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March 14, 2023  

Marjory Barlow: #2, “The Only Freedom We Have”, London 1984

Some years after that first experience of ‘magic’ with Marjory, I began to see her regularly for lessons. It was during my last term of teacher training,

Her approach was very much to emphasise ‘saying no’, ‘giving orders’ and to work with the basic procedures. She talked of ‘orders’ rather than ‘directions’ and the ‘orders’ were given with the idea that they might bring about some change later. She once described the process as rather like laying telephone cable: no messages can get through until the cable reaches its destination; if you don’t feel anything happening, it doesn’t mean nothing is happening; just go on ‘laying cables’ and be patient; eventually the messages will get through.

Marjory would often say. “I’m doing exactly what F.M. did. I haven’t changed anything.”

In one lesson she said to me, “My use might be a bit better than yours; that’s only because I’ve been working at it for longer. But when it comes to saying ‘no’ to a stimulus, we are all in the same boat. That never becomes easy or automatic.”

She also said – and it was one of those moments that really stay with you “the space in between stimulus and response is the only freedom we have“.

© 2013 John S Hunter

March 14, 2023  

Marjory Barlow: #1, A Little Bit of Magic, London, 1979

Marjory Barlow, the daughter of FM’s sister, developed an interest in her Uncle’s work early in her life – largely through necessity. Like the young FM, she did not have a strong constitution and really needed what the Technique could offer. When she spoke about training, however, Alexander always told her that she was not strong enough and would never make a teacher. In later years she wondered whether that had been to spur her on, as she joined the first training course a year or two after it had started.

She came into one of my lessons with Alan Rowlands. I had seen her from time to time when I was sitting in the waiting room at the Alexander Institute in Albert Court, and knew who she was, but I had never spoken to her.

She was the first person to give me an experience clearly of another order. She put her hands, or rather the tips of her fingers, on my head and I felt it move up. I knew that she was not doing it, in the way that we understand ‘doing’, but that something quite new was happening – and in parts of my body I was hardly aware of.

It was then that I realised that there is a little bit of magic in the Alexander Technique.

© 2013 John S Hunter