A Terrible, Horrible, Nasty No Good Day

Do you ever have terrible days?

Well, I had one yesterday. I couldn’t find ZOOM on the class computer.

I know that sounds silly, but imagine navigating an operating system in Chinese, Russian , or Korean – that’s what it’s like for me navigating a Japanese language OS on a Windows computer. I married Apple’s Mac OS back in 1984 - that little beauty had 512k memory (not a typo) and I was thrilled – but Windows? 

PLEASE. 

Even in English I’d be challenged by Windows, forget Japanese.

But the wonderful Zen Place Operations team kicked into play, rushed over to my Studio and fixed it all in a flash. I was happy, because more students joined my class via ZOOM, despite this grumpy old man finally refusing to get involved.

After that, everything went from bad to worse.

I won’t bore you with all the details except to say this: I ended up with a stiffer neck

People are sometimes surprised to hear that Alexander Technique teachers get stiff necks, sore backs or even water on the knee - I’ve had all three – but that is like thinking a doctor can never get sick…

Life happens.

It’s what you do when you suffer that matters. And this is where Alexander’s most recognised discovery kicks in. I put it this way:

Alexander discovered that head movements govern vertebral coordination.

That’s it. 

But think about that a little – what does it even mean?

“Govern”, for example, is a strong word to use. It implies a hierarchical order of activity, and many neuroscientists dispute that view. There is evidence, for example, to show that limbs begin to move a little before we decide to move them. It’s as if the brain pretends to let us think we are in control - when actually we are singing its tune like a puppet. Neuroscientists can not find a “will” centre, although the work of Ezequiel Morsella is starting to open up that Pandora box. Morsella postulates that consciousness itself evolved as a means to resolve complex motor conflicts, which isn’t that far off from Alexander’s own evolutionary viewpoint in CCCI. I hope one day Morsella will speak to us about it at a Congress, but that’s another post.

My conviction that head movements govern vertebral coordination – which includes how limbs operate off your vertebral spine- is based on decades of empirical evidence with hundreds of subjects of all ages and in all conditions.

Including myself.

Like yesterday.

By using this knowledge, it didn’t take long to sort myself back into a coordination that managed to turn a bad day into a good one. This is the power of Alexander’s key discovery.

And I’ve a lot more to say about it yet.