| Perhaps you’ve kind of heard of the Alexander Technique. You know someone who knows someone who knows something about it. Actors study it, and dancers, too, right? But how to describe it? Your confusion might grow if you knew that Nickolas Knightly uses the principles of the Alexander Technique in his consulting work teaching negotiation skills to business executives. He also uses the same principles when he teaches couples to tango. I’m not kidding. It’s not a therapy, Knightly asserts. “The Alexander Technique is generally viewed as an educational approach. The Alexander teacher would NOT promise to treat or cure any disease or neurosis. What the teacher offers is literally an education.” Knightly believes that while many therapies may make you feel better or even bring about a cure, that is different than what AT is. “Even if there [were] a total cure, it doesn’t mean anything has been affected in terms of your way of being in the world that might have contributed to the symptoms which first took you to the therapist.” So what part of us is being educated to do what? “I sometimes call it the most fundamental type of education,” Knightly explained. " . . . [I]n every context, not just educational situations, but at the office, at the training program for your office, when you go to church, or when you go to meditate, or when you do yoga, there’s something consistent in all of those contexts. And the consistent thing is you. It’s your self and the way in which you organize yourself in those contexts–the way you respond to every stimulus. The technique is trying to educate that . . .” “So what exactly do you do in a session?” I asked even more pointedly. “What we do in a session is use Alexander’s discoveries. He discovered that how we use ourselves influences everything in our lives. In other words, it’s not what we do, it’s how we do it–which we all know. Anyone who’s been in a relationship has heard, ‘It’s not what you said to me, it’s how you said it!’ “Everything in life–it’s not what we’re doing, it’s how we’re doing it. Alexander discovered that this is very important. It affects everything.” “The other thing he discovered is that he could use his hands to change the way people were being in any given context. Part of what’s going on is that there’s a kinesthetic reflection of every inner working. Everything that’s going on in my mind and in the way I’m connecting to things around me manifests in a physical way. It might manifest, for instance, in tension. It might manifest in misdirected motion. It might manifest in misdirected attention or wandering attention or maybe not enough energy where I need it . . . “What Alexander found out is that he could use his hands to help the student come to understand what his reactions to things were, and . . . by bringing them to awareness, and by retuning the student’s awareness . . . the student could learn to be a little more integrated in every . . . context.” To see if I might get a better grasp of just exactly what this technique is, Knightly demonstrated a typical . . . session with me. First he had me stand up from a sitting position on a stool, then sit back down . . . He then placed his hand on the back of my neck and head as I stood, moving with me, then again guiding me–but not guiding. Sort of inviting me to move differently. The hands are a huge part of the technique, as it turns out. There’s a strange quality to the way Knightly’s hands moved over my back . . . My mind is so busy trying to absorb what he’s saying I don’t really notice it. The space he invites my body into, however, is comforting, with an exhilarating zing to it. It’s hard to describe, you know, that zing. Being is such an ephemeral quality to describe as compared to describing doing something . . . Yet the effects are profound. Working for 15 minutes, Knightly invited me to a greater sense of being, rather than doing. It’s the art of doing by not doing. Somehow my mind is working . . . better, more fluid. Connections between uncharted synapses are being made. A key tenet of the technique is that the physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual bodies or energies are not separate systems but one cohesive entity. Knightly explains, "Alexander would say, ‘I consider the human to be one . . . We have to be a body mind spirit thing, and be understood as that so that we get away from all the distinctions.’" . . . So to some extent when you improve the quality of one part, you improve the quality of the whole. Somehow the wisdom of the body permeates the mind so cohesively that the short session with Knightly left my mind fluid and my emotions profoundly peaceful, calm. This is good stuff. He goes on, "One way to describe the technique is to say it’s about connecting to life–connecting to the people and objects around you in the world." Although I have felt a difference, felt the shift, I still can’t get my mind around just exactly what is being taught. What are we actually learning? “I think mindfulness is definitely part of the game. Alexander said, ‘What I’m teaching people is to quicken their consciousness.’ We’ve all heard of the zen arts–flower arranging and archery and tea ceremony–and the technique is kind of like a zen art for everyday living. “Ideally when you are "doing" the Technique, one of the things you learn is non-doing. And this is a remarkable thing because you read about non-doing in the [Bhagavad] Gita, you read about it in the Tao Te Ching, you read about it in many wisdom traditions. But the Technique is saying ‘Well it’s not just this highfalutin spiritual concept, but you need to be non-doing sitting in a chair, and then getting up out of the chair, and then doing the dishes. “Alexander discovered that you may be doing an action, but not really doing the action. It’s a remarkable thing to say, ‘Well, I see that you are sitting–and yes, by default you’ve gotten into the chair–but you’re not actually sitting, you’re doing your idea of sitting, which is not really as connected to sitting as you think it is.' Maybe I’m sitting, but I’m doing lots of other things that [unbeknownst to me] are actually interfering with [sitting]–or I’m succeeding in spite of. And succeeding in spite of ourselves is something we’re comfortable with in this culture. . . We’re OK as long as we get the brass ring. We’re not worried about how we got it. “Alexander thought we could make a huge cultural change if people would be a little more concerned with the how–with the means instead of with the end. “The trouble is that even if you try to change the means, because you may not know what you are doing while you are doing it, then you’re just doing a different kind of wrong. You’re doing a different kind of doing, and non-doing is somehow an unknown. It’s something we have to give up to . . .” |
| Excerpts from an interview that appeared in Point of Light magazine. |
| The Alexander Technique: A therapy that is not a therapy and the doing of non-doing By Sven Hosford |