Annie Get Your Gun
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
2w ago
I stumbled onto this photo of Annie Oakley and couldn’t stop thinking about the amazing ability it must take to hit a target behind you, something she did in all her performances.  As any marksman will tell you, their profession requires the ability to be completely still, without any undue tension. A little like a cat that waits for it’s prey. Easy for a cat, perhaps, but rare in human beings. Shooting backwards takes things to a whole new level, one that very few people have ever achieved. Annie Oakley was rightly famous for her shooting skills.  She joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West ..read more
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Mind Your Mind
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
2M ago
F. Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique, believed that if we want to improve the way we function, we need to make the best use of our ability to think.  Only then can we engage in what he called “constructive conscious control” of ourselves.  He even titled his second book Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, often referred to in the Alexander world as CCC. His idea seems logical, simple, and straight forward.  And perhaps obvious. Nonetheless, it didn’t take long for him to discover that lurking in the background, were a host of unexpected ..read more
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A Fork in the Road
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
1y ago
Suppose a man starts out to reach a certain destination and comes to a place where the road branches into two. Not knowing the way, he takes the wrong road of the two and gets lost. He asks the way of someone he meets and is told to go straight back to the crossroads and take the other road, which will lead him directly to the place he wants to reach. What should we say if we heard that the man had gone back to the crossroads as directed, but had there concluded that he knew better after all than his adviser, had taken again his old road, and again got lost, and had done this thing not once o ..read more
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There and Back Again, My Journey through Neck Surgery – Part 2
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
In a previous post about my neck surgery in early March of this year, There and Back Again, My Journey through Neck Surgery, I expressed some concern about my ability to teach the Alexander Technique while my left arm was still weak and I needed to wear a neck brace which limited head and neck movement. The surgery – a laminectomy and spinal fusion – was necessitated by exteme, partially congenital, stenosis in my upper neck that was severely constricting my spinal cord. As I wrote in the earlier post: “I knew from talking with another teacher who had a similar operation years ago that there ..read more
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The Veep’s Speech
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
  You may remember The King’s Speech, a 2010 movie about King George VI who, after his brother abdicated the throne in 1936, needed to be able to speak effectively in public despite the stammer he had since childhood. He enlisted the help of Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist who was a great help to the King. The two men became friends and later, when Britain declared War on Germany in 1939, he relied on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast. Vice President Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic nominee for President, also overcame stuttering to a la ..read more
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There and Back Again – My Alexander Technique Journey through Neck Surgery
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
It was a Monday evening in mid-February of 2020.  Our four year old grandson had just spent a couple of days with us, and my wife Anne was relaxing after the excitement and extra activity. A couple of days earlier, I had noticed some unusual neck pain and a bit of weakness in my left arm, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it.  That evening, the weakness had become more pronounced to the point where I could barely lift it. I did a little research online and soon realized this could be serious.  I told Anne we needed to go to the Emergency Room. The ER doctor quickly determi ..read more
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Gravity’s Sad Story – Part 2
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
Eight years ago I managed to arrange an interview with Gravity, Gravity’s Sad Story, during which he expressed a great deal of unhappiness about his negative image in the popular imagination, and the blame he so unfairly receives. I thought about that interview while reading an Alexander Technique blog post, Using Knees as a form of Humiliation, by Maciej Kowalczyk. I’ve very much enjoyed reading Maciej’s blogs – more at The Room of Attempts –  and I like like most of this one as well. Maciej brings a fresh Alexander Technique perspective into his writing. But two sentences in the blog jumped ..read more
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The Burden of Shame
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
I’m thinking about how, sometimes, when we look at our history, we have a visceral response of shame. It’s no wonder we don’t want to look at it. Shame begins in the body. Shame’s first language is the body, and then we put language around it. And then we put protections around it, and then curricula and policy and elections around shame. But it begins in the individual language of the body. And it’s understandable that it is so seizing of us. It is like being arrested by something — it does stop you. – Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet, theologian, and conflict mediator. This quote comes from A New Imagi ..read more
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What’s So Special About The Alexander Technique?
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
How am I functioning now? How can I improve the way I’m functioning? Those two projects, not necessarily in that order, could provide a 5 second description of what a student of the Alexander Technique learns. They could be the basis a short answer to the question, “What is the Alexander Technique”, when you want to make your interaction with the questioner as short as possible – going through customs, for example. They might also be a good answer to that question if you want to provide an opening to further discussion.  If that happens, you’re likely to come up against another question like t ..read more
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Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Slurs?
Body Learning Blog
by Robert Rickover
4y ago
The use of imagery to teach or learn the Alexander Technique is, to put it mildly, a controversial topic. The diverse views were on full display in recent exchanges on the Alexander Technique Forum Facebook Page(1) include everything from general disapproval of using images to endorsement in some or many teaching situations. Some members have also pointed out that a teacher’s verbal instructions can generate mental images in a student’s mind, so the distinction between using words while teaching – which has a long history in Alexander Technique teaching – and using images isn’t always clear. P ..read more
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