Teachers Who Speak Nonscense Revisited

Clare-Newman Constance pished back about my email "Teachers who Speak Nonsense":

Why is “send your back, back” wrong?

All the others I get, and seem like cultural norms but not what AT teachers say.

But we (or some) do say “back, back”

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OK, you may know what you mean by that.

Does your student?

Here’s a few things I don’t like:

1. Back is a vague term, suggesting a plane or surface area, without volume or substance.

2. Is “back” from top joint to sacrum? Or is it just lower "back”?

3. Does “back" include rib cage (which moves with the spine)?

4. Back does not naturally to connect to any anatomical structures that I know of - “neck” does a better job of that.

5. Without this clarity of definition - what exactly is going back? – it’s then impossible to know: how does it go back?

6. The only horizontally planned articular surfaces that could accomplish “back back" are in the cervical spine

7. Therefore, the movement vector of “back back” seems to be an impossibility. How can you?

I am a teacher of 40 years, and I still don’t know what this means. Despite asking, I have found not a single teacher who can satisfy my anatomical requirements in their explanation of “send your back, back”.

Would you like to give it a go?

Would anyone?

Prove me wrong, I don’t mind.

Until then, I hold every kind of teacher to account: Yoga instructors, Voice teachers (man do they have some beauties), Martial Artists, Tai Chi practitioners, Music teachers

AND…

Teachers of the “Alexander Technique”

Amen.

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