Chapter 1: Alexander’s Method
Frederick Matthias Alexander (20 January 1869 – 10 October 1955) was a successful reciting actor who, in the middle of his career, started having problems with his voice, resulting in severe hoarseness. After visiting a few doctors, they couldn't find any physical problem, and the only advice was to rest the voice. He followed the instructions, and his voice gradually came back, but when he started reciting again, the problem also returned, and he lost his voice again. The doctors couldn't find any problem else, and the advice was the same, to rest. But he reasoned, that if the problem was happening after reciting, and doctors couldn’t find anything, then he was doing something that was causing that problem.
Beings of habits
How do 3 or 4-year-old children move? Unless there is a congenital problem, they all stand upright and sit upright, perfectly in balance. To pick something up off the ground, they bend from the hips, squatting is a natural position for them, and they walk lightly in a natural upright poise. But at a certain point, we begin to imitate adults, and learn to collapse the body, to cross our legs or arms. It is how we learn, imitating. Can you cross your arms now for a moment? Do it a couple of times. Now try to cross them the opposite way than before (right arm on top, now the opposite or vice versa). Was it difficult? Did you have to think about it? Crossing our arms is just a movement that we learn, and when it becomes habitual, we find it comfortable. But, there is no real reason to do it, it is just a movement we've learned. Perhaps parents or teachers, seeing children collapsed on the chair and well-intended, say things like "sit up straight", which results in a too-quick movement using too much tension to maintain that posture for more than a few minutes, resulting in a worse collapse than the previous one.
Alexander started practicing reciting in front of a mirror (eventually he added two more to have a better overview), and he discovered he was contracting the head backward and down when reciting, resulting in a compression of the neck and collapsing the chest forward and down. Excited about the discovery, he learned through experimentation not to do so, but when he went back to performance, his old habit and tension kicked in.
We like habits, and they can be useful. Thanks to them, we can go downstairs or drive a car without always thinking how to do it. But some habits can be harmful. Contracting the head backward and down in space and collapsing the chest down, was Alexander's habit while reciting, and it was causing him excessive tension in his neck area, compressing the whole vocal mechanism, and excessive tension on his vocal cords, which caused the hoarseness. When he started noticing his habit, he also started to see that that is a very common habit in everybody, and, as for him, people usually don't notice it. We're unaware of the habit, and it’s not possible to change it unless we bring our attention to it.
That is a nice thing about learning AT in a group. When it is an individual lesson and we start to notice our habits, it is easy to fall into judgment and think that it is a “problem” that only one has. However, in a group, we can see that everyone present has their own sitting habits, that everyone or almost everyone tilts their head back or collapses forward when they get up from the chair, and the learning process can be relaxed and fun.
"- Do you have a habit of repeating passages when you practice them? If you do repeat them, do you really consider why you are doing that?
- Do you have a habit of mental chatter, while you are practicing?
- Do you have a habit of rushing to unpack your instrument and start playing as soon as possible?
- Is it your habit to set short-term goals and ignore your long-term development?
- Is your habit an obsession with the results rather than the way to achieve the results?
- Is your habit to screen out your body’s feedback?
- Is your habit to feel competitive?
- Do you have a habit of noticing other people’s negative habits?
- Is your habit to notice the negative things about your playing rather than the positive things?
- Do you have a habit of thinking that getting things wrong is a failure, rather than a path of learning?
- Is your habit to enjoy your playing?"
Faulty sensory perception and proprioception.
Habitual means it runs under our sensory radar, we don't perceive it's happening. And it feels right because it is what we are used to. Alexander called that faulty sensory perception. How we perceive ourselves in space, now, is called proprioception.
After years of standing, sitting, and moving in a certain way, collapsing or doing movements against the natural coordination of the body (like bending from the waist and not from the hips), the body loses the ability to react to gravity as it did when we were children. Muscles and tendons are plastic, over time they adapt to what we repeat. If we sit collapsed for years, and then we go for a walk with the collapsing still happening, the muscles become fixed that way. It is when we start to notice pain or discomfort from it that we try to change it, but by then we have forgotten what it was like to be upright without effort, our proprioception has become distorted and is no longer reliable. We become unaware of how we perform any activity and we just want to make it done, not thinking about how we do it. That’s what Alexander called end-gaining.
End-gaining and the means whereby: Choice of response through inhibition and direction.
If we think of the desired end, we will execute it in our habitual way. That is what Alexander did when he wanted to recite, and that is why it is so difficult to change a habit. If our mind focuses only on the result, we cannot pay attention to the process of how we actually do it, and we will always do it in the way we know, our habitual way. First, it is necessary to become aware of the habit, to recognize it, so then we can stop it and react differently. That pause, to stop for a moment, is what Alexander called inhibition. We can inhibit our reaction to a stimulus (reciting, playing the cornetto, getting up from a chair) to react differently (not contracting the neck, for example). This is very helpful to play our instrument without pulling our head backward or collapsing the spine forward, but a more interesting point about that ability is, that we have a choice of response to a stimulus. We react too quickly and habitually to the different stimuli in life. By observing our habits we become aware of them, and by pausing before reacting, we have a choice to change our reactions. That pause, not reacting, inhibiting, is doing nothing. But most of us don't know what that really means. Most people will hold back tension to stop their body, probably restricting their breathing, and they will use muscular effort to do so. With the help of an Alexander teacher, we can learn not to react. That means not sending the electrical impulse from our brain to the rest of the body. Because there is no such thing as a separate "physical" or "mental" state. Any physical action with the body is activated from the brain through the nervous system.
The first time we hold a cornetto in our hands, we do so with the habits of our entire life. All of us have habits like F. M. Alexander, the way we walk, stand, sit, we do it with our usual tensions. These tensions may not be the right ones for obtaining a sound with full body resonance with the cornetto, for moving the fingers quickly, or for breathing with maximum efficiency.
Alexander needed to inhibit the impulse to recite, so he didn't contract the head backward and kept thinking to free the neck, so the head released itself up and forward. This is what he called directions. Thinking the head forward and up is not a movement we make with the head. When the neck is free of tension, it is something that happens by itself, and at first, it needs the help of an AT teacher to achieve that state. The teacher will help us with their hands to keep our necks free in any activity, while we inhibit our reaction to the stimulus (producing sound with the cornetto). Over time, we can learn to maintain that muscular state in our necks (and the rest of the body) without help, inhibiting and sending directions. Free neck and head forward and up then becomes a direction we can think of ourselves. If we have tension in the neck, it is the direction in which we release the tension, but after that, it becomes a preventive direction. It prevents us from moving our head backward or forwards and down while we are doing the activity. We can choose to react differently.
Non-judgmental-awareness versus trying
Recognizing one's habits requires non-judgmental awareness. If we take a closer look at the beginning of Alexander's process, we can see the aptitude with which he started his practical research. He just observed himself in the mirror. However, most of us don't do that. We have learned that something is "right or wrong." How do we learn as children? Simply by doing it wrong. Not only that, but they enjoy doing it wrong. I'm sure we've all seen children playing with geometric shapes like in the picture. They have fun doing it wrong. When the adult helps them or they manage it themselves, the expression on their face is one of enjoyment. Learning to explore and enjoy the process instead of thinking only of the result was something that took me a long time to understand. I would like to illustrate this with a much more practical example taken from the book "The Inner Game of Music".
“Exercise: Trying versus Awareness
Let's begin with some tabletop drumming. I'd like you to keep on reading, and at the same time drum on the table (or any hard surface) with alternate hands, as rapidly as possible.
Trying. Now try to keep the rhythm constant. You must keep your arms stiff, and alternate between the hands evenly so the left hand doesn't sound softer or louder than the right. Don't be nervous, even though I doubt you can do this as accurately as I have described. Really try. Grit your teeth, hold your breath, and hammer away as hard as you can. As you are drumming away, read this next paragraph [...]:
Don't get faster. Keep the rhythm exact and even. Uh-oh, do you notice one hand getting louder than the other? Fix it. Get it even. Don't get tired. This is pretty difficult! Just try harder to get it even.
Stop. Relax your arms. Relax.
What happened? Were you able to do it easily? Did you feel any tension, doubt, or fatigue? Did your inner voice try to get you to try even harder?
You have just survived an episode of trying.
Awareness. Now repeat the exercise, this time without trying to do it correctly. Begin to rap on the table again, at any speed. Listen to the cadence of your two hands. Don't criticize, simply notice. Now pay attention to which hand sounds louder. Don't try to change it, just allow your hands to adjust by themselves. Notice where there is tension in your arms, neck, wrists, or fingers. Where you notice any tension, see if you can let yourself be a little more flexible.
When you've got a fair rhythm going, take your attention off your rapping and hum a song of your choice, with your hands keeping up a percussion accompaniment.
Stop.
What did the difference between trying and awareness feel like? How would you describe it? How would you rate your performance, your experience, and your learning in the two different sections of the exercise?
Whenever you are playing or singing music, and you notice you're in a trying state, stop trying, and focus your awareness on a single element of your movement at a time. Observe your body, and watch it subtly shift to a more relaxed and accurate kind of performance.”
The tensions we create by trying to do it right restrict our breathing, tense our face, and interfere with the delicate tension of our lips to produce sound and create resonance, and we end up always playing in a state of constant anxiety, afraid of making mistakes. This also narrows our attention. We use to focus on only one aspect, what we call “concentration”. That makes the beginning of learning AT a bit challenging, but soon we can learn to divide our attention, and our awareness starts widening without losing the contact with ourselves. For our practice that has obvious benefits, we can be aware of our body and mind at the same that we are playing, listening to our sound, and reading scores, and yet saying hi to somebody who enters the practice room. Playing in a concert becomes a very interesting experience when we include in our field of attention our colleagues, the conductor, the concert hall… We can include the audience too, playing for them and being thankful because they are giving you their attention and time. That can change the way we perceive our public and it was an invaluable step for me to overcome stage fright.
Playful practice and making mistakes
Once we learn the difference between trying to do it right and doing it wrong to learn, we can start enjoying learning and accepting mistakes as part of the process. And how fun can that be, as kids do. I would like to borrow another example to illustrate “how to do it wrong”.
“Exercise: Permission to Fail
Choose some task that you have difficulty doing under pressure. It could be executing a skip between two notes, isolating a high note for an unprepared entrance, playing a passage in tune, getting enough air during a quick pause, or playing a series of fast notes.
Now give yourself permission to fail, and play it. If you get it right this time, repeat the exercise until you fail.
How many times did you have to do it before you failed? Did “giving yourself permission to fail” affect your performance? When you failed, did you have to work extra hard to insure failure? Did you notice any mental interference (instructions) when you finally failed? Was it harder to fail deliberately than to play correctly?
Most people, like Mary-Helen, find that if they “allow themselves to fail,” they don't fail. For some people, however, giving themselves permission is not enough: they still try to get it right and wind up failing. If you recognize yourself to be one of these people, you may need stronger medicine. Order yourself to flub it. Give yourself the serious job of getting it wrong, until your “concern for getting it right” goes away. Like Mary-Helen, you'll probably find that when you stop trying, you start to succeed.
The reason is simple. You have released yourself from the fear of failure and are now able to focus your attention one hundred per- cent on making music.”
When we do it "wrong", our attention is in the present moment, and we have the chance to notice what is happening while doing it. The body and our senses can only work in the present moment. We cannot change mistakes from the past, and if we are worried about the future or the result, we are not aware of our body or the sound result that is happening at that moment. We may even end up playing in a way that is the opposite of what we want, playing with more and more tension, unable to achieve a resonant sound rich in harmonics. Thus, daily practice ends up being a source of tension and frustration, when in reality every moment with the cornetto can be fun and educational. Although we all need a teacher to guide us as we learn, a large part of the learning then takes place in our practice sessions.