“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)

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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 is unique because, unlike most systems that advise people what to do or how to do it, this teaches what not to do and how to prevent it.
(What is the Alexander Technique? – A paper written Jan 2004)

PM: In learning the Technique considerable effort on the part of the pupil is required. A first step is to learn what sort of effort is necessary. The first essay nearly always produces more muscular tension, particularly in the neck, and this is exactly the opposite of what is required. The pupil must learn to stop doing, “to leave himself” in the hands of the teacher, neither tensing nor relaxing.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p1)

WC: Now, it was Alexander’s specific and very important contribution to recognise that in order to have integration in the individual, we’ve got to have balance – we’ve got to have poise. In our terms, we’ve got to go up – we mustn’t pull down. Pulling down upsets poise, upsets balance, and therefore disintegrates. Pulling down causes disintegration. You can’t do something to integrate – the mechanism of integration is there already but you’ve got to allow the mechanism of integration to work and you’ve got to ensure that the mechanism of integration is not interfered with.
(A Talk on George Coghill, Integration, Total and Partial Pattern.)

Discussion

PM: Anything you do, at first, you do wrong. The first thing is to learn to let yourself alone, to be. After you have learned to do that, then you may bring about activity.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p4)

WC: The point that you’ve got to understand and you’ve really got to communicate to people is that non-doing is an indispensable basis for doing. When you’re going to do something, you want to ensure as far as you can that what you’re doing is appropriate, that you’re using the requisite amount of energy, and that you’re doing what you intend to do.
But how can anybody measure doing? How can you really decide whether your doing is well-directed or mis-directed. You’ve got to have a criterion that you can compare it with. It’s through non-doing that you set up this criterion because you zero in on a point where you are doing nothing.
(Thinking Aloud – Non-Doing p135)

MB: And we must always keep in mind that what distinguishes the Technique from other disciplines is that it’s a re-educational process. The pupil has to become aware of what it is that he or she is doing, and find out what’s wrong in order not to carry on doing it.
(Alexander Technique: the Ground Rules – part 1 p63)

WC: 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.
(Act of Living – Knees Forward and Away p90)

FPJ: “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 did not advocate.
(Freedom to Change – chapter p158)

MB: 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 happen by thinking and not by doing. Nevertheless I got there in the end!
(Alexander Technique: the Ground Rules – part 1 p27)

WC: If the pupil, on being asked to sit, does not say “no,” doesn’t say “no” and mean “no” and stop, then everything else that follows will be a delicate or not-so-delicate form of doing. You’re asked to sit in the chair and you skip the “no” and you think, “Ah, now I’m going to be sat down or I’ve got to sit, so what I’ve got to do is to direct my head forward and up or direct my knees to go,” or whatever. When you direct those things without first stopping, you are in fact doing the directions.
(Thinking Aloud – Allowing Time to Say No – p53)

PM: In the first place you must learn to think and not to do. After that you must learn to let the doing come about as a result of the thinking. During the early lessons I always tell you what to think.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p19)

MB: So as a teacher your task is to try to find out the cause of what’s going on and then start by undoing the tension in the neck. Really, the only things that can exert traction on the head are the neck muscles – they are in direct contact with the head, and thus the prime cause of any contraction. Then having got a little more freedom there, you give the direction for the head to go forward from the suboccipital muscles, and as soon as that happens it goes up of its own accord. It does itself, in other words. And it’s very important for people to realise that it does not have to be done in any way.
(Alexander Technique: the Ground Rules – part 2 p81)

WC: There’s no difficulty about putting your head forward and up; it just happens not to be useful. You can put your knees forward and away, you can do all sorts of things with yourself. There isn’t any question about doing. You can do it all right, but that isn’t what we want. We don’t want this activity to be carried out by the doing process, we want it to be carried out by a releasing process. The only way you’ll get a releasing process is if you stop.
(Thinking Aloud – Allowing Time to Say No – p54)

PM: 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.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p13)

LW: The only indirect mention that I can call to mind that Alexander ever made to us of the necessity of getting the head, neck and back pattern into operation by “thinking” instead of by “doing” was when he quoted a remark that John Dewey had once made to him: “Was it not wonderful, Alexander, that you came across the idea of non-doing in doing concrete things?”
(F. Matthias Alexander, The Man and His Work – chapter 13 p135)

PM: Of course, non-doing is a kind of doing, but it is very subtle. The difference is that, in doing, you do it, whereas in non-doing, it does you. Those of you who have never had practical experience of the Alexander Technique will probably find this difficult to understand.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p27)

WC: What you are doing with the orders or the directions is confronting yourself with a picture, and the more vivid the picture, the better. Then, in comparison with that picture, you can consider, evaluate, and criticize your own state. The clarity of that picture is very important, but also the understanding that the right thing does itself enables you to set about seeing why the right thing isn’t doing itself. What’s in the way? What’s wrong? What’s causing the trouble?
If you go along with what I’ve said, and you avoid falling into the trap of doing, you will be able to convince yourself that what I am saying is right. If you see your task in the proper light, which is to stop yourself doing what you are not supposed to be doing, it will experimentally prove itself.
(Thinking Aloud – Teaching Directions to Beginners p76)

PM: It is alright to do, as long as you do the right thing.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p25)

Conclusion

WC: We can believe what we like. We can think what we like. We can convince ourselves that we’re rational human beings and that we make rational decisions. But unless our rational decisions are in accordance with our feelings, unless our feelings permit, we very, very seldom succeed in carrying our reasoned decisions into effect because our feelings won’t let us. The best way, and perhaps the only way, to reeducate your feelings for the better is through the practice of non-doing.
(Thinking Aloud – Non-Doing p138)

PM: The long and short of it is that we, as teachers, require that certain activities should, as we say, “do themselves”. This we call non-doing. On the other hand, any activity that interferes with this “doing itself”, we call “doing” and it is of the aim of the teacher to get his pupils to inhibit it.
(On Giving Directions, Doing and Non-Doing – STAT Memorial Lecture 1963)

MB: In fact, all of the Technique is about undoing – that’s why we don’t have to move the head by nodding or anything like that.
(Alexander Technique: the Ground Rules – part 2 p82)

WC: To ask anybody to free the neck, direct the head forward and up, lengthen and widen the back, forward and away with the knees, is to ask them to do something. It is to invite them to make muscular effort to do something. Everybody that you would ever like to get coming to you is almost certain to believe in doing, to take the whole concept of doing for granted. If you look at it objectively, you can see that when anybody does something, they make muscular effort. They change the state they are in from the state of relative quietness and stillness that we call non-doing to making muscular effort. Now, I am not saying that you don’t have to do, or that you should never do. That of course would be rubbish. What I am saying is that everybody believes in doing, and if you are going to succeed in teaching people this technique, and bringing about changes that we really want to bring about, pupils have got to be introduced to non-doing.
(Thinking Aloud – Teaching Directions to Beginners p72)