Just One Habit

One way to simplify your Alexander Technique practice is to make progress on just one habit: The unconscious habit of compressing yourself (or pulling yourself down) as you move and do your activities.

One single habit, that we’re consistently unaware of, done in very personal ways, in pretty much everything we do.

Sure there are countless variations (different environments, balance, awareness, unique way of embodying ourselves, etc..) but keeping it simple can still be a great place to start.

For example, the simple act of drinking coffee:

We compress the torso onto itself and collapse forwards; compress the head backwards onto the spine which compresses the full length of your spine; squeeze our shoulders upwards and into the body as we bring the cup towards us to take a sip; and pull/ compress your neck forwards and downwards as we take a sip.

The opposite is un-compressing, expanding, or tapping into the opening upwards with gravity response - cultivating dynamic postural tone and balance in yourself in any movement or activity:

Un-compress the torso and open upwards from your points of balance; undo the squeeze of your head from the top of your spine as you reach for the cup; let your shoulder rest to the side and remain easeful as you bring the cup towards you to take a sip; allow your neck to lengthen upwards in space away from your base of support as you take a sip. Savour and enjoy.

This is a simple, but challenging practice. Real progress is made through the accumulation of many small 1% changes each day in this single habit: 1% less unconscious compression, 1% more awareness in activity, and 1% more conscious un-compression or expansion; small changes that become exponential over time.

From Parts To Whole

USE…was Alexander’s term to describe how your entire self acts as an integrated whole in any activity. Any specific part occurs as part of the pattern of activity of your entire self (whole body balance, cognitive/ mental aspects, body or physical responses etc..).

For example, say you want to move your arm to reach in front of you to grab something. To do so requires changes in balance and tensions throughout your whole self; all integrated and executed as mental processes by your brain and nervous system; all overlaid with previous learning and experiences of doing it before in environments like the one you’re in; and all to a greater or lesser degree influenced by your current emotional state etc..

In other words, the use of any one part of you occurs within a larger overall pattern of your entire self in action.

Learning to understand (kinaesthetically) how any single action you make is integrated into a larger pattern of how you use your entire self is real shift: From parts thinking, to whole thinking.

It’s About The How

The Alexander Technique can be hard to describe because it’s not about what you do, it’s about how you do it.

Although it informs, the Alexander Technique leaves the choice of activity (or response) up to you.

It doesn’t have mandatory movements, patterns, or physical exercises. Instead, the Alexander Technique brings practical intelligence to the things you choose to do; to include more skilled use of yourself in activity - and to grow through the process.

But should I exercise? What about Tai chi? Bodyweight Training? Dance? Meditation? Etc.. Are these in line with the Alexander Technique?

Yes.

Because it deals with balance, posture, movement, and awareness of how thought and physical responses interact it can be applied to a surprising number of things. Most activities you choose can become a framework for your practice.

These things might include work tasks, performance, exercise, communication and social interaction, or everyday activities and movements.

The difference from how you normally do these activities is that instead of doing them unconsciously - you practice placing just enough attention on yourself in activity (in particular to your neck-head-back in relation to your ground) to foster the whole body response as you do these things.

This practice acts like a flashlight to your awareness to help you discover the personal ways you may be limiting yourself through overly compressing/ collapsing/ or tensing yourself in these actions. To discover how you get in the way of your full stature, and to influence a change in the pattern of your movements and action through conscious attention (to encourage the whole self to respond with length and expansion) is the game.

Going ‘UP’

Going ‘Up’ is a fundamental experience of the Alexander Technique.

Cultivating this ‘whole body response’ is a central aim of both the Alexander Technique lesson and of a personal Alexander Technique practice; and how to tap into this response during your everyday life is a real skill.

To describe the experience with words always falls short, but it’s helpful to work towards a shared understanding. John Nichols, an Alexander Technique teacher in New York describes it as,

” ….this natural, whole body response to gravity so that from the contact of your feet on the ground you’re opening up all the way through. You have this springy dynamic that takes you up through your spine and opens you through the thorax, the back of the shoulders, the hips, everything is coming up and out in response to the contact of the feet on the surface of the planet.”

Going ‘Up’ can also seem elusive in that you can’t get directly. Instead, the response shows up (or emerges) when your attention and attitude, biomechanics and muscle tone, inhibition and activation of various aspects of our motor commands and movement, all come together together with just the right timing in just the right way.

But once you consciously set up the conditions to tap into this whole body response - you go ‘Up’.

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Here are a few more things people notice about it

• It often comes with a feeling (kinaesthetic perception) of lightness; as if you’re lighter in weight or ‘floating’ in your movement.

• The experience is of it happening to you, with you, or through you - as opposed to you doing it. It seems to be an unconscious process, which can be cultivated by conscious processes.

• It makes you more, rather than less ready for movement and response.

• You lighten upwards instead of pulling up.

• It leads to a state of being more open and responsive to yourself and the environment as a single unified experience.

• The experience is sometimes described as opening up, unravelling, getting taller without pushing, or blooming like a flower

• It’s expanding the self vs. compressing the self; as in expanding into the space around you (height, width, and depth).

• Under touch, the person ‘going up’ feels lighter and easier to guide or move - like a responsive dancer as opposed to a collapsed or overly tight dance partner.

• It often occurs with state of open focus as opposed to a narrowed focus

• It’s clearly not yet communicated to others well without direct raw experience, nor accessed easily enough by students without significant skill

• For most students it is a self-reinforcing experience; it feels good so you want more of it, or want the feeling to remain. Sometime the experience is so unique in sensation that the simple judgment of good or bad simply doesn’t match what students feel.

• It can stay through further change and growth, but once you try to hold onto and keep it the same you loose it

• It can feel like a reflex because it can ‘happen’ in a sudden moment - but through reflexes may play a part, it’s not just a reflex, it’s more that!

• It can occur in a huge range of positions and movements - that includes standing up, ying down, and everything in between.

• It’s opposite includes all the various forms of compression (through pulling down or collapse, or tightening/ constriction in movement, posture, and reaction etc..).

• Once you’ve had the experience of ‘going up’, it becomes much easier to talk about the Alexander Technique, to read an Alexander Technique book and know what in the world the author is getting at, and to articulate at least one clear result of the practice.

• Going ‘UP’ is not exclusive to the Alexander Technique.

Pause the Prediction

Perception is our belief of what happened.

It’s the combination of the unconscious prediction of our movements and the world around us, with our self observations*.

When our prediction and our observation combine to create and determine a perception, we generally feel we know what happened. But what happens when we pause the prediction?

Given that prediction in movement is involuntary, this likely isn’t possible. But what if we simply remove the whole idea of the act from our minds before (and as) we act?

Talking but not talking…

Walking but not walking…

Playing the piano but not playing the piano…

This concept seems totally crazy… until it happens. Artists, athletes, and people of all backgrounds have describe something similar when in a state of flow - when things just ‘happen to you’ or ‘happen through you’.

So what happens when you pause the prediction? Where does the ball land?

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* Biological Learning and Control: Shadmehr and Mussa-Ivaldi).

Muscle Tone, States, and Dancers

One way to simplify how you think about the way you carry yourself is to imagine possible dance partners: The collapsed/ sluggish dance partner; The tight/ stiff dance partner; The disconnected dance partner; or the responsive dance partner.

Collapsed / Sluggish

The contact you feel with the collapsed dancer is that of heaviness. When they still (such as sitting or standing without movement) they are under-engaged and often look or feel compressed, deflated, or like a ton of bricks. Imagine trying to pick someone up who doesn’t want to be picked up…they can’t be moved.

Tight / Stiff

This person is doing the opposite of the collapsed/ sluggish dancer; It’s as if they’re trying to hold themselves off the floor. They’re over engaged and often look or feel tight, strained, anxious or inflexible. The interesting thing is that they can also feel heavy, but in a different way; they too can’t easily be moved (internally or externally).

Disconnected

This person is often a mixture of the two above: They’re both collapsed and sluggish in some parts of themselves and tight or stiff in others. They’re often quite flexible in some areas, while very rigid in others. Moving with them, or dancing with them, really relies heavily on your own coordination/organization as a way to create the consistency (or framework) for their easeful movement - if you’re heavy, tight, or disconnected yourself, then the other person will be difficult to move with.

Responsive

The responsive dancer feels toned, attentive, calm, and ready to move. They’re not leaning on you for support so you don’t feel weighed down by them, and they’re not stiff so they don’t block movement. The seem like they’re listening to your every move and thought, and to their own internal intentions. They’re present and they emanate presence. They feel light under your touch but not flimsy or held, and when you move together they respond quickly and without the need to ‘get ready’ - they’re already there but they’re not far ahead of your movement - you get to be a part of a dance with them.

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In life we all have our habitual states that follow one of the above characters more than the others. It may even be the case that we need all these different states to navigate life.

Moreover, we often flow in-between these states as we embody ourselves in action; sometimes we even combine them in different ways (For instance: Heavy and collapsed but then held tightly or pulled down in a compressed way).

Nonetheless, there seems to be a certain aliveness that comes when being in the state of responsiveness that is a truly remarkable way to live. Like the curiosity of a toddler in motion looking around and responding to the world in flow.

Cultivating thought, intentions, and practices to access more responsiveness from head to toe in yourself is a game worth playing.

For Others, For You

Countless articles and posts remind us of the the idea that how we carry ourselves affects how we feel about ourselves.

But this note is not about you or me.

Rather it’s about the people we care for and the people we surround ourselves with, because how we carry ourselves can affect more that just us; it affects those we are around.

We’re social animals, and the outward display of our mostly unconscious embodied emotions, movements, and intentions seems to have a tangible positive or negative effect on others.

Maybe it happens as you walk through the hall at work, maybe it’s in the classroom, maybe it’s in the way you embody your attention as you order your coffee, or maybe it’s at home with the person you love.

How specifically, but indirectly, can you influence a positive change in others through a change in the way you embody your own actions and intentions?

No Maintaining

It’s easy to think that once you’ve got it, you just need to maintain it.

But in reality there is no maintaining. There is only constant learning.

Your brain, your nervous system, your muscles and skeleton, your memories, your movement, your everything that makes up you - never takes a day off.

These aspects of you are always in a state of learning: One of growth and formation of new expression of yourself and movement; or continued solidification or adaptation of old ways you move, balance, posture yourself, and react.

Every new day, it’s up to each of us to re-let go of the idea of maintaining - because it’s not real. And instead, to re-direct our energy, attention, and influence over the process of growth and change.

Towards somewhere we want to go.

Conscious Attention and Kind Persistence

Conscious Attention

The Alexander Technique is a conscious based technique.

It requires conscious attention and intention in movement, stillness, and action.

It does so to influence (not control) unconscious aspects of movement, ways we hold ourselves (posture), our responses (behaviours), and the way we sense and perceive ourselves and the environment.

As students, we learn to direct attention on specific things to help us observe and influence the connection between thought and physical responses or anticipation.

For example, we might place our attention on a series of intentions such as:

Allow my neck to be free of excess tension ....
To allow my head to move forwards and away from the top of my spine ...
To allow my back to lengthen and widen...
etc..

What many students don't realize is that the quality of how we consciously place attention matters.

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Division Vs. Unification

To simplify things, you can imagine that the way you 'talk to yourself' either creates division between mind and body, or unification between thought and action. For instance

Division: Barking orders at yourself or begging to make specific muscle tensions release.

Unification: The use of kind, but persistent intention to influence your whole coordination; observing the physical changes in muscle tension and how they may relate to each other in the process.

It's all a game of attention, and thus the quality or kind of attention we use matters.

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Kind Persistence

Although change can occur with both approaches (divisional or unification based ways of placing attention), one approach works far better than the other in getting the kind of results we want to show up in our Alexander Technique practice.

Kind Persistence requires both kindness is how you observe and 'speak' to yourself, and relentless persistence to do so in a constructive way. Kindness without persistence won't work - and persistence without kindness is divisional in it's approach, and thus less effective.

Change through the Alexander Technique requires both together - Kindness and persistence.

What approach did you use today?