I create an atmosphere of non-judgment; I feel less inclined to assign people and things to existing categories or to rate them according to my inner scale of sexiness, smelliness, or worthiness. 

Granted, this way of experiencing  requires more of me: I can no longer walk around half-aware, allowing my prior judgments to take the place of seeing, feeling, noticing what is happening right now.  But when I commit to this process, I've noticed that it leaves me feeling more peaceful and gives me a sense of connectedness with the world around me.  It's also more interesting--I'm noticing more and more details about everything, including myself.