A Delightful Find

I came across the following description of Alexander's work which I found to be the closest to my experience of my work as an AT iPAC teacher and wanted to share this with others.

I found this piece written by Andrew Rugg- Gunn who was an eminent eye specialist and life long friend of Alexander in a book written by Alex Murray called: FM Alexander. In his own words, and in the words of those who knew him. The book has all sorts of gems in it about Alexander and his work. I highly recommend it to all those interested in this great man and his great legacy to mankind.

You can purchase the book from - www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3391835

The Technique of Re-Integration.

Shape is perceptible to and is appraised by the eye, supplemented by touch; surface texture by touch, supplemented by the eye. Both eye and touch must be trained. The trained eye is a familiar concept, but the trained touch, is more difficult to define. It involves the sense of touch, but it includes much more, and is better described, as in clinical medicine, by the word 'palpation.'

Certain secrets of the living body are revealed only through palpation by the educated hand. For in the living body there is an individual organic consistency, the proper elasticity and spring of an organism as a working whole, which reveals to the experienced hand its state of internal equilibrium and adjustment, the quality of its functioning, and its general organic well-being, i.e. its integration as a whole or reverse. This natural resiliency or plasticity is an expression of the distribution of parts, particularly of the axial elements of the body; of the free play of elastic structures; of the optimal (or sub-optimal) level of muscle tonus and its substratum of nervous energy neuromuscular system serving posture and movement. It is an index of the dynamic state of the organism, a tactile sign of an indwelling harmony and grace. It is an index, however, which few possess the ability to assess. Much knowledge and experience underlie the correct interpretation of these perceptions.

Closely correlated with the feel of the body by perceptive hands is its objective shape, which also is an index of importance not only for the individual but for the species. Form follows function. It is evident, therefore, that shape characteristic of any species is a norm around which individual variations fluctuate, and that there is an optimal shape for the individual within this range. It follows, further, that a technique of individual re-integration must restore both the inner consistency and the outer shape which is optimal for that individual. Matthias Alexander possessed this quality of palpation to a supreme degree. His insight into the living body had the quality of genius, the product of natural endowment and great experience. Alexander's mode of palpation must not be misunderstood. His aim was not the exploration of anatomical structures but an assessment of physical and physiological forces, their distribution within the body and their collective co-operation to one end. This end is the integration of the whole man, and is based ultimately on the efficient use of man's complete anti-gravity mechanism. Alexander's conception of the body as an indivisible unity, with function as the unifying force, and the sense of touch which defines it, underlay this technique and explain his success as a re-educator.

A "Means-Whereby" Real Life Story

The story below was written by Jane’s husband. Jane is a student of mine who is working courageously to change her habitual self. Jane has suffered greatly throughout her life. Her symptoms have been interpreted, diagnosed and labeled through the medical model as a patient with “mental health problems or issues”. For years she followed her medical advisors prognosis taking pills and attending therapy sessions from psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors.

She experienced some relief and periods of stability, however, she also experienced continuous relapses and side-effects from her medications.

She finally, took her problems into her own hands and began to research other options. She found AT the iPAC way and is now working courageously to wean herself off her medication and work towards the restoration of her health through the re-education of the use of herself.

Her husband has been very supportive of her decision to go the AT iPAC route and one day Jane emailed me this little story that her husband had emailed to her in his attempts to understand the two primary underlying principles involved in this model for changing human behaviour. Those two underlying principles are:

1. Means-Whereby vs End-Gaining and

2. The Principle of Unity: that the self is a psychophysical whole system and cannot be treated by separating the self into mind, body or spirit.

Here is Jane’s husband’s account of his real life story to illustrate his growing understanding of what his wife is learning about the principle of Means-Whereby vs End-Gaining:

“I remember Dad talking about the huge pile of wood that he was discouraged about starting to split. He would say, now I will do a little each day and then before you knew it, it would be completed. I remember once it was a large pile of wood and he would be proud of it. Actually people would drive up from Port Hood to view since they would never see a pile of wood that big.

My point is that in my experience good things came to people I know and myself through gradual day to day continuous commitments. I have no fond stories or memories of people who received something instantly and it made them happy. Where are all the happy stories of people who won lotteries or gained money from inheritances?

Jane,your persistence to not accept your mental anguish is not only improving your life, your future, but it’s spreading like wild fire first at home to me and the kids, but soon to more. If you don’t stop it may get out of control. Ha ha.”

Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body

Another New Year! 2012 stands open looking at me looking at it. “Here I am!” it says. “I am giving you the possibility of helping more individuals to recognize, appreciate and value the work of F.M. Alexander and its significance in our individual and collective journey towards our primary goal (of which most people are unconscious): to come into possession of the transcendent power of a conscious mind.” I stare into the year ahead like a dazed animal in headlights. I stand still, fully cognizant that the dissemination of this precious knowledge rests upon the shoulders of Alexander Technique teachers such as myself. The responsibility is so huge that I chose to move on with my thoughts.

From the moment I met F.M. Alexander’s work (through my first Alexander Technique lesson with my dear teachers Jeanne and Axsel Haahr) I immediately recognized, appreciated and valued what I was experiencing (though I couldn’t articulate it for the life of me). It was a dim sense that I had stumbled upon the key to my deliverance from the dark forces of my negative habits of thought and body. I felt great and I wanted to share this experience of the work immediately with others. But each time I tried to explain the work to others I sounded and felt like some kind of religious zealot. I quickly realized that this approach was not attractive or effective. I felt totally ridiculous when I tried to explain The Technique to someone who asked me what it was about.

As John Dewey states: “The principle and procedure set forth by Mr. Alexander are crucially needed at present. Strangely, this is the very reason why they are hard to understand and accept. For although there is nothing esoteric in his teaching, and although his exposition is made in the simplest English, free from technical words, it is difficult for anyone to grasp its full force without having actual demonstration of the principle in operation. And, even then, as I know from personal experience, its full meaning dawns upon one only slowly and with new meanings continually opening up.”

I can only repeat: My first lesson was an awakening, a shift of consciousness that happened very deep inside myself, somewhere so deep that from that moment up to this day it has been my challenge, my goal, my quest to see if it is not possible to articulate and communicate this work to others in such a manner that people can “get it” as quickly and as easily as it is possible for people to “get” a new idea.

When I discovered this knowledge I was a patient in search of a cure (to the point of desperation) from chronic psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual and inter-personal life problems. I had started my search, like so many others, along the habitual pathways of traditional medicine and alternative medicine in alls its strange shapes and forms. Although I experienced in some instances a preliminary euphoria, in the long run they all failed to deliver me from the cause of my problems. Through every step I took (my lessons) my teachers slowly took me out of that place we call “patient” and brought me to the place where I became a “student” and in doing so helped me to realize that the problem was not my symptoms and that the solution would not be found through a “cure”. The problem was my self and the cure was gaining this knowledge. This startling truth is experienced by each new student.

After I finished my training and became an Alexander Technique teacher I found that my students weren’t all as happy to hear this alarming truth as I was. They wanted to be fixed by an “expert” such as myself. Unable and unwilling to compromise myself and sacrifice Alexander’s great work just for the sake of making a living I picked up my burden and began the arduous journey of attempting to inform, inspire, convince and empower my “patients” to make a conscious choice to move themselves from “patients” to “pupils” (Alexander’s expression – I prefer the description student). This arduous task began for me in 1983 and it challenges me every New Year. And so it begins again for me in 2012. After a careful, deliberate reflexive process of introspection I make my three propositions:

Shall I go on?
Shall I do nothing?
Shall I do something different?

Every year I am severely tempted to STOP doing what I am passionate about as it is such challenging work. Yes, I do get fed up with some people’s reactivity and resistance to new knowledge. I want to tell them to go away but I can’t; as long as they keep coming I accept them with goodwill and good grace and exert myself to find a way through to their reasoning. And, it gets harder as I am now no longer forced by finances to continue with this work. But an inner voice warns me against taking the easy path.

Feeling at an impasse I begin to re-read Alexander’s first book – Man’s Supreme Inheritance and the issue is resolved. The first chapter titled: From Primitive Conditions to Present Needs closes the issue. The romance is ignited again and with even more conviction. The comfort and idleness of the holidays has, as always, attempted to seduce me from my true love and I must not and will not surrender to the easy way out for this is an illusion. I know it with every fiber of my being that I must resist the seduction of an easy life. After all that I have witnessed in the power of this process to transform and transcend problems both in my own life and in the lives of my students over the 29 years I have been testing principles and procedure it is clear that I must go on and meet each individual and give them the opportunity to recognize, appreciate and value their inheritance:

“that long process of evolution which will enable them to govern the uses of their own psychophysical mechanisms… This triumph is not to be won in sleep, in trance, in submission, in paralysis, or in anaesthesia, but in a clear, open-eyed, reasoning, deliberate consciousness and apprehension of the wonderful potentialities possessed by humankind, the transcendent inheritance of a conscious mind.”

“For in the mind of man lies the secret of his ability to resist, to conquer, and finally to govern the circumstance of his life, and only by the discovery of that secret will he ever be able to realize completely the perfect condition of mens sana in corpore sano.”

HAPPY NEW YEAR!