Receptivity:  The Accepting Hand

It has occurred to me of late that the Alexander Technique offers us an opportunity to discover and to be our true selves.  We are often burdened by the idea that when we have reached a certain goal, or when we have achieved a certain level of skill, that only then will we be happy with who we are.  And on a parallel plane we often think we must bring our students to a certain level of ability or we have not fulfilled our responsibility.  Both these ideas are a type of end-gaining albeit well-intentioned.  My talk will deal with this area of exploration and the actual application of this idea in the course of giving a lesson: how non-doing creates a power of attraction and leads us gently into a state of peaceful balance and ease of movement: how the accepting hand helps both teacher and student.

Alex Farkas trained with Shoshana Kaminitz and qualified as a teacher in 1998.  He also has had additional lessons with Patrick Macdonald, Margaret Goldie, Marjorie Barlow and Elizabeth Walker.  Alex is also a musician and has extensive experience at the piano as an assisting artist.  He is currently teaching AT at the Conservatory of Music, Bard College where he has classes for the undergraduate instrumental students and the graduate voice students.  In the past few years he has presented master classes at the Royal Academy of Music, the Musikhochschule Luzern, Switzerland and is a frequent guest teacher at teacher training courses here in the UK and elsewhere.

 

[1] Attention and Motor Learning by Gabriele Wulf

 

 © Dorothea Magonet 2010

 

                                                               

 

 

Everything you wanted to know about the Alexander Technique but were afraid to ask:

an evening with Peter Ribeaux:  Friends Meeting House, London, 15th June 2010

 

By Poppy Walshaw

 

This June event was without a defined theme: rather, we were asked to ‘come armed with questions about the Technique’. The resulting discussions were very interesting and informative, focusing on both some specific details of Peter Ribeaux’s teaching, as well as more philosophically about the ‘timeless core’ of the Technique, and how we impart and even develop this. As the talk was by its nature dictated by the specific questions raised, I would like to examine some of these points in some detail.

 

The starting point was this concept of there being a ‘timeless core’ of the Alexander Technique. What do we perceive this to be, and how can we impart this to pupils? Peter feels that whilst he works in the same fundamental way with all pupils, one is nevertheless dealing with what the pupil most wants to work on. It doesn’t really matter whether one works more physically or psychologically, as we are ultimately a psycho-physical unity; “the way in, of working, is our preference”. How pupil-led can the teaching be, given the inherent necessity of means-whereby and sticking to principle in the teacher’s work? Peter does initially work at the source of a pupil’s pain: for example, to start work with the arms and shoulders for stringed-instrument players. Over the decades of experience, he feels that one can ‘see’ the cause of problems faster, recognising the inevitably common patterns of misuse. One must of course be wary of the temptation of an endgaining quick-fix; however, Marjory Barlow was quoted as saying: “You get cunning in your old age”.

 

How can we define what a  ‘timeless core’ of this Technique is? The question was raised whether a pupil must use the four books that Alexander wrote. Peter mentioned some of the parts of the writings that he finds most essential: the books are certainly one of the clues that we have as to how Alexander worked. How can we know this through other sources? Obviously, the work has been handed down through a lineage of teachers to trainees, but Peter questioned whether Alexander would actually recognise how many AT teachers nowadays work with their hands. The Alexander Technique is a living thing, and it doesn’t matter exactly what you are doing, rather how you do it, your own ‘directions’, and using yourself as well as you can. Peter described how as a teacher, one can in fact do “anything you like, within reason”, especially with more experienced pupils-provided that one never pulls oneself or the pupil ‘down’. By sticking to principle, and especially to the head-neck-back relationship, one stays with the means-whereby, without knowing exactly what the result will be, which is why the work always remains exciting.

 

This leads me onto a description of some of the more specific, ‘mechanical’, questions that arose about the AT and Peter’s own work.

 

• A question was raised by a pupil about his confusion between our use of the terms ‘head’ versus ‘mind’. In referring to the head leading, he seemed to see an ambiguity as the mind, or thought, also ‘leads’. Here I quote Peter’s description of the head physically leading:

The first preliminary to movement, the first things that needs to be engaged, is that the neck is free and the head coming off the end of the spine in the direction we call forward and up. The up is a sort of illusion.

What he believes Alexander means by a free neck is just the freedom between the occiput and the axis (i.e. at the top of our spine). The head always leads forwards in our directions: if we walk backwards, the head still leads off the end of the spine forwards whilst the body is allowed to move backwards.

• How do we free the neck? He works in fact to keep ‘stability’ in the body, for example by directing the feet into the ground which ‘reflexly bounces back’ so that the head leads away from the ground. By considering the total organism, we can help to let the neck be free: we create good conditions for that to be allowed.

• Did Alexander refer to ‘primary control’ or ‘the primary control’? Is it the mechanism, or the manner of operating the mechanism: the entity or activity?  In fact Alexander seems to say ‘the manner of use of the Primary Control’. Peter suggested that the differences in how teachers define the primary control is one of the main factors that differentiates ‘styles’ of the AT. Peter’s own descriptions dealt with “a connection through, which gives you an entity (the primary control), which runs from the deepest level of musculature from head to feet.” The feet in turn fire stretch reflexes up into the deep muscles of the organism, for example between the vertebrae, and the eyes play an important role. So we are rather like a tent with its guy ropes, in the way that overlapping layers of muscles, in the correct tonus, give us support.

• Following on from the above point, a definition of ‘misuse’:

Misuse is the way in which the movement musculature takes the role of the support musculature. We shouldn’t let one ‘contaminate’ the other. By undoing the contamination of the superficial muscles, the teacher allows the deeper muscles to learn to work: those that should be doing the supporting. Good use is about moving coordinated as one piece or system, and this condition of good support is, he feels, a prerequisite for being able to let the head lead, and so on.

• What is the difference between ‘opposition’ and ‘staying in the back’? Both of these terms are post-Alexander expressions, particularly from Patrick Macdonald’s teaching. Peter described his teacher’s work: that it did instant inhibition and direction, all in one go, and that he could get things no other teacher can, in terms of actually working the organism as a whole. ‘Staying in the back’ he described as ‘using some consciousness in the back so we are not lurching forwards’: if we stay in our back, our experience is of having a better sense of what is going on in the world (i.e. the periphery). ‘Opposition’ he defined as one bit of the body moving in opposition to another, slightly different to the term ‘separation’. For example, there is separation between the legs and the back, but opposition between the back back and the legs (or knees) directing forwards. There can be the opposition of our feet to our hands: the arms ‘should work in the same way as the legs’, for example in a crawl, and also the opposition of our feet to the ground.

• What is ‘non-doing’? It is not doing nothing, though that may be a preliminary step. The decades of experience have given Peter a more complex sense of many such Alexander concepts than the first appearance of the sense of the words.

• Stress Management: Peter works extensively with stress management, and described how the Alexander principles are inherent in this work, even when not specifically explained. His coaching includes how to stop, and what to do when we stop, so that we gain control over ourselves and our circumstances in tiny ways. He teaches techniques to think our way through the day, such as allowing the phone to ring once longer than normal, counting whilst breathing, or regularly remembering to take a small action such as to lie down once a day. This allows some moments to evaluate one’s situation and reactions.

 

The evening certainly dealt in an interesting amount of depth with many central issues and questions. As a trainee teacher myself,  having not experienced Peter’s work before, I would have welcomed more activity or hands-on work to enhance this, as words can perhaps only approximate to learning through experience.

 

As Peter said: “ There are genuine puzzles in the Alexander Technique”… 

   

 

 © Poppy Walshaw 2010

 

                                                               

 

 

Could knee problems be caused by poor arm co-ordination?

 

Researchers at the University of Michigan have provided an explanation of why we swing our arms when walking. Arm swinging “reduces the torques (twisting movements) we need to apply to counter the inertia of our legs, and so reduces the energy needed to walk and the twisting forces on our knees.” Subjects were asked to walk in three different ways: with arms swinging normally; with arms folded to stop them swinging; and with arms swinging in the same phase as the legs or ‘tick-tocking’. Ten subjects were filmed walking while also measuring their oxygen consumption and the forces produced by their feet as they walked over specially designed ‘force plates’ sunk into the floor. Subjects used about 10% more energy to walk without swinging their arms than when they swung them normally, while tick-tocking increased energy consumption by 26%. Filming revealed no changes in movement of the legs or body, but the force-plate records showed that while the forces involved did not change, the torques about the body’s inertial axis were twice as high with no arm swing and three times as high during tick-tocking than during normal swinging.

 

Physical World, volume 23, no. 1; January 2010. pp. 28‑30

 

                                                               

 

Books

 

The Well-Tuned Body Banish Back Pain With Gentle Exercises Based on the Alexander Technique Penny Ingham & Colin Shelbourn, Summersdale, pbk, 192pp, 129x198 mm, ISBN 978-184024578-3, £6.99. (First published in STATNews, January 2010) Review by Anna Cooper
To do or not to do   A brave book indeed. The ultimate attempt to do what Alexander did, in words? The book sets out 30 exercises “based on Alexander’s principles”, described as habit-breakers. It is a new edition of an attractive paperback, with cartoon illustrations, which has been translated into other languages. The writer offers “easy and effective solutions” for people with back or neck pain, tiredness, stiffness etc. but the book does not teach the Alexander Technique. Can it succeed? I asked a non-initiate to read some chapters and comment.   Scrupulously following several chapters of instructions – not easy when wearing bifocal specs – he reported feeling somewhat confused, stiff and getting a tight chest. Even doing semi-supine according to the book only left him feeling “faintly relaxed”, but he had largely misunderstood some important details. He thought that section should have been broken up into smaller parts for greater clarity and benefit.  I then went through the same procedures with him, helping him to understand what was required. He barely recognised any similarities between the two experiences. With guidance he began to detect some benefit. Does this prove anything? Not necessarily. He found the introduction helpful and inspiring, but did not feel rewarded by doing the exercises on his own, nor inclined to read to the end. To do so, I feel, one would need to be very motivated and patient indeed, not to experience psychophysical indigestion.
After each set of exercises the author explains the principle behind them. I feel these sections are probably more accessible. And there are some refreshing concepts such as a friendly puppeteer helping the thinking up; visualising the sitting bones as little feet in your bottom; breathing out being long, in being wide; a raindrop-scattering game, and the ‘post-it’ thoughts for the day. There is a very good chapter on breathing, but it should be at the beginning not at the end. Once our novice stopped holding his breath his chest stopped feeling tight.   A problem that inevitably arises with guidance of this kind is the challenge of catering for a huge variety of readers. Perhaps it’s more helpful to quote a range of book heights, as I’ve found these can vary by a factor of 3 or 4, and usually change within one session. And how, in one book, do you help people who wear bifocals, have different leg lengths and are advised to distribute the weight equally between both feet, have a concave thoracic curve or a pronounced kyphosis? Those on the edges will always be at a distinct disadvantage without a teacher.   Even though this work is “not the Alexander Technique” (isn’t it??), I missed any mention of freeing the neck or non-doing. Admittedly the whole book attempts to put those concepts into words, but in the end I felt it did not square that circle. The exercises would probably work best for someone with lots of Alexander re-education and kinaesthetic awareness, whereas the person most likely to buy it (or give it to an impecunious friend who can’t afford lessons) is a very different animal.   To quote M C Escher, “Only those who attempt the absurd … will achieve the impossible." If you were attempting to describe the Alexander principles, The Well-Tuned Body is the book you would write. But will its readers experience the holy grail of Ms Ingham’s easy and effective solutions or a well-tuned body? On a sample of one, I would say neither.   © Anna Cooper 2010

 

Thinking Where I Am Thinking About A Smile Thinking About Space A set of self-published books for children by Janette Costin, AUSTAT. AU$9.95 each from www.alexandertechniqueknowledge.com (First published in STATNews, September 2010) Review by Jeannie MacLean with thanks to Charlie Haden
Janette Costin, a teaching member of AUSTAT, has written and published this series of three books to be used "towards the education of children" as she explains in the introduction. The books are in a format familiar to younger children: thin paperbacks with colourful illustrations and not too many words; a blue, a green and a red book. I love the titles of the first two books, Thinking Where I Am and Thinking About A Smile – they give an immediate opportunity for discussion. I am less certain about the third title, Thinking About Space. I have worked with many children, both in schools and in private practice, and have recognised the relief a great many of them feel when they realise they are learning in a different way and not looking at books. This made me question how these books might be used and how children might respond to them.
I read them first with my adult Alexander teacher eyes and brain, then I offered them to Charlie, a 10 year-old boy who has had a number of Alexander lessons.   Let's look at them one by one.   Thinking Where I Am looks at mind-wandering as a habit and how to bring the attention back to the present moment. This is useful for young people to consider, but I found the text in the book over directional and pedagogic in tone, and my overall impression was that the book suggests that when in school a child `ought' to be paying attention to the teacher and `ought not' to be daydreaming.   In my own teaching I work to raise awareness of how `should' and `ought' can stimulate shortening and tightening in a young body, and I find the concepts unhelpful in facilitating an acceptance of `where I am'. Having said that, this book could be useful for discussing with a child their experience of the impact of `should' and `ought' and how they contribute to mind-wandering.   What did Charlie think? "This book says you have to listen to the teacher and to sit properly. It is interesting, it's real, it's what actual people do."   The second book, Thinking About A Smile sets out to look at the impact of anxiety when a child is asked to read out loud, and how a happy thought and smiling can allow change in the experience of performing the task. The introduction makes clear that there should be discussion with the child about the content and how they experience a task like reading aloud. This is where the potential value of these books lies, as a teaching aid rather than as lessons in themselves. If the discussion arises from the child's experience and can be extended by looking at the book I think this is a valuable way to proceed.   Charlie's response to this book: "You shouldn't be scared about reading in front of the class because that will make it worse. Everything is about thinking, so if you have a smile on your face it will seem as if you don't care."   About the third book Thinking About Space Charlie said, "I don't really understand it" and I rather agree with him. Introducing the idea of end-gaining I think has to arise naturally from the child's experience, rather than creating a device in a book to have them consider it.   Janette has produced three books which give us all an opportunity to talk with children about some of the principles of the Alexander Technique, to use them as a discussion stimulus with class teachers and with parents, and perhaps most importantly to stimulate discussion about children's learning among Alexander teachers.   I don't think the books can stand alone for either children or class teachers unless they have direct experience of the Technique.   If anyone would like to discuss this review or any of the issues the books raise about working with children with me I would be delighted to chat.   © Janette Costin 2010

The Master and his Emissary The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Iain McGilchrist, Yale University Press, 2009; hbk, 597pp, ISBN 978-0-300-14878-7, £25.00; pbk available in October, ISBN 978-0-300-16892-1, £10.99. (First published in STATNews, September 2010) Review by Ron Colyer
This is a book of enormous scope, whose two parts are illustrated by its subtitle. The title refers to an old Sufi tale, in which the Master is an enlightened sage who, as his teaching spreads more and more widely, delegates the administration of it to his favoured disciple. This Emissary gradually takes control of the teachings. He has a vast amount of knowledge, but it is piecemeal, and does not stem from a deep understanding of his experience in and of the world. In the book he stands for the left hemisphere, that part of us which analyses and ‘re-presents’ (McGilchrist’s hyphen elegantly emphasises the point). The argument is that Western culture has arrived at a stage in which what the author identifies as left hemisphere modes of thought and expression are too dominant, with a corresponding weakening of the functioning of the right hemisphere, with its capacity to sense things as a whole, in depth and context. McGilchrist’s objective is to plead for the restoration of balance:
“The right hemisphere, the one that believes, but does not know, has to depend on the other, the left hemisphere, that knows, but doesn’t believe. … The Master needs to trust, to believe in his Emissary, knowing all the while that that trust may be abused. The Emissary knows, but knows wrongly, that he is invulnerable. If the relationship holds, they are invincible: but if it is abused, it is not just the Master that suffers, but both of them, since the Emissary owes his existence to the Master.”   What we thought we knew about left and right hemispheres when it became a popular idea (language on the left, spatial awareness on the right, etc.) turns out to be a fairly crude and not altogether accurate picture – the right hemisphere does have language, for example:   “If it is true that most syntax and vocabulary, the nitty-gritty of language, are in most subjects housed in the left hemisphere, it is nonetheless the right hemisphere which subserves higher linguistic functions such as understanding the meaning of a whole phrase or sentence in context, its tone, its emotional significance, along with use of humour, irony, metaphor, and so on.”   The chapter on Language, Truth and Music will be extremely thought-provoking for students of Alexander’s work. Much of its argument reinforced my understanding of F.M.’s constant effort in his books to keep to a ‘broad reasoning approach’, and to use ‘blanket words’, so as not to limit meaning. McGilchrist contrasts the word ‘rational’ (left brain territory with its Latin roots in measurement and proportion), with ‘reason’, so implying a more contextual approach which does not preclude some kind of intuiting or even paradox. Too often nowadays we consider that things are explained and ‘wrapped up’ if we can produce a few statistics!   One vivid example from McGilchrist’s exhaustive survey of the scientific literature (his bibliography is huge), may sum up the situation. Evidently when a chicken feeds, its right eye (left brain) is focussed on the little grains it is pecking at, while at the same time its left eye (right brain) scans the horizon, the general surroundings, for possible trouble. Partial detail versus total context – the chickens seem to have got it right.   It may be that people with wide and expert knowledge in the neuroscientific field will find the book wanting. I gave my brother a copy, and he raised the caveat that drawing conclusions from the examination of damaged or otherwise dysfunctional brains does not in the end tell us how the fully integrated brain really works. Mind you, a vast amount of our neuroscientific knowledge is based on doing just that.   The focus on left and right is itself partial. What about top and bottom – the relationship between cortex and sub-cortical brain areas? With this narrow focus McGilchrist might be accused of the sort of overly left-brained approach he decries. He does not hesitate to accuse António Damásio of a similar crime in Descartes’ Error, deftly pointing out that Damásio commits Descartes’ error towards the end of the book!   The second half of the book, with its broad canvas of the history of Western culture, I found utterly absorbing. It started me on explorations which I might not otherwise have made, many of which seem to have links with Alexander’s work. I particularly enjoyed tracing the often fragile line of thought which began with the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus and contemporary dramatists like Aeschylus. Heraclitus is he of “everything flows” fame (except that he probably didn’t say quite that, but something more provoking, rather shocking, and relevant in a hidden sort of way to our work). The thread almost disappears from Plato onwards, comes and goes, but is almost always implicit to some extent in art, music and literature. It surfaces in Keats, Hegel, Heidegger and Mahler, to name a few. McGilchrist also mentions John Dewey and William James. Alexander of course respected and admired the work of both. What the thread is would take more discussion than there is room for here, so I hope I have aroused your curiosity!   This book may not lie in everyone’s sphere of interest, or may spill over from that sphere into too many others. Whatever its scientific merits or demerits, it stands, if nothing else, as a metaphor for ways of thinking, some constructive, some destructive, which I think have a significant bearing on our work. How, for example, do we approach the question of anatomical and physiological knowledge? What is ‘thinking’? How many of us spent our early Alexander years constructing all sorts of mental models of the Technique, each seeming to be ‘the one’ – for a while! Such misapprehensions usually arise from taking the anatomical description, which can only be partial, as describing the right thing, which, as F.M. continually emphasised, must be allowed to ‘do itself’. But such knowledge can be very helpful if it throws some light on how things might go wrong and need to be consciously inhibited. Taken in that spirit, I think The Master and his Emissary offers a good many clues.   © Ron Colyer 2010

 

New and Forthcoming Publications

 

Golf Sense

Practical Tips On How To Play Golf In The Zone

Roy Palmer, illustrated by Sophie Webber, FrontRunner Publications, 2010, pbk, 153pp, ISBN 978-0-956259-30-1, available from Amazon.

 

Integrated Practice:

Coordination, Rhythm & Sound

Pedro De Alcantara, Oxford University Press, UK, USA, by December 2010.

 

Please contact us with any ideas or contributions relating to books.

 

 

Notices

 

Obituary

 

Shamsi Davis (Lady Colin Davis)

(First published in STATNews, September 2010)

 

Shamsi Davis was born Ashraf Naini, in Iran. She came over to England in the early sixties and ended up as an au pair in the household of conductor Colin Davis (now Sir Colin). Two years later in 1964 they were married, not once but three times: in a civil ceremony and in the Iranian Embassy here in the UK, and once in Iran. They had five children.

 

Shamsi trained with Misha Magidov, qualified in 1993, and was a member of STAT until 2007. She died on 4th June 2010.

 

Paul Moore writes:

 

Shamsi Davis started her long journey into the Alexander Technique after she saw her husband, Sir Colin Davis lying on the floor and asked him what he was doing. Thus began one of her abiding passions in life. I say one of her passions because Shamsi was a lady of many talents. She took her responsibility as wife to a world-renowned conductor very seriously, and made sure that he had the peace and tranquillity that he needed; she would often accompany him on tour and meet him after concerts. She was also a devoted mother who adored and nurtured her children, all of whom became musicians or at least play musical instruments.

 

As the wife of a well-known personality, she met and became friends with many famous people, was responsible for arranging dinner parties and other celebrity events, and was often required to attend functions with Sir Colin. She was also a marvellous cook, and one of her recipes was included in a Madhur Jaffrey recipe book.

 

I say all of this because amongst all of her many and varied commitments Shamsi found time, first to train to become a teacher, and then to devote a large amount of her time and energy to teaching and promoting the Technique.

 

We trained together on the North London training course with Misha Magidov, Shamsi being a year ahead of me. She was never a self-promoting person and insisted that we call her Shamsi, rather than Lady Davis. She had a skill that was born of intuition and compassion, which is not to say that she lacked any technique: her work was secure and informed. What she brought to her work was a love of mankind. My own children were born whilst I was training, and Shamsi took particular delight in being with them and holding them. It was so clear that she loved young children, despite having five of her own! Shamsi always had time to speak to people and had that rare talent of making you feel that you were important to her, not just by saying the right thing, but by having a genuine interest in your life and problems.

 

She started teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in 1993, but refused to take any payment; indeed she donated sums of money to the RAM Alexander Technique fund from her own private teaching. Sir Colin also donated money for his performances at the Academy over the years. She was offered various honours and degrees in recognition of her support for the Alexander Technique, but always refused. Neither did she allow it to be widely known that she had such a huge input into the Academy. It is an indication of her self-effacing nature that even when she knew that she was facing death, she did not declare it, but rather was more concerned that the pupils allocated to her were able to have their last lessons with another teacher.

She will be sadly missed by all of her colleagues and friends.

 

Jane Gillie writes:

 

Shamsi was an amazing person. She had a dignified presence at Misha’s Alexander training school where we were students together; after all she was Lady Davis, the wife of Sir Colin, one of the most eminent conductors in the world. Although she participated in everything as an equal, there was a certain charisma and distinction about her that was maybe partly the result of her exotic Persian background.

 

She was always very warm and interested in people, and through her hands she conveyed a reassuring quality which reinforced this warmth. As a member of ‘The Establishment’ she was able to persuade many private London schools to appoint Alexander teachers. She managed to convince them that education can be enormously enhanced by intelligent use of the self. I myself taught at South Hampstead School for Girls for many years, thanks to Shamsi’s influence.

 

She loved the Alexander Technique and was worshipped by her many musician Alexander pupils, many from the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin’s orchestra. Of course her most eminent and grateful pupil was Sir Colin himself, who sometimes had lessons every day, particularly on concert days and during stressful tour schedules. The sudden loss of Shamsi’s healing presence and devotedness must be an incalculable blow to him.

 

My last meeting with Shamsi took place because she insisted we meet for a cup of tea and a chat near to her home in Islington. She wanted to know all about my life and was keen to tell me about hers. I enjoyed hearing about the lives of her five children and the new grandchildren. I was touched by her invitation as it must have arisen from the purest of motives, which is rare in this world of networking, and when she was so busy, as always, helping Sir Colin to manage his complex schedule. Thank you Shamsi for your inspiring life, warmth, and friendship!

-----------------------

 

We are also sad to report that Jeanne Day (formerly Haahr) passed away on 31st July, and Fran Robinson passed away on 18th August.