In a Funk? Move from Patient to Pupil

I was wondering what my next advertising line should be to arouse interest in my work. In a lesson, one day, this topic arose with a student of mine. In our discussion I emphasized how important I felt it was for people to understand that the solution lay not in therapy or remedy but in constructive education.

Reflecting upon our own journey towards finding the work of F.M. Alexander we commented on how hard it can be to see the wood for the trees. Very slowly and then suddenly with a flash a tag line emerged out of our mutual discussion - it was the title I have used for this blog. I liked it immediately; it reminded me of the title of the first chapter in Alexander’s book – Man’s Supreme Inheritance. The title was: From Primitive Conditions to Present Needs.

What do we need right now in our world? It is obvious to all of us that we are going wrong in our attempts to live a civilized life. We are all suffering from the “complexities of modern living”. We seem to be getting worse and worse and the solution that we are all fixated upon for our personal and social redemption is therapy or remedy. Pills, potions, rubs, remedies and surgery abound in all its glorious and gory detail.

I too was once amongst those lost souls seeking help in terms of healing. It never ever occurred to me that the solution might lie elsewhere why should it everyone thought the same way so there was a kind of mind conditioning going on. I stumbled like most people into Alexander work as a therapeutic solution and only slowly and dimly awoke to the fact that Alexander’s solution lying else where. It was only when I began to teach the work myself that I started to think and to read Alexander’s books with more attention and with a greater interest for I was at a loss as to what my role was and how to go about teaching Alexander’s discoveries to others. My time on the training program was one of “healing” myself against the odds. My life’s troubles seemed to be relentless. It felt as if the whole world was against me improving my lot in life. It seemed at times that the Universe was plotting against my efforts to get to school and heal myself.

Throughout my life as an AT teacher (and later as an AT iPAC teacher) I was continually working through a blur wondering what the obstacle was that prevented people from finding this amazing work for it certainly was the solution to living life well where I was concerned even though the odds seems to be stacked against me succeeding.

After nearly 30 years studying and teaching this work the scales finally fell from my eyes over the last couple of years. It culminated as always with another failure to get through to a student who left probably thinking I was no good. However, my success with many others students lead me to ask an important question what was the difference between the students who succeeded and positively enjoyed my work and those who positively hated it. It is an old cliché but this is quite true my last failure was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

I had a kind of revelation; those students who stopped coming had come to me with the idea that the Alexander Technique was a therapy a mind body therapy and that it was a remedy instead of the correct concept which is that it is a constructive teaching method.

I am not a therapist I thought clearer for the first time in my career. I can get miraculous therapeutic results but it was as a result of my teaching those who were open to learning. I was so relieved at this insight. I never wanted to be a therapist; I was always uncomfortable with this role primarily because having gone through the process of therapy myself I don’t believe the answer lies there in fact I positively think that it is hindering our advancement.

However, the fashion for therapy abounds. We have insidiously become saturated with this erroneous idea that we all need therapy. We need to wake up and out of our seduction then and only then will we be able to see what is really going on and set ourselves free from the “brain washing” that is going on in our society today by powerful vested interests namely the pharmaceutical companies and all the other associated health and fitness businesses. These businesses make big money from us by keeping us locked into a passive “patient” mind-set. They do not want to lose us because that would mean losing billions of dollars

What is the most obvious difference between being a “patient” and a “pupil”? It is POWER! One robs you of your power the other gives power back to you. I believe (as a result of my own personal and professional experiences over the last 30 years) you can never resolve your problems in living life well if you do not fully engage in the creative act of living YOUR life with knowledge and skill! Once you are made aware of this fact – that YOU need to take possession of YOUR self and YOUR life - then the next step is to find a teaching tool that will teach you the HOW to do this. It is the same as driving a car: no amount of therapy or remedy is going to help you drive the car to the place you need to get to. What you need is to find a teacher to help you learn how to drive the car so that you can get to your destination.

This is exactly the same where we are concerned. We need to learn how to “drive” our selves first before we can move ourselves around safely in the world. After all, learning how to gain conscious control of the mechanisms involved in using ourselves is fundamental to everything else. We are the first instrument in living and we need to learn how to use ourselves first and then apply ourselves to learning how to work with other tools in order to succeed in living life well. We cannot become a creative agent in living our lives more consciously and constructively with out this knowledge and skill. No therapy can give you this knowledge or skill except in a piecemeal way.

John Dewey the famous American educationalist saw in Alexander’s work the agency necessary for the creative advance of the individual and humanity as a collective of individuals. He demonstrated his full support of Alexander by writing an introduction to three of Alexander’s four books. John Dewy puts it like this:

“But the method (Alexander’s) is not one of remedy; it is one of constructive education. Its proper field of application is with the young, with the growing generation, in order that they may come to posses as early as possible in life a correct standard of sensory appreciation and self-judgement. When once a reasonably adequate part of a new generation has become properly co-ordinated, we shall have assurance for the first time that men and women in the future will be able to stand on their won feet, equipped with satisfactory psycho-physical equilibrium, to meet with readiness, confidence and happiness instead of with fear, confusion and discontent, the buffetings and contingencies of their surroundings.”

One of the most vicious pernicious acts both of self and others which befouls the noble act of self empowerment is SELF PITY! Alexander warns us against this pernicious act of self pity or pitying someone else. He compels us to change this dis-empowering act to the more empowering act of self accusation. We should ask the question as Alexander did – what is it that I am doing to bring this situation about? And, how can I learn to identify what it is that I am doing that is bringing about the problem about? And, what can I do to STOP doing this wrong thing so that the right can come about.

This sounds harsh but in practice it is not. We must never confuse empathy and sympathy with pity. Pity dis-empowers the pitied! We can only empower ourselves when we are able to put the locus of control within ourselves. Then and only then will we be able to set ourselves free to gain conscious constructive control in the use of our selves in living life well. This then brings me back to those who are ready and will to take possession of the challenging task of ownership in becoming stake holders in living their lives and helping to create a healthier and happier world.

If you are ready and willing to work hard at this final frontier – the frontier of the “use of your self” as the primary instrument through which you must live your life then please give us a ring. We would love to hear from you and introduce you to a unique psycho-physical educational model for healthy living. I emphasize the psycho-physical because there isn’t a model on the planet right now that can in practice and method demonstrate itself to be such a model. If you have to divide yourself into parts and “treat” those parts specifically and separately then you will never function as a whole. A person functions as a whole and therefore can only learn how to change as a whole.

This is your opportunity to pick up the challenge I place before you – to take possession of your inheritance (your life) and gain the power (through your conscious mind) to learn how to live your life well and bring joy instead of suffering into the world you live in. I will leave you with a quote to help you face this truth:

“Our contemporaries of this and the rising generation appear to be hardly aware that we are witnessing the last act of a long drama, a tragedy and comedy in one, which is being silently played, with no fanfare of trumpets or roll of drums, before our eyes on the stage of history. Whatever becomes of the savages, the curtain must soon descend on savagery forever.”
- J. G. Frazer


Warmly,
Tasha

Ritual and Reality

“All evidence points to the hypothesis that human beings cannot go on existing in a state of slavery to unconscious impulses and habits, relieved by only brief intervals of consciousness.”

The above quote comes from a book called “Collected Writings on the Alexander Technique” by Frank Pierce Jones, edited by Theodore Dimon and Richard Brown (a must read for all those who are serious in their desire to gain a better understanding of the great discoveries and work of F.M. Alexander).

Jones was responding to a letter by Leo Stein in The American Scholar in order to gain favorable publicity for his work as an Alexander Technique Teacher in Boston around 1945.

As we enter 2010 I see that nothing has changed! The old paradigm holds tightly onto the minds of humanity. Blindly we continue with our rituals.

The New Year’s ritual begins: We promise ourselves and others that we will change. This year is going to be different. We will stop doing the wrong thing. We promise that we will behave in a manner that will STOP hurting ourselves, others and the world around us.

The reality ends; our promises fall by the wayside. Intolerance, depression, anxiety, disappointment, fear, resentment, despair, backaches, headaches, pain and suffering crowd in upon us with relentless vigor. Our negative habits of thought and body weigh us down inch by inch. We are full of tension teetering on the break of disaster. Our postures never lie; they reveal the internecine war that wages within. We become more and more buckled and bent, twisting further into our rigidities, faults and short-comings. We despise ourselves and others for we have failed to gain the necessary control over those vicious psycho/physical habits yet again. Or, we have duped ourselves into finding a “cure” by transferring the problem somewhere else for the time being. Our slavery to unconscious impulses and our old habits reign supreme.

Einstein defined insanity as “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Such illumination is gratefully received.
Einstein gave us the necessary insight into our madness; however he did not give us the way out.

F.M. Alexander (1869–1955) did find the way out of our individual and collective insanity which we have now come to affectionately call the “human condition”! Einstein is a household name yet who is Alexander to the many in their households? Alexander - the greatest genius of the 20th Century - remains unknown to the vast majority of people around the world. Those who are promoting his work have hijacked it for their own desires and advantage or they have got the wrong idea expounding misinformation!

Take a moment to check your concept of Alexander’s work. He defined his work as follows:

“You are not here to do exercises, or to learn to do something right, but to get able to meet a stimulus that always puts you wrong and to learn to deal with it!”

“You come to learn to inhibit and to direct your activity. You learn, first, to inhibit the habitual reaction to certain classes of stimuli, and second, to direct yourself consciously in such a way as to affect certain muscular pulls, which processes bring about a new reaction to these stimuli. Boiled down, it all comes to inhibiting a particular reaction to a given stimulus. But no one will see it that way. They will all see it as getting in and out of a chair the right way. It is nothing of the kind. It is that a pupil decides what he will or will not consent to do. They may teach you anatomy and physiology till they are black in the face – you will still have this to face, sticking to a decision against your habit of life.”

The above quote is taken from Alexander’s teaching aphorisms obtainable through Mouritz publishing. www.mouritz.org

So who is this Alexander? What is this Alexander Technique? How can it help us into a saner life style?

From the day I had my first lesson to my graduation as an AT teacher to my evolution as an AT iPAC teacher I have been consumed with promoting his great discoveries and testing them in my personal life and in my professional life. I know it works! It is the most powerful discovery of our time. After 30 years of pioneering work I am still a needle in a haystack.
Back to Frank Pierce Jones for some inspiration:

“It is consciousness, as Mr Stein observes, that distinguishes man from the other animals, and it is his refusal to live a fully conscious life that keeps him in his present unhappy condition.”

As a first generation teacher Frank Pierce Jones was trying to draw people’s attention to:

“An educational technique that makes it possible for anyone to bring a greater degree of conscious direction into all of his behaviour, and to break with what Edith Wharton once called “the habit of having habits.”

As an intellectual (with excellent credentials) Jones took great pains to verify Alexander’s technique for himself and others. He was not alone; John Dewey too saw how important Alexander’s discoveries were for the advancement and betterment of humanity. Dewey in his Introduction to Alexander’s book “The Use of the Self” put the significance of Alexander’s work like this:

“It bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities.”

Jones’ ponders (and so do I) why intellectuals have not picked up on this exciting new discovery. He says: “I have often wondered why it has not had a wider appeal among intellectuals, most of whom claim to be interested in the betterment of the world.”

He answers himself (and I agree): “The answer must be, as Mr. Stein suggests, that the intellectual is not willing to accept a power that entails real responsibility, but prefers to remain in his present condition as long as he can lay the blame outside himself – on his heredity, on chemistry, his childhood experiences, his upright posture, or whatever scapegoat is currently fashionable.”

2010 moves on; the story of our evolution and our struggle for survival continues to its unknown conclusion. I reflect upon the fact that my personal journey to survive and flourish is intrinsically linked to the survival and flowering of the human race.


As a third generation teacher (with over thirty years of personal and professional experience) I no longer look to scientists or intellectuals or to religion or religious leader for the solution to our problems for it is not a mass issue but an individual one. I look to the great work of Alexander and to those individual teachers who are dedicated to bringing Alexander’s work (intact not compromised to suit the present paradigm with its vested interests) into the mainstream. I look to the changes being brought about from the grassroots up.

I look to those intelligent, curious and courageous individuals who have linked up their observations using their reason and have found the old paradigm and its methods seriously lacking. Thankfully, they are sufficiently advanced in their individuality to stand back from their herd instinct and are ready to advance themselves by taking responsibility for their actions, their ills, and their shortcomings.

Every year I too go through my New Year’s ritual: I refresh my commitment to continue to dedicate my life to helping those individuals who are ready to make a paradigm shift: to move from a passive, disempowered, patient/cure model for health and well-being to an active, empowered, student/learning/educational model for health and well-being.

I re-read the quote by Herbert Spencer in Alexander’s book Man’s Supreme Inheritance to remind me of my responsibility. It is crystal clear.

“Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view… It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of his time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die.”

Happy New Year! Please visit us again or take a moment to read some of our testimonials. We appreciate that testimonials are not proof, but they do offer a pointer to the existence of new knowledge which might be used for human betterment starting with you.


-Tasha Miller