113. Experience Before Understanding

113. Experience Before Understanding

“If I may waste a little time here, I think you would be amused by this story if you don’t know it. Ethel Webb, I think it was, once heard F.M. in very serious conversation with a very eminent Harley Street consultant. They were talking about a woman who had come to F.M. as a pupil and had been the patient of the consultant. The consultant was saying very emphatically to F.M., ‘But, Mr. Alexander, within my experience so and so, and so and so, and so and so.’ F.M. was heard to reply, ‘But my dear good sir, what I am telling you lies totally outside your experience.’ (Laughter)
That is our task, very often, in teaching: to introduce things to people that are totally outside their experience. We have to do it in all kinds of different ways, but it’s necessary for the experience to come because there can be no understanding until people have received the experience.”
(Taken from “The Alexander Review” Vol. 4 p82)

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