Carolyn Nicholls

Some people seek  out Alexander lessons because they are stiff, particularly in their joints. For my pupil Colin, it is the opposite problem. Colin is hyper mobile and some  joints cause him pain. Many people have a degree of hypermobility with no  problems, but for some it can cause severe pain and affect mobility on the  greater sense, knee and ankle pain interfering with walking. So what is it and  how do you know if you’ve got it? If, like Colin you can bend your elbow  backwards, place your thumb down on your forearm and bend your fingers back at  a right angle then you are probably hypermobile. This can have advantages in  dancing for example, but beyond a point it can be a problem. For Colin his knees hyperextend and give him pain.

People with  hypemobile joints can have a poor sense of where their joints are, so that they don’t realise that they may be standing with their knees pushed backwards  creating tremendous pressure on the joints. It is this lack of awareness that  bought Colin for lessons. He is in his 30’s and always kept fit, particularly  swimming, but his knee pain increased. A friend told him that when he stood on  the edge of the swimming pool he looked as if he’d got his knees on back to  front! Colin had no idea he was doing this but became aware that he did it whenever he was standing, even when washing up, and that when walking he pushed his knees back.

During his  lesson Colin learnt the role of his neck and back in his whole body  orientation, although he was very concerned with his knees, he was also misusing his neck badly so it was always tense, locking his head rigidly down  onto his shoulders and adding to the downward pressure in his body. His knees  were definitely victims of his misuse. The practice of semi supine gave him  greater awareness of his muscles and joints and changed his thinking about  walking and movement. Over a period of 3 months, Colin has improved his walking  enormously and no longer suffers knee pain except when very tired. He takes  much greater care with his swimming too, making sure he doesn’t stand in a  braced fashion. He hopes to avoid some of the long term problems that  hypermobility can bring by using his body well.

• For more information on  hypermobility syndrome go to www.hypermobility.org
• The whole body use can  contribute to a single joint pain.
• Learning good use can help you  manage difficulties.

 

Live the ergonomic life!

Sometimes good things emerge from conflict. Ergonomics had its beginnings in the second world war, when the logistics of moving large amounts of man and machinery gave rise to so many problems-such as backache; that for the first time physiologists, psychologists, anthropologists, medical doctors, work scientists and engineers, addressed the problems together and ergonomics was born.

So what is it and where do I get me some of it? We tend to think its about getting the best chair, perhaps with a bit of Feng Shui thrown in so that your chi is circulating freely in your office and not getting snagged up on your filing cabinet (corners are BAD!). Basically ergonomics is about fitting your environment-in particular your working environment, around you as a human and how you function. Now there’s a problem for a start- workstations have to accommodate anyone from a short women about 5’2 to a large bloke of about 6’4, that is a huge variation, so no wonder it is hard to get a good ‘fit’. Many factors have to be taken into account such as the flooring, which must be anti-fatigue; yes indeed- bad carpet can make you tired, and stress you out. Then there’s the noise level (yelling at your teenagers to turn the music down is a health issue), and don’t forget no drawer should be deeper than 12 inches,-not because it hides your underwear but because it could cause you strain rummaging for those lost socks.

Working environments must now comply with all manner of ideas to help us avoid injury of any kind and to keep us productive-a happy worker is a productive worker! But more and more of us work at home, either totally, because we’re self-employed or part time. And what about housework? Is washing up or pushing the vacuum around a repetitive activity? Who would help you if you developed RSI because your kitchen work surfaces were too low for you? Can you sue your child for being too heavy, (remember all that lifting and handling!) The list of what can go wrong if your workplace is not ergonomically conscious is large and frightening, from deafness if you are operating noisy machinery or a drummer in a rock band to a whole range of muscular skeletal disorders that could make your eyes water or leave you with a permanent limp.

The best way you can help yourself-either at work or at home is to remember that ergonomics is the art or recognising problems and offering solutions and that you are pretty good at that yourself. Keeping things tidy so that there are fewer objects to fall over is a good start and will earn you brownie points with the Feng Shui experts (chi stagnates around clutter!) Keep moving through your activities so that you avoid repetitive actions. Repetitive movements basically create tight muscles that build up lactic acid and don’t allow the blood to flow freely to flush out the acid. Don’t do all the vacuuming in one go-swap it for a bit of dusting or hanging the washing out and then come back to the vacuuming. That way you keep moving-stretching different muscles and giving yourself a gentle work-out as you go, Changing your activities in this way is one of the best kept secrets of avoiding fatigue and injury. You are designed to move-not stay still and to perform a variety of tasks, not the same thing over and over again. So go on-sort your home-office out-tell the cat to stop sleeping on the stairs and tripping you up-get the kids a toy box so that everything is in its place, and if you are a tall person either get your kitchen redesigned or make sure you bend your knees when you work there. Move frequently and feely-live the ergonomic life!

The Here and Now, not the Then and There

Most of us find it almost impossible to be ‘here and now’, we niggle at past problems and grievances, we anticipate future problems before they arrive. We fall into the habit-pattern trap. When we constantly re-hash our past events, which are usually painful or stressful, we revisit them both in mind and body. Remembering, or rather going over situations again and again, we entrench the original response more deeply into our nervous system. Whatever the situation was, the physical response will have included a pattern of shortening and tightening throughout your whole body. So as you worry about it, your neck stiffens and your breastbone sinks as you restrict your rib movement and clench your hip muscles. This tension becomes a part of the ‘memory’ and the more you go back to the past event, the more familiar the tension feels until the point comes when you may have forgotten the event, but you still have the tension, your body is not in the present, it is in the past. It is not in the ‘here and now’ it is in the ‘there and then’, or the ‘will be and maybe’. To come to a point where you can acknowledge that, enables you to recognise that your ‘here and now’ contains a lot of ‘there and then’ and it is not needed. Inhibition can be of enormous help in this situation, to inhibit that ongoing response of tension which drags you back into the ‘there and then’ or forward into an unseen fearful future allows you to genuinely get in touch with your mind and body in the present moment.

This isn’t always a pleasant experience. We layer our bodies and minds with veils of tension that we hide behind and becoming more mindful and aware of your present self can be challenging; but awareness is often a precursor of change and release, a transformational state that allows a different perspective to come about.

The Spinal Colum embraces poetry.

 

When I dream about my spine

I sigh and wonder if it’s fine

to pull my head back,- yah or nay?

Perhaps I’ll stop it- one fine day.

Stiffening your neck and pulling your head back is your ‘go to’ response to any kind of stimulus- a good stimulus or a challenging one- the instinctive response is the same. The thing is- when its over and done with in a moment- as it might be if you threw up your hands and your head back in delight, well that’s OK. The problem is this response can be come so deeply ingrained that you don’t notice you are doing it- its as if you never stop doing it- it’s locked in your body and it just gets more and more deeply ingrained and less and less noticed. At that point you are stressed, tense and most likely don’t know why.

So dream about your spine and always always ask your neck to release and your head to go forward and up- even when you don’t think you need it.

I’ve joined The International Year of the Spine– a group interested in non invasive ways to support spinal (and general) health and wellbeing. I’m writing a short column for the Facebook page- reusing a title I dreamed up some years ago. These are the first 3 entries

It’s not just your back!
The last time I checked- I didn’t have a seam down my side dividing my front from my back. It’s always nice to think about how deeply inside our bodies our spine in. We tend to rub the knobbly bits on our back and think ‘ah- spine’, but that’s just the outside- the inside of those vertebrae you’ve just rubbed are almost half way through your body. When I think about my spine- I think about the inside of it- not so much the outside of it. This helps me experience lengthening through my whole torso.Try it and see what you think. Many pupils who tend to slump have found this information useful. So just remember- your back and your front are contiguous-

Exciting Discovery of Ancient Tribe
Archaeologist in Tasmania are very excited by the discovery of traces of an ancient tribe. Fossil remains suggest this tribe walked upright with a free gait and in particular had extra space between the axis and the occipital ridge at the base of the skull. This distinguishes them from Homo Erectus and has led to a new classification. They are dubbing them Alexandras Elongartus, and think these remains may be part of an evolutionary development of the human race. The search is on for any living specimens who may now be scattered worldwide.

Vertebrae mnemonic
Once upon a time, people took their meals at regular predictable times of the day. Breakfast at 7, lunch at 12, dinner at 5, supper just once. And that’s how you remember the number of bones in different bits of your spine. 7 in your neck, 12 in your thorax, 5 in your lumbar, and your sacrum is a fusion of (usually) 5 bones into 1 wedge- and that only happens once in your spine!

Inner world, outer expression

You really can’t separate mind from body; there is no activity that uses only one or the other. Even if you think you are ‘only thinking’ your facial muscles are operating and your postural muscles are allowing you to sit in your chair. Likewise, although we yearn to ‘switch off’ occasionally, we never stop thinking – or rather our brain never stops being active. Our inner world of thoughts, feelings and emotions is reflected in our body, both in the way we hold ourselves, which you might call posture, and the way we move. It goes further than posture and movement; it also affects our functioning. If you are upset for any reason, you will find it affects you not only physically through tension but also functionally; you might lose your appetite or find your digestion has slowed down. Long-term mental tension creates long-term muscular tension, which in turn affects circulation, breathing and digestion. F. M. Alexander once said, ‘You translate everything, whether physical, mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.’

Just as your nervous system is a two-way messenger between your brain and your body, and thoughts, emotions and habits reveal themselves physically, so you can use your body to influence your feeling and habits. If you are depressed, it will show in your drooped shoulders, shallow breathing and slack muscles. In other words, your posture will show what is going on in your mind. But if you find a way to change your posture, to lengthen your torso instead of compressing it, to open out your hunched shoulders, then it will affect your mood, too, and you will feel better. Just how you set about making those changes is the subject matter of Alexander lessons and my books The Posture Workbook and Body, Breath & Being

Great summer reading that will inspire you to turn your sunbathing into intelligent semi-supine!

One thing I have noticed amongst my  clients is an increase in the number of them complaining of neck pain. This  includes young people in their 20’s and 30’s who are often doing a great deal  of computer work either as students or in their job. So what is it about the  neck and why does it so often give us pain?   Your neck has seven vertebrae, so  does a giraffe and so does a mouse. As a human being your neck and the whole of  your spine is vertical, whereas if you were a mouse, your spine would be  horizontal. This simple change of direction means your neck has different  mechanical challenges to cope with compared to other mammals. Your neck is very  slender and has to balance your heavy head on top. The only way you can support  your head so you can see where you are going, is by using the muscles of your  neck and back to hold it up. Everyone knows when you fall asleep on the train,  your head falls forward-you literally ‘nod-off’ because you no longer generate  the muscle tone needed to support you.

Our problems can start because of  two factors. First of all we simply don’t employ the full range of movement  available to us. If we sit at desks all day we spend most of the time with our  head, neck and shoulders held in one position staring at the computer screen.  Wearing glasses further rigidifies us, as our visual field is restricted. Our  necks are very flexible and designed so we can look all around us all of the  time, but we rarely do, except perhaps on a walk.

The second factor is we tend to use  an excessive amount of tension in our necks and backs, far more than we really  need. This tension is mostly unnoticed by us and is so much of a habit we  accept it as normal, but it’s not and over time can lead to problems. Some of  my clients who have neck pain know why it happened, usually an injury; but for  many people neck pain seems to have no cause, either coming on gradually or  stiffening up slowly until the point comes when it’s a serious problem.  Restricted neck mobility means you can’t reverse your car easily, or look over  your shoulder to see what is around you; it has a knock-on effect through your  whole body leading to you tightening up more muscles and restricting your breathing.

As an Alexander teacher my approach to neck pain, after ensuring my client has  sought appropriate medical opinion, is to help them learn to release excessive  tension in a way that allows their whole body to lengthen. It’s a question of  understanding how the head, neck and back all influence each other and how you  can make the best use of your body to minimize pain and maximize flexibility.  For my younger clients, simple changes in habits of tension, plus the awareness  exercise of semi-supine can make a huge difference to them. For older clients  it can take a little longer simply because they have more muscle habits to  undo, but I have taught people in their 70’s and 80’s who have rediscovered a  more natural use of their bodies and been all the better for it.

 

To read the full study click here.

Ten years ago, In 2003, I undertook an MA in Alexander Technique Teacher Training at the University of East London. I gained a distinction for my thesis, which I wrote in the form of an opera libretto.

The libretto was set to music by composer Leon Coates and performed at the 2004 International Congress in Oxford. Directed by Lee Waren, it was performed by AT teachers and the orchestra was also made up of AT teachers- we are a creative bunch and to all those wonderful people who helped out, I thank y0u all.

This is the abstract of my thesis ande opening of the libretto and the abstract of my thesis

OVERTURE

GRAVITY AND LIGHT

An Opera based on The Alexander Technique.

In one Act

The Mirrored Chamber

The opera tells the story of Emily, a young girl who has a burning

ambition to practise magic. She has heard of a powerful magician

named Frederick, who had the ability to transform people with the

touch of his hands. He was a mysterious figure, who had spent many

years locked in a room gazing at his own reflection in mirrors.

Mirrors were all around, revealing secrets that he alone could

understand (1.) He helped the lame to walk and the stutterer to

speak (2). He freed the sick from their prison of pain, and helped the

breathless to breathe (3.) He enlivened the minds of the dull and

caused the philosopher to think yet more deeply (4.) He was a strange

and powerful man, now partly wrapped in the mystery of the past;

his innermost secrets known only to a few. His hands brought about

the transformations he made, and Emily wondered if she too could

perform his most powerful spell; transforming gravity into light.

(1) Alexander 1932 The Use of the Self. ch.3 Evolution of a Technique. Alexander describes a ten-year period

of self-observation using mirrors.

(2) Alexander 1932 The Use of The Self ch.4 The Stutterer

(3) Alexander 1995 Articles and lectures v A Respiratory Method

(4) Alexander 2002 Aphorisms. ‘I don’t care what man you bring up, Socrates or anyone else: you will find

gaps and holes in his thinking. Let me co-ordinate him and you will not find gaps and holes in his

thinking’.

University of East London

Abstract

Gravity and Light

ANALYSIS OF TRAINING OF THE

SPECIALISED USE OF THE HANDS IN

ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE TEACHING

by Carolyn Nicholls BA(Hons) MSTAT

Supervisors: Susan Ryan and Jacqui Potter

Department: School of Health and Bioscience

The Alexander Technique is taught to a diverse range of individuals for diverse

reasons, yet practitioners will teach a client who presents with back pain in the same

way they would teach a client who wishes to enhance a musical skill. Central to the

teaching is the use of the teacher’s hands on the client.

This study examines how the skill of using the hands as an Alexander Technique

Teacher is taught and learned. The purpose of the study is to analyse and interpret

the factors involved in acquiring this skill; the relationship of this skill to the

individual’s own Use, the significance of this skill in relation to teaching and learning

The Alexander Technique and the significance of this skill as an aspect of teacher

training.

The study examines data collected by video recording and tape-recorded

interview. Participants were novice and advanced students in a learning

situation with two experts, and an experienced teacher giving a lesson to a

client. There is a 15-minute CD/Video edited compilation, entitled Hands Up!

How Alexander Teachers learn to Use their Hands accompanying the study for

educational purposes. Full material is stored in retrievable archive form.

An article entitled Helena’s First Lessons, for the professional publication The

Alexander Journal is submitted alongside the study. This is written in the form of a

diary of lessons from the teacher’s perspective, describing the use of the hands on a

pupil and how that skill is incorporated through the course of lessons.

The Alexander profession is currently engaged in producing National

Occupational Standards. The study and the accompaniments serve to inform

both the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) and

external bodies. The study identifies developmental milestones in learning and

suggests how this recognition can enhance future training. This is the overall

objective of the study.

To read the full study click here.

Notes on the work of Dilys Carrington

You can buy my book about my work with Dilys .

I first met Dilys in 1977 when I became interested in training at the Constructive Teaching Centre and had private lessons with Dilys. I enjoyed my lessons hugely and found Dilys’s approach both practical and refreshing. She was interested in everything I did and showed me inventive ways to apply directions to my T’ai Chi practice as well as discussing recipes and the physical act of beating pancake batter! (don’t beat the mixture with your jaw muscles…)

When I started training in 1979 Dilys was running the first 4 terms of the training course and taking all us students for regular hands-on groups. The skill of training people to use their hands well was something Dilys was passionate about and she felt that when people first started training they had little idea of how to direct their own use. “They don’t really understand direction,” was how she put it.

Dilys set out to remedy this in her hands-on groups by addressing the fundamental skills that underlie good use of the hands. So new trainees spent their groups being put through monkey after monkey, learning to release arms and legs without collapsing in the back, learning to take weight through their arms without tightening their chests and shoulders and how to rotate their forearms without grabbing with their hands and fingers. All of this was done under Dilys’s expert and accurate hands. She was very precise about direction and easily able to stimulate release and undoing in us students. It was common after a group with Dilys to find a quiet corner to lie down in to recover from what seemed like a thorough workout.

Dilys was also a keen needlewoman and delighted in tapestry designs for the many ‘drop in’ seat covers of the beautiful Victorian chairs that were around the house. I had previously studied textiles and embroidery and would discuss designs with Dilys-she loved the traditional designs of fruit and flowers and once stitched a matching set of six covers for a set of chairs she and Walter owned. These were on a black background-which is a difficult colour to work well as if you accidentally twist the wool whilst working the shade of black differs over the design . If you can’t keep your tension even as you work you end up with a motley finish. For Dilys, this too was a mater of good use and direction.

I was fortunate enough to be Dilys’ first apprentice in the remarkable skill of teaching hands–on skills. I spent a year with her, working with a group of trainees from their first group all the way through the first year of their training. I was so fascinated by Dily’s approach that I documented the whole thing and produced a document entitled “Notes Towards a Method of Training Alexander Teachers; an observation of Dilys Carrington”. At every stage Dilys and I would discuss what I had written and she would suggest changes to wording. I spent many happy times in Dily’s flat upstairs asking her many questions about what she was teaching, the how and the why-all interspersed with cups of tea and discussion about her latest tapestry design or where she and Walter were travelling to next.

Dilys was s true pioneer and her work with hands on skills was of immense value. It formed the basis of many training courses both in the UK and overseas. When John Nicholls and I emigrated to Australia to run a training course in Melbourne, it was Dily’s approach to hands-on work that underpinned our methods. She and Walter came out to Australia to visit us and I had the pleasure of showing Dilys how our students were coming along using her approach. She was as always, enthusiastic, delightful and warm hearted about it. She also wanted to visit the local market to look at textiles and maybe pick up a new tapestry design with an Australian twist to it!

Fifteen years after I wrote “Notes” I undertook a masters study looking at the unique skill of using your hands as an Alexander teacher. I was able to go back to Dilys and have more discussion with her about her work-how it had changed over the years, and what was timeless about the work. As always Dilys was interested in what I was doing first-we still discussed embroidery and our children as well as sipping tea and talking about ‘the work’. She had written some more papers on spirals and gave me copies. Dilys was the most delightful woman and made a unique contribution to understanding direction in teaching. I can do no better than to quote her words.

 

“Direction isn’t something that descends upon you towards the end of your third year of training. It’s something you have to work for, now and for always.” (Dilys Carrington 1987)

 

When I had my first Alexander lesson, I caught a glimpse of something in my minds’ eye.

It was on the edge of my vision, a fleeting peripheral image of something wonderful. I didn’t know what it was, it had something to do with my neck and yet it seemed to be more than that. I decided I needed more lessons to find out what this glimpse was about.

There were days, when, after my lessons it felt as if my legs were carrying me of their own accord, that I wasn’t actually walking- something else was ‘walking’. It was strangely wonderful.

I had been nagged into having lessons by my mother, who, suffering from ankylosing spondylitis; had received enormous benefit from her own lessons. She couldn’t explain anything to me- although I would sometimes find her sitting in one of our dinning chairs with her hands perched oddly on the top rail of another chair placed in front of her. It looked like she was playing buses and I didn’t understand. Finding her explanations inadequate, she booked me in for a series of 30 lessons. Those lessons changed my life, my career and my whole way of being. The Alexander technique became a thread that ran through everything I did. My piano playing became easier, my damaged wrist, broken in an accident when I was 12, grew stronger, I became calmer, taller, and suffered less pain. Up till then pain had been a fairly constant companion. I have a form of fibromyalgia, which meant I was often in pain when sitting or lying, or walking- or doing anything really. Climbing stairs would leave my thighs burning with pain after only two flights, sitting in a cinema was almost out of the question as I would be in such pain at the end of the film.

I was having three lessons a week. After about 20 lessons I noticed my neck feeling different, and I could climbs stairs more easily. I was intrigued. My teacher, Jean Sheppard, suggested I visit Lansdowne Road, where she trained, and have a lesson with Walter Carrington. Jean had spoken about Walter quite a lot and I was curious to meet him, so I duly rang up, was shocked at the length of time I’d have to wait for my lesson and eventually climbed those mosaic marble steps to the big black double doors, rang the day bell and went in for my first lesson with Walter.

I remember this enormous hand sucking my neck up into itself like a limpet clinging to a rock, and there it stayed. Walter stood me, sat me, laughed, talked to me about rib cages, “In our work, what we find is, people can tend to stiffen their ribs.” I nodded sagely. I knew that. Walter and I agreed on this point. It didn’t occur to me until I was almost home that he was talking about MY ribs, MY stiffness. Surely not! I had had 30 lessons after all. I caught another glimpse, in the peripheral vision of my minds eye- of a kind of freedom, an elusive but tantalising glimpse of a life free from pain. I wanted to see more so I enrolled on the teacher-training course.

I thought I knew what it meant to free my neck, I was familiar with the directions; head forward and up, knees forward and away. But as I started training I felt I actually didn’t know what they meant after all. It was a mystery and the glimpse of freedom left me and I felt mired in a morass of doing.

Later, I realised it was as if another layer of misuse was shedding– like a snake shedding its skin. My path became spiralic, mobius-like, a constant return to the much loved and much misunderstood (by me) concepts of inhibition and direction. It was like going back to the same piece of landscape year after year, walking round the same garden- seeing it again, fresh, new and yet familiar. The peripheral vision began to occupy centre stage in my sight lines and I could see more clearly the tools I was being given.

Training with Walter and Dilys was a privilege and in those three years I formed life-long friendships, gained another inch in height and acquired a reasonable pair of hands. Lessons with Walter were a highlight- his way of talking, which I came to call to myself “the first person once removed”, always intrigued me. He would engage you in a conversation about something- the neck, the knees, the thoracic area, and talk to you as if you and he were agreeing about the sorry state of such things- but you were equals and he knew that you knew about the neck, the knees, the thoracic area- he was just offering a gentle reminder. If you weren’t paying attention, you could miss the delightful subtlety of Walters discourses.

I qualified: another notch on the Alexander belt, and began to teach. The image of spirals stayed with me, a spiral staircase of use I climbed, occasionally looking back, sometimes seeing the same things from a different height. I began to write: lectures, articles, books. My learning felt almost alchemical in its subtleties and complexities. I pondered deeply on the effects of gravity on my neck muscles and wondered what the opposing force was, apart from my own muscles; perhaps it was the light itself, urging us upwards, like plants. From my new perspective of not only teaching the public, but also staring to be involved in training future teachers; F. M. appeared to be a magician.

I become Dilys Carrington’s apprentice, learning the skills of teaching new trainees precisely what is involved in using hands on another person. Here, more than anywhere, I was struck by the seamlessness of use, how the things I had learned in my own early lessons were still the important things. How an understanding of good use was fundamental to becoming a good teacher and, if you wanted to teach someone else to become a teacher, you still had to maintain your use. “There, can you feel it coming?” Dilys would ask, her hand on the top of mine as we helped a new trainee into monkey. “There it is, that’s the direction coming.” I couldn’t feel it- not at first. Later, I could feel it, even sense it coming before the sensation arrived in their backs, as Dilys did. I could feel Dilys was initiating this strong current of direction that began to flow through the trainees and she was teaching them both to not interfere with its natural course and then to initiate it for themselves. It was all to do with the many facets of direction. “Let’s all let our knees go.” she would say; and we would, and the direction would flow from Dilys through me into the trainee and on to the person they had their hands on. Everyone got it.

In 1987, the Alexander technique took me to Australia– where it had all begun. I was the assistant of the first teacher-training course in Melbourne. 24 people gathered from all over Australia for the course- some had never had lessons because at that time F.M’s homeland had so few teachers. It felt strange and wonderful to be a part of re-energizing Alexander’s work in his own land, a strange spiral, an odd twist of fate. How would we fare? Peripheral vision now was fully focused on this way of working, this way of being and to my pleasure, the more I taught, and engaged others in the process of teaching, the more my own use improved. Long standing injuries finally resolved and most of the time I was pain free. Walter & Dilys came out to visit us in Melbourne, Dilys to see how her ideas were working out for me in our ‘hands-on’ sessions and Walter to lecture, discuss, give turns and share his thoughts. I was struck again by his immense skill and his beaming personality. He would work on our students, none of whom he had met before and somehow would find just the right way to talk to them so that things made sense. He talked to one about the rigging in a ship, how it had to be balanced if the sails were to catch the wind, how important it was that every rope was the right tension. He didn’t know the man under his hands was not only a keen sailor but had built his own boat, including the sails! “Must have smelt the salt behind my ears.” was the astonished comment when Walter moved on to the next trainee.

 

 

Sitting on the wooden veranda of our weatherboard house, waiting for the cool change to switch the air from stifling saturation to clean fresh breeze was an opportunity for inhibition. I certainly couldn’t change this stimulus- the cool change would come when it came, but I could change my response, so that I used myself better instead of fretting about what was not changeable. I learned a lot about use in different environments in Australia. 3 yrs, a baby son and a flash flood later, I returned to the UK, glad to have lived for a while in F.M’s homeland, to have visited Ballarat and Bendigo where he had taught and to get a sense of place and seen for myself the ‘wide brown’ that surely must have influenced F.M’s thinking. The sheer size and openness of the landscape, the immensity of the night skies and the persistence of its people, these things are now part of the technique for me.

Of all the disciplines in my life, the Alexander technique remains the one that is the most effective. Life throws challenges at you, both in the circumstances of your life and the accidents or illness that befall you. How you meet those changes is what makes you. I have been teaching over 30 years now and my legs still sometimes hurt when I walk up stairs, but I don’t make things worse by stiffening my neck or holding my breath as well, or shortening my spine. Neither do I tell myself I’m not applying the technique properly- an easy trap to fall into- surely you should be perfect by now shouldn’t you!-instead I return again to those things I was taught in my first lessons. How to free my neck, how to send my head forward and up, how to inhibit my responses so I can see my choices to act or refrain from acting more clearly. The glimpse I saw out of the corner of my eye is now a detailed picture, fully viewed. It is a landscape of body, mind, breath, awareness and choice that never fails to delight me. It is the journey I embarked on in my early 20’s and I know will last me the rest of my life.

Thank you F.M.