Notes to Self is a series of dialogical journal entries in which I attempt to break down my own understanding of The Alexander Technique and psycho-physical education through Socratic questioning, with the goal of finding new ways of articulating this field of study and of rebuilding my own understanding of it from first principles.
What is meant by “directing” in this work?
Our muscles contract or lengthen according to the communications they are receiving from our brain. Because we know from prior study in this field that we want our muscles to stop unnecessary contraction and let go into length in an integrated way, we send directive messages using our thinking to encourage this. This is different from simply wanting to stop tensing certain muscles and then gauging whether we are accomplishing this based on what we feel in that muscle. We are working with the underlying factor that determines muscular activity — our mental activity and intentions — and trying to feel whether anything is changing is counterproductive, because this distracts us from the clarity of thought that will allow us to actually prevent our habitual directions and replace them with intentional, conscious directions that allow our muscles to lengthen and integrate as a whole system. An alert, reasoning frame of mind is needed for this, and so it is important also to not become absorbed in one’s thinking or to close one’s eyes to block out “distractions”. Keeping a calm but alert general awareness of one’s surroundings and oneself at the same time, without becoming too absorbed in either, is the optimal state in which you can think through directions clearly and overtime observe the changes that they cause.