Body Learning: 40th anniversary edition

An Introduction to the Alexander Technique

Michael J. Gelb

• Publisher: Aurum
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781781311974
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: General Health

Body Learning has been a steadybestsellersince it was first published in 1981.Thisupdated 40thanniversary edition confirmsitsstatus as the classic work on the Alexander Technique. The Alexander Technique is now recognized the world over as the most revolutionary and far-reachingmethod ever developed for maintaining thecoordinationand efficiency of the human body. It is not only a means of putting us in touch with our bodies, but also a way of deepening our perceptions and general well-being.Itseffects on all aspects of living and learning are profound. Body Learning provides a simple, clear answer to the question: "What is The Alexander Technique and how can it help me?"Michael J. Gelbprovides inspiration and guidance to newcomers to the technique and conveys a full understanding of the complex mental and physical dynamics involved. " The approach to learning and the techniques outlined in Body Learning transformed my life. Read and practice, and Michael Gelb's profound message will transform yours." Tony Buzan, author of The Mind Map Book

1

The Man
and His
Discovery

‘He who knows that power is inborn... and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles.’

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Alexander:
the man
and his
discovery

Frederick Matthias Alexander was born at Wynyard on the northwest coast of Tasmania, Australia, in 1869, the oldest of eight children. He was brought up on a large, isolated farm where self-sufficiency was not an abstract concept: when the roof leaked, one fixed it or got wet. Alexander was a precocious child and, suffering from recurring respiratory difficulties, was taken out of school to be educated privately. As his health began to improve from about the age of nine, he developed a passion for horses and gradually became expert at training and managing them. His other great love was the theatre, particularly Shakespeare, and throughout his life he kept up an active enthusiasm for these two very different interests.

At the age of sixteen financial pressures forced him to leave the country life he loved for the mining town of Mount Bischoff. During the day he worked at a variety of jobs and in the evenings he studied music and drama and taught himself the violin. After three years he moved to Melbourne, where he continued his dramatic and musical training under the best teachers, visiting theatres, concerts and art galleries and organizing his own amateur dramatic company in his spare time. When his money ran out, he took odd jobs as a clerk or an accountant, even working as a tea-taster on one occasion. However, recurrent illness and what was then a violent temper, along with a distaste for commercial life, ensured that he never held any job for very long. In his early twenties, he decided to devote himself to a career as an actor and reciter, and he soon established an excellent reputation, giving recitals, concerts and private engagements and producing plays. His speciality was a one-man show of dramatic and humorous pieces heavily laced with Shakespeare.

F.M. Alexander as a young man: a portrait taken for his theatrical portfolio.

There was only one cloud on the horizon: a persistent tendency to hoarseness and respiratory trouble that affected the quality of his voice during recitations. Voice teachers and medical men advised rest, and Alexander found that the symptoms disappeared so long as he did not attempt to recite. On one occasion he rested his voice for two weeks before a particularly important performance. Half-way through the show, it failed. Confronting his doctor, Alexander was told only that he should continue to rest his voice. Not being one to stand under a leaky roof, he decided to take matters into his own hands and to seek his own cure.

Clearly, something he was doing while using his voice was the source of the problem. As he had no apparent difficulties in ordinary speech, Alexander deduced that it must be something he was doing while reciting that was the cause of the problem. Standing in front of a mirror, he started to observe exactly what he called his ‘manner of doing’ – first while speaking and then, since he found nothing unusual, while reciting. As he started to recite he noticed three things: he stiffened his neck, so causing his head to retract (he later called this ‘pulling the head back’); he depressed his larynx unduly; and he sucked in breath with a gasp. In more difficult passages the pattern became exaggerated. He soon realized that this pattern was also present in his ordinary speech, although it was so slight as to be barely noticeable, and that this meant that the difference between speaking and reciting was one of degree only.

Reasoning that the pattern must constitute a misuse since it seemed to be responsible for his problem, Alexander set out to try to prevent it. Although he could not stop himself depressing his larynx or gasping for breath by direct, conscious effort, he did at least partially succeed in preventing himself pulling back his head. What is more, this led to the disappearance of the other two harmful tendencies. As he got better at preventing this pattern of misuse, Alexander discovered that the quality of his voice improved, and his medical advisers also confirmed that his larynx was in a better condition.

From all this Alexander concluded that his ‘manner of doing’ did indeed affect his functioning. This was the beginning of his realization that the choices we make about what we do with ourselves to a large extent determine the quality of our lives. He called this power of choice ‘Use’.

In an attempt to improve his functioning further, Alexander now started experimenting by putting his head forward. He observed, however, that when it passed a certain point he depressed his larynx, with the same effect as before. Seeking next a way of using his head and neck that did not involve depressing his larynx, he discovered that when he depressed his larynx he also tended to lift his chest, narrow his back and shorten his stature.

This observation was a turning-point. Alexander now understood that the functioning of his vocal mechanism was influenced not only by his head and neck but by the pattern of tension throughout his body. His next step was to prevent himself shortening his stature while maintaining the improved Use of his head and neck. His experiments showed that his voice functioned best when his stature lengthened and that this could only be achieved when he used his head in a way that he described as ‘forward and up’ in relation to his neck and torso. From this came his later discovery that the dynamic relationship of the head, neck and torso is the primary factor in organizing human movement, a special relationship that he termed the Primary Control.

Having reasoned out the steps to his goal, Alexander was now confident that he could combine the necessary elements of ‘prevention and doing’ while he was reciting. Bringing two more mirrors into service, he was surprised to discover that:

...at the critical moment when I tried to combine the prevention of shortening with a positive attempt to maintain a lengthening and speak at the same time, I did not put my head forward and up as I intended, but actually put it back. Here then was startling proof that I was doing the opposite of what I believed I was doing and of what I had decided I ought to do.⁸

Reflecting on his experiments in the light of thirty-five years’ teaching experience, Alexander added:

I was indeed suffering from a delusion that is practically universal, the delusion that because we are able to do what we ‘will to do’ in acts that are habitual and involve familiar sensory experiences, we shall be equally successful in doing what we ‘will to do’ in acts which are contrary to our habit and therefore involve sensory experiences that are unfamiliar.⁹

Alexander continued to experiment, observing himself standing, walking and gesturing. He already knew that the patterns of tension and malcoordination throughout his body all appeared to be ‘synchronized’ with the imbalance of his head on his neck. Going on to examine their relationship with his mental conceptions of his actions, he began to understand that the patterns of misuse were not simply physical. They involved the whole of his body and mind. From this realization he came to formulate the idea of psychophysical unity, a truly revolutionary idea that became the cornerstone of his work.

Opposed to Alexander’s desire to use his mind and body in this new way was an overwhelming habitual pattern. This pattern was particularly powerful in Alexander’s case because it had been specifically cultivated during his theatrical training, when he had learnt how to stand and walk on the stage. The stimulus to misuse himself, he realized, was much stronger than his ability to change, and he was forced to conclude that his approach to the problem of improving his Use had been misdirected and that he had never consciously thought through the way in which he directed his Use of himself. Like everyone else, he did what ‘felt right’ in accordance with habit. Now that he had observed that he pulled his head back and down when he felt he was putting it forward and up, he had to admit that his sense of what felt right was unreliable. This was a disturbing discovery. It compelled him to question all his basic assumptions and also seemed to reveal a new area for the study of human behaviour. ‘Surely if it is possible for feeling to become untrustworthy as a means of direction,’ he wrote, ‘it should also be possible to make it trustworthy again.’¹⁰

Alexander now set himself to overcome his difficulties by fleeing himself from his dependence on what felt right and relying instead on conscious reasoning alone. As he knew his voice functioned best when his stature lengthened and also that any attempt to bring about such lengthening would be based on his untrustworthy sense of what felt right, he decided that the habitual pattern had to be stopped at its source. He therefore practised receiving a stimulus and refusing to do anything immediately in response. (He called this process ‘inhibition’.) He then experimented by consciously willing the lengthening rather than by attempting to ‘do’ it directly. (This he called ‘direction’.) Once again, however, at the ‘critical moment’ when he began to speak, he observed that his habitual direction dominated his reasoned intention. ‘I could see it actually happening in the mirror,’ he wrote.

Now he realized that he must spend time practising this conscious mode of direction and that any new Use of himself based on this practice would feel wrong according to his old sensory standard. As he practised, he came to understand that there was no clear dividing line between habit and reasoned direction and that he could not prevent the two overlapping. In order to allow his reasoned direction to dominate habit, Alexander concluded that he must give up all thought of the end for which he was working and focus instead on the steps leading to that end (the ‘means-whereby’).

Taking now the problem of speaking a sentence, Alexander worked out a plan. First, he would inhibit his immediate response to speak the sentence, thereby stopping at its source the habitual uncoordinated direction. Second, he would consciously practise projecting the directions necessary for his improved Use of himself. Specifically, he would think of letting his neck be free and his head go forward and up so as to allow his torso to lengthen and widen. Third, he would continue to project these directions until he was confident that he could maintain them while speaking the sentence. Fourth, at the moment when he decided to speak the sentence he would stop again and consciously reconsider his decision. In other words he would leave himself free to perform another action, such as lifting an arm, walking or simply remaining still, but whatever he chose to do he would continue to project the directions for the new pattern of Use.

It worked! By paying attention to the quality of his action rather than to his specific goal, Alexander began to free himself from his unreasoned control of his organism.

He outwitted his instinctive habitual direction and in the process developed a new method of learning based on psychophysical integrity.

Continued practice of the new technique had an exhilarating effect on Alexander’s entire being. His breathing difficulties disappeared, and he moved with a new air of lightness and grace. His fame as an actor grew, and he became especially celebrated for his striking voice. Other actors and members of his audience flocked to him for lessons in voice production. Finding that words were insufficient to convey his experiences, he now began to devise a subtle process of manual guidance that would directly communicate the experience of improved psychophysical coordination, a process that he spent the rest of his life developing and refining.

Alexander’s initial discoveries were made gradually over a period of years, during which he continued his stage career. His fame both as an actor and as a teacher grew, and by the mid-1890s he had a flourishing practice in Melbourne. At first his pupils came chiefly from the performing arts. As local doctors came to hear of his work, however, a few sent their patients to him, and before long these pupils outnumbered the ones with a theatrical background.

In 1899 Alexander moved to Sydney. His reputation preceded him, and he was soon inundated with work, although the medical establishment on the whole remained suspicious. One famous surgeon whom Alexander did win over was J.W. Steward McKay. The story goes that when they first met McKay remarked, ‘If your teaching is sound, I’ll make you, but if it’s not I’ll break you.’ Alexander’s response was characteristic. He shook McKay’s hand warmly, saying, ‘You are the man I have been loo...