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Category: Kinaesthetic Sense

The sense which gives us information on the positions our bodies are in, and the movements we make

123. Understanding and Experience

123. Understanding and Experience

“No verbal description can do justice to a technique which involves the changing…of an individual’s sensory experiences. One cannot describe the experience of seeing the colour, red. Similarly one cannot describe the much more complex experience of improved physical coordination. A verbal description would mean something only to a person who had actually had the experience described… Complete understanding of the system can come only with the practice of it.”(Taken from “Ends and Means” p223)

120. Wrong Ideas

120. Wrong Ideas

A pupil of one of my colleagues was once told in a lesson not to close her eyes. She said, “If I don’t close my eyes, I can’t concentrate.” My colleague said, “I don’t want you to try to concentrate.” “But,” she said, “if I don’t concentrate I can’t feel what is happening.” “I don’t want you to try and feel what is happening,” he said. “But,” she replied, “if I don’t feel, how can I relax?” “I don’t want…

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95. The First Hands-On Teaching

95. The First Hands-On Teaching

“Have I ever told you how FM came to use his hands in teaching? No? Well, after FM recovered his voice, he earned part of his living teaching drama students. I remember him telling me: ‘It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t be able to do what I told them. But they just couldn’t understand what I was talking about. So when they pulled their heads back, I just put my hands on and made an adjustment.’ Later on,…

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87. A New Spectrum of Colours

87. A New Spectrum of Colours

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…

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52. Attention and Imagination

52. Attention and Imagination

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…

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27. Sensory Awareness

27. Sensory Awareness

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)

The Experts On… Feelings and the Kinaesthetic Sense

The Experts On… Feelings and the Kinaesthetic Sense

“They won’t try and get out of the chair unless they feel they have that something that will get them out of the chair! That something is their habit.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p198) Introduction FPJ: I can’t talk about the Alexander Technique without using the word “kinaesthesia”. So I’ll start out by defining it. Kinaesthesia is a Greek word – it is too bad there isn’t a good English word for it like “sight” or “hearing”…

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The Experts On… Learning the Alexander Technique 1

The Experts On… Learning the Alexander Technique 1

“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….

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The Experts On… Learning the Alexander Technique 2

The Experts On… Learning the Alexander Technique 2

“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…

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I Know You’re Debauched, And I’ll Tell You Why

I Know You’re Debauched, And I’ll Tell You Why

What shape are you in at the moment? But how do you know? Do you know how many senses you have? The usual answer is five, but in fact we have many more than that, as discussed in this BBC article. As well as the five we are all familiar with, we can also sense temperature, pain, and balance, among others. And then there’s our kinaesthetic sense, which is our sense of body awareness. It tells you where in space…

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A Three-Point Explanation of Alexander Technique

A Three-Point Explanation of Alexander Technique

1. The right thing does itself Like all life on earth, the human body has evolved with gravity ever present. We aren’t just designed to simply cope with gravity, we require it. The force of gravity produces an automatic response which engages our postural muscles, and these muscles then hold us up easily, freely and naturally. This is not something we need to consciously manage – just as our hearts beat and our food is digested, being upright should happen…

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The Attraction of Slumping

The Attraction of Slumping

The familiar versus the beneficial Are you addicted to sugar? Apparently most of us are, and it’s not good for us. It is now claimed there is “hard and fast data that sugar is toxic irrespective of its calories and irrespective of weight.” (TIME) And once sugar has become part of our make-up, those who indulge will carry on indulging, even when conscious that it is gradually undermining their health. “It shows that in the case of sugar, for instance,…

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