I asked ChatGPT to give me some quotes in the style of F.M. Alexander, using bogan language and Yoda’s speech patterns. I hope they’re helpful. “Oi, mate! Change ain’t easy, but effort put, break free from same ol’ drongo routine, you must.” “Screw yer past, cobber! Power you have, chuck a U-ey and fresh start, you must. Take control of ya thoughts, unleash a ripper new version of yaself, you will.” “Body and noggin, mates they are, ya know? Fix…
Hands are a Necessary Part of Teaching 1 You want to learn to play piano like Duke Ellington, the famous jazz pianist. How do we do this? 1. I could describe his style to you, and suggest ways to practise to get closer to his sound. “His style originated in ragtime and the stride piano idiom of James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith. He adapted his style for orchestral purposes, accompanying with vivid harmonic colours and, especially in later years, offering swinging solos with angular…
Hands are a Necessary Part of Teaching 2 Question 1 (10 marks) “Cubist art depicts a subject from several angles all at once, often by fragmenting an image. The simplified planes and shapes can be deceptively complex in their relationship to one another. Possessing a sense of constant movement, the images are not symmetrical. But they often share a careful balance. “ Using the description above, draw a rough sketch in the Cubist style. Question 2 (10 marks) Using the…
Introduction “My life’s work as revealed in my books has been the teaching, on the lines of the educator, of a technique I evolved for changing and improving the manner of use of the self, which in turn so improves the general functioning of the pupil that specific symptoms tend to modify and in time disappear which, in medical terms, is called a ‘cure’.” F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures – Manufacturing Premises Required for Desired Deductions p214) WC: The Alexander…
“Boiled down, it all comes to inhibiting a particular reaction to a given stimulus. But no one will see it that way. They will see it as getting in and out of a chair the right way. It is nothing of the kind. It is that a pupil decides what he will or will not consent to do. They may teach you anatomy and physiology till they are black in the face – you will still have this to face:…
“All I want you to do is to give certain directions for me, and then inhibit the tremendous effort you are making to be right.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures – Teaching Aphorisms p204) Introduction PM: A large part of this audience will have been through the experiences which I am proposing to touch upon, but there will be others to whom giving directions is little more than a verbal concept and it is possible that this lecture may clarify their…
“There is no such thing as a right position, but there is such a thing as a right direction.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures – Teaching Aphorisms p194) (…continued from Directions and Directing – Part 1) Back to lengthen and widen LW: We can now discuss the final parts of the pattern, the lengthening and widening of the back. But before we begin to consider the back by itself, let us realize that we can never possibly consider the back by…
“They won’t try and get out of the chair unless they feel they have that something that will get them out of the chair! That something is their habit.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p198) Introduction FPJ: I can’t talk about the Alexander Technique without using the word “kinaesthesia”. So I’ll start out by defining it. Kinaesthesia is a Greek word – it is too bad there isn’t a good English word for it like “sight” or “hearing”…
“The experiences which followed my awareness of this were forerunners of a recognition of that relativity in the use of the head, neck, and other parts which proved to be a primary control of the general use of the self.”F.M. Alexander (The Use of the Self – Chapter 1 p9) Introduction PM: One of Alexander’s discoveries and one which has immense significance in the learning of the Technique is what he called “The Primary Control”.(The Alexander Technique As I See…
“Everyone is always teaching one what to do, leaving us still doing the things we shouldn’t do.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p196) Introduction FPJ: The Alexander Technique might be defined as a method for knowing simultaneously what you are not doing as well as what you are doing – knowing, for example, that you are not interfering with the “primary control” while you are talking, listening or thinking…(Freedom to Change – chapter 14 p158) WC: The method…
“These things can take care of themselves.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p195) Introduction WC: The basic thing is up, and up is built in.(Thinking Aloud – “Lengthening in Stature” – p36) WC: What you are doing with the orders or the directions is confronting yourself with a picture, and the more vivid the picture, the better. Then, in comparison with that picture, you can consider, evaluate, and criticize your own state. The clarity of that picture is…
“As we have seen, one of the serious obstacles to be overcome in helping pupils to change their manner of use is that any change from the old wrong use (the known) to the new right use (the unknown) feels wrong to them, and at each stage of change the new improving manner of use has to be experienced for some time before the pupil can feel that it is right and comfortable, and so develop faith and confidence in…
“Under the ordinary teaching methods, the pupil gets 19 wrong to 1 right experience. It ought to be the other way round.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p196) An Unstructured Group of Quotes Related to Learning AT MB: There’s a ‘still point’ as Elliot would say, where, I don’t say it’s unaffected, but it’s not pushed off its perch – you’re able to keep something going whatever happens to you outwardly. And that’s the secret of life really….
“I ask you to do nothing, but you act as if I had asked you to do. I have got to train you to act according to your decision where the habits of life are concerned.”F.M. Alexander (Articles and Lectures, Teaching Aphorisms – p196) An Unstructured Group of Quotes Related to Learning AT FPJ: When I knew F. M., he had very little to say about “directive orders” or “thinking.” I assumed that he was satisfied that I knew how…
“I find the Alexander Technique very helpful in my work. Things happen without you trying. They get to be light and relaxed. You must get an Alexander teacher to show it to you.” – John Cleese You’ve never heard a clarinet played before, so I loan you mine. You sit down for a couple of hours and work out how to make a few sounds, some not too bad. It may even pass for music. You think you have a…
In modern Australia there can be some status attached to having a convict ancestor. This was not the case in F.M. Alexander’s time. Alexander’s four grandparents were convicts, transported to Tasmania in the 1830s and 1840s when just teenagers or in their early twenties. One stole a dress. Another destroyed a threshing machine in an uprising of agricultural workers. Once in Tasmania, all survived and prospered, and in 1869 their grandson Frederick Matthias Alexander was born in north-west Tasmania. In…
What shape are you in at the moment? But how do you know? Do you know how many senses you have? The usual answer is five, but in fact we have many more than that, as discussed in this BBC article. As well as the five we are all familiar with, we can also sense temperature, pain, and balance, among others. And then there’s our kinaesthetic sense, which is our sense of body awareness. It tells you where in space…
There have been a few articles over the last few years which talk about the dangers of sitting, and comparing sitting to smoking. Here is a word in defence of sitting. While there is no such thing as healthy smoking, there is such a thing as healthy sitting. It is possible to sit comfortably for long periods of time without causing harm or damage. And while you can’t learn to smoke healthily, you can certainly learn to sit healthily and…
Roger Federer is quite precise about his tennis racquets. According to this article in the New Yorker, he has nine racquets prepared for each match, with “three racquets to be strung at twenty-six kilos, five at 26.5, and one at twenty-seven”; and he likes “natural gut for the sixteen main strings and polyester for the nineteen cross strings”. Federer knows how to get the most out of a racquet. He has thought and practised a lot, to be able to…
It is easy in today’s society to think of life as being complicated. If we could live in an earlier time perhaps life would be simpler, without the stress and strain that goes with the modern world. Perhaps. “Many years ago Confucius said, ‘Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated’. He must have been thinking about post-war airport consultants.” – 1949, Aero Digest I’m pretty sure Confucius had no such thing in mind because I’m pretty…
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.” – W. C. Fields We’re one week into the Olympics in Rio, so there’s already been a lot of trying, and some succeeding, going on over there. Sport is certainly one area where the “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” philosophy gets a run, but it is certainly applied in many other areas of life as…
Do you know how likely it is you’ll get back pain? Do you know how likely it is you can get long term benefit for your back pain? Firstly, you have about a 10% chance of experiencing “chronic, impairing low back pain” at some stage, according to a 2009 University of North Carolina study. This was up from 3.9% just three years earlier, so if you’re reading this in 2020 (or later), it will probably be higher. The effects of…
Alexander Technique and Playing Slowly “The point of slow practice is not just to slow things down in order to play it perfectly. It’s about fine-tuning the execution, and looking for additional ways to play it even better while we are playing slowly enough to monitor and think about the little details. Are you cultivating the right habits, so that when the tempo increases, you are still playing it the right way? Or are there lots of inefficiencies, or bad…
“About 10 million working days a year are lost to stress” in the UK, according to this article in the Guardian. They don’t say how many involved bears. There’s a bear in there You hear a noise to your left, and you quickly look up. There’s a bear, looking at you. What happens next? You immediately go into the fight-or-flight response, preparing you to deal with the threat. Some muscles in your body tense, to provide you with the extra…
There’s a cartoon you may have seen which features two men standing before a large sign that reads, ‘Stop and Think’. One of the men says to the other, “It sort of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it.” Some of us stop and think on a regular basis. A golfer, before teeing off, will compose themselves, take some time, and when ready will then complete their stroke. A diver will step to the edge of the platform, and then…
“There’s a number that is all the buzz these days in the world of autonomous vehicles: 94 percent. That’s the percentage of car crashes caused by driver error.” – Washington Post, December 10 2017 You have a friend who crashed his car into a tree. Bad luck, you say, I bet that won’t happen again. Two months later it happens again. Bad luck again, you may say, though you’ll be having doubts. Two months later and there’s another bonnet in…
Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year? And two weeks into the year, have you managed to keep any? “Around 50 per cent of Australians make a New Year’s resolution and there’s around an 88 per cent failure rate” according to this article from the Sydney Morning Herald. So how do you manage to stick to your resolutions, at least beyond January? This recent piece in the Guardian points out that “there is no magic, one-size-fits-all solution… In…
Alexander Technique was born of acting. Alexander himself was an actor in Melbourne, Australia in the 1890s when he began losing his voice, an affliction known at the time as Clergyman’s Throat. He regained his voice thanks to the discoveries he made, and he went on to teach his methods to many people, including numerous actors, over the next sixty years. One of his most famous students was Sir Henry Irving, forgotten to many of us today. In his day…
George Bernard Shaw: I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend—if you have one. Winston Churchill: Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second—if there is one. The above quote probably refers to George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, which was first produced in 1912 when Shaw was fifty-six years old. Twenty-six years later, in 1938, he received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of the play to the…
Operations can be painful, and not just for the patient Like many of us – dentists, musicians and hairdressers, for example – surgeons are required to perform at their best while maintaining a potentially damaging posture for long periods of time. A 2010 study looked at whether the Alexander Technique could help surgeons deal with this situation. Research from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center looked at “the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique at improving the surgical posture and technical performance…
A few years ago, in 2013, many people announced that the English language was broken. As the Guardian reported at the time: “Literally the most misused word in the language has officially changed definition. Now as well as meaning ‘in a literal manner or sense; exactly’… various dictionaries have added its other more recent usage. As Google puts it, ‘literally’ can be used ‘to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong…
“Mr. Alexander has done a service to the subject by insistently treating each act as involving the whole integrated individual… To take a step is an affair not of this or that limb solely, but of the total neuromuscular activity of the moment.”– from “The Endeavour of Jean Fernel” by Sir Charles Sherrington, Nobel Prize winner in medicine (1932). In sporting clashes it’s often said that a champion team will beat a team of champions. This saying appears as far…
In the current US election campaign, politifact.com tells us that Trump’s statements have been 15% mostly false, 43% false, and 18% pants on fire. For Clinton, the numbers are better than Trump but still not good. It’s a little early in this Australian campaign to have any numbers, so here they are for the previous election: Tony Abbott – 23% half true, 40% mostly false and 8% false; and Kevin Rudd – 26% half true, 5% mostly false and 37%…
1. The right thing does itself Like all life on earth, the human body has evolved with gravity ever present. We aren’t just designed to simply cope with gravity, we require it. The force of gravity produces an automatic response which engages our postural muscles, and these muscles then hold us up easily, freely and naturally. This is not something we need to consciously manage – just as our hearts beat and our food is digested, being upright should happen…
“Most of Australia’s classical musicians are suffering from injuries due to poor playing techniques, and experts say more needs to be done to educate the industry and overcome what is still largely considered a taboo topic.” – ABC Online News, 2014 Injuries are unfortunately all too common in the world of musicians. “A 2012 survey of members from Australia’s eight professional orchestras found 84 per cent of musicians had experienced pain or injuries that interfered with their playing.” Back pain,…
How do you have your stake? If you want your tomato plants to grow upwards, you might want to tie them to a stake, to guide them in the direction you wish. So if you choose a nice straight stake they’ll follow its shape upwards. And if you don’t, they’ll tend to meander across the ground. We’re a bit like tomato plants. We also grow in the direction we’re guided. In our case it’s not a piece of wood that’s…
Kurt Vonnegut would have said I was a man in a hole. I was 27 and working fulltime as a pianist when I developed RSI. For me it was pins and needles in both arms, pain and weakness in my hands, arms and shoulders. I lost my income, my career, and much of my social life which revolved around work. And I was told by some that RSI wasn’t real, so there was self-doubt as well. Definitely a man in…
It is easy to see gravity as a problem – something that takes us downward and which needs to be overcome. But this is wrong. Would you like to go to Mars? It’s a one-way ticket, leaving 2026. You’ll need to pack light, and you’ll have to get used to being indoors – higher radiation levels restrict outside time to just one hour a day. Also, your bones will lose density and strength and your postural muscles will weaken, no…
The familiar versus the beneficial Are you addicted to sugar? Apparently most of us are, and it’s not good for us. It is now claimed there is “hard and fast data that sugar is toxic irrespective of its calories and irrespective of weight.” (TIME) And once sugar has become part of our make-up, those who indulge will carry on indulging, even when conscious that it is gradually undermining their health. “It shows that in the case of sugar, for instance,…
A crooked clarinet will make a crooked sound “There are musicians – some say there were more of them in the past – who get as much pleasure from a performance as they give, who always perform easily and well, and who use themselves so efficiently that their professional lives and their natural lives coincide. There are others, however, with equal talent and training, to whom performance and even practice are exhausting, and whose professional lives are cut short because…
A Student’s Perspective When I first heard about the Alexander technique through a newspaper article, it made intuitive sense to me. In the interview, Christine talked about changing the way we moved in everyday activities in order to manage pain and injuries. I had experienced back and neck pain at times, I had been to physiotherapists and osteopaths for recovery from injuries in the past but could see that these sessions did not support the real and lasting change I…