Tag Archive | head forward and up
June 3, 2013  

Being with Erika: #04, Melbourne 1991 – Tea Ceremony

I arrived at Fulton Street, Armadale for my appointment with Erika. After my lesson with her six years earlier I was curious to discover how I would experience this one. But a lesson with Erika was nothing like what we are conditioned to expect. A lesson almost invariably began with a cup of tea.

Erika confessed that she had heard on the Alexander grape-vine that the ‘Chair of STAT’ was coming to Melbourne and she had been looking forward to meeting me. She did not remember the young teacher she had met in London after her Memorial Lecture in 1985. She left me sitting in her living room and went off to get the tea.

As I looked around I noticed several editions of STATNews were lying about on the coffee table and on chairs, all open at pages on which were articles I had written over the past two years in relation to various bits of ‘STAT business’.

“Oh dear,” I thought. “She certainly does her homework. She wants to find out what makes me tick.”

She asked me, with regard to the Alexander Technique, what I was concerned about. I was not aware that I was concerned about anything, but I said, “That it is all still a mystery”. We talked on a little more and then she suggested we go into the next room to “do some work”.

I fell straight into the first ‘trap’. As soon as I saw her hands moving towards me I immediately started to ‘give my directions’.

“Whoa!” she said. “You’re getting ready aren’t you! Wait and see what it is I am going to do.”

She commented on some of my misuses, saying she was trying to see my “trick”. The whole time she was directing my attention to the outside; using her hands just a little – to initiate a change – and then immediately taking them away again. A gradually increasing sense of length and width in my back was beginning to appear, and it was something that was ‘doing itself’.

She asked if I would like to work on her and I was struck by the quality of relaxation and liveliness in her body. ‘Work’ was never allowed to become something that we were doing for its own sake though. As soon as anything became fixed (a thought, an idea) she redirected my attention.  The conversation continued throughout.

“It’s really something practical”, she said. “When I look around and I see that the sink has filled up again with dishes, instead of grumbling I put my head forward and up and I get on with it. That’s the Alexander Technique. That’s Zen too.”

I was still calmly expanding as I left, with a sense of something really new. It was as though a light had been shone through the diamond of Alexander’s discoveries from a completely different angle; I was given a glimpse of hitherto unseen aspects.

© 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!”
#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
#10,  A Lesson in Stopping, London, 1993
#11, Hands, London 1994
#12, “Yes, but you’re worrying!”, London, 1993
#13, “Nothing special”, London, 1994

May 5, 2013  

Tips4Teachers – Head Forward and Up

The relationship between the head, neck and back is, quite rightly, considered to be one of the central tenets of Alexander’s work.  Nothing else can, when working well, give such a sense of lightness, ease and integration; and nothing else is the source of so many difficulties and misunderstandings.

Why is it central?  Poor co-ordination in this area was, as we know, at the root of Alexander’s own problem with his voice.  It is reported (by Marjory Barlow I believe) that FM said in later years that he was lucky his difficulty was in that area as otherwise he would never have discovered the Primary Control.

Head Forward and Up

Alexander does not go into great detail about the meaning of “Head Forward and Up”. In Conscious Constructive Control of the Individual he writes:

This is one of the most inadequate and often confusing phrases used as a means of conveying our ideas in words, and it is a dangerous instruction to give to any pupil, unless the teacher first demonstrates his meaning by giving to the pupil, by means of manipulation, the exact experiences involved.1

So it’s clear! As teachers, we have to be exact! No pressure then…!

Some of his early followers tried to be more explicit.  Lulie Westfeldt gives a detailed description of her understanding of the processes involved.  In particular:

Alexander in using the words meant head forward in relation to the neck. It took a long time and hard work to find this out. One realized in time that his hands, which he used in demonstrating and teaching, were always tending to take the neck back and the head forward in relation to it. Once one had discovered this, one could ask him a direct question and get his confirmation that ‘head forward’ meant ‘head forward in relation to the neck’. The head’s tending to go forward in relation to the neck causes the alignment of the head and neck to improve, in that the head is balanced on top of the neck instead of being retracted back upon it. Once this retraction or locking is done away with, the head will tend to go up whether any other thought is given or not, just as the plant will come up out of the ground if it is not prevented or interfered with. If in addition the head is thought up, however, it will go up more strongly.2

Frank Pierce Jones also addresses this issue:

“Forward and up” clearly is not a single, oblique movement but two movements, the first of which facilitates the second. Depending on where the head happens to be at the start, “forward” will bring the centre of gravity up or down. In any case, the increase in this distance increases the torque exerted by the head on extensor muscles and facilitates extension of the spine. The head feels lighter because more of its weight is carried by discs and ligaments and because muscles that move it (for example, the sternomastoids and the upper trapezii) have lengthened.3

Marjorie Barlow credits Patrick MacDonald with the realisation that “head forward and up”, in physiological terms, involves a release of the atlanto-occipital joint.

We were all very confused, until Pat (Patrick Macdonald) realized that what F.M. meant (although he wasn’t saying it in a word) was that the head goes forward and up from the occipital joint, not from the “hump”. This was such an eye opener to all of us because as soon as we realized that, we could get the freedom there and the rest did itself almost. 4

In his book The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald goes into some detail about the meaning of “forward” and “up”:

…the direction …..forward in Forward and Up is an unlocking device and … the direction Up should produce a tiny elongation of the spinal column….

and

… release the neck at the atlanto-occipital joint… bring about an expansion along the spine. 5

MacDonald credits Dr Andrew Murdoch, a pupil of FM, with making the connection between Alexander’s “Primary Control” and the sub-occipital muscles.6

The direction “head forward and up” stimulates and activates the anti-gravity muscles of the body’s support system referred to in Tips4Teachers – Keeping the Back Back.

As well as the physical aspect described above, “Head forward and up” also has a more subtle “psycho-energetic aspect” which I will discuss in another post.

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1. Conscious Constructive Control of the Individual, F Matthias Alexander, Part II, Chapter IV, “Illustration”, Published by Mouritz (UK). ISBN 0954352262/978-0954352264 (back to text).

2. F. Matthias Alexander: the Man and his Work, Lulie Westfeldt, p 135. Published by Centerline Press, California. (back to text).

3. Freedom to Change, Frank Pierce Jones, p148, ISBN 978-0-9525574-7-0, publisher: Mouritz 1997, (First published 1976 as Body Awareness in Action by Schocken Books). (back to text).

4. An Examined Life, Marjory Barlow, p. 81-82, 2002), Publisher: Mornum Time Press; First American Edition edition (October 2002), ISBN-10: 0964435241, ISBN-13: 978-0964435247.  (back to text).

5. The Alexander Technique As I See It, Patrick MacDonald. Chapter 4: Teaching the Technique. Published by Rahula Books, 1989.  (back to text).

6. Ibid. p46. See also The Function of the Sub-Occipital Muscles: The Key to Posture, Use, and Functioning by A. Murdoch M.B., C.M, paper read at the Hastings Division of the British Medical Association, May 5, 1936 (excerpts from which appear in The Universal Constant in Living by F Matthias Alexander, Published by Mouritz (UK). ISBN 0952557444/978-0952557449). (back to text).

© 2013 John S Hunter

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