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June 14, 2023  

Therapy, Education and Evolution

During the time when I was training and in the years immediately afterwards – so between 1981 and 1990 – Alexander lessons were generally spoken of within the profession as “education”. Currently, and in recent years, there is much more emphasis on the Technique as “therapy”. Alexander himself seemed to place his ideas, theory and practice firmly in the domain of “evolution”. In this post I would like to explore these three aspects of Alexander’s discoveries: therapy, education and evolution.

Lessons are certainly therapeutic. Right from the very start, people experience a release of muscle tension and a calming of the nervous system. There is now evidence from trials to support what teachers have known for a long time: that lessons are helpful in reducing back and neck pain. Some teachers are drawing attention to the benefits of lessons in helping to deal with trauma. I think it would be fair to say that the majority of people come to the Alexander Technique looking for help in resolving mostly musculo-skeletal complaints.

The educational aspect relates to the idea that the pupil is learning something rather than receiving treatment. Our aim as teachers (we still in the UK call ourselves “teachers”, though in some other countries that is no longer the case) is surely to teach our pupils how to look after themselves and go on improving on their own. The balance between “educational” and “therapeutic” can fluctuate from lesson to lesson and even from moment to moment within a lesson – according to the needs of the pupil and the states of both pupil and teacher. I remember the late Adam Nott once commented that: “When I’m tired, it’s therapy. But it’s good therapy!”

Many musicians come to the Technique because of a physical complaint but then discover that it is also a valuable tool to improve their practice and performance. Therapy elides seamlessly into education: the learning of a skill.

There are other mind-body disciplines which, though not in themselves therapies, have therapeutic effects, for example Tai chi ch’üan – originally a martial art but often studied with no intention to apply it in that way.

The evolutionary aspect of the Alexander Technique is more nuanced still. Let’s pause here to examine the etymology of our three terms;

  • Therapy, from from Greek therapeia – curing, healing
  • Education, boasts two distinct etymologies, both from Latin: 1) educare, meaning “to train” and 2) educere, meaning “to draw out”
  • Evolution, from the Latin evolvere – unroll, roll out

A more general meaning of evolution is “gradual improvement”, with the sense of “development”. Very appropriate, one may say, for our work!

In his writings Alexander made many references to evolution in the sense of the evolution of the species. It was, arguably, the zeitgeist of his time and any major theory about human beings needed to be understood in the context of Charles Darwin’s theories. But is there any evidence that human beings are still a work in progress with regards to evolution? Are we any more developed as a species than the cultures that built the pyramids, produced the pre- and post-Socratic philosophers, the Roman orators or the founders of the great religions from the Far and Middle East? No, in my opinion, we are not! There are many theories about general evolution 1 but it is more relevant to consider any evolution that is going on now as only of a personal nature. And what is meant by that? What is “personal evolution”? How does it differ from, for example, gaining expertise in something?

Watching Roger Federer glide across a tennis court to hit an impossible winning shot or Rudolph Nureyev seemingly suspended in mid-air whilst leaping across a stage or Yo-yo Ma performing a Bach cello suite – it is evident we are in the presence of remarkable talent and skill, even greatness. Is that representative of some kind of personal evolution? Is it something to do with consciousness or spirituality? If I live my life more consciously, making real choices, being present in mind and body – does something become more refined? Am I evolving? What do Alexander’s discoveries have to offer in this regard? Have we as a community tried to really explore all three aspects of his teaching?

Certain other disciplines – such a Qi Gong , Yoga or Mindfulness – retain a link with their roots in spiritual practice, and spiritual development is arguably the only real personal evolution available to human beings. In neglecting the developmental aspects of Alexander’s ideas – and a high degree of refinement and subtlety is indeed possible – in favour of lauding its therapeutic and performance-enhancing aspects, have we brought about an unnecessarily narrow perception of what we can offer? Are we even neglecting these aspects within our own profession?

These are thoughts I would be pleased to discuss with those who may be interested.

Notes

  1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-may-become-of-homo-sapiens/
April 22, 2020  

Being With Erika and Marjory Barlow, London 1998 #16

I forget the exact sequence of events, but I think it was at the Manchester STAT Conference that Marjory Barlow invited Erika to come and visit her when she was next going to be in London. When that time came Erika was staying with me, so I drove her to Marjory’s apartment near Swiss Cottage and joined them for tea.

After my spell of lessons with Marjory in the mid-eighties I had only intermittent contact with her at various STAT meetings. On one occasion, when I was still Chair of STAT, I asked Marjory to host a meeting of senior representatives of the different “streams” of the Technique at which the question of what to do about a school that was considered by some to have “gone rogue” would be addressed. Marjory had to play the role of “the authority”; the representative of the dharma, so to speak. Whilst the discussion about the various “goings-on” at the school in question was progressing, Marjory at one point gave me a dig in my ribs with her elbow and whispered, “Well you know what old Gurdjieff said don’t you; that sooner or later everything turns into its opposite, and this is an example of just that.” 1

With this in mind, and already by then being quite familiar with Erika’s views on a number of Alexander-related matters, I was anticipating another fascinating encounter. I had seen them together before of course; at Erika’s Memorial Lecture in 1985 (when they had a different recollection about the role of table-work during the Ashley Place training course), at the Brighton Congress in 1988 and more recently at the Manchester STAT Conference, but this was something more intimate. How were they going to interact? Given all that Erika and, to a lesser extent, Margaret Goldie had told me about the development of Alexander’s work and the split between the two groups of students at Ashley Place (see The First Training Course in 1931: a different perspective), I felt that here was an opportunity to gain some insight into the fruits of their different understanding and focus.

Most of the conversation was very light – chit-chatting about people they knew or had known. It was, in fact, at this tea party that I heard Marjory’s story about Margaret Goldie and FM’s ashes (see Lessons With Miss G, 10: Some Meaningful Tittle-tattle). At some point Marjory began to talk about the need to keep Alexander’s teaching just as it had been taught to them. I knew that Erika had a different perspective on this issue, and wondered how she might deal with it. But Erika could always find an angle from which to respond which neither complied with nor contradicted what another person was saying. She just moved the conversation seamlessly along – something at which she was a master. “Well” she would often say, “one has to get along with people.” What I witnessed in her, however, evidenced an inner freedom from reaction. She could allow another person to have their own opinion without it disturbing her equanimity.

Somehow the interaction reminded me of Hermann Hesse’s novel Narcissus and Goldmund 2; not by any means in the personal details of their lives – the parallel does not stand up to scrutiny as Erika could not at all be described as Dionysian any more than Marjory could be described as Apollonian. No! It was the fact that Marjory, despite the quarrel with FM in the 1950’s, had – like Narcissus in Hesse’s novel – stayed, as it were, “in the monastery” and risen to be the “abbot”, whereas Erika had, like Goldmund, gone out into the world in search of adventure and knowledge, and had a different understanding of Alexander, his ideas and life itself. Marjory had a mission; to look after the Technique and to transmit it in its purity; to not change a thing. Erika chose to put it and herself to the test in the maelstrom of Life, and thereby to hone her understanding on the wheel of experience. Both of these octogenarian “living treasures” were indubitably evolved human beings; not only did they have the wisdom which comes from a long life, but also they were replete with the palpable energies which ensue from several decades of work on oneself. I had and have tremendous respect for both of them.

My personal impression was that whereas Marjory was a very big fish in the Alexander pond, Erika swam free in the sea of life.

1. G I Gurdjieff (1866-1949). In his theory of Octaves, Gurdjieff states that “…we can observe how the line of development of forces deviates from its original direction and goes, after a time, in a diametrically opposed direction, still preserving its former name.”: In Search of the Miraculous, P D Ouspensky; published by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London 1950. See also www.gurdjieff.org.uk

2. See: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/299/299707/narcissus-and-goldmund/9780141984612.html

© 2020 John S Hunter

April 9, 2020  

The Giving and Withholding of Consent: the Secret of “Letting Do”

So you’ve learnt how to direct – and perhaps you experience some expansion, integration and a flow of energy when you “give your orders”.

You can inhibit some of your reactions and enter into a more quiet state. Maybe you can let your head lead as you go into activity. Then now it’s time to explore the world of giving and withholding of consent: the secret of “letting do”.

I had my first real experience of this in a lesson with Margaret Goldie. I was sitting with my hands resting palms-up on the tops of my legs. She took one arm, moved it around – up and down and rotating it in a particular way that she had – and let it rest at my side. Then the brain work!

“Not you doing it!” she quietly insisted.

“You are going to give consent to letting your hand come back up onto the top of your leg, but you are not going to do it.”

I had already been having lessons with her for some years so I was not distracted by “unbeliever” thoughts. I just listened to her and followed her instructions as exactly as I could.

“Not you doing it! You are going to give consent to allowing your hand to move. Give consent and let it do it!”

Then suddenly, effortlessly – my hand floats up onto the top of my leg. How? Not, evidently, by using the familiar pathways I associated with such a movement.

It’s all there in one of Alexander’s Teaching Aphorisms:

“The reason you people won’t give consent is because none of you will give consent to anything but what you feel.

F M Alexander 1

This approach gave me new insights into Alexander’s work, in particular the similarity with aspects of Taoism.  2

Withholding consent – inhibition – is the doorway. Pass through it and experiment with giving consent to what you wish to do – volition – and then “letting do”! Allowing activity to take place using unfamiliar pathways, given that so many of our “identity habits” are embodied, challenges our sense of who we think we are, opening a door to a world which seems to operate under different laws.

 …the Alexander Technique, like Zen, tries to unlock the power of the unknown force in man.

Patrick Macdonald 3

Your early experiments might be simple physical activities – like the one Miss Goldie showed me; giving consent to a very basic movement of some part of the body, getting out of a chair, moving around from A to B or even (and this takes patient practice) making a cup of tea. As you become more at home in this new medium, you could experiment with interacting with other people. Give consent, for example, to chatting with your neighbour about the weather.4

You must learn to get out of the teacher’s way, learn to get out of your own way, then learn to get out of ITS way.

Patrick Macdonald 5

What do you find? Do you become more the watcher than the doer?

If you wish, share your experiences in the comments section or write to me.

1. Teaching Aphorisms: The Alexander Journal No 7, 1972, published by the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique. Also published in Articles and Lectures by Mouritz (1995).
2. The concept of non-doing in Taoism – Wu Wei – has been understood in different ways throughout its long history. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei
3. The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald; Notebook Jottings. Published by Rahula Books, 1989
4. At the time of writing we are all practising social distancing so interacting with others may have to wait.
5. The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald; Notebook Jottings. Published by Rahula Books, 1989

© John Hunter 2020