Students frequently ask questions like "Am I straight?" "Are my shoulders even?", or "Am I doing this right?" While we do use external markers like even shoulders and improved posture as valuable land marks, the technique itself is a set of internal processes which help the student choose more coordinated and natural responses to every-day challenges.
The goal of the teacher is to help the student become aware of her innate capacity to improve her physical coordination and mental alertness via a set of largely mental directives.
The Alexander Technique is not an end, it is a means.
In helping students achieve their goals, I must also introduce them to a bewildering paradox: That in order to better achieve their objectives it will first be necessary to embrace a process which is largely centered around setting these goals aside -- at least momentarily.
[Related: How to Achieve Your Goals With the Alexander Technique]
To remove the desire or expectation of goal-getting is to relieve the body of the undue tension created by poorly coordinated attempts at attaining these ends. In other words, to learn the Alexander Technique is to learn that process which helps you subdue the stress of goal-getting, whether you are stooping to pick up your cat or accepting an Academy Award.
The advantages of being in a process are in the here-and-now.
Action which is motivated by goal getting focuses your attention on a future reward and obscures your perception of how you coordinate your self in the present moment. This disconnect from the here-and-now is the source of many stress-related complaints.
The Alexander technique has a valuable quality of "now-ness" which helps you realize how you might be distorting your natural balance as a matter of habit. It is a process which is available to you in present time as are its many rewards.
There is no 'black belt' in the Alexander Technique.
The principle advantage to being in a process is that you are always in a process of becoming. It pays to avoid the misconception that at some point you will be "complete" in some sort of external, measurable way. Don't ever be complete.
After all, why place arbitrary limits on your self? Any goal, once achieved, can become a stopping point. This is something the Alexander technique actively seeks to avoid. As far as I know, there is no limit to how well coordinated your thinking and movement can become.
Become a master of indirect means.
Take the case of poise, for example. Strictly speaking, poise is not what we teach. Although you can rightly expect to become more poised as you take lessons, the Alexander technique is not poise itself. The Alexander technique is the cause. Poise is the effect.
Similarly, better posture, less pain, improved breathing are all effects of practicing the Alexander technique, but we arrive at these ends through indirect means. The technique itself can be described as a set of strategies for causing desirable effects to appear by increasing your awareness of how you prevent them.
Stay in the process.
Once you have found the path of the Alexander technique, even setbacks seem less final, less grave. In fact, setbacks become the starting point for the next upswing, promising even higher levels of mental and physical acuity. So find the path, and stick with it!
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