Being with Erika: #05, Melbourne 1991 – Jean Jacques by the Sea
There were two training courses in Melbourne in 1991: Vivien Mackie’s school at Melbourne Trinity College and Duncan Woodcock’s Melbourne Alexander Teacher Training School. Although both of these courses were from a different “line” or “tradition” to mine, the work seemed somehow familiar and I enjoyed my visits. What was it, though, that was different about Erika? And for that matter about Margaret Goldie? I could not really put my finger on it, but I wanted to find out.
At the end of my first week in Melbourne Diana came back. I had plenty of time still before I was due to start teaching in Sydney, and so I was pleased to accept her invitation to stay longer. I had the chance then to catch up with Valerie and David Rich, whom I had also known in London and, of course, spend more time with Erika.
I invited Erika, Diana and Jacqui to lunch at a well known Melbourne landmark, Jean Jacques by the Sea; a characterful restaurant in a refurbished bathing house. The conversation was alternately light and serious and everyone was having a grand old time. Erika’s stories were, as with all octogenarians, somewhat repetitive, but she was always alert, poised and full of life.
We were sitting at a window table and outside was a patio area with more tables. There seemed to be quite a lot going on at the one just the other side of the window, where a family was sitting. At one point I made a comment about something I had noticed. Erika then told me everything about that family: there were three children; the eldest was very serious and the middle one liked to joke around; Mum was trying to get the youngest one to eat something and Dad was beginning to think it was getting late; and so on and so forth. Erika had taken all that in without noticeably seeming even to look at them at all.
Her attention danced, while at the same time she kept her inner state collected. If ever one wanted a lesson in how to apply the Alexander Technique in life, the solution was to spend a few hours in Erika’s company.
Through our conversations I was beginning to realise that Erika had a very different perspective on what had happened in Ashley Place in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s; and in particular during the first teacher-training course which began in 1931. Over the next ten years pieces of this fascinating jigsaw began to fall into place.
I left Melbourne and flew to Alice Springs. I was treated to a rare phenomenon at Uluru; a setting sun, a full moon and then a lightning storm. Little waterfalls appeared overnight on the rock, and all the desert plants had the dust washed off them, so they appeared greener than green against the darkened red sand.
Then I was off to Sydney and back to my twin roles as “teacher” and “chairman”. Little did I know what a political minefield awaited me 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
#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
Being with Erika: #01, London 1985 – Annual Memorial Lecture
In 1985 Erika Whittaker was invited to give the STAT Annual Memorial Lecture, a very popular event which took place in the Autumn each year, quite separate from the Annual Conference, in St. Wilfrid’s Hall at the Brompton Oratory. It seemed that the Alexander world was beginning to knock on Erika’s door. I believe it was Jean Clarke who sought her out in Melbourne and suggested she give the Annual Lecture. During Erika’s time in the UK she also visited several training-courses and met two generations of teachers to whom she was quite unknown.
I had been qualified for just over a year and, having recently started taking lessons with Margaret Goldie, was very curious to see another ‘grand old lady’ of the Ashley Place days.
John Nichols, the Chairman of the Council at that time, was already sitting on the stage to introduce her in a rather formal way. Then this relatively youthful looking woman came bounding onto the platform and began to speak.
I was initially rather confused. I wondered who this person was, why she was talking to us; and when the ‘grand old lady’ was going to come on stage. It took a good couple of minutes for me to actually realise that this was Erika.
One of the first things that registered was when she said that anyone who looked as though they were practising the Alexander Technique was not. I looked around the lecture hall and saw practically a room full of people who looked very much as though they were practising the Alexander Technique. Not only that, they were sitting in little enclaves, depending on where they had trained, and were practising the Alexander Technique in the ‘house style’.
My interest was piqued. I wanted to know more about this very unusual woman.
A few days later I was talking to a colleague about Erika and the lecture. “I had a lesson with her” she said. “It was very interesting.”
It had not occurred to me that she may be teaching while in London, but now I was hoping that I could get to see her before she returned to Australia. She was staying in another teacher’s flat in Earls Court. I contacted her and asked if I could have a lesson. “I’d be pleased to meet you” she said. A couple of days later I rang the doorbell and Erika answered. I knew straightaway that there was something different about her which, at that time, I could only express to myself as she allowed herself to ‘live her personality’. There was no ‘imposition of a technique’, no sense that she was ‘the teacher’, and one felt immediately at ease with her.
Because of a mix-up over times, the teaching-room was in use so she took me into another room and we sat down and began to talk. Well mostly she began to talk and I listened. After a while I began to realise that what she was talking about was actually very relevant to me. She had quickly got the measure of me and was giving me some insightful advice in a very indirect way.
After a little while the other room became free and we moved in there. In front of the chair she constantly kept my attention engaged so that I did not interfere. It never became ‘chair work’, but I soon found myself sitting down; and a few moments later I was standing up again – though I did not know ‘how’. She invited me to lie on the table and made minimal contact with her hands, but kept talking to me all the while.
Then she said she had another appointment and I had to leave. I asked her what I owed her. “Oh no!” she said. “You are a teacher aren’t you, so we are just ‘exchanging’. The next time will have to be in Australia.”
And so I left. I went and sat in a cafe to have a coffee, feeling somewhat similar – and yet very different – to when I had my first lessons some seven years earlier. Similar in that I was experiencing myself in a new way; but different – very different – because this had come about with hardly any ‘hands-on’ work. Something very important had happened. Erika had got inside my head. She had changed my thinking.
© 2013 John S Hunter
Other Posts on Being with Erika:
#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
#10, A Lesson in Stopping, London, 1993
#11, Hands, London 1994
#12, “Yes, but you’re worrying!”, London, 1993
#13, “Nothing special”, London, 1994
Tips4Teachers – Keeping the Back Back
There was a time when “keeping the back back ” was the sine qua non of teaching and learning the Alexander Technique. It could be said to be the physical equivalent of inhibition (but that is for another post).
There are some lovely diary entries written by Eva Webb which suggest that “keeping the back back” was quite the norm at Ashley Place. Somewhere along the line it has fallen into disuse.
In 1947 Eva had her first session with FM, then lessons with Irene Stewart, Margaret Goldie, Patrick MacDonald, Max Alexander, Dick Walker and Walter Carrington; thirty three lessons in total over a period of two months.
“They teach leaning back against their hands to prevent entirely the old lurch forwards.”
“It is still difficult to remember to lean back a little when support is given”
“For goodness’ sake remember the slight lean back.”
“Instead of coming back I was pressing back.” 1
Although Patrick MacDonald was the first-generation teacher most often associated with the injunction to “keep the back back”, the point was made most dramatically to me by Peggy Williams, who once quoted FM Alexander as saying to the students while she was on the training course:
“Never in a thousand years will you make a teacher of my technique unless you can keep your back back.” 2
Frank Pierce Jones describes this process:
“The subject, sitting in the experimental posture, is asked not to alter the balance of his head while the experimenter rests a hand lightly against his back. As the experimenter gradually increases the pressure of his hand in a horizontal direction, the subject equalizes the pressure by coming back instead of going forward as he would ordinarily do in response to such a stimulus. When the pressure reaches a certain level (varying with the distribution of tonus in the subject’s back and his ability to inhibit a change in the head-neck relation), the subject will be brought easily and smoothly to his feet.” 3
I think it is a great pity that many teachers have let this aspect of Alexander work almost be forgotten and that many were never even taught it, so in this post I would like to talk about some of the reasons why I think it is important and how I use it in teaching.
When we are upright, simply standing, clearly work is being done by our musculo-skeletal system in order to oppose the force of gravity. We recognise, instinctively one could say, that the work which is being done is of a different nature or quality to when we are doing other kinds of work with muscles – to move ourselves in space or lift objects, for example; work which is more obviously volitional.
Certainly there are postural reflexes at work, nevertheless, when standing, one could decide to “switch off” the muscles involved and thereby cause the body to drop to the floor (Delsarte referred to this intentional withdrawal of energy from muscles as “decomposition”). So there is still an element of volition involved, but again of a different nature to when I am “doing”. We experience it as a kind of “background volition”: I simply decide to be upright.
When I put my hand on a pupil’s back I allow my whole frame to expand, and the expansion along my arm is away from my back, which is staying back. Because of my training I activate this expansion in such a way that it stimulates the same expansive response in the pupil, but only if he or she opposes my hand.
There are, however, different ways of opposing me. The pupil could:
- simply lean back
- “do” something (ie.voluntary muscular work, and it doesn’t matter which muscles) in order to push against me
- stiffen to prevent movement
None of the above is what is wanted.
However, if the teacher is sufficiently integrated, free and expanding, the contact with the pupil gives a strong stimulus to the anti-gravity response of the whole musculo-skeletal frame. The teacher is then providing both an enhanced gravitational downward force whilst at the same time stimulating the appropriate upward response of the body’s support system. With a little patience, and a clear explanation of what is required from the pupil, it is rare for this not to work. A pupil in time realises that he or she can use gravity to” go up”, but they are not “doing” it. He or she can be taken into movement in the way Jones describes above.
Keeping the back back, without stiffening or pushing, is a subtle, but rewardingly effective way to activate the primary control, without too much focus on “release” as an end in itself.
From here one can explore how the support system is also activated by the correct relationship between the head, neck and spine. Also how it can be, and often is, interfered with in response to many and varied stimuli.
1. F.Matthias Alexander and The Creative Advance of the Individual, by George Bowden (ISBN: 0852430027, Publisher: L. N. Fowler & Co. Ltd) (back to text).
2. In conversation with the author (back to text).
3. Freedom to Change, by Frank Pearce Jones (Chapter on “Experimental Studies: Reflex Responses”:ISBN-10: 0952557479, ISBN-13: 978-0952557470, publisher: Mouritz 1997. First published as Body Awareness in Action. (back to text).
© 2013 John S Hunter
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