A bigger picture

With a bunch of new students the question 'What the hell is this Alexander Technique' arises anew. I forget about my aversion against 'isness' for a second and give you yet another one liner: Alexander Technique is a set of skills to do more with less.

The notion of skill set makes the involvement of a learning process obvious. And this learning process can not be purely intellectual, 'do' points towards activity. If we remember how we acquired some basic (motor) skills like writing, cycling or swimming, we might get an idea about the time involved to acquire a basic skill, and the endless refinement of those skills by application.

'Doing more with less', or epheremalization how Buckminster Fuller called it, happens to students of the Alexander Technique, paradoxically by un-doing. Conventional education does not yet cover teaching of the principles that govern human movement, and typical physical education produces more harm than good. Nevertheless, we developed our idiosyncratic movement patterns to successfully face most challenges of our every day life, especially living with gravity.

Most of our body learning has been unconscious, guided by our curiousity and examples of varying quality. We learned names for body parts and intuitively mapped these words to areas of our body. We use this internal body map, especially when attempting to execute verbally instructed movement. Often enough this map does only a poor job of reflecting the interdependent tensegrity structure of our bodies. In long term, misconceptions about our body can manifest as physical ailments like back, shoulder or neck pain.

For example, if I work in front of a monitor, and want to 'see better', I habitually hunch over (bend the thoracic part of the spine), which effectively reduces the distance between eyes and screen. The idea of reducing this distance got translated by my faulty body map - instead of using tension to pull the levers operating my hip joint, tilting the entire torso forward, I pull my head forward and down, curve my spine and use of lot of tension to maintain this inefficient solution.

Well, I managed to recalibrate this part of my body map, and therefor get up without pain after hours of screen work. Yet I still find myself hunched over every now and then, seduced by a high stimulus to use a familiar way of reacting. I don't know how and why I picked up this habit, and I don't mind too much. I didn't consciously choose an 'expensive' way for a simple movement task. I had no idea about a better way, or even that I produced a lot of discomfort myself.

Our language sometimes leads to the funny idea that our body 'has a life on its own'. Problems with the musculo-skeletal system often relate to this disassociated conception of our self. My shoulders did not tense themselves, I gave unconsciously the necessary instructions to let antagonistic muscles fight each other. Once I accepted responsibility for my discomfort, I could start changing my habit.

Doing less meant not reacting to the impulse to get into a specific feeling state, in my case hunching over. Excess tension seems a typical problem in the western world, and habitual excess tension can initiate a vicious cycle.

Too much tension in muscles reduces the blood flow, which means less exchange of oxygen and metabolic products. The surrounding fascia can lose its flexibility, and overused outer muscles tend to weaken the postural muscles. Knowing my responsibility in this detrimental process came as a bitter revelation, especially as I thought to have maintained a good and healthy level of body awareness.

My experiments with body awareness, following different paths yet without the right kind of teachers, lead me not as far as FM Alexander. I underestimated the importance of touch for re-education of the self, and didn't know which skills to develop to get back in touch with myself. Our habits form a part of our personality, we associate them often with 'normal' or 'feels right'.

Letting go of habits does rarely feel 'right' or 'good'. Although a single event can suffice to ingrain a habit, the process of changing habits takes time. Working on personal development is not a wide-spread phenomena yet. Committing yourself to more self-responsibility clashes not only with personal, but also with cultural habits.

We carry some of our habits, individually and cultural, as a burden. By carefully observing their connections through the entire organism we can determine whether to keep them or not. Although so many useless wars about 'truth' are fought, we tend to fool ourselves most of the time. If you fool yourself, do it at least in an enjoyable way.