s

Teaching Technology Part III[1]

 

I’ve spent decades exploring how to craft an effective process for a group of brand-new students to gain a powerful, illuminating experience of Alexander’s discovery without ever having to put a hand on them.[2]

After experimenting with this for 43 years, I am getting closer to my wish.

I introduced this process to teachers in Berlin. However, I could not explain what lies behind the process in the same depth I can here. It’s a journey, so get a drink, give your Self some time and follow along with me…

***

For a long time - as an Alexscovery teacher[3] - two things have puzzled me the most:

1. How to think in an ‘Alexander way’; and
2. How to teach others to think in this way.

Alexander describes how he solved the first problem in “Evolution of a Technique” (Alexander, (1946 [1932]) p.1~25.) and then spent his life perfecting a way to accomplish the second - by using his hands.

I have travelled a similar journey - but in reverse to Alexander. I benefited from the extraordinary competency FM developed in using touch as a communication tool through my teachers in London. Ten years later, I started training with Marjorie Barstow and started thinking more deeply about what I was doing - and why. Finally, from 1999 to the present, I developed my understanding of the work by learning from the many teachers I invite to Japan to assist me in training teachers.

All of this contributed to my presentation in Berlin…

 

The Berlin Workshop

My opening question to participants in all three of my practical workshops was:

“Which 3 joints are crucial for calibrating coordination?”

How would you answer?

1. Teachers got the first one quickly - almost by consensus - the Atlanto-Occipital joint (AO). Where the head joins the spine was easy, but the other two?
2. The pair of sternoclavicular joints - no one volunteered this, which doesn’t surprise me. When I work with beginners, over 90% do not know that their arms join their torso just below the neck. It often shocks them to discover it.
3. The acetabulofemoral joints- but whoever calls them that? The hip joints, of course![4]

 

I’ve arrived at these conclusions not from some intellectual fantasy but from continuous Alexandrian experimentation with my Self and others over 50+ years of practice. Before describing the Berlin exercise, let me share elements of the journey that led me to these conclusions.

 

Why Joints?

Alexander left us with the concept of ‘giving directions’ as a process of ‘thinking-in-activity’ (Alexander, (1946 [1932]) p.19) to bring about beneficial changes in our coordination. When I trained in the 1970s, I was taught that there were 4 directions along the lines of:

“Let the neck be free (1) so that the head can go forward and up (2) so that the back can lengthen and widen (3) so that the knees can go forward and away (4).”

When I analysed these 4’ orders’, I was curious about three things:

1. FM’s directions are binary - it’s head forward and up; it’s back lengthening and widening; it’s knees forward and away. This pattern of binary directions appears later in my Berlin Exercise.
2. FM’s directions are contiguous - each stage leads directly connects to the next stage. My way of expressing this in the Berlin Exercise is to say we want ‘consequential movements’, i.e. movements that precipitate other ‘consequences’ throughout your movement system.[5]
3. FM’s directions encourage muscle mapping - e.g. free your neck, lengthen and widen your back.

Alexander evolved his teaching technology to avoid verbally explaining the meaning of these words verbally. Indeed - as Edward Maisel claims[6] - it was Alexander’s inability to convey their meaning that prompted him to start using his hands. Over his teaching career, FM innovated using touch to communicate the physical changes in his four directions. This approach can be summarised as follows:

“Lead them into the experience so they can understand the necessary thinking.”

However, my aim is precisely the opposite:

“Lead them to understand the thinking so they can give themselves an experience.”

Ironically, the latter was how FM taught himself - who did ‘hands-on’ with FM?! Therefore, I knew this approach was realistic.

Realising this, by 1988 I became determined to find an effective plan of thinking that produced a vivid experience every single time before communicating via touch. There are too many experiments and difficulties to explain how I arrived at my current plan, but let me give you one example that illustrates my approach…

 

Thinking About Your Head

The first problem to tackle was the vague meaning of FM’s 4 directions. Readers can refer to my book Principles of the Alexander Technique (2013 [1998]), in which I first documented my initial efforts to clarify the meaning of Alexander’s four directions. Here I was - almost 20 years after graduating as a teacher - still trying to make sense of Alexander’s four directions as my basis for effective thinking about coordination.

This initial approach never panned out successfully. It was too complicated, with too many shades of grey to be effective for a beginner. As an example, I will drill down on one word to demonstrate how easily words become ineffective and confusing for the beginner…

EXERCISE A - Draw Your Head.

With a group of beginners, this usually brings forth many drawings that are the same as the ubiquitous emojis we see on social media, i.e. 🙂. So what’s wrong with this emoji? It has no brain, yet this is how most people imagine their heads.[7] Therefore, when you tell new students to think about their head, they inevitably think about where their face is - which is more in the neck region! No wonder they get stiff.

To encourage accurate thinking, I better define “What is a head?”. So I developed a series of exercises for participants to redefine how they imagined their heads. After a decade of this approach, I began to wonder - maybe there’s a quicker way?

There is. Luckily, everyone knows where their brain is. Therefore, when you ask people to imagine where their brain is, they start thinking around the area of their head. Problem solved without too much effort.

This long period of experimentation led to realise the guiding principle of my approach:

 

The Truth Sets You Free

I believe this saying is more than a platitude - it is an essential principle of happiness. When we have insight into the true nature of phenomena, we reduce our confusion. Over and over again while teaching, I discovered that optimised movement is a function of clarity. Clarity, in turn, is a function of accuracy. When your words hew closer to the truth of what is happening, it exponentially increases the chances of producing the change you desire. Think of it in the opposite way: lies sow confusion. Isn’t that true of our world today?

 

Metaphoric Directions

Unfortunately, this truth principle effectively rules out metaphors, which are popular among many Alexscovery teachers. I am not one of them, and this is why…

There is no string at the top of your head, heads don’t float, and we do not breathe into our stomach. I don’t deny that metaphors may initially be helpful, but they are essentially lies - or fantasies - and in the longer term, metaphors are neither universally reliable nor sustainable. I want something that works with every person and works every time. Metaphors don’t possess that quality.

But what about muscles?

Muscles are actual, and they are responsible for movements. So I started to think of them more often. After writing my first book in 1998, I found myself at the helm of a new teacher training school in Tokyo. I used this situation to delve deeper into this topic…

 

Mapping Directions Onto Muscles

I became a muscle mapper. Since first studying with Don Burton during my training in the 1970s, I became obsessed with mapping muscles. Later in the 1980s, Dr David Garlick introduced me to the functional optimisations caused by the appropriate recruitment of red and white twitching fibres. I thought at the time that this was a miraculous insight into Alexander’s work, and I later wrote about it (Chance (2013 [1998]) pp. 57-68). I was convinced muscle mapping was the way to go.

The sub-occipital muscle group appeared in my first book, together with a guided meditation recorded by speech maestro Michael MaCallion (1938-2004) based on my script.[8] After years of exploring that muscle group, I became obsessed with the rotator cuff muscles and generally the muscles of my arms. This was partly in response to dislocating my glenohumeral joint on the left side 13 times, then again on my right while body surfing in Perth. I ended up with a frozen shoulder in my 30s - until Marj rescued me![9]

Once I started my training school in 1999, I started going through all the muscle groups with my trainees every year. I developed a method of using touch so my trainees could experience changes in the specific muscle groups we studied in class. I kept repeating and repeating this study, year after year, for more than 15 years until I finally took two years to transpose it into an online video course.[10]

I also loved the Kohnstamm phenomenon[11] - I made it a central teaching tool for years - so I was convinced muscle mapping was the way to go.

It turns out I was wrong. What happened?

 

Why Joints Matter - Producing Consequential Movements

I began to notice that thinking about muscles was functionally confusing. In myself and students, focusing on muscle groups tended to encourage introspection and stiffening. Something was missing. Finally, I had an epiphany which is embarrassing in its simplicity:

Muscles act around joints.

Understanding movement means knowing:

1. Around what joint(s) is a movement being actioned?
2. What ranges of movement are available around that joint(s)?
3. How do joints interrelate with each other and the whole movement?

Muscles mostly come in paired groupings - the agonist and antagonist groups - to operate movement around the joint: think flexion/extension, abduction/adduction or medial/lateral rotation. If you fail to grasp both groups, you are immediately at a disadvantage. However, thinking about joints avoids that problem - because joints organise muscle actions! Why did such a simple concept escape me for so many decades?

That’s why I started by naming three joints at the Berlin Congress.

 

But Why Those Three Joints?

Anatomists define two skeletons: the axial skeleton (head/spine) and the articular skeleton (arms/legs). These appear in Alexander’s four directions - first, the axial skeleton (head/spine) links to the articular skeleton (arms and legs). Any request to organise your coordination needs to embrace the relationship between the axial and articular skeletons.

Over time I realised that the joints where the arms and legs effectively link into the axial skeleton are the most consequential for your overall ability to stabilise your movement as you do what we do.

The concept of “consequential” is essential: although you are thinking at a precise location, the consequence of changes at that joint will exponentially cascade throughout your entire movement system.

To summarise thus far - my ‘Alexander thinking’ needed an object to influence. I explored many different ‘objects’ such as imaginary metaphors or muscle actions or actions around a joint. Eventually, I found crucial joints optimising my thinking by causing cascading effects - or consequential movements. Those crucial joints were where the head, arms and legs interacted with the spine.

Now we come to my next point - when I think about movements in an ‘Alexander way’ around my joints, what internal system(s) am I utilising for a change to occur? Or, to put it more simply - concretely, what am I attempting to influence?

 

Binary Movement Systems

A design feature of evolved living systems is that they often deploy binary systems to accomplish results. For example, we have two functionally distinct brain hemispheres, two sets of limbs, two kidneys, two essential kinds of muscle fibres, two eyes and two ears - you find many examples when you reflect upon this. I state this as an observation - I am not trying to answer why this is the case - it just is the case.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that this bias towards using binary systems extends into how motor learning and control function in everyday life.

Tim Cacciatore, Patrick Johnson and Rajal Cohen have proposed a scientific model of our work in the Kinesiology Review in 2020. While it is astonishing that their paper has nothing substantive on Alexander’s discovery of the head/spinal complex affect, the three scientists propose a profoundly valuable idea of a parallel binary movement system that underlies our motor learning and control.[12]

The first is obvious to everyone - our Voluntary Movement System (VMS). We can voluntarily fire up any skeletal muscle group we wish. However, when individuals try to sit up straight to improve their postural integrity[13], they dysfunctionally use this system (VMS). But, as Alexscovery teachers know, this is not effective in the longer term - as soon as a person stops putting energy into this process - they collapse rather quickly, and more so than before.

I call it “fake postural control” because the main job of VMS is not postural - it is for learning new skills in an infinite variety of ways. So if VMS is a fake postural control, what is our real postural system?

The second movement system proposed by the three scientists is the Postural Support System (PSS). Watching a young child play gives you an insight into this superb unconscious postural regulation - it is poetry in motion. However, can an adult replicate this? Postural regulation mimics respiratory regulation - both are automatic, but weird and dysfunctional voluntary adaptations can easily override their automatic function.

I assert that Alexander discovered the existence of this second parallel postural system. However, in practical everyday terms, its presence is masked by the voluntary system. Today, even the most sophisticated fitness practitioners remain blithely unaware of its existence - yes, shocking as that statement is, I believe it to be true.

Of course, everyone knows of “the core” - those deeper intrinsic muscles so important to postural control - I don’t mean that. 40+ years of teaching have impressed upon me that few appreciate that PSS control of this “core” is an inaccessible, unconscious and automated system. You can’t make it do what you want to do because, as Alexander liked to say, “it does itself.”[14] Another way of making this point is to compare VSS to another automated system that is not under our conscious control - temperature control.

Can you sizzle snow with your bare bottom?

Tibetan monks can. They melt ice while sitting in meditation using a technique known as “g Tum-mo” or Tummo, which means ‘inner fire’. They gain conscious control over what is typically considered an inaccessible system that regulates your body temperature. Through years of practice, Tibetan monks can subject that system to conscious oversight.

Alexander’s discovery puts you on a similar path. But how do you train in this?

 

The Brain Speed of Images

At the Berlin Congress, Rachel Sullivan pointed out in her Keynote on “Marketing the Alexander Technique”[15] that our brain processes images exponentially faster than text. She was arguing for spending money on a logo, but what impressed me is how much quicker we respond to visual images than to language/words.

The three scientists mentioned previously propose in their paper that an area of the brain known as “Body Schema” [16] may have an important role to accurately “visualise” a task as a preliminary means of directing our binary movement system to actuate it. This may be one way to indirectly inform our PSS of what we require.

Alexander’s four directions are words expressing movement images - but they are still words. And the words are vague and open to widely different interpretations. So what would happen if I offered my students visual images instead? Wouldn’t that be quicker? Wouldn’t that make more sense to beginners?

But what images?

And now you understand why I have carried on about joints!

We can communicate with our PSS through a movement image[17] , i.e. of movement at joints - and not just any joints, but the joints that are crucial to optimise our coordination. Therefore, in the exercise in Berlin to teach others how to ‘think Alexander’, my job was to construct vividly clear movement images of what happens when we coordinate in cooperation with our design.

 

The Exercise in Berlin

Before starting this exercise, explain the ranges of movements at the three crucial joints I outlined above. You rehearse these ranges by training students to picture what happens at the crucial joint areas.

With a larger group of 12 or more, it is effective to split the group in two and alternate each group doing each step - observing others is a powerful learning tool.

Step One: Everyday Walking (or Group A walks, Group B observes)

TEACHING NOTE: This sets up a kinaesthetic reference point for Step Two below. Walking will amplify quality-of-movement changes. The usual model for beginners is standing (or sitting) while the teacher touches them. While it is necessary for ease of communication, in this exercise, we want students to experience that they can make effective changes while continuing to move.

Step Two: Reverse Alexander - Consequential Movement at the AO Joint & Below[18]

TEACHING NOTE: With beginners, the most effective instruction - after years of exploring alternate expressions - is this: “Lift up your chin (head back), then push it forward (neck down) as you walk.” Notice that I don’t say “stiffen your neck”, which is a form of muscle mapping and ineffective - as explained previously. Instead, always talk about movement.

In a new group - when first hearing the instruction - there is an almost immediate systemic reaction, a collective groan. This is a moment of recognition - your next learning step is to underline that reaction and expand upon its meaning…

Step Three: Alternating AO Movements

While everyone is walking, now instruct them to change the relationship between their head and spine. They have been lifting up the chin and pushing it forward to walk - now ask them to move the opposite way and restore the relationship as it existed at the start, all the time experiencing the different systemic effects these changes have while they continue walking.

Step Four: Feedback on Step Three

I left this step out in Berlin as it was unnecessary for a group of teachers. However, with early learners, it is helpful to ask them to articulate their experiences. For example, if you have a group, get them to do this with each other first, then collect their stories through a group sharing experience. Then, as participants share, highlight different categories that their experiences illuminate; for example…

1. Changes in quality-of-movement (slower, stiffer, harder to walk)
2. Changes in breathing (shallow, shorter, harder)
3. Changes in emotion (introversion, anxiety, depression)
4. Changes in awareness (narrowing, less related to people & environment)

After each feedback, ask: “Did you intend to make that change?”

Students universally answer: “NO, I did not.” This realisation underlines Alexander’s discovery of how head/spinal relationship calibrates other systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, emotional, spacial, awareness etc.).

Before introducing the second and third movement images, I must address the concept of “thinking-in-activity”, which I believe is crucial to successful performance…

 

Thinking-in-Activity - Powered by Jugging Three Elements

 “… and anyone who carries it out faithfully while trying to gain an end will find that he is acquiring a new experience in what he calls “thinking”.” (Alexander 1945 [1932], p.23)

Most of us tend to think about one thing, and then go on to think about another thing with a tenuous connecting link. I have discovered this to be a fundamental performance limitation, especially when implementing ‘Alexander thinking’ to optimise your coordination. And who - for decades - often practised in this limited way? My silly Self. You can prattle on all you like, but understanding does not equal realisation.

I now headline this aspect of ‘Alexander thinking’ and strongly suggest you do so. I tell participants that they will need to visualise three linked consequential movements. While people can comfortably manage three when asked - they need to be asked because their habit is not to think this way. Then they need to be reminded that they were asked, and then asked if they did what was reminded?

They will mostly answer “No,” - so never give up teaching this.

Alexander’s solution to this conundrum was constructing a series of linked sentences to repeat over and over. This approach works when you have Alexandrian touch to instil kinaesthetic meaning into the words. But without touch, words are slow, confusing and ineffective. Images, on the other hand, work fast. Any marketer who has studied human behaviour knows this - why do you think large corporations all have logos?

Because the corporation’s values get quickly embedded into the image.

Your three movement images can - should - differ from person to person, as no two behaviours are the same. Bespoke Alexander still lives on. The constant is not the specific movement images I suggest, but simply having three contiguously systemic movement images. Always start with three. What I recommend next is a place to start…

Berlin Exercise Continued - Two Additional Consequential Movement Images

Step Five: Arm movements “Back & Down”

The arms join the axial skeleton at the sterno-clavicular joint, i.e. where your collar bone joins your sternum, just below the neck at the front. You can move your collarbone (clavicles) - hence your entire arm - either up/down or back/forward.[19]

The “classic misuse” of the arm is that people pivot the entire arm back and down from this joint. How many dance, singing and yoga teachers harmfully advise students to keep their shoulders down? Also, some Alexander teachers seem to have a mini-obsession with widening the arms across the chest. Whenever I see teachers doing that, I see them moving their arms back (retraction) from the sterno-clavicular joint.

So try it. Start your group walking again, remind them about the head movement at the AO joint, and then ask them to take both arms back and see what happens? Or take them down and see what happens? Now combine both, all while continuing walking. Again, usually a collective groan emerges from the group as they move their arms back and down.

Step Six: Arm Movements “Forward & Up”

As they continue walking - still with arms pivoted back and down - ask them to move the whole arm around the sterno-clavicular joint in a forward and up direction. Cute isn’t it? Same as the head. Easy to remember!

Step Seven: Rehearsing Torso Movements Over the Hip Joints

The hip joints of the legs have three ranges of movement: flexion/extension, adduction/abduction and medial/lateral rotation. However, your leg’s dominant hip joint action in walking is flexion/extension, so focus on that.

When your feet remain on the floor, flexion over the hip joint involves your whole torso moving forward as though about to bend forward - which sends your pelvis backwards in space. However, extension over the hip joints involves moving in the opposite way - your torso leaning back while your pelvis moves forwards through space as both feet remain on the floor.

Best to rehearse those movements with the group before moving to Step Eight.

Step Eight: Torso Extended over the Hip Joints

Start with the second of these movements - ask the group to begin walking by extending the torso over the hip joints so that it bends back, which will send the pelvis forward to initiate walking. This is a “familiar” way of walking for many people.

 

You are now introducing the third “thinking-in-activity” consequential movement image - remind them to continue the movement images of the forward and up movements at the AO and arm joints as they launch themselves into walking by extending at the hip joint.

TEACHING NOTE: Hopefully, this won’t work out well for them. If you insert some feedback time, ask them how well they could continue with the first two movement images as they introduced the third and final movement images? You will get some wonderful, enlightening replies!

Step Nine: Torso Flexed over the Hip Joints

Finally, you can put the three elements together: AO forward and up as the arms go forward and up, as there is a slight forward flexion of the entire torso over the hip joints as you walk.

TEACHING NOTE: Some teachers may object: where is the spine in all this? Hmm, that’s another essay, but long story short: as soon as you introduce the whole torso moving in a slightly flexed way over the hip joint, the spine - indeed the whole torso - is now in the consciousness of the student. It works.

The aim is simplicity - three elements are already a lot. Adding more complications at this early stage of learning is counterproductive; that is my observation.

Step Ten: Playtime for Alexander

Your subsequent explorations may resemble an experimental étude or an improvisational dance: using all three movement elements, ask them to try all kinds of different things. For example, you can vary from changing one element from forward and up to back and down while still asking for the other two elements to move towards ease. Or you expand into new activities - greeting each other, passing around a toy, picking up a chair - all while practising the ‘Alexander thinking’ as they do those things.

Final Thoughts

I often communicate with my hands, but only when my student understands their job. And their job is to think in an Alexander way. I have struggled for decades to know how to explain that to them!

My current way of explaining it is based on these three insights:

1. Alexander discovered a Postural Support System hiding in our unconscious Self;
2. The joints most crucial to postural support are those closest to the spine;
3. Images of cascading movements around crucial joints impact faster than words;

Something like that.

At least now, I have a way of training my students to ‘think Alexander’ through cascading movement images rather than words, while the mystery of magical results has a logical explanation. It’s nowhere near fully developed, and any feedback, criticisms and suggestions that my article prompts are welcomed! Contact details are below.

ENDNOTES

[1] I wrote two previous Congress papers, the first for the 7th Congress at Oxford in 2004 and the second for the 8th Congress at Engelberg in 2008. These two papers should be read along with this essay, which is why I call this essay “Part III”. See the Bibliography for more details.

[2] This does not mean I avoid using my hands to communicate Alexander's Discovery - on the contrary, I believe the use of touch accelerates a person’s ability to cognitively grasp the skills required to be optimising coordination while in activity. However, I do not want to communicate through touch until my student is able to grasp the nature of their cognitive responsibility. As a result of this necessity - I am compelled to find a way for my students to self-create an experience that immediately demonstrates the efficacy of Alexander's discovery, therefore confidently understanding their own responsibilities.

[3] I do not think of my Self as a teacher of the Alexander Technique - because I don’t know what that is. I am confident in understanding what Alexander discovered. Therefore, I see my role as communicating this discovery to others. Hence I coined the name “Alexscovery teacher” to describe my personal role as a communicator of FM's stupendous discovery.

[4] Technically - if we consider arms and legs analogous - the equivalent of the sternoclavicular joint in the leg would be the sacroiliac joint, not the hip joint. However, we discount the sacroiliac joint as it does not have any significant range of movement, thus rendering the pelvis more a part of the spine than a part of the leg. For functional purposes, the leg joins the torso at the hip joint, which in the arm is the equivalent of the glenohumeral joint. However, if you are going to include the pelvis as a functional part of the leg - and there are times you must definitely think that way - then the joints to consider are the lumbar spinal joints.

[5] I invented the term “consequential movements” to indicate when a movement at one joint has a cascading effect on many other joints. Movement at the little finger is not a “consequential movement” as there little likelihood that it will have a cascading effect on other joints. However, a movement at the AO Joint is more likely to have a cascading effect all the way down the spine and through into the joints of the limbs, hence it is I define it as a “consequential movement”.

[6] Edward Maisel - in his extended Introduction to “Ressurection of the Body” - claims that the two Alexander brothers in Australia ended up shouting at their students. For a riveting account of the development of Alexander’s work, read Ed’s Introduction. See Bibliography.

[7] The brain is unique in that it is not represented by our proprioceptive system - we have no sensory nerve endings within the grey-and-white matter of our brain. Of course, hair follicles do have sensory nerve endings, but the large space between our head of hair and the beginning of our face is sensorily blank. I suspect this is why emojis are drawn that way - because it’s how people experience it. “Principles of the Alexander Technique” in Chapter XX, ppxx-xx.

[8] Please contact me - [email protected] - if you want a copy of the recording. I am happy to share it. In fact, there are three different meditational recordings to listen to!

[9] For an account of how Marjorie Barstow dealt with my frozen shoulder in 1988 in London, read “How I Fixed My Frozen "50-Year" Shoulder” at https://atsuccess.com/blog/2021/04/how-i-fixed-my-frozen-50-year-shoulder.html.

[10] My “BodyThinking Course” is available online. It is now a required component of my teacher training school in Japan. It consists of 66 videos and 15 lessons divided into three sections. Read more about it here: https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/store/oTZvjLye

[11] Read more about this effect here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/floating-arms/

[12] They may correct me and say that they proposed three systems - the third concerning balance. Is that independent in the same way as the other two? I don’t see it. However, decide for your Self: the original paper can be found here: https://www.alexandertechniquescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Cacciatore2020ATmodelKinesiologyReview.pdf

[13] Postural integregity can be loosly defined as the need to maintain our “uprightness” while we do what we do - this is obviously a less than rigorous definition, but suffice for our purpose here. What holds you together as you do what you do can be referred to as basic postural support.

[14] “The right thing does itself” Alexander FM - in aphorisms?

[15] [Please add the relevant endnote citation!!]

[16] Ibid, Endnote 11 above

[17] ‘Image’ as a descriptor is misleading. Evangeline Benedetti, an AT teacher and New York Philharmonic Cellist, taught - when she came to Japan in 2011 - how important it is for a musician to “hear” a sound internally before playing it. This is another example of using an “image” of sound. In each case, it is a conceptional construction, not a real movement or sound. Margaret Goldie, as reported by Penelope Eastern in her book “Lessons with Miss Goldie”, mentioned that Alexander would often say in his final years of teaching “Let all be quiet so the right thing can do itself.”

[18] I am aware that while I am presenting movement at the AO joint, of course, there are movements at the atlanto-axial joint and all 36 joints of the cervical spine just for starters! The reason to initially focus on the AO area is to build awareness that the spine reaches great heights - this is an implicit training goal to encourage an accurate visual map of the spine. Secondly, loading excessive information at an early stage of learning diminishes its effectiveness. Information about spinal movements can be introduced in later stages of training.

[19] Technically we have three ranges of movement at sterno-clavicular joint - however, axial rotation (anteriorly/posteriorly) is a passive movement that results when moving through the other two ranges. Therefore, I only introduce beginners to two ranges of movement: up/down (Elevation/depression) and forward/back (protraction/retraction). In my enthusiasm at the Congress, I discounted axial rotation altogether. Apologies to those I confused.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, F.M. (1946 [1932]). The Use of the Self. Integral Press: Kent

Chance, Jeremy. (2004) “A Tale of Two Paradigms”. In The Congress Papers: 7th International Congress of the FM Alexander Technique. STAT Books: London

Chance, Jeremy. (2008) “Teaching Technology”. In From Generation to Generation: The Congress Papers - 8th International Congress of the FM Alexander Technique,  Lugano 2008, pp. 93~106. STAT Books: London.

Chance, Jeremy (2013 [1998]) Principles of the Alexander Technique. Singing Dragon: London.

Maisel, Edward (ed.) Alexander, F. Matthias (1978) The Resurrection of the Body: The Writings of F. Matthias Alexander. Selected and Introduced by Edward Maisel. University Books: New York.