Awareness is Not a Motor Activity 

If you want to be aware, what do you do?

Nothing. 

Why?

Because awareness is not something you do - it is something that happens.

But try to tell that to half the world that is busy trying to be aware, turning what is essentially a sensory activity into a motor activity. One of the startling consequences of Alexander’s discovery is that you slowly come to see that almost all the efforts you put into trying to be aware of your coordination are the very reason you stay stuck. FM Alexander put it this way:

“Trying is only emphasising the thing we know already.”

This point was brought home to me again yesterday as I was working with a musician on the action of picking up his clarinet. He complained that every time he did it, he felt tightness along his arm and discomfort in how he held it.

***

I asked him to show me.

The first thing that happened was… nothing.

Instead, he got this glassy look in his eye while his clarinet continued to wait patiently on its stand in front of him. 

“What are you doing?” I asked him, “Why haven’t you reached for your clarinett?”

“I am trying to be aware,” he replied.

“Of what?” I asked him.

“My arms.”

“Oh dear,” I thought, “This is going to take awhile…”

***

Spend a moment now thinking about how common his approach is. You may even be doing this yourself - believing that the first step to work with your movement system is to be aware of what you are doing…

Indeed, this was my own way for a seriously long time.

In Yoga - and many other body arts - people are often asked first “to be aware” of their body, just as my student with the Clarinet was trying to do. In Pilates or gym exercises people may not usually start with “being aware” but they do still start with a “sensory” goal – such as wanting to feel a particular “stretch” in one place or “widen” one part of the body. 

Same thing.

While my clarinet student was staring off into space he was not making a motor decision to reach out and get his clarinet - instead, he was trying to use his senses to get his arms to feel right before he moved. He was letting his feelings decide instead of his thinking.

This so often happens.

Alexander explained it this way:

“You are not making decisions: you are doing kinaesthetically what you feel to be right.”

This is why his arms always ended up hurting – he projected that hurt into his arms by his insistence in starting with an “awareness” of his arms. This is not a mild point – this points to an epidemic of misunderstanding that has infiltrated itself everywhere. 

You don’t start with awareness, you start with a motor intention.

As my precious teacher, Marjorie Barstow (1899-1996) often said:

You think, you move and then you feel.