“The trouble is most of us grow up with the idea that just thinking about doing something is one thing and actually doing it is another. In the Alexander work we soon find out that there is no wall or line separating the former from the latter. We learn that whatever boundary there is is so tenuous that to distinguish between the thinking-about-doing and doing is of little use or value except academically. The distinction may have theoretical value, but…
“It seems to me that telling yourself subvocally, ‘the head to go forward and up’ and so on is a very, very powerful stimulus to do it. If I tell myself things, I usually tell myself to do things. I’m not so subtle in conversations with myself that I just tell myself to give consent to do something. I don’t just say, you know, ‘Come on, old fellow, just let it happen.’ I say, ‘Wake up at the back there!’…
F.M. used to say to people very often, “Now tell me, what’s the difference between when you go to do something and when you try to do it?” And the difference is that when people try to do something, they make a great deal more muscular effort about it. The muscular effort is associated with an emotional attitude as well – an attitude of anxiety, fear of failure, and all that sort of thing.(Taken from “The Act of Living” –…
I remember sitting on the tram on my way back to Streatham Hill and thinking, “Now, should my back be here or should it be there?” I was experimenting a lot in those early days although I didn’t understand that that wasn’t how to go about it at all. I think nearly everyone does that in the beginning. And, of course, it does take time, especially if you’re very young like I was, to appreciate that it’s all going to…
Q: Then how to teach new pupils to stop?A: It is a brief reminder, a quick intention. You do get these people who are laboring and look as if they are laying an egg or something!I explain that they need to be still so that I am able to work with them – so that my hands can work on them. I ask them to keep their eyes looking out and seeing something – looking out but being still within….
The whole point is that, from a practical point of view, certain things have got to happen and certain things mustn’t happen. And really it’s much more important to see that the wrong thing doesn’t happen than to see that the right thing happens. We’re such creatures of habit that if the wrong thing is allowed to happen, a wrong habit is readily established. People make the mistake of believing that if they carry out an action somehow or another…
Stillness is a state of awareness – leaving yourself alone – not doing anything to be still and not doing anything not to be still. Some people mistake stillness for collapse. Collapse is an act. Stillness is not.Peggy Williams (“Unsmudged. An Encounter with Peggy Williams” – p152)
So, at the outset, never mind what we do want. Everybody thinks that what we do want is what matters, but of course it isn’t. The thing that matters is what we don’t want. If we can be clear about what we don’t want, what mustn’t take place, then we can watch out and at the very first signs that it is going wrong, we can quickly intervene and, hopefully, stop it. But people’s minds don’t work in that way.Walter…
Everyone is always teaching one what to do, leaving us still doing the things we shouldn’t do.FM Alexander (“Articles and Lectures” – Teaching Aphorisms p196)
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)
In Alexander’s sense “stopping doing” means stopping that which leads to over-activity. It does not mean collapse (relaxation), for this is a doing of a different and even more harmful kind. To gain improvement it is necessary to stop thinking in certain ways and to think differently.Patrick MacDonald (“The Alexander Technique As I See It” – Notebook Jottings p13)
“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…
“Everyone is always teaching one what to do, leaving us still doing the things we shouldn’t do.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p196) Introduction FPJ: 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…(Freedom to Change – chapter 14 p158) WC: The method…
“Under the ordinary teaching methods, the pupil gets 19 wrong to 1 right experience. It ought to be the other way round.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p196) An Unstructured Group of Quotes Related to Learning AT MB: There’s a ‘still point’ as Elliot would say, where, I don’t say it’s unaffected, but it’s not pushed off its perch – you’re able to keep something going whatever happens to you outwardly. And that’s the secret of life really….
“I ask you to do nothing, but you act as if I had asked you to do. I have got to train you to act according to your decision where the habits of life are concerned.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p196) An Unstructured Group of Quotes Related to Learning AT FPJ: When I knew F. M., he had very little to say about “directive orders” or “thinking.” I assumed that he was satisfied that I knew how…