Tag Archive | FM Alexander

Our Link with Alexander: A Legacy Project*

While visiting a UK training course recently, the subject of the short films of Alexander came up. “Why on earth”, said the Head of Training, Ron Colyer, “did no one think of putting a microphone in front of him?”

Good question! Then, later in the morning, Ron and I were remembering our lessons with first generation teachers when one of his students said, “I want to put a microphone in front of you two”. I could see how interested the students were in hearing about these teachers through whom came all our direct knowledge of Alexander’s work. Many of us who did train or have lessons with that first generation are no longer young ourselves and if we wish to record our experiences for future generations, the time is now.

The Trustees of the Charity for the F Matthias Alexander Technique (aka AT Friends: www.fmatcharity.org) propose to hold a series of panel discussions on Zoom, each one dedicated to a teacher trained by FM Alexander. The panel will be made up of people who were students or pupils of that teacher and audience members will be able to pose questions. The event will also be recorded so that people unable to attend are able to view it.

The subject of the first such event, to be held in 2023, will be Margaret Goldie (14/12/1905 to 25/01/1997).

Did you have lessons with Margaret Goldie? If so, would you be willing to share some of your experiences with the world-wide Alexander community? Please contact me by email and let me know: john.s.hunter@gmail.com

* First published in STATNews, January 2023

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

Cult of the hands

My friend and colleague Terry Fitzgerald, a fine teacher of both the Alexander Technique and Ballroom Dancing, told me while attending one of his classes many years ago that “a good dance teacher can make it work for you”. It’s true! When one begins to study and practice partner dancing it soon becomes apparent that there is a communication between leader and follower which is similar in many ways to that between teacher and pupil in an Alexander lesson. Intention, typically related to familiar outcomes – be they dance steps or, in our case, the rather more prosaic movement in or out of a chair – is transmitted through movement and touch. In both cases though, all parties need a basic familiarity with both the choreography involved and the language of the leader or teacher. In finer moments of Dance the delineation of roles becomes blurred; two people move as one, moved by and moving to the music. There is neither leader nor follower – reminiscent of that moment in an Alexander lesson when “It’s just happening”.

FM is reported to have come into the training course one day and announced to everybody that “Now I can give it to them whether they want it or not!”. Like Terry’s “good dance teacher” FM could “make it work” for his pupils.

It can be beautiful to watch gifted dancers moving together to music. Watching a couple of people performing their Alexandrian “pas de deux” can look rather bizarre, though for the trained eye there are nuances of significant change taking place.

Nevertheless, the process is largely one of becoming familiar with the nature of the messages and how to respond to them. Different lineages have different languages of touch and different choreographies, which can make it more difficult for teachers or students from one school to work with those of another than for most dancers to adapt to a new partner; it’s more like learning an entirely new dance.

Patrick Macdonald once commented that it did not matter which words one used to represent the directions, one could, for example, say to oneself “Coca Cola” instead of head forward and up – as long as the words corresponded to the experience. The teacher gives the experience and by a kind of association the words come to represent it. “Up to a point, Lord Copper,” for herein lies a trap. Unless and until pupils go through the process of rediscovering Inhibition and Direction for themselves, they will continue to seek out the sensory satisfaction that comes from the teacher’s hands. A good teacher can make it work for you, but also needs to know when not to, and when and how to help you find your own insights. Learning to respond to the teachers hands must, at some point, give way to learning to make your own decisions and respond to your own intentions.

Trying to teach without hands is fraught with difficulties as the Alexander brothers discovered in the early years. The attempt to explain everything in words can all get very complicated.

Hands-on work, the great gift of the Alexander Technique, has in some ways become its limitation. The medium has become the message. Although in its present form the Technique is indeed a boon for humanity, the evolutionary secret at the heart of it still has to be found in the depths of one’s own being, in places which cannot be touched by even the most gifted hands – but only by one’s own consciousness.

© 2018 John S Hunter

Reflections on History & Development, #2: Lulie and Erika on The First Training Course

I’ve already written about the first Alexander training course in The First Training Course in 1931: a different perspective, but in this post I wish to look in more detail at some of the points made by Lulie Westfeldt in her book F.Matthias Alexander: The Man and His Work1 ) For those who are unfamiliar with this book, I consider it essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the history and development of the Alexander Technique.

It is fascinating to read how Lulie’s attitude towards FM changed during the four years of the training course. What that says about Lulie and what that says about Alexander, the reader must decide for him or herself.

It was not until many years after I had first read that book, and many years after I first heard Erika Whitaker’s Annual Memorial Lecture (delivered to the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique in 1985) that I realised that, to quite a large extent, Erika was responding to much of what Lulie had written in her book.

Erika and Lulie were in different groups or factions at Ashley Place, but remained friends throughout and spent time together teaching at a girls school in the United States after their training course had finished.

The Macdonald/Westfeldt faction was certainly dominant and has seemingly won the battle for history; their version of what happened in the early 1930’s is now the conventional wisdom of how the Technique developed.

Then hereunder are some passages from both writers juxtaposed for comparison. The references to Lulie’s book are from the 1986 Centreline Press Edition. Erika’s lecture is sadly not currently in print.

It is interesting that Erika mostly defends Alexander here, although she certainly had her own critique of him, but one quite different from Lulie’s.

Lulie: p42 “One other thing that took place in this first series of lessons was an emotional scene…..Since I simply didn’t know what F.M. meant me to do, I wavered, hesitated and tried one possible alternative after the other. We had reached a total impasse. I got more and more frantic and he got more and more furious. Finally he burst out ‘You make me feel like a fool’. It surprised me that this should be his main concern and the cause of his anger.”

Erika: “…then one day there would be a slight stir in this quiet series of lessons, and if you were in the room next door you would suddenly hear FM say “You will do it, you will do it”, and this would mean that the pupil had suddenly got himself into a bit of end‑gaining trouble. And if the pupil then protested and said they didn’t intend to do it they were really in trouble and FM would say “Of course you intended to do it, otherwise you wouldn’t have done it”. So as I see it now FM chose the right moment to make a pupil aware of his reactions; probably he had changed the pupil’s condition subtly to a point where it was safe to make the pupil aware of his reactions.”

Lulie: p50: “…..we were like the élite  of all the earth. We admired F.M. uncritically and wholeheartedly, and he basked in our admiration……. We began to have grave doubts about the other human beings outside our orbit.”

Erika: “I began to feel that there seemed to be a tendency at Ashley Place to have the attitude that we were the clever ones and the people out there don’t know anything. And I began to want to be with friends who knew nothing about the Alexander work, who did interesting things and I wanted to find out what else was going on in the world.”

Lulie: p50-51: “Anthony Ludovici2   … was going to write a book about the work: Miss Lawrence3 , the former head of the Froebel Institute, was planning to buy a house and start an Alexander school for small children…
…another opportunity that seemed most promising was the interest of an American foundation…
…F.M. had a way of killing an opportunity, although in the beginning he apparently accepted it and rejoiced in it.”

Erika: “ When (his well-wishers) decided to help him and wanted to set up schools or institutions, any sort of organisation to keep his work going, he was flattered by the periodic attention from these well-wishers and enjoyed it for a while, but then he realised that he was being pushed in the opposite direction to what he believed in, and he refused to be fenced in, and withdrew. Naturally, those many good friends were often puzzled and sometimes offended.”

Lulie: p56: “There were frequent periods in the training course when F.M. was extremely bored….It was a shock to discover that F.M. could get bored teaching – especially teaching us, the future custodians of his work.”

Lulie: p56: “You simply did not get what you needed when you asked him. The answer didn’t meet the question and often mystified you further. If questions were pressed, he would get irritated and behave as though he felt himself persecuted.”

Lulie: P57: “…he was not interested in training. He did not believe anyone could get it.”

Lulie: P59: “I began to see that the fault lay with FM rather than with myself.”

Erika: “Some students complained that FM didn’t explain enough, or that he kept things back, or worse, that FM seemed sometimes a bit bored with his students. Now when we come to explaining, I remember Eliza Doolittle’s plea in ‘My Fair Lady’: “Don’t expline, show me!” Well, FM showed us, day in day out, with his hands, gave us new experiences; as we changed. So it seems now that FM would say he was showing us. That he was bored, I can now understand much better! We couldn’t see the wood for the trees, because we were end‑gaining like all students.”

Erika: “And I began to see more clearly why FM had resisted all attempts to categorise our progress and had such problems answering questions that seemed to him irrelevant and strange, since he put his working principles plainly before us. It was a case of the Chinese saying: ‘There are answers to questions that are never asked'”.

1. F. Matthias Alexander: the Man and his Work, Lulie Westfeldt, p 135. Published in 1986 by Centerline Press, California. First published in 1964. Currently in print published by Mouritz; (back to text).

2. Anthony M. Ludovici (1882 – 1971) (see Wikipedia) went ahead and wrote his book about the Alexander Technique entitled “Health and Education through Self-Mastery”: Published by Watts & Co (UK): 1933; (back to text).

3. Esther Ella Lawrence (1862–1944) was a well-known figure in Education having been involved for many years in establishing in London the work of the German Educationalist and founder of the Kindergarten system Friedrich Froebel (see Wikipedia). According to Lulie Miss Lawrence went as far as buying a property for her planned Alexander school, but FM withdrew from the project at some point and the house was later sold. Earlier (in 1926) Miss Lawrence had sent Margaret Goldie, then one of her young teacher-trainees at Froebel College, to have lessons with Alexander; (back to text).

© 2015 John S Hunter

Tips4Teachers: Some Thoughts about “Orders” and “Directions”

FM Alexander seemed at certain times to favour the word “orders” to describe processes involved in his technique of re-education and at other times “directions”; he also used both words as, for example, here:

“…if we are going to do, not a mechanical exercise, but something real that matters, you have to think out beforehand the means whereby you have to do it, and give the directions or orders for these means whereby, in the form of a wish, as it were, and keep that wish going all through the activity.” [i]

He sometimes also used the term “directive orders”.

Walter Carrington often referred to “wishing” and “willing”; Margaret Goldie spoke of “brain-thought-messages”; Patrick Macdonald preferred “think up”; Marj Barstow, somewhat controversially, talked about “moving up”; and Erika Whittaker said it was really about “decisions”.

In this article I would like to consider particular emphases which are brought out by the words “orders” and “directions” in the English language in order to explore how the nuances of meaning might inform our ways of using these words in our work on ourselves and in our teaching.

The following list is doubtless not exhaustive, but gives some sense of the breadth of meaning that can be found in these words. Some of the elements listed hereunder will be very familiar to most people interested in Alexander’s work and have perhaps already been written and talked about sufficiently. Others are certainly worthy of further exploration and I will dedicate future posts to that endeavour.

  1. Order as the opposite of chaos

The above meaning of the word “order” – found, for example, in the expression “order your thoughts” – is not so apparent in “direction”. Its clearest application is in trying to calm a disordered mind. Dr Wilfred Barlow, in his thoughtful letter to Father Geoffrey Curtis, writes:

“… it is useful to tell pupils that for a short period at the start of the lesson they should, as you [Fr Curtis] put it, ’give their orders and not do anything to implement them’. I would call this ‘first stage ordering’. This period of directing at once begins to calm the mind, and such initial calming is not very different from the calming effect which might be achieved by meditation or prayer or some other repetitive mental discipline.” [ii]

All that is required is to say the words to oneself, like a mantra, without trying to link the words to parts of the body or to any kind of sensory experience. A mind that is saying the orders can less easily be thinking about to-do lists or various worries that may be circulating the mental landscape.

One of FM’s aphorisms also refers to this “first step”:

“When you get to the point of giving an order and hoping to God that it won’t be carried out, you are making the first step forward.” [iii]

  1. Order as sequence, e.g. “in a certain order”.

The sequence is important. For example, in order to carry out an activity (or not carry out an activity) most likely involving arms and/or legs, we want the movement to be supported by a lengthening and widening back; the back cannot lengthen and widen to its optimum if the head is pulling back and down onto it; therefore we want the head to go forward and up and take pressure off the cervical spine; the head can’t go forward and up if the neck is stiff; therefore we want the neck to be free. Hence the sequence, “Let the neck be free in order to allow the head to go forward and up in order to let the spine lengthen and the back widen in order to … (carry out whatever activity one has chosen).  Each stage can liberate the possibility for both subsequent and preceding ones to progress. Therefore as they connect and integrate, they become one.

“The phrase ‘All together, one after the other” expresses the idea of combined activity I wish to convey.” [iv]

  1. Order as command

Both “orders” and “directions” carry the meaning of “commands”.

Many teachers use the example of a ship’s captain or a Duchess ruling her estate to make clear the distinction between giving a command and trying to carry it out. A ship’s captain who, having ordered “full steam ahead”, then runs down to the engine room and starts shovelling coal into the boiler, would be considered mad. Similarly a Duchess, having commanded that something or other be done in her household, has the expectation that her orders will be carried out. In the psychophysical realm too, trying to carry out an order when that work belongs to another function, or constantly checking out whether something is happening or not, is as counterproductive in the human organism as on the ship or country estate.

  1. Order: a request to make, supply, or deliver food or goods

This is an interesting one; to “place an order” – as, for example, in a restaurant – has a very different emphasis from “order” as “command”. There is still the distinction between the one who gives the order and the one who carries it out, and the same expectation that the request will be met. However, there is more the sense of a contract rather than of a duty. It’s worth experimenting with this nuance to see how it changes your experience.

  1. Order: a situation in which everything is arranged in its correct place

The expression “the natural order of things” comes to mind. We are not trying to impose a different system of organisation on ourselves but rather we are trying to stop interfering and uncover “the natural order”. I like this quote by Donald Curtis.

“Relaxation means releasing all concern and tension and letting the natural order of life flow through one’s being.” [v]

  1. Direction as aim or purpose

For example, “she had no direction in life”.

In this regard the word “direction” has a different sense than “order”. One can have order in one’s life (timetables, structure, etc.) but have no sense of a life-purpose.  Similarly one can have a sense of one’s life leading in a certain direction, in terms of career or personal development, and yet in many aspects be very disorderly.

  1. Direction as orientation

“Modern man, when in activity, has very little awareness of such simple directions in space as backwards and forwards, and up and down, in relation to his own body…” [vi]

This meaning is not found in “ordering” but it is a vital aspect of sending directions. To lend meaning to the words ‘forward’, ‘up’, ‘back’, etc. it is important to relate these words to a direction in space. Muscle, as Hellstromists [vii] know, is very sensitive to directional thinking.

Patrick MacDonald comments in The Alexander Technique As I See It that:

“The science of physiology has not yet got round to recognizing this factor of orientation, even though it is the fundamental on which everything else depends.” [viii]

Once a state of mental calm has been achieved, or at least approached, it is time to let the ordering or directing relate more intentionally to the physical body; Dr Barlow’s “stage two ordering”, whereby:

“…the teacher…teaches the pupil the bodily meaning of the orders and how to put them together in relationship to his body.” [ix]

In my experience an essential element of this is to relate directions to orientation in space; to be aware of where “up” is (the virtual continuation of the spine); to be aware of where “forward” and “back” are.

  1. Directions as a description of expansion

The directions are specific to our human musculo-skeletal system. For a hypothetical spherical entity, for example, the directions would be something like “let every point on the surface move away from the centre”.  A description of what happens when the human musculo-skeletal frame expands is that the head tends to go forward and up, the spine lengthens, the back widens and the knees go forward and away.

  1. Direction as relationship between parts

Although it is an essential aspect, it is often forgotten that the directions are about the relationship between parts of the body: for example, head forward and up in relation to the neck; head away from hips, knees away from hips. The relationship is one of opposition (Alexander used the term “antagonistic pulls”).

The late Sir George Trevelyan put it thus:

“I think ‘head forward and up – but my head can’t go forward and up because my back is going back – but my back can’t go back because my head is going forward and up – but my head can’t go forward and up because my back is going back ….etc. etc.'” [x]

  1. Direction as instructions (how to do)

We are all used to reading instruction on packaging, and the directions can also be thought of as instructions how to do something; means-whereby. For example, in order to type these words I am going to let my neck be free in order to allow my head to go forward and up in order to allow my back to lengthen and widen in order let my shoulder widen and my arm lengthen in order to move my fingers towards the keyboard etc. etc.

  1. Direction as movement

Marj Barstow’s use of the word “move” (as, for example, in her use of the words:

“… you move your head delicately upwards”

 – rather than “direct”, “order” or “think” caused a great deal of controversy. I must say though that the experience under her hands was by no means one of an ordinary muscular movement, but rather one of allowing the head to be carried upwards by a kind of inner buoyancy, so the difference for me was only semantic.

  1. Direction as a flow of energy

“It is not enough to just give the orders. You must also conduct the energy there” [xii]

In many cultures and in many epochs of history there has existed a “science of vital energy”: qi, prana, vitalism, animal magnetism, odic force and orgone – to name but a few. Did Alexander find something similar though his work with projected messages?

Patrick MacDonald refers to:

“…sending a flow of force to alter the condition of a part or parts.” [xiii]

This is an important and subtle aspect of Direction and one which I will write more about in a separate article.

  1. Ordering or directing as wishing or willing

I find it helps pupils a great deal to remind them that they should:

“… give the directions or orders for these means whereby, in the form of a wish …” [xiv]

“Wishing” and “willing” are, of course, very different inner processes and are both worthy of further exploration.

  1. Direction as “brain-thought-messages”

This was the expression favoured by Margaret Goldie. She did not speak of either “inhibition” or “direction”, but of “stopping” and “thinking” – and the thoughts were not speculative or reflective but were “brain-thought-messages” which connected with the physical body.

  1. Direction as “decision”.

Alexander, as recorded by Ethel Webb, told a pupil:

“You only do what you decide to do” [xv]

Both Erika Whittaker and Margaret Goldie stressed the importance of really making decisions. This aspect of Direction connects with Intention.

  1. A Directive State

Dr Barlow’s “third stage of ordering” is, he says, akin to:

“… a state of ‘grace’, in which the ‘words’ and the ‘flesh’ are one and the whole organism is in a ‘directive state’.” [xvii]

To conclude, I have added to the footnotes a list of synonyms for Order and Direction – which may provide further food for thought. [xviii]

Notes

[i] An Unrecognised Principle in Human Behaviour: Address given to the Child Study Association, F M Alexander, 1925. Articles and Lectures, Mouritz (1995)

[ii] More Talk of Alexander, Chapter 18, Ed. Dr W. Barlow. Victor Gollancz Ltd 1978.

[iii] 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).

[iv] Use of the Self, F M Alexander, Chaterson 1946

[v] Donald Curtis (1915-1997) was an American writer and speaker on New Thought (see http://cornerstone.wwwhubs.com/Donald_Curtis.html). I know nothing about him or his writings, but I stumbled across the quote and find it very apt.

[vi] The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald. Chapter 3: Why We Learn the Technique. Published by Rahula Books, 1989.

[vii] “Hellstromism” or “Muscle Reading” is a technique used by mentalists to create the illusion of mind-reading by detecting involuntary movements or changes in muscle tone in response to stimuli (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_reading).

[viii] The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald. Chapter 3: Why We Learn the Technique. Published by Rahula Books, 1989.

[ix] More Talk of Alexander, Chapter 18, Ed. Dr W. Barlow. Victor Gollancz Ltd 1978.

[x] In his Memorial Lecture to STAT in 1992, Sir George shared with us his way of using directions with the sense of what might be described as an “oppositional, non-doing relationship” between parts of the body.

[xi] Marj Barstow used this way of explaining direction. She would pose the question: “What moves first, in what direction and what is the quality of the movement?”

[xii] This very interesting remark by FM was told to me by the late Tony Spawforth.

[xiii] The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald. Chapter 4: Teaching the Technique. Published by Rahula Books, 1989.

[xiv] An Unrecognised Principle in Human Behaviour: Address given to the Child Study Association, F M Alexander, 1925. Articles and Lectures, Mouritz (1995)

[xv] 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).

[xvi] See Tips4Teachers – “…not to do…”

[xvii] More Talk of Alexander, Chapter 18, Ed. Dr W. Barlow. Victor Gollancz Ltd 1978.

[xviii]  Lists of synonyms:

Synonyms for order: Synonyms for direction:
adjustment administration
aligning charge
arrangement command
array control
assortment government
cast guidance
categorization leadership
classification management
codification order
composition oversight
computation superintendence
disposal supervision
disposition
distribution
establishment
form
grouping
harmony
layout
line
lineup
management
method
neatness
ordering
orderliness
organization
pattern
placement
plan
procedure
procession
progression
propriety
regularity
regulation
rule
scale
scheme
sequence
series
setup
standardization
structure
succession
symmetry
system
tidiness
uniformity

© John Hunter 2014