March 17, 2014
To anyone who has taken a lesson with me on Alexander Technique,
While touch is the primary way in which we communicate this technique, most of the ‘work’ we do on ourselves is in our thinking. I thought it would be interesting to send out an occasional email with excerpts from some readings in order to enhance our understanding. Let me know if you would prefer not to receive these emails.
The first few emails will be devoted an article by Frank Ottiwell (my first teacher – 26 years ago!) called “The Alexander Technique: A Matter of Choice”. (see Frank Ottiwell for entire article.)
“The Alexander Technique is notoriously difficult to explain. Any discussion of it, including this one, has a built-in drawback; the technique can’t really be explained verbally; you can’t just tell anyone how to do it.
Almost from my first Alexander lesson, however I felt I had “come home,” much in the way I’ve experienced arriving at a new place and feeling unaccountably comfortable in what should have been an unfamiliar surrounding. I think this feeling has something to do with the essential simplicity and rightness of the Alexander work. My body was quite simply being encouraged to go in the directions and move in ways that are natural to its structure and being discouraged from repeating the patterns that were leading it (me) into a complex of physical constrictions.
Before long I began to see that these constrictions were not just physical but were psycho-physical and that in addition to the more obvious physical orientation, I could apply the process of the Alexander Technique to a variety of issues I had previously thought of as strictly psychological, such as a generalized depression.”
To anyone who has taken a lesson with me on Alexander Technique,
While touch is the primary way in which we communicate this technique, most of the ‘work’ we do on ourselves is in our thinking. I thought it would be interesting to send out an occasional email with excerpts from some readings in order to enhance our understanding. Let me know if you would prefer not to receive these emails.
The first few emails will be devoted an article by Frank Ottiwell (my first teacher – 26 years ago!) called “The Alexander Technique: A Matter of Choice”. (see Frank Ottiwell for entire article.)
“The Alexander Technique is notoriously difficult to explain. Any discussion of it, including this one, has a built-in drawback; the technique can’t really be explained verbally; you can’t just tell anyone how to do it.
Almost from my first Alexander lesson, however I felt I had “come home,” much in the way I’ve experienced arriving at a new place and feeling unaccountably comfortable in what should have been an unfamiliar surrounding. I think this feeling has something to do with the essential simplicity and rightness of the Alexander work. My body was quite simply being encouraged to go in the directions and move in ways that are natural to its structure and being discouraged from repeating the patterns that were leading it (me) into a complex of physical constrictions.
Before long I began to see that these constrictions were not just physical but were psycho-physical and that in addition to the more obvious physical orientation, I could apply the process of the Alexander Technique to a variety of issues I had previously thought of as strictly psychological, such as a generalized depression.”
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