Q: How do you make it clear to the pupil that the Alexander Technique is not a therapy, particularly to those who’ve been on a Cook’s Tour of conventional and alternative therapies and think that this is just another port of call? A: If anyone comes to me and says that they’ve got this, that or the other, I say, “Well, alright. But the fact of the matter is that the way you use yourself – the way you stiffen,…
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…
As I’ve said previously, FM was a very practical man. And although a lot of people got the wrong end of the stick, he always emphasised that this work wasn’t about getting in and out of chairs. It’s about paying attention to how you’re using your body whatever you’re doing – even standing on your head if that’s what you want to do!Marjory Barlow (“Alexander Technique: the Ground Rules” – part 1 p66)
Playing musical instruments can be a source of mal-coordination. So many piano players gain their emphasis by bringing the body downwards towards the keys. It is only the arms, hands and fingers that should travel downwards. The body should be directly upwards.Patrick MacDonald (“The Alexander Technique As I See It” – Notebook Jottings p23)
I’ll say a little bit more about Alexander’s expressed view that belief is a matter of muscle tension. I’m pretty certain that what he meant, and what I would mean by such a thing, is that when any of us adopt fixed beliefs and fixed ideas, above all it is from the grounds of security and safeguarding ourselves. We think: “I believe this has to be so because if it isn’t so, then I don’t know what to do, I…
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)
Use is the exercise of conscious choice. It is conscious awareness, the essence of our individual living, because when we are talking about use in that sense, we are talking about choices and decisions. You choose to do, you choose not to do, in the light of all that you know and understand and feel and think.Walter Carrington (“Thinking Aloud” – The Demand of the Constant p93)
“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…
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.” – W. C. Fields We’re one week into the Olympics in Rio, so there’s already been a lot of trying, and some succeeding, going on over there. Sport is certainly one area where the “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” philosophy gets a run, but it is certainly applied in many other areas of life as…
“There’s a number that is all the buzz these days in the world of autonomous vehicles: 94 percent. That’s the percentage of car crashes caused by driver error.” – Washington Post, December 10 2017 You have a friend who crashed his car into a tree. Bad luck, you say, I bet that won’t happen again. Two months later it happens again. Bad luck again, you may say, though you’ll be having doubts. Two months later and there’s another bonnet in…
A few years ago, in 2013, many people announced that the English language was broken. As the Guardian reported at the time: “Literally the most misused word in the language has officially changed definition. Now as well as meaning ‘in a literal manner or sense; exactly’… various dictionaries have added its other more recent usage. As Google puts it, ‘literally’ can be used ‘to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong…
“Most of Australia’s classical musicians are suffering from injuries due to poor playing techniques, and experts say more needs to be done to educate the industry and overcome what is still largely considered a taboo topic.” – ABC Online News, 2014 Injuries are unfortunately all too common in the world of musicians. “A 2012 survey of members from Australia’s eight professional orchestras found 84 per cent of musicians had experienced pain or injuries that interfered with their playing.” Back pain,…
How do you have your stake? If you want your tomato plants to grow upwards, you might want to tie them to a stake, to guide them in the direction you wish. So if you choose a nice straight stake they’ll follow its shape upwards. And if you don’t, they’ll tend to meander across the ground. We’re a bit like tomato plants. We also grow in the direction we’re guided. In our case it’s not a piece of wood that’s…