Hi Everyone!

I just had to post this as my quote for this week. Given the current debacle over Romney’s plan to cut PBS funding, there’s a video going around of Fred Rogers speaking at the US Senate Subcommittee in 1969 about the value of public broadcasting. The whole video is amazing (as is everything Fred Rogers was involved in), but the tail end really caught my mind. He finishes his statement by reading the lyrics to one of the songs from his show, called “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” In addition to being a simple, beautiful rendition of what his show was about, the song is also a perfect example of the Alexander principle of inhibition.

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…
And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

It’s great to be able to stop
When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish.
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

That quality of being able to stop and do something else instead is exactly what we mean by inhibition. It’s a freeing thing; it opens up a world of new options instead of your usual response. And it’s a healthy thing for you and your mind. I love that Fred was at his heart aiming for the same goals that Alexander was; the ability to make conscious, reasoned decisions without falling into reactive habits.

You can watch the whole video here, and listen to the song here.

Thank you Fred!

Forward and Up! is a Pittsburgh-based private practice offering quality instruction in the Alexander Technique in a positive and supportive environment.

“As for positions, everyone knows that there are five of them…I shall simply say that these positions are good to know, and still better to forget, and that it is the art of the great dancer to neglect them gracefully.” ~Jean-Georges Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballets

I love this quote on the five basic positions of ballet. I first encountered this quote in Becky Nettl-Fiol and Luc Vanier’s book Dance and the Alexander Technique: Exploring the Missing Link. Noverre’s claim that these positions are better forgotten than known ties in closely with Alexander’s work in a very practical sense. During an Alexander lesson, much time is spent with the student sitting in a chair, poised over his sits-bones with the backs of the hands resting on the thighs. It can be tempting, having experienced how wonderfully the body moves in this state, to feel compelled to maintain it constantly. One can start to feel guilty about “not using my Alexander” and attempt to correct it by sitting in exactly that orientation at all times. The hands must be palms up, the weight must be over the sits-bones, the head must be straight front. But in reality, these feelings of guilt and duty are self-defeating; the end result is a whole self that is much more fixed and tense than before, but in a different way. This phenomenon is known in some teacher circles as “The Alexandroid.”

The skill and art of the Alexander Technique comes in first learning good use, then forgetting it, and then being able, as Noverre so deftly puts it, to neglect it gracefully. Sure, you can rest your back against the chair! Go on and turn your head to look at the person who’s speaking to you! Cross your legs under the dinner table. Heck, you can even curl up on the couch with a good book (and your feet twisted up under you) if you feel like it. It’s all about how and when you choose to neglect the positions that your lessons have taught you. Because at its heart the Technique is about movement, not position. It’s about a dynamic relationship between the various parts of your organism, one that moves and shifts as you do. Just as a ballet dancer eventually begins to toss aside her fifths and fourths in the middle of the big duet, and a martial arts master stops worrying about his stances in the heat of battle, we can all learn to gracefully neglect our positioning with a positive attitude, and be better and happier for it.

Forward and Up! is a Pittsburgh-based private practice offering quality instruction in the Alexander Technique in a positive and supportive environment.

“Decide what you’re going to do and then do it, and the rest be damned!” ~Alex Murray

One of the main principles of the Alexander Technique is the need for transferring decisions from the subconscious plane to the conscious one, in an act that Alexander referred to as “inhibition.” Inhibition in the Alexander sense refers not to suppression or restriction, but rather to the voluntary withholding of impulsive actions. When confronted with an action that is usually performed subconsciously (such as getting out of a chair), Alexander challenges us to simply stop and think about HOW we intend to complete the action before attempting it. By stopping to think, we create choice where there was habit, and open ourselves up to the ability to complete old actions in new ways.

One of the drawbacks of creating this choice, however, is that doubt, self-consciousness, and the ever-present desire to be “right” can creep in and lodge in the space created by the choice. This frequently bogs down the student, as they feel a great responsibility to always employ correct use and to never “slack off.” My teacher, Alex Murray, deflects this feeling with this oft-invoked quote. Once you’ve created the choice, simply decide what you’re going to do and then do it, and to hell with the consequences.

Over and over I’ve heard teachers say that the moment they finally clicked with the Technique was the very moment they said “Oh, to hell with it!” and just tried something. Feeling that you must always choose the “right” action is just another sort of end-gaining. The important part is the act of choosing. If you stop long enough to create the choice for yourself, and then make a choice, you’ve inhibited successfully. Whether your decision in that moment was to correct it or to leave it be is irrelevant.

Forward and Up! is a Pittsburgh-based private practice offering quality instruction in the Alexander Technique in a positive and supportive environment.

“Decide what you’re going to do and then do it, and the rest be damned!” ~Alex Murray

One of the main principles of the Alexander Technique is the need for transferring decisions from the subconscious plane to the conscious one, in an act that Alexander referred to as “inhibition.” Inhibition in the Alexander sense refers not to suppression or restriction, but rather to the voluntary withholding of impulsive actions. When confronted with an action that is usually performed subconsciously (such as getting out of a chair), Alexander challenges us to simply stop and think about HOW we intend to complete the action before attempting it. By stopping to think, we create choice where there was habit, and open ourselves up to the ability to complete old actions in new ways.

One of the drawbacks of creating this choice, however, is that doubt, self-consciousness, and the ever-present desire to be “right” can creep in and lodge in the space created by the choice. This frequently bogs down the student, as they feel a great responsibility to always employ correct use and to never “slack off.” My teacher, Alex Murray, deflects this feeling with this oft-invoked quote. Once you’ve created the choice, simply decide what you’re going to do and then do it, and to hell with the consequences.

Over and over I’ve heard teachers say that the moment they finally clicked with the Technique was the very moment they said “Oh, to hell with it!” and just tried something. Feeling that you must always choose the “right” action is just another sort of end-gaining. The important part is the act of choosing. If you stop long enough to create the choice for yourself, and then make a choice, you’ve inhibited successfully. Whether your decision in that moment was to correct it or to leave it be is irrelevant.

“There can be no such thing as a ‘correct standing position’ for each and every person. The question is not one of correct position, but of correct coordination.”

This quote resonates strongly with the dancer in me. Most traditional dance training, particularly in ballet, places an enormous emphasis on proper alignment. The idea seems to be that there is exactly one ‘right way’ to stand, and we must all strive to be as close to that ideal as possible. I struggled for many years with my own failed attempts to match that ‘right way’ of standing in ballet. In contrast, Alexander’s words remind us that each and every person is different. Our unique body types and weight distributions mean that five people performing the same movement may result in five movements that look completely different—on the surface. What’s important, though, is not how the movements or positions look, but how the body as a whole is coordinated.

In dance, this means that the focus should really be on the internal impulses and energetic directions behind the movements, and the intentions behind those impulses, rather than on the exterior appearance of the movements themselves. Rather than trying to imitate the teacher’s movements exactly and match her form, emphasis should be on identifying her directions, her initiations and her intentions, and matching those. That way, even though every dancer’s arabesque might look slightly different, their directions will be consistent and they will still appear to be “together” in a group piece.

As an example, consider the following video. This is the ballet company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male parody company. (Yes, these ARE in fact men in drag.) This is an excerpt from “Go for Barocco,” their parody of Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco. (I chose The Trocks because they are one of the better examples in today’s ballet world of a company composed of many varied body types. Big companies tend to have one body type they prefer and hire based on that, to achieve a more uniform look in performance, which defeats the whole purpose of my argument.) As you watch this video, notice how the same movements appear different on each dancer, and how they are tied together into a cohesive whole by the clear intentions behind their movements.

Forward and Up! is a Pittsburgh-based private practice offering quality instruction in the Alexander Technique in a positive and supportive environment.

“My strongest impression when A.R. Alexander first demonstrated the Technique to me was that of a mechanism working against gravity…I was occupying more space; my movements were less jerky; and I had lost my customary feeling of heaviness…” ~Frank Pierce Jones

In his book Freedom to Change, Frank Pierce Jones gives us this lovely description of the fascinating feeling that often results from a lesson. We are so accustomed to the way we habitually feel that it can be easy to forget the impact gravity is having on all of us. As we walk around on this earth, there is a force of nearly 15 pounds per square inch pressing down on us all the time. While our bodies have to some extent adapted to make us unaware of this pressure, we do know that over the course of a day it compresses the skeleton, compacting the cartilage between each vertebrae of the spine and generally diminishing the body’s ability to move freely. This can easily lead to the “heaviness” and jerky movements that Jones describes. A lesson in the Technique offers several unique ways to regain some of that lost space, and to maintain that sense of lightness in everyday life. We will discuss one such way in our Concept Spotlight on Wednesday.