"The conscious mind must be quickened."

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Past Articles:

Starting at the Top

The Spine as a Compression Spring

We Don't Know Squat

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Thinking With More of You:

Coordinating Thought and Action

When I talk to my students about awareness and activity, I often hear them say, "Oh, this is so hard," or "It takes so much time to think about these things."

Why do we limit ourselves like this? It seems that we often want to go through the day on autopilot and to "check out" from our daily activity—to let our activities "do" themselves. It is often our goal just to finish our current task without any real involvement, so we can just move on to the next task.

This habit of thought is the largest obstacle in an individual's learning and incorporation of the Alexander Technique. This is what F.M. Alexander called endgaining, and it is this habit that needs to be addressed before any changes to posture or movement can occur. Learning to stay present in the moment, and not to endgain, is an integral part of the technique.

We are constantly allowing the work at hand—or any stimulus presented to us by people or activities—to dictate the way we are present in ourselves or the way we organize ourselves.  The majority of the time, our awareness of this is very low.  Deadlines and the work at hand become what we are most committed to – we lose track of ourselves and the process of getting to our end. Somehow we have come to believe that to be present and aware of ourselves while we work is an impossibility, or that it requires so much energy that it is not worth making the effort.

Yet everyone wants to change their posture, find muscular release, or alleviate pain—even as they resist the call to be active participants in achieving those goals. So most of us force ourselves into stiffened, rigid postures that provide temporary relief, or seek assistance from people who manipulate our bodies to give us a momentary release from pain or tension. And until the original condition returns, we forget about it. But by allowing ourselves to become immersed in this cycle of "checking out" we are not taking responsibility for ourselves and our potential.

Right now, you are probably seated at a desk. When you notice yourself slumping, what do you do? Most of us go for the quick fix: we throw our shoulders back or suck in our stomach to correct the slump, and our involvement goes no further than that. We fail to see the big picture, which is that pushing and pulling on individual parts affects our whole body. If you push and pull on one part, it may do what you want—but a part that you are not aware of will then be interfered with.

If we truly want to experience freedom and change our habits we must make the leap to thinking of ourselves not just as a collection of parts, but as an integrated mechanism in which all the parts relate to and counterbalance each other.

Take just a moment and really consider how you define posture. If you think of it as "hold your head high, suck in your stomach, keep your shoulders back," or some similar list of static positions, then you are limiting yourself. I tell my students that posture isn’t a place or a position—it is slow motion movement. It involves balancing yourself, and not only balancing all of your parts but allowing your conscious thinking to be involved. So if your thoughts of posture are stagnant, your physical posture will be rigid as well. As I always say, the way you think of yourself is the way you move yourself.

We are designed for movement with this amazing, jointed, balanced, tensile structure of muscle and bone constantly relating to each other. If you hold yourself upright by bracing in muscle groups, you limit the movement of bones in their joints—and you cut down not only on your freedom of movement, but also on your freedom of thought. Our thinking and movement are inseparable and we need to find more effective ways of freeing and coordinating them.

One of the most difficult mental habits to change is people's unwillingness to believe that they can include awareness of how they are doing things as they are involved in doing them. Yet thought and conscious awareness are faster than we acknowledge them to be. Alexander Technique is, above all else, a practical work—and you should not have to move in slow motion in order to achieve deeper awareness of yourself. The shift that needs to take place is in your thinking, specifically accepting that consciousness and thinking can be quick.

So now try this. Pick up a pen and write the words:

Release my thumb and soften my wrist and forearm.

And now do it again, but first look at the photo at right and take a minute to consider where your thumb joint actually is; it is deep within your hand, close to your wrist, down at the base of the fleshy part of your palm. As you are writing about your forearm, think of releasing the muscles in it. Remind yourself that thinking can be fast if you allow it. Do not allow yourself to freeze up and begin moving in slow motion as you consider how your arm, hand and wrist can release as you make contact with the pen or keyboard. Think about softening into what you are connecting with. You can read this article, take in information, and write or type at the same time that you notice your feet on the floor below you and your back in contact with the chair behind you. I encourage you to find ways of including your awareness of your points of contact as you work.

Try writing the phrase again:

Release my thumb and soften my wrist and forearm.

Did you tighten against the contact of the pen? Try it again, and use as little muscular effort as is possible to hold the pen. Remember where your thumb joint is.

And now once more:

Release my thumb and soften my wrist and forearm.

So did it really take you longer to write with awareness than without?

It is absolutely possible to think with more of you, and to do so in a timely manner. As you are holding the pen you can think with your hand and wrist. Challenge yourself to allow your consciousness, in activity, to permeate more of you and not to just reside in the brain.

- Kate Kobak

"The Technique opens a window into the little-known area between stimulus and response and gives you the self knowledge you need in order to change the pattern of your response -- or, if you choose, not to make it at all." 

- Frank Pierce Jones