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Category: Right Thing Does Itself

69. Pleasure in Everyday Movement

69. Pleasure in Everyday Movement

“More ease and lightness,” “a feeling of ease, of competence – very different from ‘relaxation’,” “a greater degree of ease and consequent pleasure,” are expressions that subjects have used to describe the experience. The feeling of pleasure in an everyday movement takes most subjects by surprise, and their faces break spontaneously into a smile as they notice it. “It’s a funny thing,” one of them said. “It’s as if my arms liked moving this way and wanted to do it…

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46. Allowing It To Work

46. Allowing It To Work

Now, it was Alexander’s specific and very important contribution to recognise that in order to have integration in the individual, we’ve got to have balance – we’ve got to have poise. In our terms, we’ve got to go up – we mustn’t pull down. Pulling down upsets poise, upsets balance, and therefore disintegrates. Pulling down causes disintegration. You can’t do something to integrate – the mechanism of integration is there already but you’ve got to allow the mechanism of integration…

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16. To Work Efficiently

16. To Work Efficiently

It seems appropriate to say here that it is natural for our bodies to work efficiently. It is not, however, our habit, owing to the fact that consciously or unconsciously we have learnt a lot of bad habits, over many generations.Patrick MacDonald (“The Alexander Technique As I See It” – Notebook Jottings p7)

The Experts On… The Right Thing Does Itself

The Experts On… The Right Thing Does Itself

“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…

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7. The Right Thing Will Do Itself

7. The Right Thing Will Do Itself

Really, it’s all quite simple: as soon as you stop pulling your head back, what else can it do apart from go forward? But you certainly won’t get it by making any sort of movement of the head, although I know that’s what a lot of people, including Alexander teachers, try and do. Let me put it another way: you’re already making the movement by pulling the head back and down, or over to the side or any of the…

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The Experts On… Learning the Alexander Technique 2

The Experts On… Learning the Alexander Technique 2

“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…

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A Three-Point Explanation of Alexander Technique

A Three-Point Explanation of Alexander Technique

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…

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The Need for Good Gravity

The Need for Good Gravity

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…

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