I’ve just had the pleasure of attending a current ITM Alexander Technique Teacher training course weekend. While there I had the joyful experience of both teaching students, being taught, and observing brilliant lessons taught by other Alexander Technique teachers.
The weekend reminded me that Alexander Technique lessons really can be transformative. People change. They discover things about themselves and are presented with new options. Lessons provide the space for students to explore unhelpful rules and ideas that they have been applying to movements and behaviours, and give them an opportunity to drop them if they wish.
In a lesson students often find new ways of doing things that make their chosen activities easier and sometimes more enjoyable. I can say this quite confidently because in my lessons I changed, and I came away with some new ideas to apply to how I’m moving.
So, what happens in an Alexander Technique lesson?
Normally a student comes with an activity that they would like to explore. It could be playing an instrument, typing, karate, or simply sitting in a chair.
Often, there is something about the activity they feel they could improve upon or that they would like to do with less discomfort or more efficiency - or just better: slower, faster, louder, quieter - whatever that means to them and to that activity, that day.
More often than not, they do change, the activity ends up different from how they had been doing it before. Not always in the way they expect – often in ways they don’t expect!
What struck me again while watching lessons, and what is such a wonderful characteristic of the ITM Alexander Technique, is that these changes take place even though the teacher does not work directly to improve the student’s end performance.
The teacher is rarely an expert in the students’ chosen activity: they don’t give them any new specialist techniques or exercises specific to the activity - and they don’t hold up an “ideal” end result for which the student should be aiming in order to perfect the activity.
This approach demonstrates an important principle in the ITM Alexander Technique: that (often much to the frustration of the student – myself included) teachers work indirectly and generally rather than directly and specifically.
What does it mean to work indirectly and generally?
Answering this question brings us to an important model in the ITM Alexander Technique:
THINKING = USE = PERFORMANCE
Let’s break that down:
THINKING: The way a person thinks: including their ideas, paradigms and the neurological activity that sends messages from our brain to direct the body in movement)
= (creates)
USE: The way a person “uses” themselves in activity or the total pattern or movements a that characterises their response. This “use” or pattern of movement
= (influences/ determines)
PERFORMANCE: The quality of a person's performance either for good or ill. The performance being their activity: which could be something simple sitting, standing, getting out of a chair - or something more involved like singing or Tai Chi.
When we accept this model, the most indirect way is to to work with the thinking that creates the movements which in turn determine the quality of functioning during the performance.
When the unhelpful thinking stops then the unhelpful movements simply no longer occur. The less unnecessary and unhelpful movements a person uses to accomplish an activity the better it tends to go.
This is the really exciting thing about lessons: How quickly and easily people change the way they are moving after their ideas change.
In a lesson, teachers often work with touch, using their hands to demonstrate new ideas, but sometimes big changes happen BEFORE the teachers begin any hands-on work at all.
This used to amaze me but it’s really quite reasonable when you acknowledge that thinking causes movement. It means that chance can happen AT THE SPEED OF THOUGHT.
Sure, students might then need to practice employing this new way successfully and consistently and at will – because the allure of the old familiar ways of doing things is often hard to shake.
But once they have seen the new way is possible - we know it's possible and we can do it again.
On the way back from class I listened to an old lecture given by Don Weed (The Founder of the ITM school of Alexander Technique – now sadly passed away) and his words really bought home the experiences of the weekend: He said:
“Some people think that lessons are about showing people how to do things well, but I think lessons are a wonderful metaphor through which we can learn something about how we think and have proof of it. Then work to build up the skills to think more constructively and successfully.
In the end, I don’t care how people stand or how people sit; what I care about is using how they are sitting or standing as a way of exploring and demonstrating and proving how they are actually thinking and how they can think more constructively to build up the capacity to stop old responses and implement the new plans which are more suited for their purpose.”
This is why no one is going to tell you the right way to sit in a lesson, but we will take the time to explore your ideas about sitting – or the ideas about whatever activity you bring to the class.
I'd love for you to experience this work first hand. You can drop in to individual sessions on the 6-week course to explore the principles of the Alexander Technique. Before dropping in it’s important to watch the introductory lecture which we ran through in the first session, email me to receive the video.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
Thursdays 7th March-28th March, 7-8 pm at The Family Practice, 116 Gloucester Road, BS7.
We talk about the principles of the Alexander Technique and apply them to activities that interest you through a series of lessons - be it jogging, singing, a yoga pose, typing at a desk or simply sitting…
Investment: £20 drop-in or £15 for musicians under 18s and full time students.
Email movingformsyoga@gmail.com to book a space.