Alexander90210

I have the worst confession for an Alexander Technique teacher — there have been many days over the past few weeks where I’ve had no will to go up (meaning to give myself the upward thinking direction that allows for freer movement). I’ve just been hunkering down. I say to myself, I should think up, and then I say, I just don’t have it in me. My get up and go got up and left.

So even during my worst days, I’ve been doing active rest and that has allowed me to let go of unnecessary tension and to thereby lengthen and widen. My mood tremendously affects my thinking and my freedom of movement which all in turn affect my mood.

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I just had a conversation on Facebook with an opera singer who regarded the Alexander Technique as a cult.

Emma Stace Darling luke. i went to an alexander person once….they said relax and i did. they said. my god i have never known anyone who can turn on and off that quickly and completely.
19 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Emma Stace Darling i hope you shaved that nightmare beard cos you look dishy without it n it makes you look like a vegan
18 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Luke Ford Why did you have only one Alexander lesson?
18 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling erm…i think i just explained that. i do it al right naturally.
17 minutes ago · Like

Luke Ford so you didn’t discover anything from your lesson?
17 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling that i was doing it all fine. i am naturally placed well. no problems. and how extortionately expensive it is. and a bit hippy for me. a bit ….smug
16 minutes ago · Like

Emma Stace Darling i never met one who wasn’t superior. or who had any money thought they charge the earth. and i never met one who i felt comfortable with and in the world of opera EVERYONE takes alexander technique. i know all about it i assure you.met the weirdest people.
13 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Luke Ford Interesting!
11 minutes ago · Like · 1

Luke Ford I love your feedback on my profession! Hilarious!
10 minutes ago · Like · 1

Luke Ford How much were people charging and what did you think would be a reasonable charge? What did you do in your lesson? What was taught to you in the lesson?
9 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling i went to meet 6 practitioners. and knew two out of work. all the same. ALL THE SAME… i consulted one who made me pay £100. and told me i was fine. nothing wrong. i moved naturally perfectly. he siad he could fine tune but i thought i would spend the money on jewellery instea
9 minutes ago · Like

Luke Ford All smug and superior!?
9 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling i learnt nothing. told you how much charge was. no it was too much for one 4o minute session
9 minutes ago · Like

Emma Stace Darling he taught me how to stand up. said i did it perfectly well. the best he had ever seen in 40 years. i said thanks. and learnt f*** all.
6 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Emma Stace Darling i know a lot of ppl who like alexander, but you know the fact is, i dont like all the birkenstock wearing floaty trousers stuff. i dont like nose rings and goaty beards and eating seeds i all felt very like a sect to me. and it ruins its image too.
4 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Luke Ford Alexander Technique is something I devote my life to, so it is interesting to see how the Technique came across to you.
4 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling yeah all smug n superior.
4 minutes ago · Like

Emma Stace Darling yes i know that. so i am kindly giving you my views on it to help you. its like a cult so i know it wont put you off it. you’ll dig your heels in (in perfect balance ) even further.
3 minutes ago · Like

Luke Ford Hilarious! I can wait to tell my Alexander friends.
3 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling you meant cannot?
3 minutes ago · Like

Emma Stace Darling there you go. my alexander friends. like a cult.
2 minutes ago · Like

Luke Ford That’s awesome! Even some Alexander teachers have asked if we are a cult? I did some videos and blog posts on just this theme.
2 minutes ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling bet they all wear flat shoes and the girls have long flowing hair and nose studs and eat organic
2 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Emma Stace Darling you see how you put yourselves across? no wonder none of you are rich! even with your charges
2 minutes ago · Like

Luke Ford http://yourmoralleader.blogspot.com/2011/09/is-alexander-technique-cult.html

Luke Ford Emma, you are awesome!
about a minute ago · Like · 1

Emma Stace Darling i can feel you getting angry underneath so i will go. but i just wanted to share. you have such a cute face dont EVER do that beardy things again. reel em in dont put em off! god bless you n yours dear luke xx

Emma Stace Darling cool…well done you. as i say, a lot of my (least favourite and slightly smug) friends praise it. when i say a lot i mean you know, a good amount. 10%.

I often hear sportscasters talk about some athlete having his game face on. It means a look of concentration.

What does concentration look like? To most people, it means a degree of extra tension in the face. If your face is not free to react freely to the moment, then your options have narrowed, your thinking has narrowed, and your emotions have narrowed. I can’t see how this is helpful in any endeavor.

Concentration is not helped by scrunching and tension. Concentration is helped by the letting go of unnecessary tension so that you are more free to be in the moment.

From UrbanDictionary: “Game face means “a confident swagger you bring out when you are about to get ready to tackle something difficult, or when you are about to take on a challenge. Or when you are getting ready to get down to hard business.”

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In the last three years, I’ve noticed that one topic has led to the most heated exchanges in the Alexander Technique world I know — teaching via Skype. That I thought this was OK was a major factor in the loss of several of my relationships with other Alexander teachers. Bringing up this topic might be the very best way in the current climate to put a traditional Alexander teacher into the startle response.

Alexander Technique has traditionally been taught one-on-one, which was largely how I learned it. Some teachers have excelled at teaching the Technique to groups, but this was highly controversial and I’ve heard it led to the most vigorous arguments in the 1970s and perhaps even friendships were lost over it. Few Alexander teachers are as skilled at teaching the Technique to groups as they are to teaching it one-on-one.

Here is an excellent podcast on the topic: “Mark Josefsberg, an Alexander Technique teacher in New York City, talks with Robert Rickover about whether a teacher’s hands are crucial for teaching the Alexander Technique. List of Alexander Technique teachers who use Skype: alexandertechnique.com/teacher/distancelearning.”

Robert: “I’d have a hard time saying that my private students advance more quickly than my Skype students.”

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Veteran teacher Robert Rickover tells fellow teacher Mark Josefberg: “The Alexander Technique is simple but not necessarily easy. There are some classic traps some students encounter.”

“The most classic trap is to try to recreate [the great feelings you get during a lesson]. The teacher helps you. You have this feeling of lightness. You try to hold on to the feeling [and it then eludes you]. Trying to latch on to feelings is a dead end.”

“Wanting to get a right position or wanting to be right. A student will often come in and ask, is my head in the right position?”

“Most posture advise is about putting yourself in a certain position such as head held up high or chest lifted or shoulders pulled back. They’re all terrible. They’re all static.”

“There is no right position but there is a right direction aka the mental statement you are making to yourself about what you would like to happen.”

“The idea that you have to try or to concentrate on your Alexander directions. In directing yourself, the more gently and softly you can think them, the more effective they will be… You are going to forget your directions within a second or two and you have to forgive yourself and move on.”

“When people think about specific things, there’s a tendency to narrow your focus while when people think about things generally, it is about vague things such as enjoying the breeze. You can’t get much more specific than thinking about your neck… So I recommend a light way of thinking about a specific area. It’s not a natural way of thinking.”

“Expecting instant results. People can easily get the impression that all they need is to be shown something once or twice to make these changes because the changes seem so deceptively simple.”

“Getting upset with setbacks… It’s easy to get discouraged and to feel like not much is happening… Because our ideas are so contrary to most thinking about physical functioning, people will tack on what they believe and attribute it to you.”

“You might hurt more after a lesson, even in different places. As you start to become more sensitive to what is going on, you’ll notice tension more readily. When you start to change your functioning, some parts of your body will be called upon to do stuff they’ve not done before.”

“When muscles that have been chronically held begin to release, the sensing mechanisms wake up and you start to feel the tension that is still there.”

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Robert Rickover writes:

There have also been dramatic developments in what might be called “Alexander Technique teaching technology”. This started with Alexander Technique spin-offs such as Body Mapping, Posture Release Imagery and Up With Gravity – all of which are easily accessible to members of the general public and which are to a large extent web-based in terms of how people discover and use them.

More recently, several new methods of Alexander Technique directing have emerged, starting with Negative (sometimes called Inhibitory) Directions, which have gained a significant following among Alexander Teachers. In the past few months, Freedom Directions have emerged as a likely successor to Negative Directions – one that is simpler to use, often a bit more effective, and above all, one that students can easily share with others. They can used by pretty much anybody with an interest in learning them. (You can learn about all these and other new developments in Alexander Technique directing at the Alexander Technique Podcast page: New Directions in Alexander Technique Directing.)

As if all that weren’t enough, the web has also provided a new medium for teaching the Technique at a distance: Skype. Of course there is at present no hands-on teaching with Skype, although this seems certain to change as existing new technologies become cheaper and more widely available. Many teachers have successfully used Skype to teach students who would otherwise have no access to a teacher. The new teaching developments mentioned above are fairly easy to convey via Skype.

What this all means is that the “cage” provided by professional Alexander Technique organizations – one that may well have been necessary half a century ago – has now opened wide, allowing new ideas to be quickly and easily tested and propagated throughout the Alexander world without any official involvement or control. Alexander organizations still have important roles, but controlling innovation in Alexander Technique teaching is, in my opinion, no longer one of them.

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“Pedro de Alcantara, an Alexander Technique teacher in Paris, France, talks with Robert Rickover about his concept, the “Simplified Skeleton”, the basis of what have come to be called “Neutral Directions”.”

Pedro: “When most people talk, they move their heads and their necks besides from gesticulating and moving their arms, legs and body. They nod. They say something and the head goes up and down. There are at least three possibilities. You can train yourself to talk without actually moving the skull, where the jaw, tongue, lips, vocal chords, and diaphragm move but the skull stays where it is. Many good singers, actors, politicians, preachers know how to do that. It is very convincing when a speaker can talk without moving the skull. It lends a certain authority to the speaker. It also changes the tone of voice and the timber of the voice.

“Then you can choose to move your skull on the joint between the spine and the skull. You can nod the head a bit but the neck is not affected. You nod with the head, not the neck. Then you can catch yourself moving your neck in space, moving it forward and down. Once you feel the distinction between the three things, they are very different ways of speaking. If you often talk moving your neck and you train yourself to talk without moving your neck, you’ll become a different preacher, speaker, singer, actor. A different set of emotions.”

“Practice talking without moving your neck or watch how people talk on TV. Watch the movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? And you’ll see these two great actors, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, they talk without moving their skulls. They show strong emotions without nodding with the neck and the emotion and action is more condensed on account of it. If you keep your neck in place with the spine, everything changes — the voice, the emotion, the communication, the force, the personality.”

“Direction works best when it is multi-media, when you use words, thoughts, images, sensations, trigger, symbols, anecdotes, haikus. In that song and dance of directions, you find the one that suits you and gives you that stable neck. You say to yourself, my emotions flow through me to my listeners, but my neck stays.”

Robert: “In my experience, the people to watch are successful politicians. They generally don’t give their necks away. You don’t get elected if you are constantly giving your neck away.”

In this interview, Pedro says: “The Alexander Technique is a way of solving a problem by putting the problem aside and working on yourself instead, focusing on yourself, calming yourself, and opening up your mind. If you do that, most problems disappear.”

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Monika Gross tells Robert Rickover: “I wanted to teach people in a way that wouldn’t increase their stress. People have less money and less time (at least in their perception).”

“People spend so much time in front of their computers. Wouldn’t it be interesting to devise an intervention that makes them alert while dealing with this device?”

“Rather than saying I’m giving up the beautiful skill of touch in teaching, I’m saying, maybe I can give you some Alexander principles via Skype so that when you can come in person, you will. You’ll find time to do it because you’ve found inhibition.”

“An advantage of Skype is that people feel your presence in real time. You are still creating a bond with your student of caring, compassion and attention. That’s something most people don’t have access to a lot of the time. That’s one reason they relish having an Alexander lesson. I can’t touch them through the computer, but I can allow them to begin to understand that what they’re learning is something they already have. It is not something I am doing to them or fixing them or adjusting them or manipulating them. That’s not what we do as teachers but it is something in the early lessons that the student perceives we are doing.”

“I have made quicker progress with some of my Skype students of losing a perceived dependency on me as the teacher, the magic hands, come and fix me, I need this…”

“When my daughter learned to walk, I encouraged her but I didn’t hold her.”

Robert: “There’s something very clean about it. It’s clear that you are teaching. People on Skype are much more likely to experiment between sessions.”

“For most of my in-person students, it takes them a while to realize that I am not going to fix them.”

Monika: “When you’re giving a Skype lesson, it’s usually in a person’s home or office. Occasionally I’ve done Skype lessons when somebody is at a golf course and at a track. When you have a lesson in your habitual environment, it becomes marked by the perceptual changes you had during your lesson. Being in your space becomes a mnemonic device that wakes you up.”

“They come to associate a change in use when doing email.”

Robert: “You can work with someone as they process their email.”

Monika: “The plasticity of the brain is imprinting the experience in their home or office.”

There are some students who don’t want to be touched, so Skype is ideal.

F.M. Alexander tried to teach people through letters.

Monika: “We need to be able to teach Alexander Technique principles through a broad spectrum of media and pedagogy.”

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I was watching this 2013 documentary on former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen. I was struck by his hoarse voice and immediately thought that the guy suffered from unnecessary body tension and this stressed and damaged his vocal chords.

Early on in the film, Hank says: “I’m a sloucher.” Pulling down is going to hurt the quality of your voice. Unnecessary tension anywhere in your body is going to hurt your voice.

“I do a lot of things well, but relax isn’t one of them,” Hank says. You can tell that in his voice.

Hank’s wife Wendy says: “Hank’s intense.” That intensity when it manifests as unnecessary body tension is going to cause you a lot of physical, emotional and mental problems.

Hank: “We always joke about the fact that I can’t read anything with expression. If you heard me read a speech, you would know it wasn’t a pleasant thing. I would read with a monotone. I would race through these books [with the kids] in a monotone and Wendy came in once and said, ‘Slow down. Read with expression.’ As soon as I did that, both kids started to cry. They said, ‘No! Read like a daddy, not like a mommy.’”

Hank talks about a key meeting during the 2008 financial crisis. “Getting near midnight, I had a problem cover over me. All of my life when I get really exhausted, I get the dry heaves. And it sounds like I’m really sick because I make a lot of noise.”

Wendy laughs: “Everybody asks. I forget, dry heaves, I think he calls it that.”

Hank: “I would play tennis with Wendy. If I was in the hot sun and so on… A couple of times, our opponents would think it was a tactic, and I’d go over and have the dry heaves and she’d say, ‘Hank, get back out here. That’s disgusting.’.”

Wendy: “I would totally discount it. People would get very undone about it and I’d say, ‘Forget it. That’s just Hank.’ I discount them completely. I know he’s had them before.”

Hank: “Rahm Emmanuel and Harry Reid came over and offered to get a doctor.”

Why does Hank Paulsen get dry heaves under stress? It’s related to his slumping, tension and hoarse voice. He’s using himself poorly. He has way too much tension in his body, way too much compression, and he makes himself sick.

I blogged about this Sept. 1, 2009:

“Do you have any thoughts on stomach aches?” I ask my Alexander Technique teacher today.
“When do you get them?” he asks.
“When I start worrying. I find myself clenching.”
“Well, what would you say to a friend with this problem?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d say that you’re probably moving down when it happens, pushing your stomach down, playing a loop of worrying thoughts, and you’re probably tipping your head back. So the solution is to flow up. You’re too smart of a guy for this. You know this.
“Why do people throw up when under stress? Because they push down, they tip their head back, they catastrophize and the bile flows up.”

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“Daska Hatton, an Alexander Technique teacher and criniosacral therapist in London, England, talks with Robert Rickover about the connections between the Alexander Technique and Craniosascral Therapy.”

Robert: “The two processes are complimentary.”

“Cranio work is less demanding of a student. You could even fall asleep during a cranio session and it would be OK. You don’t have to present the whole time while most Alexander teachers would prefer you have your eyes open and be present and notice what is going on and even do some simple movement experiments while you are lying down.

“Table work in the Alexander Technique world is just one of several procedures, most of which are more active than lying on a table, while cranio work is all table work.”

“Alexander Technique is about learning to change the way you think about yourself in movement. The goal is always to get the student thinking.”

“Cranio work can get at these subtle, internal twists and turns in your musculature that are so complex that it might take many lifetimes of self-directing to release these on their own. It helps to have another person there to do the thinking for you and release those. Alexander Technique is about consciousness and cranio is about letting someone help you and physical therapy and manipulation is about having someone whack you into a new relationship.”

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