“These things can take care of themselves.”
F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p195)

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Introduction

WC: The basic thing is up, and up is built in.
(Thinking Aloud – “Lengthening in Stature” – p36)

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)

Discussion

WC: In Man’s Supreme Inheritance, F.M, talks a lot about the primary movement, and the primary movement is, of course, up. I remember so well being struck by it when I first read it. The primary movement is up. You initiate the movement by undoing the catch, by taking the brake off. You’ve got this ongoing flow of energy that is seeking to take you up against all the downward forces, and going up is what happens when you release the neck.
(Thinking Aloud – “Generating the Energy to Go Up” – p32)

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. So that’s the primary objective, that’s what Alexander called the primary control – the process of ensuring that the integration is working, that we are whole in the truly practical sense and in every detail.
(A Talk on George Coghill, Integration, Total and Partial Pattern.)

WC: When thinking about lengthening in stature, it is important to remember that the postural mechanism is as much a part of the reflex apparatus as the heartbeat or the circulation or anything else…
We talk about this reflex process as though we did it, as though we could do it. It’s not only misleading, it’s quite a dangerous way of thinking about it. It’s a misconception of the whole process… Because the fact of the matter is that with you or with me, if the mechanism is freed from interference, then of course just as the heart will beat freely, as the breathing or breath will flow unimpeded, as the digestion will work correctly, so the postural mechanism will work correctly, and the body will be poised and free and, of course, lengthening in stature. It has to lengthen in stature because that is, as we’ve said repeatedly, absolutely basic.
(Thinking Aloud – “Lengthening in Stature” – p35)

PM: It seems appropriate to say here that it is natural for our bodies to work efficiently. It is not, however, our habit, owing to the fact that consciously or unconsciously we have learnt a lot of bad habits, over many generations.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p7)

MB: Really, it’s all quite simple: as soon as you stop pulling your head back, what else can it do apart from go forward? But you certainly won’t get it by making any sort of movement of the head, although I know that’s what a lot of people, including Alexander teachers, try and do. Let me put it another way: you’re already making the movement by pulling the head back and down, or over to the side or any of the other variations that are possible. So, you’ve just got to stop doing that, and the right thing will do itself.
(Alexander Technique: the Ground Rules – part 2 p81)

PM: The question of doing and non-doing, again in our special sense, is one that is intimately bound up with that of giving directions, and is one that has caused a deal of confusion. 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. Alongside of the actionless activity, which is set in motion by directions, either from the teacher’s hands or from the pupil’s brain, or from both, there is also, in every day living, the need to use the ordinary “physical” kind of doing with which everyone is familiar. In learning the Alexander Technique…these ordinary doings must be inhibited until they can be done without interference with the behaviour of the neck-head-back relationship – or what Alexander calls the primary control.
(On Giving Directions, Doing and Non-Doing – STAT Memorial Lecture 1963)

PM: On Trying To Be Right: If your right is wrong, then it follows that any attempt on your part to be right will produce the wrong result. Rather, it is better to be prepared to be wrong. This leaves the way open for real right to take place.
F.M.: “For God’s sake try to be wrong. There is just an outside chance you might be right.” Pupil: “How do I know when I am right?” Teacher: “You don’t. Stop doing what you know to be wrong. The right, aided by my hands, will come about of itself. It is natural to be right, though not habitual, so let Nature do it for you. As you progress you will be able, more and more, to stop doing the wrong things.”
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p1)

WC: As a natural property of living things, we all do generate energy to counteract gravity. Unfortunately, we interfere with this energy. We interfere with it very much. There are all sorts of ways in which you can block off and inhibit the natural flow of upward energy. Your mood and your state of mind, as well as your state of body, affect it very much.
(Thinking Aloud – “Generating the Energy to Go Up” – p30)

PM: When an individual is taught to stop interfering with his natural functioning, Nature, so released, can restore the individual to health. In cases of illness and disease we have to learn how not to impede this “Vis medicatrix Naturae” which, if it is not too late, will restore health. There are many ways of interfering with Nature. It is the job of the teacher of the Alexander Technique, without disregarding other ways, to deal with the one for which he or she has been trained.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p17)

WC: But a teacher must be careful not to say to himself or to others: “Now I’m going to take this person’s head forward and up” or “Now I’m going to take this person and lengthen and widen them”. Once you think that, you’re likely to do something other than work on preventive lines, without the recognition that the right thing does itself. After all, the pupil’s head will go forward and up and lengthening and widening will occur naturally if the interference is removed. Thus a teacher doesn’t take the head forward and up; he merely removes the interference so that the head goes forward and up.
(Personally Speaking – part 3 p112)

MB: 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)

Conclusion

PM: It is noteworthy that the Alexander Technique, like Zen, tries to unlock the power of the unknown force in man. Compare the Zen “Let it do it” to Alexander’s “allow your body to work as Nature wishes”. The techniques for bringing this about are, no doubt, different.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p29)

WC: Here’s the ideal picture: You are looking at it, and saying, “That’s how I want to be,” but you are not going to do anything about it. You are going to consult your observation and awareness and, so far as you are able, see whether your neck is free. If it isn’t free, you better stop stiffening it. The only reason it wouldn’t be free is because you are stiffening it. If your head is not going forward and up, if it is being pulled back and down, it is because you are pulling it back and down. So you better stop. As Alexander repeated over and over again, and more and more towards the end of his life, “The right thing does itself, the right thing does itself, the right thing does itself,” and the right thing does do itself.
(Thinking Aloud – “Teaching Directions to Beginners” p75)