Conscious guidance and control

I realise more and more that progress in our work depends on the willingness to change one's own thinking, or rather thought patterns. I experimented today with some of the ideas from Missy Vineyards excellent book 'How you stand, how you move, how you live'. Her lucid description of inhibition didn't solve any mystery for me, yet advanced my understanding of this vital skill immensely.

Missy's ideas about spatial thinking inspired me massively as well, and using this concept in hands-on work with Andrea worked out quite well. Gaining new experiences of free movement rewards the work we invested, yet we need to integrate this experience in a connected way into our thinking, 'understand' it.

When we discussed the first chapter of Universal Constant of Living the question arose whether the world would change for the better when more people learned the technique. Jenny's reply caused a bit of conflict, she claimed that everybody would need to change to make this happen. I loudly objected again this very absolute statement. I noticed the lack of willingness to change thinking, or to work on each others thinking outside the safe boundaries of a turn.

The disassociation of body and mind looks to me pretty similar to the disassociation between individuals and the communities, and the fragmentation of society. When it comes to solving problems with a foot, an AT teacher would address it indirectly, sorting out the primary control instead of doctoring around in the symptomatic area. In a living organism symptoms are not considered the origin of a problem, they rather indicate specific use, often lacking primary control.

It surprised me that Jenny managed to think about her connection to society in vastly different terms than the connection within her self. As student we have to push 'impossibilities' aside, at least for limited periods of time, and once we took this temporary leap of faith we can experience the connectedness of our selves. This experience transcends the linear thinking of the mind-body dichotomy and allows us to glimpse wholeness.

This remains me of the Flatland story. During an Alexander lesson, we can leave Flatland for a while and experience Spaceland. This gives us a new perspective. In Flatland, body and mind can never come together, merely touch at each other. Let's think of our body as a little square, and the mind as a little circle in flatland. Philosophers of all time have not yet solved the problem of squaring a circle, no matter how hard we try, creating a unity between circle and square (body and mind) in two dimensions is not possible.

There's a lot of variations you can create with the circle and the square: separated, touching at one point, intersecting to varying degrees, the circle embedded in the square, the square embedded in the circle. This represents the varying degrees of wholeness achievable in two dimensions, it cannot be complete.

Now let's move into spaceland. A square is just an intersection of a (2d) plane with a (3d) cuboid, a circle the intersection of a plane with a (3d) sphere. If we extend square and circle into the third dimension, they will meet like legs at the hipjoint. Even if square and circle were disconnected in flatland, their connection (and unity) becomes apparent from the 3rd dimension.

(I need refine this image, as I understand it better).