“I do not know who it was who introduced [Aldous] Huxley to Alexander. It could have been any one of his friends. “Going to Alexander” was a fashionable thing to do in the circles in which the Huxleys moved… Sometime in the fall of 1935 Huxley began having daily lessons in what Alexander called “the Use of the Self.” His general condition soon began to improve and by the end of the year he was speaking in public. In February,…
Thinking, directing, “giving orders”, or however you wish to describe it, is not an end in itself. It has value and meaning only as it is applied to the pupil’s own life.(Taken from “Freedom to Change” – Appendix D p193)
In describing their experiences pupils are apt to emphasize physical changes – so much so that the Technique is often thought of as a kind of posture training. I think this is natural, especially for intellectuals who tend to be overawed by the physical changes that lessons produce. In my case, the discovery that physical activity could be a source of pleasure was like waking from a bad dream. In the past I had taken exercise of one kind or…
In 1924 a child whose parents were in India was sent to Alexander for lessons. He was nervous and excitable and Alexander felt that he needed daily help in employing the new use of himself in his schoolwork. Other parents who were themselves having lessons asked for the same kind of help for their children, and a class was set up to provide academic instruction for them, “upon the principle,” Alexander wrote, “that the end for which they are working…
“More ease and lightness,” “a feeling of ease, of competence – very different from ‘relaxation’,” “a greater degree of ease and consequent pleasure,” are expressions that subjects have used to describe the experience. The feeling of pleasure in an everyday movement takes most subjects by surprise, and their faces break spontaneously into a smile as they notice it. “It’s a funny thing,” one of them said. “It’s as if my arms liked moving this way and wanted to do it…
The big stumbling block for me lay in my concept of thinking. Thinking meant concentrating, narrowing the attention to a small area and making an effort to keep it there.Frank Pierce Jones (“Freedom to Change” – chapter 2 p9)
Ultimately a pupil must be able to make reliable kinaesthetic observations of himself in activity. Such observations, however, cannot be performed by the suggestions of the teacher. The purpose of lessons is to sharpen the kinaesthetic sense and to increase self-knowledge and self-control. The purpose is not to help the pupil develop his fantasy life. To imagine, for example, that your head is a balloon (which it certainly is not) is to get further away from reality than you already…
What makes a good pupil? It is not suggestibility. The person who sits down, relaxes and prepares to have some kind of novel experience may get what he is looking for, but it will not be the Alexander Technique. A healthy scepticism is much easier to deal with.Frank Pierce Jones (“Freedom to Change” – chapter 14 p154)
The Alexander Technique might be defined as a method for knowing simultaneously what you are not doing as well as what you are doing – knowing, for example, that you are not interfering with the “primary control” while you are talking, listening or thinking…Frank Pierce Jones (“Freedom to Change” – chapter 14 p158)
When the pupil perceives directly through the kinaesthetic sense and can compare a habitual with a non-habitual way of doing something, he doesn’t need words in order to grasp the significance of the experience. Alexander put it succinctly in a remark reported by Lulie Westfeldt (p. 71): “If we become sensorily aware of doing a harmful thing to ourselves, we can cease doing it.” The key word here is “sensorily.”Frank Pierce Jones (“Freedom to Change” – Chapter 6 p51)
As I understand it, the Alexander Technique is not concerned with three-dimensional but with four-dimensional posture, in other words with movement.Frank Pierce Jones (“Freedom to Change” – Appendix D p190)
Having injured my back in a car accident, I had never been able to sit at a desk for any length of time without discomfort. Now I began to notice that whenever I leaned forward to read or write I displaced my head downward and allowed my chest to collapse so that my torso was a dead weight on my lower back. Since I had always done this, I assumed that there was no alternative except to make an effort…
“Anyone,” said F. M.,” can do what I do if he does what I did.” In practice, few seem to have succeeded in accomplishing this. The reason, I am sure, is that in spite of warnings they “turn it into a doing.” People have frequently introduced themselves to me with the statement: “I have read Mr. Alexander’s books and I always try to hold my head in the right position, which he advocates.” This, of course, is just what he…
One day when I was having trouble understanding the relation between my thinking and the kinaesthetic experiences A.R. was giving me, he said, “Be patient; stick to principle; and it will all open up like a great cauliflower.” I did not understand what this meant but it was somehow reassuring.[A.R. is Albert Redden Alexander, brother of F.M. Alexander.]Frank Pierce Jones (“Freedom to Change” – Chapter 8 p68)
The Alexander Technique might be defined as a method for knowing simultaneously what you are not doing, as well as what you are doing – knowing, for example, that you are not interfering with the “primary control” while you are talking, listening or thinking…The Technique is not a treatment; it is a discipline that, to be effective, has to be applied in the activities of daily life. The reward is an increase in competence and self-esteem and in the sensory…
A Lecture Given By Frank Pierce Jones at Indiana University School of Music, Bloomington March 10, 1975 It may not seem logical to go to an Alexander teacher who can’t sing or play an instrument and expect to learn something about musical performance. It isn’t illogical, however. The reason is that an Alexander teacher is concerned with unlearning rather than learning – with non-doing rather than doing, with subtracting rather than adding. The Alexander Technique is a method for getting…