For many centuries, we humans have known that the pursuit of our wholeness is necessary for the education, healing, and strengthening of the whole person.
Alexander taught us that the real significance of his Technique lies with the fact that humans function as a whole and can only be fundamentally changed as a whole.
For me, the primary purpose of the Alexander Technique is to help educate, heal, and strengthen the whole person in our striving for our wholeness in our lives. Alexander called this the use of the self.
Walter Carrington describes Alexander’s concept of wholeness in relation to Alexander’s use of the self in the book entitled Explaining the Alexander Technique, The Writings of F. Mathias Alexander, In Conversation with Walter Carrington and Sean Carey. There, Carrington states:
One of the greatest handicaps in getting an understanding of the Technique is that people instinctively chop up and separate an issue, whereas FM’s approach was completely the opposite. For instance he loved words that you or I might consider imprecise but that he would consider comprehensive. He thought that a virtue. He makes this clear when he decides to talk of the ‘use of the self’ because the ‘self’ was the comprehensive term that included not only mind, body, spirit, soul and anything else you like, but all the things you haven’t thought of as well.Since our wholeness includes aspects of our self that are unknown and unseen by us, as they are part of the mystery of life, words alone are not sufficient to fully describe the concept of wholeness. However, Carrington’s words give us vital knowledge of Alexander’s description of self—particularly with his inclusion of “anything else you like” and “all the things you haven’t thought of as well.”
Carrington was stating that our wholeness—known and unknown—is the meaning of Alexander’s concept of the self; that Alexander’s concept of the self is whole and not fragmented into parts. Carrington was stating that Alexander rejected partial descriptions of the self.
In Alexander’s 1945 preface to the 1946 reprint of Man’s Supreme Inheritance, he expressed his concern about the “horrible” state of the world at the time. He asked a question: How could “we and all the other good people in the world” have allowed this “dreadful mess” to happen?3 He then asked what was, to him, a more critical question—one he states that humans have been asking themselves during every crisis since time began. When the horror stops, where must we begin to make a change to prevent a recurrence? Alexander concluded that the answers given to this question have always failed to solve the problem. He states, however, that “there is an answer, a magnificently simple and effective answer… It is what man does that brings the wrong thing about, first within himself and then in his activities in the outside world, and it is only by preventing this doing that he can ever begin to make any real change.” 4
Alexander states that “before man can make the changes necessary in the outside world, he must learn to know the kind of doing he should prevent in himself and the HOW of preventing it. Change must begin in his own behavior.” 5
Alexander wrote that the theme of all his books is this “how” of change in human behavior. Here, he quotes John Dewey’s statement concerning how to change human behavior. Dewey wrote that Alexander has “demonstrated a new scientific principle with respect to the control of human behavior as important as any principle that has ever been discovered in the domain of external nature.”
Alexander’s quote of Dewey is from Dewey’s Introduction to Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual. There, Dewey explains his statement, as follows: “Through modern science we have mastered to a wonderful extent the use of things as tools for accomplishing results upon and through other things. The result is all but a universal state of confusion, discontent, and strife. The one factor which is the primary tool in the use of all these other tools – namely, ourselves – in other words, our own psycho-physical disposition, as the basic condition of our employment of all agencies and energies, has not even been studied as the central instrumentality. Is it not highly probable that this failure gives the explanation of why it is that in mastering physical forces we have ourselves been so largely mastered by them, until we find ourselves incompetent to direct the history and destiny of man?
Never before I think, has there been such an acute consciousness of the failure of all remedies and forces external to the individual man. It is, however, one thing to teach the need of a return to the individual man as the ultimate agency in whatever mankind and society collectively can accomplish, to point out the necessity of straightening out this ultimate condition of whatever humanity in mass can attain. It is another thing to discover the concrete procedure by which this greatest of all tasks can be executed. And this indispensable thing is exactly what Mr. Alexander has accomplished.” 6
Alexander writes that the answer to the problem of human behavior lies with “the fact…. that a human being functions as a whole and can only be fundamentally changed as a whole . It is in the light of this fact that the technique described in this book has real significance.” 7
In The Universal Constant in Living, Alexander stresses the importance of gaining the knowledge and experience required for putting the concept of wholeness into practice consistently. He writes that this knowledge and experience is essential if the acceptance of the concept of wholeness is not to remain only an intellectual belief. He states that writers and speakers in the world of education and medicine have advocated the concept of wholeness as the one upon which sound methods in all fields of activity should be based. Alexander concludes, however, that few of these authorities have offered the knowledge of the means of translating the concept into experience or give a technique for applying the principle into practice.8
In The Resurrection of the Body, Alexander acknowledged that his work was not finished, that there was more to discover, and that his work needed to evolve and grow. He stated, “[My] experience may one day be recognized as a signpost directing the explorer to a country hitherto undiscovered, and one which offers unlimited opportunity for fruitful research to the patient and observant pioneer.”9 Thus, he encouraged explorers and pioneers to carry on that evolution and growth, a challenge that we, as teachers of his work today, have before us.
Some conclusions gathered from the above writings of Alexander and CarringtonI believe the above writings of Alexander and Carrington exemplify Alexander’s universal vision of his Technique and conclude that Alexander believed that this universal vision requires us to know, understand, and experience the following:
We need to practice and teach his Technique from and within our evolving knowledge, experience, and practice of our wholeness.
We need to practice Alexander’s Technique from and within our wholeness in order to allow ourselves to fundamentally change our behavior.
We need to change as a whole person to be capable of changing our behavior fundamentally, both within ourselves and in our activities in the world.
It is necessary for us to fundamentally change our behavior to be capable of undoing the misuse we engage in within ourselves and in our activities in the world.
Our knowledge, experience, and practice of our wholeness and its role in our practice and teaching of Alexander’s Technique must continue to evolve.
From F.M. Alexander and Walter Carrington we know that our wholeness is the foundation for educating, healing, and strengthening the whole person through the practice of the Alexander Technique.
John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, Patrick McDonald, and others recognized and understood this truth.
John Dewey also wrote: “The technique of Mr. Alexander gives to the educator a standard of psycho-physical health—in what we call morality is included. It supplies the ‘means whereby’ this standard may be progressively and endlessly achieved, becoming a conscious possession of the one educated…. It bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities.10 In the 1946 edition of Alexander’s Man’s Supreme Inheritance, Aldous Huxley states: It is now possible to conceive of a totally new type of education affecting the entire range of human activity….an education which, by teaching them the proper use of the self, would preserve children and adults from most of the diseases and evil habits that now afflict them…….I heartily recommend this latest and, in many ways, most enlightening of Mr. Alexander’s books. In The Universal Constant in Living they will find, along with a mass of interesting facts, the ripest wisdom of a man who, setting out fifty years ago to discover a method for restoring his lost voice, has come, by the oldest of indirect roads, to be a quite uniquely important, because uniquely practical, philosopher, educator, and physiologist 11
In the essay titled “The Education of an Amphibian,” Aldous Huxley sets forth a detailed description of the benefits offered to us—physical, psychological, spiritual, essence, the transcendent within each of us, etc.—by Alexander’s work. 12
Patrick McDonald stated: “Good health is priceless and this technique lays the best possible foundation for good health. If one is mis-using oneself it must be an advantage to be able to correct this misuse.” 13 McDonald wrote that many of the passages in Zen in The Art of Archery (by Eugene Herigal) might have been written by Alexander himself. 14 He wrote that Alexander’s work “…provides a spiritual calm and confidence that makes living a pleasure and not an existence.” 15
The knowledge, experience, and practice of wholeness in Alexander’s Technique todayFrank Ottiwell, in giving the first Alexander Memorial Lecture in 1993 at the NASTAT (predecessor to AmSAT) annual meeting, said that he now saw that Alexander’s universal vision was right and that he, and perhaps others, “had been underselling Alexander by narrowing his vision to make it somehow more acceptable.” Frank then said: “I have to ask: Acceptable to whom?” 16
For more than 40 years, I have witnessed the silence of our international Alexander community in the presentation and communication of Alexander’s work to the world regarding the concept of wholeness as the foundation of Alexander’s Technique - the very concept Alexander emphatically stated establishes the real significance of his Technique for changing human behavior: A human being functions as a whole and can only be fundamentally changed as a whole.
I am defining “our international Alexander community” as all Alexander organizations, schools, and teachers engaged in the profession of presenting and communicating Alexander’s Technique to the people of the world.
I am not speaking of nor raising questions about the teaching of Alexander’s work by any individual teachers of Alexander’s Technique to their students. I am speaking solely of our international Alexander community.
It is my observation and experience that the concepts and curricula of Alexander’s Technique communicated by our international community to the world do not include the idea of wholeness, much less wholeness as the foundation of Alexander’s Technique. Consequently, its foundation is not acknowledged nor communicated to the world by our community.
Instead, our community has encouraged the people of the world to focus on the material/physical aspects of ourselves in Alexander’s Technique. Thus, our community asks the world to consider only fragments of our wholeness in the study of Alexander’s Technique. For example, our wholeness is far more than our mind, our body, and our emotions. Alexander knew this. Carrington, Dewey, Huxley and McDonald knew this. Many others knew this.
All of the above raises questions for me. I invite discussion and answers to these questions.
With Frank Ottiwell’s insight as my guide, I ask:
Given that Alexander stated that our knowledge, experience, and practice of our wholeness is necessary to fundamentally change our behavior and use of our selves; and
Given that Alexander taught us that his Technique offers a means whereby we can gain the knowledge and experience needed to consistently put into practice our wholeness within ourselves and our activities in the world,
Why has our international Alexander community historically acknowledged only fragments of our wholeness in our presentation and communication of Alexander’s Technique to the world?
Why has our international Alexander community expressly encouraged us to know, experience, and practice Alexander’s Technique using only fragments of our wholeness in our efforts to fundamentally change our behavior and our use of ourselves?
Our international Alexander community and we individual teachers
Our international Alexander community has power and authority; we hope for good. The danger of the power and authority of our international Alexander community, like any other, is the undue influence it can have on teachers, students, and the world. That influence, if ill-used, can stifle the evolution and creativity of Alexander’s Technique.
We individual teachers do not have such power and authority. Better than such power and authority, however, is the fact that we have earned the right to envision and understand Alexander’s work as we choose, so long as we do so with honesty and integrity. Alexander himself expressly encouraged us to do so. 17 In this way, we individual teachers participate in maintaining the inherent freedom within Alexander’s work.
For more than 40 years, I have taken Alexander’s advice about the future of his work. I have attempted to be an explorer and pioneer of the work he began: to listen, observe, discover, and remember the unlimited knowledge, understanding, and experience his work offers. There are many other teachers who have been exploring and pioneering as well.
The element that stands out most to me from my experience with the classical approach to Alexander’s work is the primary importance of sticking to principle. Alexander taught us that the foundation of the principle of his Technique lies within our wholeness. My own evolving understanding of my wholeness includes my life energies (divine, universal, psychic, instinctual, physical, and others unknown to me), heart, soul, spirit, sacred body, feeling, psyche, human values (e.g. morality, ethics, character), oneness with others (Thou Art That), nature, and God. (I use the word “God” because it satisfies me. Other symbols for the unknowable mystery of life include Atman, the Great Spirit, Tao, the Invisible. There are many from many different cultures.) And there is much more of my wholeness that remains unknown to me.
My understanding of my wholeness grows and deepens as I live and evolve. We each develop our understanding of our wholeness during our lives.
John Dewey wrote, in Experience and Nature*, that “the visible is set in the invisible; and in the end what is unseen decides what happens in the seen; The tangible rests precariously upon the untouched and un-grasped.” 18
Many aspects of my wholeness are invisible, unseen, untouched, and un-grasped by me. Yet, my wholeness has created and sustained me—a visible and seen creature living on our Earth, touching and grasping, who mingles freely with every living entity.
My conscious knowledge, experience, and practice of my wholeness is the foundation of my Alexander work. This has enabled me to know and experience the deeper meaning and universal vision of Alexander’s work for the greater good of myself and our world.
When my wholeness is not consciously included in my moments of awareness, choice, action, and movement, I am left with only my material, rational self. In those moments, I may no longer see myself as a unique creature of life. Instead, I may see myself as just an example of a human physical body with nerves, bones, brain, connectors, etc.
However, when I honor and express my gifts as this unique creature, I am free to consciously choose to progressively and endlessly experience one of the greatest gifts offered by life itself—the choice of living as a whole person.
Through Alexander’s work I have found that “country hitherto undiscovered” and the opportunity for a greater understanding of the gifts the Alexander Technique offers and much more.
Alexander’s work has helped me live a more wondrous, joyful, and healthy life. This has led to a vast improvement and understanding of myself and my responsibility for others and our Earth.
Today, more than ever, our international Alexander community can significantly help many people in the world through the education, healing, and strengthening of the whole person.
In our dehumanizing and mechanical culture (scientific materialism, separation from nature and God, over-reliance on technology, rejection of heart, soul, and spirit in our public discourse and policies, etc.), many people are experiencing trauma and despair from the harm to their hearts, souls, and spirits suffered while living within our culture. In response, people are seeking help in dealing with the myriad problems caused by living in this culture.
The deeper and more profound experiences of Alexander’s work gained from the knowledge, experience, and practice of our wholeness offer the help many people are seeking while living in today’s culture.
When our wholeness is expressly communicated through our touch, words, and presence during our lessons with students, the creative experience received from Alexander’s work is deepened immeasurably. Through this help, people are offered an original pathway to receiving the education, healing, and strengthening they are seeking. However, having chosen to present and communicate only the material/physical aspects of our Alexander work to the world, the deeper vision and understanding of Alexander’s work continues to be little known. And because people do not know that Alexander’s work offers these experiences, people are not looking to the Alexander Technique for this help.
What choices do we as individual teachers have today in dealing with this state of affairs?
In this essay I am advocating that we each, as individual members of our international Alexander community, begin to consciously and expressly include our wholeness in our presentation and teaching of Alexander’s work to others—our students, our peers, and the people of the world. This would require that we consciously and expressly include our wholeness in our own exploration, study, practice, and teaching of Alexander’s work.
I believe this is precisely the work that Alexander was teaching us to carry out if we are to be successful in fundamentally changing our behavior and our use of our selves.
Notes
- Walter Carrington & Sean Carey, Explaining the Alexander Technique: The Writings of F. Mathias Alexander, In Conversation with Walter Carrington and Sean Carey, (London, The Sheldrake Press, 1992), 110-111.
- Carrington, Explaining the Alexander Technique, 110-111.
- F. Matthias Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, (Bexley, Kent: Integral Press, 1946), v.
- Alexander, Inheritance, v.
- Alexander,Inheritance<, v.
- Alexander, Inheritance, vi; F. Mathias Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, (London, S.W.1: Re-Educational Publications Limited), xxvii, xxviii.
- Alexander, Inheritance, vi.
- F. Mathias Alexander, The Universal Constant in Living, (Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1986), xxxvii-xxxviii.
- F. Mathias Alexander, The Resurrection of the Body, ed. Edward Maisel, (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1978), front page before Preface.
- F. Mathias Alexander, The Use of the Self, (Weybridge, UK: Re-Educational Publications, Ltd., 1955), xxi.
- Alexander, Inheritance, page preceding “Preface to the New Edition”.
- Aldous Huxley, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, (The New American Library, 1964), 9-31.
- Patrick McDonald, The Alexander Technique As I See It, (Brighton: Rahula Books, 1989), xiii.
- McDonald, As I See It, 85.
- McDonald, As I See It, xiii.
- AmSAT Journal 9 (Spring 2016): 21.
- Alexander, Resurrection, front page before Preface.
- John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1958), 43-44.
Larry is a teaching member of AmSAT. He graduated from the Alexander Training Institute of San Francisco in 1979. In those years the directors were Frank Ottiwell and Giora Pinkus. Larry was one of the teachers assisting Frank Ottiwell at the school from 1981 until its closure in 2004. He also studied with Patrick McDonald and Walter and Dilys Carrington during their periodic workshops given at the San Francisco school. For 10 years he studied extensively with Marjorie Barstow in San Francisco and Lincoln, Nebraska. Marjorie and Frank are his mentors. He has been exploring, studying/writing and practicing Alexander's work since 1976 and has been teaching since 1979.
Larry has certifications in Reiki I and II (2007-2008) and a certification in Shamanic Healing Practices (2014). Additionally, he has been a serious student of the psychology of Carl Jung since 1976. Since the beginning of his Alexander studies he has sought to understand his Jungian work as it interplays with his Alexander work and vice-versa. He is currently preparing to teach a class on the interplay of Jung's psychology and Alexander's technique at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.
For 44 years Larry has been a serious track runner. His track running has been a major means of his working with his wholeness and Alexander's technique.
Concurrent with his Alexander teaching, from 1981 to 2014 Larry practiced law as a civil rights litigator in private practice in San Francisco in the field of employment discrimination and harassment, representing employees. At the time he retired from law in 2014, he had been elected a "Super Lawyer" (top 5%) in his field by his peers in San Francisco and the Bay area for 10 straight years.
His Bachelor of Arts degree is from the University of California at Berkeley (1969). His Juris Doctor degree is from U.C. Berkeley’s School of Law (1974). In 1974-75 he worked as a Vista Volunteer lawyer (Vista was the U.S. domestic version of the Peace Corp) in the Mission District of San Francisco for the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation.
Larry is married to Monica Norcia, also a teacher of Alexander's technique. They live and teach in San Rafael, California.