Alexander Technique Pt. 2

When Alexander realized that his head and neck were the main reasons for the restrictions in his voice, he attempted to force his body to make these changes, but soon realized that he couldn't do this.  Instead, he realized he should apply a process of decreasing his body's inhibitions and directing his intentions toward alignment.  He realized that his head, neck, and torso all work together towards organizing his body as a whole, and he coined this process as "Primary Control".  It's what allows us to function in the way that our bodies have evolutionarily adapted to behave, that makes all of the functions that we want to do happen in the way that we want it to.  To deny yourself this, is to never fully experience what it is to be human.

After realizing this, he then went on to discover that when our body isn't implementing Primary Control, all of our kinaesthetic functions will be viewed in a distorted fashion.  We lose our ability to fully understand what we are truly doing with our bodies.  When we misuse our body habitually, we come to a point where we are so comfortable in our misuse that we can't trust what our bodies are doing as being correct.  The view is skewed because the bad practices have become our normal.  It also distorts how much muscle tension we feel we need in order to do simple tasks.

In order to get rid of these misuses of the body, the Alexander Technique teaches the concept of Inhibition.  This means that we must bring attention to these tensions and misuses of the body, and once we've acknowledged that they exist, we stop them so that new movements and ways of aligning the body may surface.  It's the process of stripping away the bad movements so that you are functioning at your purest, base state.

Once you have determined what is wrong and worked to fix it, when it comes time to actually implement these changes, you must use the concept of Direction.  In doing so, you are telling your body what to do in all aspects, adding one adjustment to the other in a sequence, while reminding yourself of all previous steps.  It's a state of actively checking in on your body regularly and directing it back from where it may have strayed.

The final aspect of this technique is taking all of these things and deciding what to do with them.  You have multiple options in how you decide to approach your body, and by making the conscious decision to flow with it, focusing not on the end goal but on the process of reaching it, you achieve fuller understanding.

I liked reading about this process.  I feel in our Western society we focus too much on goals rather than on the journey we go on, no matter how small, in order to achieve this goal.  I feel like that's more important.  It also drove home all of the principles of Yogic thinking that I've been reading about for years but have never actually managed to implement into my daily life.