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!

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

Our Christmas Message

Although materialism and consumerism have hijacked Christmas for the time being, the message and spirit of Christmas still holds. Amidst the powerful stimulus to buy, buy, buy, there are fleeting moments of quietness and stillness when we can hear the gentle voice of consciousness whispering to us. In these brief moments we remember that this is a time to reflect - how can WE as individuals bring peace on earth and goodwill to all our fellow beings?

As Alexander Technique teachers working the iPAC way, we believe we have the how - The Technique - to help you achieve this vital goal of peace and quiet - first inside yourself and then in your actions in the outside world.

Our work, ‘Education for Living’, is all about developing individual potential. Each individual must be developed so that it is “as difficult to fire us as it is to fire a piece of stone.” Peace is not possible without the effective use of that transcending power of our conscious mind - it is “Man’s Supreme Inheritance”.

Recognising and understanding the need to QUICKEN and develop our conscious mind takes time. But we have no choice: either we make the transition or we are going to destroy ourselves and our planet.

Here at Alexander Technique Atlantic you learn how you can think and act differently: you learn how to overcome your powerful negative feelings; you learn how to let go of your fear; your preconceived ideas; your fixed ideas and prejudices; you learn how to prevent your too quick reactions to others; you learn how to develop patience instead of impatience; and you learn how to overcome your compulsion to “do” “do” “do”. Choosing to live differently - to live a more conscious and constructive life style - involves leaving behind your unwanted habitual ways of being and behaving. Often these unwanted habits have their roots in the legacy of our instincts - which once served us well but are no longer a satisfactory means of guiding and controlling our behaviour in the modern world.

Our work involves no exercises; no rituals or complicated procedures; no effort or strain; no esoteric or mystical doctrine. It involves using your reasoning and intelligence to gain the necessary practical knowledge and skill (which can be verified and demonstrated) to understand how to organise yourself into a coherent psychophysical system in order to achieve POISE in living.

We invite you to work with us and put your Christmas wishes and New Years resolutions into positive action in building a healthier and happier future for you, your children, and their children’s children.

Season’s Greetings,
Tasha & David

Thanksgiving: a toast to F.M.

Conscious guidance and control in relation to human evolution in civilization: Still pioneering this work after nearly 30 years – what has kept me at it? From time to time (more often than I would like to admit) I have wanted to quit - throw it all up – give up on people and withdraw into a life of a recluse; do something where I could avoid people because they made me so sad and mad but something in me couldn’t. Each time I met this moment it was triggered by people who seemed so crippled inside and yet seemed so polished and sophisticated on the outside – perfectly socially constructed - identities thin and hollow with starvation on the inside – perfect magazine lookalikes. Each time I glimpsed a fleeting peep into these people’s empty cruel eyes and saw their utter cold disdain projected outward at those of us who refused to conform to this social construction it cut deep into my soul – my soul literally teetered on a knife edge. I would go to Alexander’s book Man’s Supreme Inheritance and read the following quote by Herbert Spencer:

“Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should 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 the 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”.

I need to read it today even more as I now live in Canada or North America which is as close as one can get to the capital of Capitalism or the culture of gluttony. All this materialism, be it materialism of matter or spirit, is overwhelming at times – everything has a price. People here know the price of everything but do they know the value of anything? So, having bumped into many socially constructed perfect personalities whilst out shopping for groceries for Thanksgiving and feeling the old “why bother” feelings coming over me I sat down to read an old fashioned book which is the best chicken soup for the soul. And happily I made a new insight on the matter of why do I keep at it? This time the revelation was made whilst reading another book. I can’t remember the title of the book, but I wrote the quote into my note book it goes like this:

“When we encounter the rare individual whose conduct is inspired by a moral ideal, we cannot help noticing his aspect. Moral beauty is an exceptional and striking phenomenon – one never forgets it. This form of beauty is far more impressive than the beauty of nature. It gives to those who possess its divine gifts a strange and inexplicable power. It increases the strength of the intellect, much more than science, art and religious rites, moral beauty is the basis of civilization.” - Alexis Carrel

I finally understood why I keep at it: Alexander’s work is the only system that gives me the necessary tool for the development of moral beauty. It is the hardest challenge for us all to face and get on with. We are all trying to pretend and cover up our ugliness inside but the key to our deliverance lies within. We need to meet our darkness and to transform it into the light of conscious constructive guidance and control in the use of ourselves in living a healthier and happier life. There is so much work to do on ourselves and time is of the essence. I continue on this most difficult journey of my own choosing even more enlightened and uplifted than before.