It had been several months since I had an Alexander Technique lesson but in the interim I had read The Alexander Technique Manual by Richard Brennan. Although I am sure that I had heard and read many times that you do not do the Primary Directions, you think them, for some reason it had never really clicked with me until I read this book.
For those of you not familiar with the Alexander Technique, the Primary Directions are:
1) Allow the neck to be free
2) Allow the head to go forward and up
3) Allow the back to lengthen and widen
So the other day when I had a lesson and the teacher began with "Give me your best thinking" I actually heard it for the first time. I think in all of my past lessons I must have unconsciously translated that into my way of being - trying to do - and attempted to adjust myself into my idea of a 'correct' posture. But this time I just thought the directions. This could also be described as getting out of my own way.
This all got reinforced after the lesson when I happened to come across this blog - http://performanceschool.org/ - that has a page about the "pitfalls" that can be encountered in the Alexander Technique. (The image above is supposed to represent me on a path that has pitfalls.) The first pitfall listed is "Remember, don't try to DO anything to make any changes."
And this was further reinforced because I had also been reading a section in In Search of the Miraculous in which Ouspensky relates what Gurdjieff says about 'doing.' Gurdjieff is speaking at a much deeper and more complex level but there are parallels with the not-doing in the Alexander Technique:
"...man's chief delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood....To get rid of this conviction is more difficult than anything else for a man. You do not understand all the complexity of your organization and you do not realize that every effort, in addition to the results desired, even if it gives these, gives thousands of unexpected and often undesireable results, and the chief thing that you forget is that you are not beginning from the beginning with a nice clean, new machine. There stand behind you many years of a wrong and stupid life, of indulgence in every kind of weakness, of shutting your eyes to your own errors, of striving to avoid all unpleasant truths, of constant lying to yourselves, of self-justification, of blaming others, and so on, and so on."
Photo Source: http://sadanandsafar.blogspot.com
Recent Comments