Ice Skating on Positivity

Although I finished my “official” Alexander training in the winter of 1980, I like to think I finished it in 1979 because I didn’t bother with any more learning at my School of Alexander Studies.

Once I returned to London from Australia, instead I partnered with Terry Camilleri – a fellow Australian actor whom I shared a home with in Camden Town – to offer a regular workshop for actors at the East West Centre in Old Street.

I also set out to teach Alexander’s Discovery in groups – considered heretical by some teachers in those days. We called ourselves YAAO - “Yet Another Alexander Organisation” – and set about treading on toes all over London. I also got a job teaching actors at the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.

I loved those days in London. 

I was youthful, full of hope and excitement, and eager to change the world. My future wife likes to describe my behaviour as “Ice Skating on Positivity.” 

No matter what happened, I turned it into a positive and kept on going forward.

And I was a fanatic.

I loved spending hours basking in the glory of my movement experiences. I once got scolded by my Supervisor at the National Theatre for spending too long in “monkey” – one of Alexander’s teaching procedures. It involves bending your legs, and people always say, “I feel like a monkey,” while doing it. When I was on duty as an usher - waiting for the show to end - I put my hands on the wall, bent my hips, knees and ankles and went into the “monkey” pose. One night, my Supervisor caught me. 

Ooops.

It is like an Alexander Asana.

It is still quite popular with teachers, but I don’t use it anymore. These days I prefer to explore the movements people want to do every day, but for whatever reason, have trouble. Just yesterday, a trainee wanted to know how to stop “making herself small” every time she wrote.

People do this a lot.

Watch anyone writing – or mousing with a computer – and most will be scrunching up their bodies to make it smaller. It is almost like they are trying to go into the screen of their PC - like they are in an episode of Lewis Carrol’s “Alice Through the Looking-Glass.”

This was a ZOOM lesson, so I could not use my hands.

Instead, we explored her mental condition and discovered she was busy telling herself she was wrong. She was occupied with an inner voice that kept saying, “do not be that”, but instead “be a better version of you”. 

This becomes a never-ending loop – a mental condition that thrives on the negativity of your self-image. 

How do you get out of that?

This is one of the joys of exploring the Alexander “sensation” which results when you mentally align your Self with what you are doing. Instead of hallucinating a perfect version of your Self, you explore what to do at a practical level.

We worked together on that - which involved some detailed anatomical insights about writing with a pen while sitting in a chair – and she slowly absorbed the reality of writing.

Now, instead of a dualistic mind alternating between right and wrong, she became one with the activity. All her shrinking miraculously ceased, without any effort on her side. Instead, writing delivered pleasure as she was continuously discovering a new relationship with her whole Self.

Such are the joys of exploring Alexander’s Discovery in the simple task of writing.