Allowing time, even a macro-second, for a more overall elastic response is a familiar concept for Alexander students and teachers.  We learn to welcome a dynamic pause, even in the face of seeming urgency.  This skill begins with sitting and standing in a lesson and can proceed to all the activities of life. “I have time” (to quiet, welcome new experience, spring up from the ground) takes on fresh meaning with a long term injury recovery. What I want to happen faster (full resumption of easy mobility) cannot be rushed.  All that is hurried is my mind, and a hurried mind is no he ..read more

The use of the self includes far more than posture, shape, movement quality and coordination. Use is an entire expression and response to the changes, shifts, demands and delights of life. Students and teachers of the Alexander Technique refine the entire integrated instrument by which they learn. This refinement requires attention, intention and time, but not in a furrowed brow, “get it right” manner. Instead, we allow new solutions, beginning with simple activities (rising from a chair with surprising ease, for instance). We begin to more accurately see our habitually fixed responses so we c ..read more

Months have passed, all a blur. Much has happened and nothing is predictable. We swim in a soup of uncertainty, treading water far from visible shores. Perhaps we can mark time differently, detached from travel plans, daily transport, without performance schedules or rehearsals, in free fall from time expectations, bereft of our roles and how we costumed those roles. The world has changed, and our place in the world changes in response. From an Alexander perspective, our choice is in dynamic non-interference, in getting out of the way so the entire self can respond to the conditions at hand. T ..read more

As demands rise and needs for endurance increase, our habits of fixing into positions, reactions and patterns may amplify. This is our opportunity to notice our own individual bracing styles, and to request a more curious condition of self, not because our bracing style is “wrong”, but because habitual fixing may limit new experience, new solutions and new skills. Our best means may be un-fixing, de-positioning and active welcoming. We can bring our best response to the increasingly complex demands of living if we brace less and allow overall elasticity and enlivening more. All of our instrume ..read more

If we view the instrument of self as an inseparable and integrated whole, then a change in any aspect changes the entire self. We unfix overall to allow new solutions, means and experiences instead of directly addressing a part. The entirety of our selves is shifted by face masks and coverings. We wear masks to care for our communities, and yet now we are partially hidden from one another. Perception and response modes change. We are in new social territory, with new cues, stresses and uncertainties. Conditions have dramatically changed, and our dynamic response is essential so that we can rem ..read more

Ongoing refinement of the instrument of self does not require conditions that we might consider “ideal”. The quiet oasis of an Alexander studio provides an environment in which to build skills in dynamic non-interference, spatial thinking, and prioritizing means over achieving ends. Life outside the studio brings challenges and demands: injuries, losses, anxieties, neighborly noise and pandemics, for instance. We have nearly endless opportunities for application of our Alexander skills in life. In the studio, we learn to rise from a chair with a balance of tone. In life, we can rise to demands ..read more

How do I know I am worried? There’s the mental chatter, of course, and forehead tension, limited respiratory support, narrowed visual reception and a general sense of withdrawal from the world. I am spinning a narrative (so many potential threads these days), reacting to said narrative threads, and narrowing and shortening myself in the resulting spin. Where is my choice in response when so much is worrisome? A good beginning is choosing levels of stimuli (news/information). Knowing enough news/information to remain effective but not so much as to paralyze response is an ongoing balance of cho ..read more

Dynamic non-interference is a key skill for Alexander teachers and students. Over time, and with guidance, we learn to more accurately notice unnecessary efforts, and to cheerfully request a new response. We ask how much less we can do, fix, or be right as we consider activities, whether those activities be primarily mental, physical or emotional in emphasis. We bring our entire thinking, emoting, moving, sensing instrument to everything we do. The more we request a unified field of self, the more solutions arrive. The less we hold the instrument into a fixed or “right” mode, the more new expe ..read more

Public health and epidemiology experts have recommended wearing cloth masks in public settings in order to significantly reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2. A mask doesn’t just decrease infection potential for the wearer. A mask reduces the transmission by asymptomatic people to others. If we all wear masks when out and about, we care for each other, our communities, and thus ourselves. Many pedestrians (runners and walkers) share the streets and sidewalks during my daily walking miles. Most wear masks and attend to physical distancing. Others, not so much. I can’t do anything about the non-mas ..read more

Most of us are working, socializing, teaching and learning via electronic devices instead of in shared actual space. The increase in screen time brings new demands to the use of the instrument of self. With our Alexander tools of refined intention and attention, we can find new means to rise to these increased demands. While I am teaching online Alexander lessons, I notice an urgency to teach well and to provide some shred of normalcy in these abnormal times. Urgency easily tilts to end gaining, as I crane toward the screen, and reach for sound and vision. By narrowing my attention to reach fo ..read more