The Evolution of Alexandrian Inhibition

I avoid using the word ‘inhibition’ in my teaching because of the utter confusion and disparity of meaning attributed to that word. 

As I recently discovered, this is not limited to our community – scientists also grapple with its meaning. David Anderson, a respected scholar of motor control and learning in San Francisco - and an Alexscovery teacher - commented recently:

“I am wondering how to relate these descriptions to the way in which inhibition is typically discussed in the behavioral and neuroscientific literatures. In both literatures, the term also has multiple meanings and even more measurement instruments, each of which supposedly assesses a different sub-dimension of inhibition.”*

“these descriptions” - that David referred to above - were Greg Holdaway’s definitions of Alexandrian inhibition, which come in two distinct versions.

The most famous is FM’s two-step version of “inhibit = stop and think” and then “re-direct” to do what you want to do. Of course, the full version in EOT± has 5 steps, with lots of “deciding” and “not deciding” and “redeciding”, etc. etc. You could punch a million holes in my description – but you get the idea, right?

I was happy to use that model until one day – in a group class with Marjorie Barstow where I’d asked her to watch me teaching – I paused next to my student for “directing” before putting my “hands-on”. This is the procedure I had been taught in my 70s training in London! 

I was a good boy scout, doing his best.

Suddenly Marj’s voice boomed through my deep concentration:

“What are you standing like that for? It’s spooky!”

General laughter in the room, my shock at her reaction – and the beginning of a long learning curve into an alternate version of Alexandrian inhibition. On that occasion, Marj got me to walk up to my student and put my hands on without “stopping”, declaring:

“If you are not ready when you get there, you never will be.”

As a side note, I once looked through a copy of CCCI** at Marj’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I came across an entry she had scribbled in the margin about inhibition: “Why 2 steps?” 

Indeed. Why 2 steps?

Well, I have a theory about why FM did that. 

It involves understanding what scientists call “postural support” – the unconscious muscle tone that maintains your upright integrity against external and gravitational forces. And this general muscle tone changing produces most of the delightful feelings of lightness and ease that accompany an effective lesson.

The first thing to recognise is that Alexander never had Alexander lessons.

These profound changes we experience in “postural support” – well, he didn’t. 

Instead, he had to produce them from his own mind. Today scientists suggest that his body image/schema ability – call it bodymapping - was the neuro-mechanism FM was using when he was “thinking in activity” to free-his-neck-so-that-head-goes-forward-&-up-so-that-back-lengthens-and-widens etc. – very precise! More on that in another post.

But back to FM in front of his mirrors.

In order to change the use of himself while speaking, he first had to change the ordinarily unconscious “postural support” of speaking. So he was intent on FIRST, improving his postural support by moving his head and whole body as many times as was necessary to be familiar with it; then SECOND, finally deciding to enter into voluntary speaking. 

Hence, two steps.

I’ve always thought this was a consequence of Alexander never having received any haptic information from “another” person’s system, i.e. no “hands-on”. Without that sensory information, he had to attune his body image/schema system to a precision that most teachers today do not possess, because it is a redundant skill in the presence of haptic input.

Enter Marj.
 
Marj often pointed out that this “two steps” methodology of inhibition - by her observations - more often than not DE-OPTIMIZES postural support, i.e. people get “stiff”, which we could interpret as an inappropriate increase in postural tone. This stiffness may result from the fact that - unlike FM - his students are referencing past sensory information. So we can guess Alexander was not doing that - because he had none to reference!

This is probably what FM meant when he commented to a pupil one day:

“When the time comes that you can trust your feeling, you won’t want to use it.”

That was almost certainly true of FM, but I wonder if it is true for his students?

*** SUMMARY ***

Even after 20 years, I still use Marj’s definition as my operational guide:
 
“Inhibition is the activity by which the old habit can not take place.”

(Although I am also a big fan of Tommy Thompson’s more holistic definition of “withholding judgement”.)

About FM’s two-steps inhibition policy - in her living room in Lincoln, Nebraska, Marj once asked me the simple question:

“If my head is moving forward and up, haven’t I already inhibited it from going back and down?”

Well…, yes. One step. 

Because, unlike FM, we already have an experience to conceive forward and up. 

FM didn’t.