Being with Erika: #10, A Lesson in Stopping, London, 1993
Whenever Erika was staying with me I was always keen to get her to talk about her insights into the Alexander Technique and the key individuals involved in its discovery and transmission. Sometimes this became a distraction from actually ‘entering into the moment’.
Erika taught me a lesson, without words and without touch.
After dinner one evening I was washing up. Erika picked up a tea towel and began to dry the dishes. I was impatient to go and sit down and talk about the Alexander Technique. Erika was living it. The more I rushed, the more contrast I sensed between my movements and the freedom with which her arm would appear from somewhere behind me and pick up a plate or bowl or cup. But still I carried on along my furrow of end-gaining.
Then the hand stopped appearing. I turned a little so I could see her in my peripheral vision. She had “stopped”; not ‘frozen’, not ‘paused’ but ‘stopped’. Sometimes when one was with Erika, one became aware of her thought processes. She had stopped, and was giving herself a choice. I felt at that moment that she was perfectly free to put down the tea towel and simply walk out of the kitchen, or to remain quiet and still, or to carry on drying the dishes. She chose to carry on.
By now I had got the message; not only about my own rushing, but more critically about the difference between ‘pausing’ and ‘stopping’. Stopping opens a door into other options.
Even a seemingly mundane activity like ‘doing the washing-up’ could be a medium for teaching.
© 2013 John S Hunter
Other Posts on Being with Erika:
#01, London 1985 – Annual Memorial Lecture
#02, Brighton 1988 – Key Note Address
#03, Melbourne 1991 – “Come for lunch!”
#04, Melbourne 1991 – Tea Ceremony
#05, Melbourne 1991 – Jean Jacques by the Sea
#06, Back in Melbourne, 1992
#07, “Where did you train?”, London, 1993
#08, “It’s all the same”, London, 1993
#09, “Making the Link”, London, 1993
#11, Hands, London 1994
#12, “Yes, but you’re worrying!”, London, 1993
#13, “Nothing special”, London, 1994
Being with Erika: #09, “Making the Link”, London, 1993
I can no longer be sure of the chronology of all the following events as, after such a long time, the occasions Erika stayed with me for one or two weeks, spanning a period of some five years, have mostly blended into one.
It is interesting to record, however, the way she addressed some of the difficulties young teachers were having – rarely related to a technical question about ‘hands-on’ or what we normally think of as ‘use’, but something more existential.
To one she suggested taking up a craft, perhaps even getting a loom, recognising this person’s need for a creative outlet.
Another teacher who came told her of his constant planning inside his head from the moment he woke up in the morning. She got him to sit beside her and watch together in silence the planes flying into Heathrow airport in the distance. He told me later how, at some point, he felt the ground appear underneath him and all his tensions and worries just drain out of him; he ‘stopped’ – and came into being.
Some did come with very definite questions about this or that ‘procedure’; not being open to other possibilities, they missed an opportunity for another level of self-discovery.
One came with a question which was to capture very succinctly a problem which many had. “How do I make the link between what I have learnt in my training course – and do with my pupils – and my own ‘everyday’ life?”
I personally felt it important to pursue this theme of “making the link”; it also gave me some insight into Erika’s comment “all about teaching“.
© 2013 John S Hunter
Other Posts on Being with Erika:
#01, London 1985 – Annual Memorial Lecture
#02, Brighton 1988 – Key Note Address
#03, Melbourne 1991 – “Come for lunch!”
#04, Melbourne 1991 – Tea Ceremony
#05, Melbourne 1991 – Jean Jacques by the Sea
#06, Back in Melbourne, 1992
#07, “Where did you train?”, London, 1993
#08, “It’s all the same”, London, 1993
#10, A Lesson in Stopping, London, 1993
#11, Hands, London 1994
#12, “Yes, but you’re worrying!”, London, 1993
#13, “Nothing special”, London, 1994
Being with Erika: #07, “Where did you train?”, London, 1993
Erika’s first stay with me in West London in the late Autumn of 1993 was a very busy two weeks; there were teachers’ groups most days, numerous visitors for lessons, friends for tea and chat, and a talk to the recently formed STAT Student’s Network at the Westminster Friends Meeting House in London WC2, where I had recently set up a practice.
About forty students came to the event. I was by now getting used to the fact that nobody imagined the woman with such a youthful bearing could be someone who had lessons from FM in the 1920’s. A typical example was when I went to let a STAT student into the Friends Meeting House just as Erika was coming out of an adjacent door from the ladies restroom.
The student, seeing Erika, asked if she was “… here for the talk”.
“Yes I am” replied Erika.
“Are you a student or a teacher?” came the next question.
“I’m a teacher”.
And then that almost compulsory ‘tribal’ question in the Alexander world “Where did you train?”
“I trained at Ashley Place” said Erika.
“Oh really! When”
“I started in 1931.”
The student’s jaw dropped several inches.
A similar incident comes to mind. A small group of teachers were expected at my home for an afternoon workshop. One of them arrived early and Erika went to let him in. After the class Erika, being a great mimic, recounted to me what had happened. The teacher evidently thought Erika was another participant at the workshop, possibly even a student but certainly not a “teacher of note” as he did not recognise her.
“Oh yes” impersonated Erika with her nose slightly in the air, “I’m so and so and I’m here to see Erika Whittaker. I teach at such and such institution and I’m on such and such STAT committee, don’t you know… And you are….?”
“I’m Erika Whittaker!”, at which point his tone changed dramatically.
© 2013 John S Hunter
Other Posts on Being with Erika:
#01, London 1985 – Annual Memorial Lecture
#02, Brighton 1988 – Key Note Address
#03, Melbourne 1991 – “Come for lunch!”
#04, Melbourne 1991 – Tea Ceremony
#05, Melbourne 1991 – Jean Jacques by the Sea
#06, Back in Melbourne, 1992
#08, “It’s all the same”, London, 1993
#09, “Making the Link”, London, 1993
#10, A Lesson in Stopping, London, 1993
#11, Hands, London 1994
#12, “Yes, but you’re worrying!”, London, 1993
#13, “Nothing special”, London, 1994
Being with Erika: #06, Back in Melbourne, 1992
Despite the political problems, which related to AUSTAT’s path towards affiliation with STAT, I enjoyed my time in Sydney. The four week refresher course went well and the teachers’ group asked me to return for a longer visit.
So about a year later, in 1992, I was back in Melbourne – having delivered this time a three month refresher training course in Sydney; by then I was very glad to see Erika again.
I tried to get her to be more specific about how she worked with people. She would always answer in a practical or anecdotal way – never theoretical. Some of my insights into her approach are as follows.
Tea is very important!
My friend and colleague Professor Marilyn Monk also went to visit Erika in Armadale and was duly served with a cup of tea. After about half an hour or so of tea, cake and chat Marilyn said, “This is all very interesting Erika but actually what I came for was a lesson“.
Erika looked at her, somewhat surprised, and replied. “Well, you are having one!”
Tea provided the opportunity for Erika to get to know the person coming for lessons; whether they had what she described as a ‘straight-forward physical difficulty’ or some underlying personal problem. If the former, they were fairly easy to help, she would say. If the latter, she needed to find out why they were, as she put it, ‘closing themselves’; to discover their ‘trick’ – that is to say, the little habit they had by means of which they avoided something that was uncomfortable for them; not in order to engage in some kind of analysis, but in order to help the pupil to see their ‘trick’ for what it really was, and to then help them to see their ‘problem’ from another perspective – the perspective of ‘presence’ – thereby loosening its grip on them.
As they engaged in conversation and began practical work, Erika would encourage the pupil to use their senses to connect with the outside world whilst bringing about a change in the head, neck back relationship – but with very little hands-on contact; just enough to begin a process. In Melbourne she used the seagulls always visible from her window. Later, when she was teaching in my apartment in London, she used the aeroplanes on their way to Heathrow in the distance.
She said that it was a question of timing. One had to chose one’s moment to help pupils to see their “trick” without it becoming an issue.
However, it would not be accurate to define this as her ‘teaching technique’; it was one aspect which I observed and garnered from various conversations. Her approach was expressed very well by one of her young Melbourne ‘Alexander friends’. “Erika is just so open that after being with her for a while, you find that you are opening too”. R.D. Laing’s term ‘co-presence’ comes close, but with a lightness of being.
I felt that it was outside of the more ‘formal’ teacher/pupil relationship – which she was always keen to avoid – that the most ‘learning’ took place. She often referred to her favourite Zen stories, in particular one which talks of a man advancing to the stage where he goes beyond all techniques; now a Master, he returns to the world and mixes with ordinary people – appearing to be one of them. This was a key element in Erika’s approach to teaching. As she once said, “The best teaching happens when the pupil doesn’t know he or she is being taught”.
Many people, including Alexander teachers, who met Erika saw only a pleasant elderly lady. The ‘wise-woman’ in her cohabited with the very sociable “Leo”; there but ‘hidden in plain sight’.
If one tried, with one’s questions, to ‘pin her down’ – then, like a judo master, she stepped lightly aside; before one knew it the subject was changed and the moment had passed. She was also very adept at acting. When someone wanted her to do something that she didn’t want to do, she could be a “very confused old lady” for a time. “Well” she told me, “one has to get along with people!”
I remember one incident when I and a colleague were spending a morning with her in Melbourne. She was out of the room when we began discussing some lofty subject – I can’t remember what – and at the moment when Erika came back into the room my colleague happened to be saying the word ‘truth’.
“Truth!” said Erika, in a firm voice.
We both stopped, surprised at her tone, and looked at her.
What I saw at that moment is difficult to put into words; something like ‘total presence’.
She continued, “Truth is right now.”
We were all silent for a few timeless seconds. Then she picked up an earlier conversation and time moved on again.
After my second visit to Melbourne I was beginning to get a taste of something. The things I was learning by being with Erika were, I felt, important not only for me but for the Alexander community. She was having less difficulty with her leg after the accident some two years earlier, and was talking about coming to the UK the following year to see friends and family. We discussed the possibility of her teaching in London.
I had a few days in Tasmania, visiting friends and making a ‘sentimental journey’ to Wynyard and Table Cape, then returned to London.
Erika and I kept in touch and plans began to take shape. Towards the end of 1993, I was delighted to welcome her – on her way to Edinburgh to spend Christmas with her family – for what was to be the first of many visits to my home in West London. A very busy programme awaited her there.
© 2013 John S Hunter
Other Posts on Being with Erika:
#01, London 1985 – Annual Memorial Lecture
#02, Brighton 1988 – Key Note Address
#03, Melbourne 1991 – “Come for lunch!”
#04, Melbourne 1991 – Tea Ceremony
#05, Melbourne 1991 – Jean Jacques by the Sea
#07, “Where did you train?”, London, 1993
#08, “It’s all the same”, London, 1993
#09, “Making the Link”, London, 1993
#10, A Lesson in Stopping, London, 1993
#11, Hands, London 1994
#12, “Yes, but you’re worrying!”, London, 1993
#13, “Nothing special”, London, 1994
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