Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet

Letters To A Young Teacher

Bruce, you write, “Aren’t there more direct, fun, practical, and effective ways to work with how we react to stimuli from within and without besides endlessly getting people in and out of a chair?” My AT teacher at school would probably say: “Chair work will indirectly affect their use in everyday life – let them make the transfer.” So how does that tie in with your take on teaching “activity work”, which to my mind is not indirect, but direct? 

Thank you for your good question. My understanding is that when Alexander spoke of working indirectly he meant that when a person comes to you with a specific problem, let’s say, a frozen shoulder, working directly would be choosing to work immediately to regain range and comfort in the shoulder, through working on the shoulder. A reasonable idea. The approach in Alexander Work, if we are sticking to the principle of working indirectly, is to attend to a person’s overall integration and coordination, and in turn that may, (and may not), resolve the shoulder issue.

It’s a bit like family therapy. Let’s say the whole body is the family, and the hurting child is the frozen shoulder. The parents are fighting, a lot. The kid begins developing asthmatic symptoms. The problem may not lie within the child, but within the family dynamics as a whole. By the parent’s shifting their way of functioning, their child may begin to function differently as well. That, as I understand Mr. Alexander, is what he meant by working indirectly. Indirectly, that is, getting to the part through the whole.

Once you begin to get this idea of working indirectly, you begin to see that Alexander stumbled upon a very big idea, one that, now, everyone understands. If bees are beginning to disappear, or tree frogs, and you start looking for the cause inside the bee world, or the tree frog world instead of backing up and looking at the entire world they inhabit, their larger body, of which bees and tree frogs are an integral part, you won’t see the whole problem, or find the solution.

Alexander discerned an ecology within people, an inner ecology – the study of our inner house and home, in relation to our larger house and home.  (You could say we are the overlap through which our inner and outer environments become one.) Alexander, seen in this light, was a holistic and ecological thinker and practitioner.

As for working through Alexander’s “conventional” procedures, that is, the procedures that have  become the norm within today’s Alexander world, I am not an expert. Yes, I have worked with lots of teachers, including most of the first generation teachers who employed these procedures and, to the best of my limited ability, I have taught through these procedures as well. But I have spent more time learning about Alexander’s work through his less conventional procedures – walking, going up and down steps (lunge work is beautifully woven within this action),  the performing arts, speaking, and everyday activities. These were the procedures that my mentor, Marj Barstow, enjoyed and explored. Consequently, these are the procedures I have taught through most successfully.

Over the years I began to sense that working through Marj’s procedures were, in a way, working too directly, too specifically, but for a very different reason than your teacher might think. I started to see that any activity happened within a larger context, and that I had to zoom both further in, and further out if I was to work holistically or ecologically. That’s why I no longer refer to what I do as “working in activity.” I call it “working situationally.”

For example, a young man is late. He jumps up from his desk, swings on his coat, hops in his car, squeals out his driveway, double parks, runs up three flights of stairs, knocks on his girlfriends apartment door, and waits, standing there, reliving that phone call, the fight they had that morning, feeling like a total jerk, wondering if she will open the door or not, whether she will ever speak to him again, whether she will call off their engagement, and what his parents will say.

Okay. You could work with this poor, distraught young man by taking him in and out of a chair, a la Alexander, or work with him driving his car, walking up steps, and knocking on a door, a la Marj Barstow. Still, are you really going to get to the precise inner and outer stimuli that cause this man to fall apart, to lose his psycho-physical composure, his integrity?

If I am going to work with this man in his entirety, in relation to his inner and outer home, then I may need to address such factors as his relationship to time, how he listens to his girlfriend when she is feeling insecure and starts criticizing him, how he reacts when he starts believing thoughts like his being a total jerk, or what happens to him when he starts caring too much about what other people think about him. But I am going to figure out a way to do this somatically and personally, not psychologically or clinically. I’m going to “stick to principle” and work as the Alexander teacher that I am.

Not our postural habits, nor our movements habits per se, (though they are part of the picture), but our habits of life, these are the habits we are attempting to unearth, and bring into the light of day, to be seen, felt, and known, accepted, and resolved. This is, for me, profoundly humbling work, both personally and as a teacher. Sometimes I wonder if I’m making any progress at all. I wonder if I will ever really be able to live and teach Alexander’s work. Forty years later, I begin to understand Marj when she would say, “I really don’t know how to teach this work.”

I really don’t.

Not knowing has for me become a good thing. It keeps me questioning, as you are questioning. It keeps me experimenting. It keeps the work fresh and alive in my soul, as it is in yours.

Let’s keep going.

Yours,

Bruce

It’s a bit embarrassing. But I will tell you anyway.

It still thrills me when I post something and a few hundred people, dispersed around the world, read and appreciate what I have to say. Places I’ve never been like, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, or Peru, or Latvia, Estonia, Iceland, Belarus, or even Mongolia.

So…

Let it be known, I am officially declaring my availability on the off chance someone in a country other than my own would like me to come to their country to teach.

Let me be more specific.

In the beginning of each July, and then again at the end of each October, I am free to teach somewhere in Western or Eastern Europe.

In the beginning of each May, I am free to teach in Australia, New Zealand, or the Far East.

And, each June or September, I am free to teach in North, Central, or South America.

If you are from a country you assume would be absolutely impossible for me to visit, ask anyway. I would do my best to find a way.

Now, to be even more specific.

Having taught movement arts for 50 years, (Oh my God, really!) this is what I have to give…

For The General Public

I introduce people to the work of F.M. Alexander as inspired through Marjorie Barstow, my primary mentor, the first person formally certified by Alexander to teach his work, and with whom I studied for 16 years.

I also introduce people to the Fertman Fundamentals, movements founded upon the essential principles within the Alexander Technique, Tai Chi Chu’an, Aikido, Argentine Tango, and Japanese Tea Ceremony, (Chanoyu).

My work lives in the space where body and being, movement and meaning, and the sensory and the sacred meet.

For Trainees and Teachers Of The Alexander Technique

Passing On The Teachings Of Marjorie L. Barstow

Most people in the Alexander world attribute two pedagogical contributions to Marjorie Barstow – teaching in groups, and working in activity.

Few, outside of those of us who worked directly with Marj, remember her for how extraordinary her hands were, how she was able to trigger “the true and primary movement” effortlessly and dramatically, so everyone watching could see it as plan as day. I made a vow not to stop until I had hands that were as sensitive and as skillful as Marj’s. Though I do not imitate how Marj used her hands, (as Marj did not imitate how Alexander used his), I can honestly say, that after 40 years my hands are as sensitive and skillful as Marj’s hands were. I have kept my promise.

That doesn’t mean, however, my job is over. Sure, I’ve been passing on this tactual wisdom for a long time now, but I’m a mere 63, quite young as far as Alexander elders go. Alexander didn’t start formally training teachers until he was my age. I met Marj when she was 75. Hopefully, there are many students I have yet to meet.

The story goes that once there was a little girl who when asked by her mom, “Dear, what piece of this cherry pie would you like?” replied, “I’d like the whole pie. The whole pie is the best piece.”

Marj held an important piece of the Alexander pie. Marj is gone, but she gave a few of us her recipe before she left.

I’d be happy to serve you.

The Art of Introducing The Alexander Technique In A Group

This could not possibly be true. (But it is.) Estimating conservatively, I have taught over 1000 intro workshops in the Alexander Technique, and have, through my hands, given over 15,000 people a direct kinesthetic experience of Alexander’s work.

I’ve learned a thing or two. Just as Marj gave us her contributions, many people tell me, unmistakably, that introducing Alexander’s work is one of mine. There’s a framework that I’ve evolved for introducing Alexander’s work to a group that’s easy to learn, leaving you free to insert the content you wish to impart.

Introducing the technique can be intimidating for a lot of Alexander teachers. Knowing this simple structure makes it a whole lot easier.

Alexander’s Directions – The Unabridged Version

Alexander’s directions are a short hand for a startling beautiful, moving constellation within us, a subtle, powerful mobile of somatic support and freedom.

Kinesthetically contemplating Alexander’s understanding of human directionality has been, for me, a joyful obsession. Slowly, over 44 years, I’ve discerned inherent patterns of connection and organization. Alexander’s directions point to an internal blueprint, both elaborate and simple in design. At moments along my way, I’ve had almost revelatory kinesthetic visions of this blueprint. Through various directional models, Helical, Spherical, Spatial, Imagistic, and Anatomical, I’ve been able to help Alexander trainees and teachers “see” and touch this pattern, making the invisible, visible.

For the sake of expediency, Alexander’s directions can lead to over simplification. “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler,” Einstein said.  Alexander trainees and teachers, from all the various traditions within our community, have found these directional models enlightening, and more importantly, imminently practical and effective.

We were driving home from yet another introductory workshop in the Alexander Technique. Marj looked a little sad. She was 88. Her osteoporosis was getting worse. I asked her what she was thinking. She said, “ Bruce, one person can only contribute so much.” She was thinking about what she had done inside of the work, over her lifetime. I told her what she had done that was so important: evolving her own language for the work, her own way of using her hands, making the work more visible, more practical, more accessible, bringing a naturalness back into the work, teaching in activity, in groups, inspiring so many people…

Marj didn’t say anything. Then about a minute later she said, “And Bruce, what will your contributions be?”  I told her I didn’t know yet.

But, as usual, Marj got me wondering. “What will my contributions be?”  Now, I think I’ve got some idea.

So, if you are one of these people who enjoy what I write, I can tell you that English is my third language. Touch is my first, and movement my second. I don’t teach as well in my third language. Teaching through touch and movement are my most effective ways of communicating what I have come to understand about people. This is why am I being so bold as to invite you to invite me to your country, and into your community.

The best way to contact me is through email at bf@brucefertman.com or through Facebook, or by calling me, (May through September) at 575.638.5005.

Yours,

Bruce Fertman

http://peacefulbodyschool.com/about-2/testimonials/

DaVinci’s Sensus Communis

There are three senses most of us know little about.  They’re rarely acknowledged or consciously cultivated. They’re vital to us and we could not live without them. They’re senses that tell us more about ourselves than about the world. We learn hardly anything about them in school, not even their names. Perhaps we don’t know much about them because, long ago, many religions began to belittle the body, sometimes to the point of perceiving the body as vile, even demonic. The spirit and the body were divorced.  The spirit was higher and holy, the body lower and lowly. The spirit was etherial and eternal, the body material and transitory. That which was material was of less worth, soulless, and those who took care of and nurtured the material world also were of less worth, and therefore subject to exploitation.

Perhaps we don’t know much about these three senses because our modern world is greatly influenced by the scientific model, which often concerns itself, brilliantly so, with the observation, predictability, and control of external nature. As for arriving at objective knowledge of subjective experience, science finds itself on shakier ground.  To add to the confusion, secular society has virtually deified what I refer to as “the cosmetic body”, encouraging a preoccupation with how we look. This draws attention away from appreciating how our bodies work. The cosmetic body distracts us from noticing and feeling what our real bodies do for us, how devoted they are to us, how they continually serve us, how they do everything within their power to keep us alive.

Our institutions of learning lack the knowledge and the sophistication needed to educate our children about how their bodies work, how to take care of them, how to use them, how to respect them, and how to love them. Fortunately, as adults, we can choose to round out our education.

The three senses I have spent a lifetime studying, the intrapersonal senses, are the kinesthetic sense, proprioception, and the tactile sense. These senses tell us about where we are, and how it feels to us to be doing what we are doing, as we are doing it. Neurologists and physical, speech, and occupational therapists know a good bit about these senses, because when these senses are impaired, like when a person has a major stroke, or a severe spinal injury, everyone knows life is going to get seriously challenging. People get acutely disoriented, often depressed. They can’t do a lot of things they took for granted, like knowing where their limbs are, or being able to lift an arm, or hold a fork, or speak, or balance.  Neurologists and therapists will then work, as best they can, to restore these senses. God bless them for what they do, day in and day out.

We are taught that touch is one of the five senses that tell us about the world. This is true. But it has a dual function. Touch tells us both about the world and about ourselves, because all touch is mutual, 100% of the time. The fact that we perceive ourselves as touching things in the world, without sensing that whatever we are touching is touching us back, (giving us information about ourselves), is due to how we are educated, to the almost exclusive value we place on the external world to the neglect of  intrapersonal life. Touch is our unifying sense, the sense of togetherness, of closeness, of intimacy, of connection, of kinship with the world, of union and communion.

So, what would happen if we took people with adequate tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive senses, and trained these senses to function at exceptionally high levels, at extraordinarily high levels? What if these senses became, accurate, reliable, open, refined, awakened? How would we experience the world? What would it feel like to be alive?

What if we then trained people to be able to simultaneously use those senses that tell them about themselves; kinesthesia, proprioception, and touch, with those senses that tell them about the world: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch? What if all the “inlets” were open?

…for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this Age.

William Blake

What if we could create sensory consonance within ourselves? What if we could become synesthetes? What if we did discover what DaVinci longed to discover, the Senses Communis, the union of the senses, the seat of the soul?

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to us as it is… infinite.

William Blake

As Alexander teachers, let us not aim too low. As important as bodies are, as debilitating as bad backs can be, let us remember the breadth, the width of Alexander’s work. Let’s take this task upon ourselves, and educate ourselves accordingly.

Photo: Holly Sweeny

The Gift Given

- In Memory of Marjorie Barstow

Marj didn’t teach us what she did. She showed us what she did, over and over again. We experienced the results of what she did. We walked away, mysteriously transformed, hearing Marj say, “Think about that.”

That was it. No instruction. No words of advice. Sentences were rarely comprised of more than five words. We hung on to her quips.

It’s not a position. It’s a movement.

There’s nothing to get; there’s only something to lose.

You’re all trying to do something, and that something is your habit.

It’s just a little bit of nothing.

This is not complicated. It’s your habits that are complicated. This is too simple for you.

No pushy. No pully.

No especially anything.

There are three kinds of strange: good strange, bad strange, and crazy strange.

If you’re up because you’re afraid to be down, you’re not up.

At some point you have to say, I’m tired of hurting myself.

Can you leave yourself alone?

Through her hands, Marj let us know what was possible without major surgery. As if she was an eagle, she’d swoop us up and sweep us to the top of the mountain so we could observe the world from a vista, unknown.

Before we knew it, we had slide back into the foothills. What we felt was how far we had regressed. What we often failed to notice was that, each time, we regressed less. Step by step we were walking our way up that mountain. There was space, and it was vast. Our eyes were opening. The air was fresh and clean.

Marj was clear about us having to walk our own walk. She did not baby us. It was not in her nature. Those of us who, through Marj’s inspiration, turned ourselves into teachers found our individual paths up that mountain. Along the way we developed our own way of walking, had our own revelations, figured out how to best use our hands, hone our language, sharpen our seeing, refine our kinesthesia. We developed our own pedagogy. Our tradition was one of originality.

Each of us saw something in Marj that was latent within us. We saw in her our potential, what we valued, what we aspired toward, what we most needed. An educator par excellence, she educed from us that which was longing to come out. Like a skilled midwife, she led the gifted child within us out into the light of day. We had to do our own labor, but she was there to see us through.

If I were to choose three values of Marj’s that I want most to see kept alive and passed on to other Alexander teachers they would be – Delicacy, Naturalness, and Movement.

Delicacy

Delicacy is a tricky word. It has multiply meanings. It can mean carefully, which was not what Marj meant when she used the word delicately, which she did countless times in a day of teaching. She meant extraordinarily fine, texturally and structurally, like a spider’s web, strong, flexible, spacious, patterned, and yet delicate. She meant delicate like the scent of sweet alyssum, the faintest of pastels, the softest of breezes.

Delicacy also means something rare and delicious, something special.

Using the word delicacy was Marj’s way of bypassing the doing/non-doing conundrum. We’re after something that is not a doing and not a non-doing. It’s in between doing and non-doing. Or it’s both doing and non-doing. That’s getting closer. You see what I mean? Hmm….language.

Marj observed that often students who were working with the idea of not doing, only thinking, were not changing, not moving, not releasing into greater freedom, but subtly holding themselves still, one foot slightly on the break, afraid of forcing it.

With these students you’d hear Marj say something like, “Move. Why don’t you move? Don’t be afraid to move. No movement, no change.”

Then the next person she’d work with would be a person who was moving with too much force, and you’d hear Marj say something like, “Ehhh, wait a minute. You’re pushing from here, pointing the tip of her index finger on the center of the person’s sternum. No pushy. Ehhh, wait a minute. Now, you’re pulling from here, lightly touch the sides of the person’s neck. No pully. Can’t you just ever so delicately follow my hands this way?”

Marj would say what she had to say to coax a person into the realm of delicacy. Delicacy was more important than direction for Marj, perhaps more important than anything. Nothing real could happen without it. No matter what you did, if you did it within the realm of delicacy, well, that was a beginning.

When I teach I rarely use the word delicately unless I am role-playing Marj, which I love to do. It always gets students smiling. I use phrases like “ever so softly can you”, or “without any effort see what happens if you…I talk about deep softness, powerful softness, softer than softness.  The meaning and feeling behind words change from generation to generation. I use words that work for my students, now.

Marj’s delicacy was like the feel of air, like space itself. Deep softness  feels like water. You can put your hand right through it, there is substance to it, but a substance yielding and fluid. Water can take the form of a droplet hanging from the tip of a leaf, and it can take the form of a one hundred foot wave rising over an entire village. Both are soft. Both are fluid and moving. Power and delicacy are not mutually exclusive.

The realm of delicacy, that’s where our work lives. And only there.

Naturalness

Naturalness is the absence of artificiality. You can’t be natural, just as you can’t be confident. Confidence is the absence of fear. You can’t make yourself relax. But you can learn to release unnecessary tension. You can’t be yourself, but you can be less of what you are not. Absence. Presence through absence. You can’t be present. Presence is the quieting, the falling away of distraction and contraction.

So to understand naturalness, we have to understand artificiality. In the Alexander world artificiality has a certain look to it. When I was at the 3rd International Congress for The Alexander Technique in Engelberg, I overheard a conversation. “Do you know anything about the group that’s here?” “Not really, but it looks like they are here because there’s something wrong with their necks.” A good actor once said to me, “I can spot an Alexander teacher from a mile away. And then when I see them sit down, it’s a dead giveaway.”

Marj’s pedagogy was partly predicated on eradicating artificiality within Alexander’s work. She succeeded to some degree, but not entirely. We are almost programmed to hold on to what we like. So when we experience freedom and naturalness, immediately, we try to hold onto it. And it is this holding onto it that builds artificiality. When Alexander saw a person holding on to the newfound freedom they didn’t want to lose, sometimes he’d go over to them, put his hands on their shoulders and jiggle them about, telling them to give it up, to let it go. When Marj saw us all trying to hard, she’d say, “Why don’t you all just have a good slump?”

How can we hold a moonbeam in our hands? We can’t.

Marj perceived this look of artificiality in many Alexander teachers when they were working through Alexander’s procedures. I think she loved those procedures. She taught through them for many, many years. And then one day, she didn’t.

In the late 1960’s, Marj had been invited to Southern Methodist University to teach in their Performing Arts Department. She packed her big blue suitcase, put it in the trunk of her old Plymouth, and drove down to Texas. When she got there, the director of the program told her there were about 50 or so students who wanted to work with her. Clearly, it was going to be impossible for her to give individual lessons. She was forced to work with all these kids in a group. When she got in front of this wild horde of hippies, Marj knew that having them all watch her get someone in and out of a chair was not going to work. So she said, what do all of you like to do? These freewheelers were into juggling and circus arts, into acting, dancing, stage combat, playing music. Marj thought it would be a lot more engaging for them if they watched each other doing what they did. After all, they were performers. And so it began.

What Marj saw was that these kids were getting free and more organized within what they were doing, and it was all looking pretty natural. At the same time it was freeing Marj up too.

It was a beginning, a way of working that she pursued and refined for 27 years with the goal of bringing more naturalness into Alexander’s work, to ridding it of its ritualistic formality, its starchiness, to making it extraordinarily ordinary. She passed this ball onto me, and I caught it and have been running with it for 38 years. That’s 65 years of research. We’re getting somewhere.

Movement

Marj was a gymnast as a kid, and later studied modern dance with some of its pioneers: the Duncan Dancers, Ted Shawn, and Ruth Saint Denis. She rode horses all through her life, well into her 80’s. She loved to move. I remember seeing a photo of Marj in her 20’s seemingly floating in the air, high above the ground, suspended at the top of a high leap, and under her the inscription, The Wild One. In the photo her body was masculine, strong and muscular. Most of us met Marj in her 70’s and 80’s and saw a slender, petite, slow moving, slow speaking, elderly woman with an intense sparkle in her eyes.

After graduating from Alexander’s first teacher training program, Marj actively taught the Alexander Technique for eight years along side of A.R. Alexander, assisting him in Boston and Philadelphia. When Marj’s father died, she moved back to Lincoln, Nebraska to help run her family ranch. For over twenty years Marj rarely taught the Alexander Technique. She lived the life of a rancher. Marj told me that it was only after years of hard, physical labor that she really learned how to bring the technique into her everyday life. Marj was profoundly physical.

This brought something dynamic and practical into Marj’s work. She could see movement. She knew what good coordination looked like, in people and in animals. She trained world famous quarter horses. Alexander too was an avid rider, and began riding as a child. I think this contributed to their subtle ability to lead movement without force.

Marj preferred Alexander’s earlier description of “a true and primary movement in each and every activity,” rather than his later reference to the Primary Control. This inner control was a result of an effortless movement that reorganized the head in relation to the torso, and the head and torso to the limbs. So Marj focused, pretty much exclusively, on this primary movement.

Often she’d say, “It’s a movement.” And it was this movement, and what resulted from it, that we watched six hours a day, day after day, until we knew it inside and out. We saw that it had a particular quality, (ever so delicate), that it initiated from a particular area, (from the relationship between the head and neck), that it had a sequence, (there was a kind of rapid rippling response as a result of this subtle movement initiated between the neck and head), but that this rippling was so rapid, as to look and feel simultaneous with the initiation of this primary movement, hence Marj’s phrase, “the head leads and the whole body immediately follows.” And Alexander’s phrase, “altogether, one after the other.” So we discerned a particular timing inside of the sequencing. It was a bit like when you drop a stone into the calm surface of a pond, and rings form rippling out, one after the other and all of them widening and expanding at the same time. Then this primary movement had particular directionality; the head seemed to float up, rising like a boat resting upon the water as the tide slowly rose. Then we saw that the head had this tiny tipping motion forward, a rotational movement on a horizontal axis that happened at the same time the tide was rising, which we could see was the spine decompressing. As all this was happening we saw an omni-directional expansion of the body as a whole, almost like a sphere inflating in every direction, an overall increase in three dimensional volume, like bread dough rising, the whole body filling into its rightful space. At the same time we could see a gathering, strengthening movement within the expanding movement. It was similar to the dynamics of a vortex funnel, to centripetal and centrifugal force, the same force moving in opposite directions, one up and out and the other in and down. Maybe this was why Marj didn’t use the terms lengthening and widening, because of their two-dimensional connotation. Maybe this is why she spoke of the whole body rather emphasizing the back. She saw and we saw that everything was filling out: the back, the front, and the sides. Something was happening to the whole body in its entirety.

And out of this “true and primary movement”, this “easing up,” this “little bit of nothing,” we witnessed changes not only in the body, but in the person. We saw seemingly opposite qualities working in harmony. As the true and primary movement began to happen we beheld the person before us as stable and mobile, light and substantial, relaxed and ready, peaceful and vigorous, gathered and expansive, soft and powerful, open and focused, unified and articulate.

Essentially, we saw beauty. We saw people unveiled, people wholly themselves, authentic, honest. We saw integrity. It moved us. It moved some of us so much we decided that this was a good way to spend the rest of our lives.

This is Marj’s legacy to us. The gift given…the gift received… the gift given…the gift received…the gift given… from generation to generation.

Most people don’t know I’m “half Korean.” They don’t know I spent hours feeding and staring into my Korean babies faces. They grew up feeling they looked like me, and I grew up feeling I looked like them. They became Caucasian, and I became Asian. Years back, I taught annually in Korea at Music Camps for kids. I felt right at home. Everyone looked like my kids, like me. It’s great to be invited back to teach again, this time for the general public. Thank you Sungwan Won for inviting me back to one of my homelands.

According to Aristotle, the psyche, (meaning soul, breath, animating spirit, mind), is the form of the body, in that it forms the body, is the origin of its movements, and is the body’s final aim and purpose. The psyche sculpts the body, yet is itself without body, and therefore cannot be located in, or reduced to, a particular organ, or cell, or gene.

James Hillman, in The Force Of Character, compares the body and the soul to a sock.

Take, for instance, your favorite pair of wool socks. You get a hole in a heel and darn it. Then you get a hole in the big toe – and you darn that too. Soon the darned holes are more of the sock than the original wool. Eventually, the whole darned sock is made of different wool. Yet, it’s the same sock.

A human body is like that sock, sloughing off its cells, changing its fluids, fermenting utterly fresh cultures of bacteria as others pass away. Your material stuff through time becomes altogether different, yet you remain the same you. There seems to be an innate image that does not forget your basic paradigm and that keeps you in character, true to yourself.

If what outlasts the wool is the form, then a preoccupation with physical decay – with where the sock is wearing thin – misses a crucial point. Sure, the sock is showing holes, and stitching up its weak places keeps it functional. But our minds might more profitably be thinking about the mystery of this formal principle that endures through material substitutions.

There comes a time when we look into the mirror and wonder who that old person is staring back at us. It’s as if our bodies no longer reflect who we are. They don’t express who we feel ourselves to be, internally. There’s a distinct and disturbing mismatch. There’s a sense of being estranged from our own bodies. Then it hits us and the question arises, Yes, I need this body, but am I this body?

Ultimately, the body is not about the body. The physical is not exclusively about itself, not for humans. The soul is the body’s final aim and purpose. There lies within us a metaphysical dimension that seems not to wither with time. To the contrary, the soul seems to mature, to evolve, to become ever more vital. And thus, the mismatch. Outside we are becoming stiff, inside more flexible, outside, weaker, inside, stronger, outside, ragged, inside, refined.

As we become older the body can do less, but can empathize more, and not just with people. The senses become mediums of communion. Boundaries blur. It’s as if we become a host for the world around us. We open our sensory doors and welcome the world in; we let everyone and everything fill us. The emptier we become, of ourselves, the more completely the world can enter and fill us, sometimes to the point of total identification with the world at large. No longer identified with ourselves, we’re overcome with a joyful neutrality. We’re free.

Shortly before he died, Carl Jung wrote, I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about…

When Lao-tzu says: ‘All are clear, I alone am clouded,’ he expresses how I now feel. Yet there is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, essences of people. The more uncertain I have grown about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.”

When my dog Amy was old, so old that she could not walk, was incontinent, could not hear, or see, I still cared for her because when I held her in my arms and carried her out into the yard and lay her down on the green grass where she could feel the breeze blow through her fur, I knew her body was doing what it was intended to do, to bring joy to her soul.

Yes, the day came to put Amy down. She died in my arms, and the moment she did, she was gone. Her body had done its job, and done it well. Anyone who has held someone and felt the moment of their dying knows that a person is not their body. In that moment, immediately, the body becomes unreal, like a wax figure of someone who once was and will never be again.

So let us remember, especially as our bodies begin to falter, why we have them, why they outlast their beauty and their skillfulness. Bodies last beyond their usefulness to give us as much time as possible to reach their final aim and purpose; the maturation of soul, the culmination of character.

Eva with her Alexander Alliance Quilt.

For Eva’s family and friends, and for the Alexander Alliance,

As the years go by, it becomes ever clearer that the Alexander Alliance is more than a place where people learn about the Alexander Technique.

In 1982, Martha and I had no idea the Alliance would become a haven of deep support and love for so many people, in so many ways, over so many years. In a community the size of the Alliance something is always happening – relationships beginning, others ending, someone gets a new job, and another is losing theirs, someone’s life seems finally to be coming together, while someone else’s life appears to be falling apart.  A baby’s on the way into the world, and at the same time someone’s life is coming to an end.

But no matter what is happening to us, there will be people close by who will celebrate with us, or comfort us. There will be someone near who we can turn to, talk to, confide in, that will do their best to help us out.

When Eva Ehrenberg came into the school I remember her as a gentle, though frightened person, a person who felt wounded and vulnerable. A lone, scared deer in a dense woods. But gradually, almost imperceptibly, Eva began to change. By the time she graduated, four years later, Eva was lighter, less fearful, less fragile, willing to try new things. She laughed more, worried less. I remember how, when Eva first joined the school, she refused to practice tai chi, due to it’s martial underpinnings. It was against her non-violent philosophy. But on the last days at the school, she changed her mind, and started learning the form and was loving it. She’d become more flexible, more open, in a word, happier.

The journey each person takes through the Alliance is a different one. It’s not always the journey we expect, but it’s the journey life deems we need.

For many of us, even after we graduate, the Alliance remains a real part of our lives. It did for Eva. The Alliance helped carry Eva through until the end of her days. And in so doing, the Alliance became stronger.

Thank you Eva for being a part of us,

Bruce Fertman for The Alexander Alliance Community School

Last week, in Seoul, Korea, my workshop theme was, The Physiology Of The Human Spirit.

Leonardo daVinci set out to discover the seat of the soul. No small task. He explored an area of the body known, in his time, as the sensus communis. Here, he plots the site of the sensus communis at the intersection of upright and diagonal lines seen within the tilted plane, at a point that marks the proportional centre of the skull.

DaVinci’s Sensus Communis

Leonardo saw the sensus communis as a point of convergence, a center from which all voluntary action was controlled – everything from running, to walking, to lifting an arm, to singing a song, to the smallest details of expression like smiling, or raising an eyebrow. For daVinci, the sensus communis was the locus of the human soul. Leonardo writes, “The soul seems to reside, to be seated in that part where all the senses meet, called the sensus communis, and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. Rather it is entirely in one part.”

The work, developed by F.M. Alexander seems, almost mysteriously, connected to Leonardo’s insights. But Alexander went a step further. He evolved a way, through touch, of helping others to experience this center in themselves.

Here, in these images, you can see people coming into contact with their sensus communis, you can see them residing in a place where the soul sits, in peace.

To those who know me and love me, who have helped me over and over again to get to where I am trying to go. Ironically, I am likely to be remembered for my exquisite sense of direction within the body, and for my utter and complete lack of direction within the world around me. At last, I’ve found a kindred spirit, also “spatially dyslexic.” Paul Auster writes:

“Always lost, always striking out in the wrong direction, always going around in circles. You have suffered from a life long inability to orient yourself in space, and even in New York, the easiest of cities to negotiate, the city where you have spent the better part of your adulthood, you often run into trouble. Whenever you take the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan (assuming you have boarded the correct train and are not traveling deeper into Brooklyn), you make a special point to stop for a moment to get your bearings once you have climbed the stairs to the street, and still you will head north instead of south, go east instead of west, and even when you try to outsmart yourself, knowing that your handicap will set you going the wrong way and therefore, to rectify the error, you do the opposite of what you were intending to do, go left instead of right, go right instead of left, and still you find yourself moving in the wrong direction, no matter how many adjustments you have made. Forget tramping alone in the woods. You are hopelessly lost within minutes, and even indoors, whenever you find yourself in an unfamiliar building, you will walk down the wrong corridor or take the wrong elevator, not to speak of smaller enclosed spaces such as restaurants, for whenever you go to the men’s room in a restaurant that has more than one dining area, you will inevitably make a wrong turn on your way back and wind up spending several minutes searching for your table. Most other people, your wife included, with her unerring inner compass, seem able to get around without difficulty. They know where they are, where they have been and where they are going, but you know nothing, you are forever lost in the moment, in the void of each successive moment that engulfs you, with no idea where true north is, since the four cardinal points do not exist for you, have never existed for you. A minor infirmity until now, with no dramatic consequences to speak of, but that doesn’t mean a day won’t come when you accidentally walk off the edge of a cliff.”

Paul Auster from Winter Journal

Rilke’s Letter To A Young Poet

I just recently graduated from an Alexander Technique Teacher Training Course.*  The director spoke of you. During school we watched your video, The Top Ten Myths About The Alexander Technique. I went on to watch your other videos. The myths were exceptionally enlightening. It sparked great conversations during school.

I’m currently starting my own Alexander Technique practice and am always looking to expand my education. I’m also currently returning to college, and in the process of finishing my science degree, as I started it before AT training.   

Do you believe AT can support one fully? Especially just starting out. I’ve had a very slow start and it’s becoming clear that it takes time.

Expanding your education is the best way to build a practice, because the better you become as an Alexander teacher, the more your students talk about you and recommend you to other people. Being able to teach well in groups, as well as individually, makes it possible to get more people interested in you, and in the work. Living in a place where there are universities and performing art departments can help, but it is not essential. Marketing skills are necessary for anyone who has their own business. A bit of charisma goes a long way. You have to love people, and love teaching. Sometimes finding a niche, some group that you are especially qualified to teach, like athletes in your case, distinguishes you from other Alexander teachers. Jeremy Chance, an Alexander teacher here in Japan has given a tremendous amount of thought to this subject. It might be worthwhile to see what you can learn from him. 

I would not hold on to the idea that it takes a long time to get a practice going. That thought might have a way of working against you. More than time, it takes a good strategy, some creativity, some guts, and particular skills. But there is nothing more important then becoming excellent at what you do. And you get good at teaching the Alexander Technique by teaching the Alexander Technique. So finding a way to teach, a lot, is essential to becoming good, and successful.

I landed two half-time positions in university theater departments when i was 28 years old. I sent out 200 resumes across the country. 198 rejections. 2 acceptances. This ensured me students every week, lots of them. I did this for 6 years. That got me off to a good start. But all the while, when I wasn’t teaching, I was studying with Alexander teachers, Tai Chi teachers, Aikido teachers, modern dance teachers, anyone I could learn from.

When I decided I wanted to teach introductory workshops in AT, I went anywhere to do them, even when there were only 3 students and I lost money. I knew I had to practice introducing the work to all kinds of people. I knew I needed to practice, that there was no substitute for practice, and lots of it.

If possible, assist on a training program. The graduates who did this over the years at the Alexander Alliance, and who are doing it now, are the ones who have become, and will continue to become some of the most talented teachers. Keep your heart and mind open to learning from Alexander teachers trained in other Alexander lineages. Marj Barstow, my main mentor, was my second teacher. I didn’t meet her until I had been studying for 5 years. Everything opened up for me when I met her. You never know.

When I first met Marjorie Barstow, I was a poor graduate student majoring in modern dance. What little money I had I spent on education. One night I told Marj that I wanted to be a full time Alexander teacher. That was my dream. I was 26 years old, almost 40 years ago. Marj told me that you can’t make a living as an Alexander teacher. I think she was trying to protect me. Maybe she didn’t want me to be disappointed when my dream fell through. Maybe she didn’t see that the times were changing, that interest was really growing in the Alexander Technique. Maybe she said it because she knew I was the kind of kid who would try to prove her wrong. Marj was tricky.

But I have made a living now as an Alexander teacher for 35 years, and a good living, enough to raise a family, enough to send two kids to college – in America!  And now, when lots of men my age are being forced to retire, I’ve got work, work I love. Every morning I wake up feeling grateful, grateful that I made my way as an Alexander teacher. And of course grateful to Marjorie, and to all my teachers.

So if making a living as an Alexander teacher is what you want, go for it, go for it full out. Give it your best. Don’t quit.

And remember, a successful teacher has many students, but a great teacher has many teachers. Aim for becoming a great teacher. The success will follow.

*For purposes of privacy, I’ve chosen to leave out the name of the training program and the particular graduate who wrote to me.

Carl Rodgers

There’s an advantage in not understanding a word people say. My students for the weekend, all Japanese psychologists, after a good amount of preparation the day before, were getting ready to show me what it’s like for them when they work with their patients. The therapists who would be in the role of the patients had learned a lot about who they were and how they were to behave. One of the therapists works in jails with prisoners. Another goes to homes where depressed teenagers will not come out of their rooms. Another assists in a community center for poor, mentally vulnerable people who can’t find a place in the world. Another for victims devastated by domestic violence and sexual abuse.

I’m not going to know a word you are saying, I tell them. I don’t want to know. I can be of more help to you if I don’t. My job is to track what’s going on somatically, in a silent realm between body and being.

And so it begins….

The Boxer

Yoshie is sitting across from a patient who’s angry, and taking it out on her. I’m standing far away, as I often do, off to the side, in my students blind spot. At some point Yoshie’s torso collapses on the right side, the bottom of her ribs dropping down closer to the top of her pelvis. Her head has shifted over to the right too. She looks concerned. After about thirty seconds, Yoshie shifts her ribs diagonally up and over to the left, this time lifting them up away from the pelvis. She’s over straightening and pulling her neck back, and lowering her chin, appearing wary, perhaps skeptical.

This dropping down to the right, then shifting and pulling up to the left repeats itself several times. Suddenly I see it, a boxer dodging punches, ducking down to the right, pulling back to the left. Yoshie’s doing her best to avoid being hit.

Still in Yoshie’s blind spot I silently walk over, quickly but gently placing one hand over her hands and the other on top of her head as I quietly tell Yoshie to stay there for a minute. (If I don’t place my hands there before I ask a person to stop, invariably they immediately try to correct themselves.) Yoshie’s now frozen, sculpture like, ducking down to the right. Yoshie, this is where you spend a couple hours every day. Now where do you go when your body gets tired of being here? Without any hesitation she pulls up and over to the left. And here is where you spend another couple hours a day. She slowly nods her head. She’s getting it. Yoshie, why do you think you do that? I’ve no idea she says, but I can feel that I do this a lot.

Would you like to know what it looks like to me? Hai, she says. It looks like you’re a boxer dodging punches. I show her her movements with my arms up like a boxer. Then I show her the same movements again with my arms down. Yoshie covers her mouth with her hand, as most Japanese women do, and lets out a big laugh of recognition. She looks, at once, ashamed,  amused and relieved. Okay Yoshie-san, would you like to try something different? Hai, she says. Let’s sit smack in front of this patient. I get her hips back in the chair, get the chair to give her some back support, and bring her into her full stature. She looks about twice the size. Now, see what happens if you decide to look easily but squarely into your patients eyes, and no matter what your patient throws at you, you will remain in front of her, resting inside of this soft, powerful, fullness. Have you decided? Have you made a commitment to yourself? I wait until I can see she has. Looking at the patient I say, okay, let her have it. Everyone is waiting for the patient to explode. Nothing. We continue to wait. Nothing. What’s the matter I ask the patient? I can’t yell at her. She’s right in front of me and I can’t yell at her. She’s a person. I just can’t do it.

The Bead Maker

Kyoko’s working at a community center for poor, mentally troubled people. She walks over to a table where a couple patients are making necklaces. The patient on the right, frustrated, slightly hysterical, asks Kyoko to help her string a tiny bead. Keiko bends way over, rounding her back like a question mark, pulls the string and the bead very close to her eyes, looks over the tops of her glasses, her head just inches away from the patients head, and begins stringing the bead. Kyoko’s totally into what she’s doing, so she doesn’t notice me next to her. Softly, I place one had on the top of her head, the other on her upper back and quietly ask her to just be there for a moment. This is what you do, I say without judgment. Just sense it and take it in. How about we go about this another way? What do you think?  I get a nod, Hai. Consent.

Pull up a chair. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. She rounds over in the chair much the same way as she does when she is standing up. At the same moment, both patients start asking her for help. I can see her panicking and feeling like she’s got to work quickly. Keiko, you’re doing well. Let’s take a little break. Follow my hands. I give a slight impulse around her neck and her spine uncurls. With my hands, I invite her shoulders to open apart, and I ask her just to look at her patients from where she is now. I’m so far away, she says. Well, yes and no, I say. You are sitting at the table with them. You’re on the same level with them. They’re right here. Let’s continue. They both start to talk. Keiko turns to the patient on her left and calmly listens, and looks at the problem. I’m not rushing, Keiko says. When there’s space, there’s time. It just works that way, I say. Let’s continue. The patient on the right is supposed to continually interrupt, but instead she’s just sitting there waiting.  I know I am suppose to give her a hard time, but I can’t do it. I just don’t want to do it.

The Prisoner

Ridiculing Makoto, making snide remarks, the prisoner sits there feeling superior. Makoto looks hurt, weak, helpless. It looks to me like they’re both behind bars, both imprisoned, both locked in their own worlds.

My eyes immediately go to Makoto’s legs, so lifeless. They look like the legs of someone who cannot walk, who hasn’t walked for years. Toes turned inward, knees fallen together, stomach compressed, chest hollowed out, shoulders curled and drooping forward. Her body almost looks like it’s sunken in a wheelchair, but there is no wheelchair. Above her caved in body is a beautiful face. Makoto’s mouth and full lips stand out, literally, pushed gently forward in space, while her eyes seem to recede back. There’s something almost overwhelmingly kind and tender about her. This large, beautiful, expressive face, and below a body deflated, without support, without structure.

It takes about fifteen minutes. Slowly, from the bottom up, I build her structure, as if I’m building a wall. Makoto, this is your left foot. We want it to live on the left side of your body, away from the midline. This is your right foot. It lives on the right side of your body, in another hemisphere. This is East pointing to the left, and this is West pointing to the right. And so it is with your ankles and your lower legs and your knees, living on different sides of the planet, with an immense ocean between them. (In reality her legs are now apart but not far apart, nothing that would draw attention. But for her it feels enormous.) My hands are touching each part of her body as I mention them, as if I am introducing her to her body for the first time. From under your feet up to your knees constitute 25% of your height. These are your knees. They’re the largest joints in your body. They’re huge. These are your thighs, from your knees to your hip joints. They’re big, made up of the most powerful muscles in the body, constituting another 25% of your height. They too live in separate hemispheres with the Pacific Ocean between them. This is your pelvis, sitting bones, hip joints, sacrum, iliac crests. This is your spine, lower back, middle back, upper back, neck, head, the remaining 50% of your height. This is your arm structure, clavicle, scapula, shoulder joints, humerus, ulna, radius, wrists, palms, fingers. Makoto, your outstretched arm structure, from finger tip to finger tip, your wing span, is as wide as you are tall. This is your body. This is the size of your body.

I touch her lips, ever so lightly, with the tip of my index finger. This is your mouth, your lips, and you have them protruding a little in front of your face. I place my other index finger on the corner of her eye. And here are your eyes. Can you feel how they are falling back in relation to your mouth that’s sliding forward? I can see her exact moment of recognition. Such a beautiful moment. The mind connecting to the body. Hai, I feel it. Great. Now this is likely to feel very strange but give it a go. Follow my hands. I guide Makoto’s head, as it seems to rotate around like a ferris wheel. Effortlessly, the mouth circles slightly down and under while the eyes rise up and over the top. I feel like a king on a throne, Makoto says. Not a bad thing, I say. You don’t look like that. You just look like a strong, kind person. Okay, Makoto, I want you to say something to this man, but I don’t want the words to come out of your mouth, I want them to come out of your eyes. Make a decision, and let that decision spread through your whole body, to leave your mouth, without effort, exactly where it is. As soon as Makoto even thinks about saying something I can see her mouth begin to protrude forward. It takes several tries, each time asking her to decide deeply. Let that decision spread through your body as if it were streaming through every vein in your body. I glance at the prisoner and notice that his body no longer looks rebellious. There’s no smirk on his face. Makoto is silent for a while. I can see it. She’s sticking with her decision against a fierce life habit. Then she says something. I don’t know what. But what I do know is that she spoke from a place of compassionate authority. And I do know that, at that moment, the bars were gone, both the therapist and the patients bodies were unlocked. They were free.

And so it went for the remainder of the workshop. After the workshop some of us go out for dinner.  Masako, the organizer of the workshop, tells me that psychotherapy in Japan is primarily founded on the work of Carl Rodgers. Listening and empathy. I smile remembering when I was 25 years old reading, On Becoming A Person, and feeling like Carl Rodgers was my Dad. On every page I could hear his voice talking to me from some deep place of love and kindness. I remember wanting to be like him. And maybe, 40 years later, I have become a little like him, sitting there, seeing the beauty in both therapist and patient, helping them to listen and empathize with their whole bodies, watching them, together, becoming who they really are.

Prepare Yourself

On this particular day, in Japan, in a hospital, I am with physical and speech therapists. I have two days, fourteen hours. Two professors of Physical Therapy invited me because it has become apparent to them that two key elements are missing when it comes to educating physical therapists: how they use their hands, and how they use their bodies, when they are doing their work. They get a lot of theory in school. They learn a lot of specific techniques for a lot of specific problems. But they don’t have a class called Touch 101, or Movement for Physical Therapists 202. They just don’t, and these professors are beginning to wonder why. There’s about 35 therapists in the room, about 7 Alexander teachers. That should work.

It begins.

Georges Cuisenaire, originator of The Silent Way, once said, ‘Don’t prepare your class; prepare yourself.”

That’s primarily what I do, but I also jot down a few ideas. Not many. I scribble them in a notebook, bought at a 100 yen store, a notebook I fill up, don’t revisit, and throw away once it’s full.

What I rely on is being where I am, awake to what is happening, to who walks into the room, to the room itself, and to the unexpected.

Just as I am about to begin, Kenji-sensei stands up and begins to talk. He’s telling his students how he took a four hour train trip to Kanazawa to take a workshop in the Alexander Technique for physical therapists.. There, he had an experience that he did not understand but knew was vitally important to being a good physical therapist. He knew he wasn’t going to figure it out in a weekend workshop. So he decided to organize some workshops for me at his hospital so he could study more. I could see how excited Kenji was about me being at his hospital, about the work, and about sharing it with everyone.

Before I speak, I don’t speak, sometimes for an uncomfortably long time, not uncomfortable for me, but for everyone who is waiting for me to say something. I’m not speaking because I am thinking. Kenji had just given me some new information, and I wanted to use it.

You all have a great role model here, and no doubt you know it, I begin. That’s how you learn, how you keep learning. You do what Kenji does. There’s a lot to learn inside your own profession. For sure. But think of how much knowledge exists outside your profession. Kenji went outside of the PT world to learn something new. He’s a very busy man, but he made the time, he spent a lot of money to do it. A four hour Shinkansen trip is expensive. When Kenji-san was there, he stood out to me because he was 120% awake, watching me like a hawk. He was asking questions, something that, inside a room of 60 people, not many Japanese people do. Kenji-san came to learn something, and he did.

He knew he had to study more, so he organized workshops where he lived and worked. If you haven’t noticed, Kenji is excited about learning. So that’s how it works. If you want to get a lot out of this weekend, you now know how to do it.

The stage was set. Everyone was awake.

I Don’t Know

The Alexander Technique is not a technique, not in the same way you guys learn techniques for working with adhesive capsulitis (frozen shoulders or in Japan as it is known, the 50 year old shoulder), or hemiplegia (severe strokes), or dysphagia (swallowing disorders). The Alexander Technique is not a technique for anything particular.

The Alexander Technique is a field of study. It’s an inquiry into human integration, into what integration is, what restores it, and what disturbs it. It’s a foundational study. Integration underlies everything you do. The more of it you have, the easier it is to do what you’re doing.

So what is integration? You PTs help people a lot with strength, flexibility, and coordination, super important for everyone. Integration includes all of these but is, at the same time, something distinct from them. For example, a baby can scream holy hell for an hour and not lose its voice. Why is that? Why can’t a grown up do that? A baby will reach for something, but never over-reach for something. They will only extend their arms or legs so far and no farther. Why is that? Babies will work for a long time figuring out how to pick up a pea on their plate but will never distort their hands or bodies while they’re doing it. They just won’t distort themselves. They are somehow prewired, preprogrammed to remain whole, all of a piece, a flexible unit. That’s integration.

So why do we lose it? I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things. How do we lose it? I don’t know that either, but I’ve got a few theories. What I observe is that in the process of our becoming coordinated, something happens. At some point we’ve got to learn how to button our shirt, tie our shoes, eat with hashi, (chopsticks). We’ve got to learn how to speak, how to ride a bicycle, how to write kanji. Did you ever see little kids trying to write kanji? There you can see it. Children disintegrating. Their tongues are sticking out of the corner of their mouths, they’re not breathing, their heads are hanging down, spines bent and twisted, little hands gripping their pencils for dear life. And the more pressure around learning, the more felt fear, the more the body just falls apart. There’s no preventing it entirely, no matter how great your parents are, or your teachers, or your culture. Sooner or later it’s going to happen, to everyone, more or less. The fall from grace. Somehow, we’ve got to find our way back to the garden.

Bulldogging

Have you ever been to a rodeo? (I’ve now moved from standing in a big circle with everyone, into the center of that circle.) I haven’t, but sometimes when you walk into a bar in New Mexico, you might look up at the TV and see one. A rodeo’s a contest where cowboys and cowgirls show their skill at riding broncos, roping calves, and wrestling steers. These are practical skills ranchers need in order to roundup cattle, to count them, or brand them. (I’ve chosen this example for the PTs because its profoundly physical, strongly kinesthetic. It’s also exotic, and people like that.)

It so happens that Marjorie L. Barstow, the first person formally certified to teach the Alexander Technique, and my mentor for 16 years, took Frank Pierce Jones, a man she helped train to become an Alexander teacher, a classics professor at Brown University, an East Coast intellectual, a man who would never find himself at a western rodeo, except for on this day, when Marj wanted to show him what the Alexander Technique was all about.

Okay Frank, in a minute a big, mean, steer is going to explode out of that gate, and out of the gate next to it, a cowboy on a horse is going to burst out, and that cowboy is going to do his best to lean over, grab that steers horns, dig his heels into the dirt, and take that steer down. And that steer is going to do his best not to let him.

The gates open. Frank watches. He sees the cowboy lean over, take the horns, snap them back, jam the back of the steers skull into his massive neck while twisting that neck to the side and bringing that steers head to the ground. The steer, unable to stay on his legs, crashes to the ground.

What did you see Frank? Not too much. It all happened so fast, Frank says. Keep watching Frank. They watched, and as they watched, little by little Marj got Frank to see exactly what was happening. You see Frank, the cowboy snaps the steers head back, and jams it into his neck. That compresses his entire spine. Now the steer can’t breathe. His front legs begin to buckle. His pelvis tilts under. His hind legs can’t get any power, any traction. That steer’s got nothing left. The man’s in control now.

There’s one last cowboy to go. Looking down at him as he sits on his horse, Frank can see that this cowboy doesn’t look well. He’s slouched back in the saddle, the horse’s head is dropped way down. Maybe he was out late. Maybe he drank more than he should have. The gates swing open, the steer gets the jump on him, the cowboy catches up, leans over, grabs the horns but can’t seem to snap the head back. Rather than the horns going back, Frank sees them rotating slightly forward, the neck looks enormous, the steers ribs are widening as air fills his huge lungs. The steers body seems to be getting longer, his front legs are dropping under him, his pelvis is out, his tail’s up, his haunches powerful, his back hooves driving him forward like a train. Meanwhile, the cowboy looks like a flag flapping the the wind. This time around, the steer’s in charge.

Now that’s the way of it, that’s how it works, that’s what we’re after, Marj says. We’ve got that kind of organized power in us too. We’re just interfering with it all the time. That’s what Alexander figured out.

And that’s what I mean, I say to the class, when I use the word integration. I mean that naturally organized freedom and power that’s in all of us.

I can see I’ve got everyone’s attention. I’ve been telling this story as much with my body as with my words. I see that everyone’s been sitting for a while, so I say, Okay, enough sitting. Why don’t you stand up. The second they start to stand up I tell them to stop and just stay where they are. Don’t move a muscle.

Where are your horns? I mean, if you had horns? Are they rotating forward or are they rotating backwards? My eyes see one guy who’s head is pretty jammed into his neck. I walk over, and kneel down on one knee in front of him. I invite everyone to come closer so that they can see us. I scoop his head lightly into my hands the way my grandmother would do to me when she greeted me, and I gently tilt his imaginary horns forward. His spine surges up. Everyone can see the power filling his body. That’s the steer, I say. I guide his weight over his sit bones, then over his feet, and without any effort, he floats to a stand. How was that, I said? Smiling, dazed, he says, Zen zen chigau! Totally different! I floated up without any effort. Well, I say, that’s what happens when the cowboy is off your back.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. We’ve all got a steer inside of us. I call that your mammal body. And we all have a cowboy inside of us. That’s your acquired body. And sometimes our acquired body works against our mammal body. There’s a conflict in there. We’re fighting against ourselves. And it can get dangerous. The steer can get hurt, and the cowboy too.

Now our cowboy can’t take us down by our horns because we don’t have horns, and besides, the cowboy is not outside of us. So how does the cowboy within us bring us down? Well, instead of coming at us from on top of our heads, he comes at us from below our heads, from our necks. It’s like he’s hiding there inside our neck, looking up, reaching up, and pulling our skull back and pressing it down into our spines. That’s not the only place where he hangs out, but it’s definitely one of his favorite places from which to operate.

Here’s what’s very cool. Our mammal body has got a lot of energy in it. And our cowboy body does too. Now if they’re going at each other, they’re using up all of our energy, and that’s the energy we want to be using to get on with our lives. If we can get the energy of the mammal body and the energy of the cowboy body to harmonize, to work together toward a common purpose, if we can get them both working for us, not busy fighting against each other, then just imagine how much energy that would free up.

And that’s why it felt so effortless standing up. Not only was the cowboy off your back, the cowboy was actually helping you get up! So you’re going from having almost no available energy to stand up, to having a surplus of energy to stand up. Now, that’s exciting. Imagine what it would feel like to work with patients with all that organized energy, what it would be like to move through your day like that.

Over the next half hour, I do this with about ten students. I make a point of always catching a person unaware that their horns are pulling back. Don’t move, I tell her. You’re perfect just like that. Okay, I’m going to be the cowboy. I place my hands around her head, but this time I put a slight pressure with my little fingers against the back of her neck, and take her more into her “disintegration pattern”, gently getting her throat to bulge forward and down, which immediately tilts her head back, collapses her chest, and tucks her pelvis under.

Now, I’m going to have a change of heart, a conversion. I’m a cowboy who decided to change his ways. My new mission is to free the steer, free its power. Finding the potential spring in her spine, I guide her back into her “integration pattern.” (I don’t use any Alexander jargon. I find I don’t need it.)

Supporting teachers, I call out!  It’s time to give everyone this experience! I can sense a bit of panic in the air. I know what they’re afraid of. Don’t be afraid of taking people down, I say to them. Do it. It’s good for them. It’s good for everyone. We want to get springy down there. When you buckle a person’s neck forward and press their heads gently into their spines, it’s an intelligent response for the body to go into a collapse pattern. If the spine is too rigid and can’t do that, there’s a problem. So take people down, softly, and get them to know what’s happening down there. Lead them down in a way that makes their spine springy. Load the spring. Fill it with potential energy. Then take the pressure off it and let it spring back up. Get to work. Have fun.

By the end of the first morning we are off to a good start.  Everyone’s got a clear idea of what the works about, what the workshop is about. They’re beginning to be able to see what the cowboy within looks like, and what the steer within looks like. They’ve all felt the power of their mammal body when the cowboy is working for it, and the weakness of the mammal body when the cowboy is working against it.

Their Own Story

I want to tell them about their own countries story of the ox and the ox herder, about the boy who finds the wild ox and tries to tame it, and has a real hard time of it, how they both end up exhausted. I want to tell them how, if they just hang in there for forty or so more years, the ox and the ox herder will come to trust one another, like one another. The fighting will stop. But I decide not to go there.

Have a good lunch. Get some fresh air. Move around. Rest a bit. Come back ready to work.

Doumo arigatou gosaimashita, I say, bowing, grateful after all these years to still be teaching, that there are young people out there interested in what I know.  Doumo arigatou gosaimashita, everyone repeats, happy and energetic.

Riding The Bull Home

from

The Zen Oxherd Pictures

Mounting the ox, slowly I return homeward.

The voice of my flute floats through the evening air.

Tapping my foot to the pulsating harmony of the world around me,

In rhythm with the beating of my own heart.

O mata se. Thank you so much for waiting. I’m really sorry I am so late. You say this, straight away, if you arrive late in Japan. Actually, you say it even if you arrive on time. Because if you arrive on time, you are still late by Japanese standards. You are only not late in Japan, if you are 15 minutes early. Then you can just say hello.

Given this cultural mandate, one can begin to understand seeing a trash collector running to get a trash can, running back to the truck with the trash can, dumping the trash into the truck, running back to return the trash can, running back to the truck and, as the truck is in motion, jumping onto the trash truck only to get to the next house where he jumps off the trash truck and begins running once again, this continuing for roughly 10 hours. 

No wonder my friend Dr. Tanaka who owns and runs a large orthopedic clinic, a gifted and loved doctor, rushes continually. He cannot seem to keep up with the number of people, everyday, who want to see him, people in pain; backs, knees, hips, shoulders, necks, all hurting and in need of attention.

Dr. Tanaka sees me once a year. Knowing he has one session a year, he gives me his undivided attention. Knowing I have only one chance to work with him each year, I give him mine.

Dr. Tanaka asks me to look at him and to tell him what I see.Though I refrain from doing this with most of my students, with Dr. Tanaka, I know it will be fine. He won’t fall into the trap most students do when given such information. He won’t freak out, thinking he’s doing terrible things to his body. He won’t immediately try to correct his dire condition. He’ll just take in the information and begin wondering about it. As will I.

Standing in front of me, I take my first good look at Dr. Tanaka. A little taller than me, a little younger, (both not difficult), he looks healthy; bright eyes, good skin color, excellent muscle tone, not overweight, nice sense of symmetry about him.

You’re looking good Tanaka-sensei. Let’s see what I see from the side. My eye goes directly to the back of his neck, and my hand follows landing on a large, tight muscle. This muscle interests me, I say, gently pinching it between my thumb and fingers so he can feel it. Maybe it’s your trapezius, but whatever it is, it’s working hard. There must be a reason. I see there’s no natural curve in his cervical spine. He looks like he’s just started to bow and then suddenly stopped before his body had a chance to follow, leaving his neck over-extended and stiff. For a second I see the neck of one of those creepy gargoyle drain spouts you see as you walk around Notre Dame. Dr. Tanaka, you carry your head a bit in front of your body in a way that over straightens your neck, so chances are that muscle, and others, have to work to counterbalance the displaced weight of your head.

And your body also inclines slightly forward from your ankles, a little like a ski jumper in flight, but less so. I bend down and feel his calves which, as I suspected, are working hard, keeping him from falling over, as well as his glutes which have squeezed themselves in, and hiked themselves up. I move and place myself in front of Dr. Tanaka, as if I were one of his patients, and suddenly I see a man who looks like he’s been racing to get where he has to be, and once there jams on the brakes, skids to a stop, frozen in the slightest gesture of a bow as if to say, O mata se! Thank you so much for waiting. I’m really sorry I am so late.

Tanaka-sensei. Let’s sit down, I say, pointing to a chair. He sits down. I pull up a chair in front of him and say, I’m your patient. Take my pulse. Being learned in Chinese medicine as well, I know that pulse taking is an important ritual for Dr. Tanaka. It’s his first contact with his patient. True to form, Dr. Tanaka jumps into action. When I sense he’s totally into it, I ask him to just stay where he is, not to move, and sure enough he has clicked into the exact attitudinal expression throughout his body as when he was standing, his particular way of being engaged, of serving his patients. The image flashes through my mind of an invisible witch, black pointed hat, black dress, crooked broom, wart on her big nose, flying overhead and casting a spell over Dr. Tanaka, a ‘now you will turn into a very busy doctor spell.”

Dr. Tanaka, I’m wondering if you have to look at your fingers? You can’t see the pulse, right? Right, he says. So keep taking my pulse, slowly look up a little toward the ceiling, letting your neck go into a comfortable arch, then close your eyes, and just continue reading my pulse. Now, leave your eyes closed, softly rotate your head slightly forward, letting it rest on top of your spine. Roll back ever so slightly on your sit bones and relax your butt muscles because you don’t need them now, and just continue taking my pulse. And you might as well relax your left elbow, so you don’t have to work so hard in your left shoulder.

For the first time since we began Tanaka-sensei looks calm, quiet, and comfortable, not like a busy doctor, but like a doctor for sure. That large neck muscle is no longer protruding. He’s got the natural curve back in his cervical spine. He’s not rushing. He’s not in front of himself, not ahead of himself. He’s within himself, and he’s with me, more than ever. Like the good student Dr. Tanaka is, I can see him drinking in the experience, quietly coming to an understanding about how he does what he does. What he’s most happy about, he tells me, is not how good he feels, but how clearly he can feel my three pulses under his fingers.

Seeing Dr. Tanaka looking so relaxed and attentive reminds me of something I read years ago in the Tai Chi Classics, words of wisdom gleaned over 600 years about the workings of the mind and the body. Dr. Tanaka practices Tai Chi.  My guess is he’ll resonate with what I am about to say.

In the Tai Chi Classics, I say, it’s suggested that you want the mind of a sober man, and the body of a drunk. I call it Matcha Mind and Sake Body. Give it a go. Sit back in your chair and relax into your Sake Body. That appears to be easy for him, but I see his head drifting off to the left as if he’s falling asleep. Tanaka-sensei. Open your eyes and decide that, without engaging your muscles, to use your Matcha Mind.

Muzukashii! That’s really hard, Dr. Tanaka says, surprised. I can’t do it!  That’s because you’ve got working hard and muscle tension paired up, and you’ve got releasing muscle tension and sleeping paired up. Meditation is cultivating an inverse relationship between  tension and attention. The more you increase your mental attention, the more you want to decrease your muscular tension. Saying it this way, I can see Dr. Tanaka gets it.

Okay sensei. I know you want me to watch you playing your shakuhachi, so go get it. Tanaka-sense springs out of  his chair and starts running toward the door. Choto mata kudasai!  Please wait a minute Dr. Tanaka!  I want you to decide, deep inside your body, not to rush. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. See what it feels like if you don’t rush. Just find out what happens.

Dr. Tanaka calmly leaves the room, is gone for about two minutes. When he returns he’s got a different expression on his face. How was it, I ask? It was really different. I began to see this building, this clinic. I began feeling how long I have worked here, and my father before me, he said. Under the sadness, I could feel the love and gratitude in Dr. Tanaka’s eyes.

Dr. Tanaka. We will get to playing the shakuhachi, I promise. But I’d like to talk to you for a minute. Not teaching. Just tell you something from my heart. Is that okay? Hai, he says.

Look, we are going to die… someday. You could rush and run toward your death, or you could walk toward it the way you just walked to get your shakuhachi. Two different worlds. Which one do you want to live in for the time you have left?

And there it is, the moment, the shift. The shift in a person’s soul.

We did get to the shakuhachi. The usual things happened. Resonate sound. Freer breathing. Better phrasing. More fun. But it didn’t seem all that important, inside of the greater scheme of things.

We thanked each other, many times, as you do in Japan before saying good-bye. Yoi Otoushi wo. Have a happy New Year, Dr. Tanaka.

It’s 5 o’clock and already evening as I walk down a small, empty street toward the train station.  A soft, misty rain is falling.  Most Japanese open up their umbrellas and rush along to wherever they’re going. I don’t mind getting wet. Why run? It’s raining everywhere.

Photo: B. Fertman

“Anchan, I will pay for all your expenses, travel, room and board, training, film, everything, if you travel around with me and take photos.” That’s how it all began, the making of a man able to catch that elusive moment when a person opens up, frees into who they really are, revealing their intrinsic beauty, their fundamental dignity.

That’s not easy. In the first place you have to be able to see, to see people. You have to be able to feel the instant before a person lets go into a space unknown to them. You have to remember what’s most important; to draw the viewers eye to the inner life of the student.

Now videography, something Anchan taught himself how to do, poses formidable challenges. Movement can be distracting, and words too. Photographs have power. Catching a moment, one moment, the moment of transformation, within stillness, within silence, suspended there in front of you with all the time in the world to enter into what you are seeing, and to be moved by it.

Anchan had an idea. He thought, “what if I could make a wordless video that showed not only the transformative moment, but the transformative movement, without losing the beauty and the stillness of photography?” And with that question Anchan made, The Touch.

But Anchan’s much more than a photographer. He’s an Alexander Teacher in his own right. And a good one.  Not only does he have a better eye than most Alexander teachers, he knows how to teach what he knows. It’s moving to watch Anchan with his kids, how he gives them the time and space to figure things out for themselves, and only interjects a suggestion when needed. He knows when and exactly how much encouragement to give, and he knows when it’s not needed. 

Photo: Bruce Fertman

Anchan’s always there. He’s ready to serve. He makes things work. He’s generous. He overflows with generosity.

We were young men when we met, and though Anchan is a good ten years younger than I am, we are both decidedly older, no longer young. But rather than growing tired after all these years of dedicating ourselves to making the invisible visible, to making people see the power of touch, the beauty of Alexander’s work, we’re becoming ever more engaged in this undertaking. We keep getting closer, and closer.

In this short video, made by Anchan, entitled The Touch, you get to see how Anchan sees, and what Anchan loves. You get to see what the students are seeing.  And you get to see the students seeing what they are seeing.  See that, and you will see why I have faith in young people. Those students are delighting in the power and beauty of teaching through touch, something Marj Barstow passed onto me, that Alexander passed on to her,  and that I will continue to do my best to pass on to my students for as long as I am able.

I could tell you much more about Anchan, but I won’t. Let The Touch speak for itself.

Watch The Touch.

Tell us your impressions.

We welcome any and all feedback.

https://www.facebook.com/akihiro.tada.5?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/bruce.fertman?fref=ts

www.peacefulbodyschool.com

Photo: Bruce Fertman

Having taught Alexander’s work for all of five years, just shy of my thirtieth birthday, my workshop at Crosslands Retirement Community had finished.  Putting on my coat, head down, feeling unsure of myself, in grave doubt about my ability to get Alexander’s work across, an elderly man approaches, a soft elegance about him. Upright, tweed sports jacket, bow tie. He extends his hand and says, “James, James Bennett. You might like knowing that fifty-five years ago I received lessons from Mr. Alexander. He used to tell me, in jest that, next to John Dewey, I was his worst student. I always took that as a compliment.” “Well,” I said taken aback, “tell me, be honest, how did I do?”  “It moved me seeing you work with my friend Agnes, he said. To see her walking without her walker. How can I say, it was thrilling. You know, I had many lessons with F. M., but they were always individual lessons. I never watched anyone having a lesson. Until now. I could actually see what was happening. You were teaching me how to see. It was enlightening. As for how you did? Have no doubt. You did splendidly. You have that touch.”

That made my day. Actually, that kept me floating for years. It affirmed my intuition that Alexander’s work could effectively be taught in groups.  It further convinced me of the importance of being able see Alexander’s work, as subtle as it was. And I felt encouraged to keep cultivating “that touch.”  Early on I had made a vow to myself that I would not quit until my hands were as good as Marjorie Barstow’s hands.  James Bennett made me feel I was on my way.

Forty years after having made that vow,  a 1000 workshops later, 15,000 people-under-my-hands later, I may have made it. I may have gotten there. I may have fulfilled my vow. I will never know for certain and so best not stop practicing. I don’t think I could stop practicing. It’s who I am, at my best.

In this short video, entitled The Touch, by Anchan, you get to see what Marj Barstow passed onto me, what Alexander passed on to her, and what I will continue to do my best to pass on to my students for as long as I am able.

Photo: Bruce Fertman

“Anchan, I will pay for all your expenses, travel, room and board, training, film, everything, if you travel around with me and take photos.” That’s how it all began, the making of a man able to catch that elusive moment when a person opens up, frees into who they really are, revealing their intrinsic beauty, their fundamental dignity.

That’s not easy. In the first place you have to be able to see, to see people. You have to be able to feel the instant before a person lets go into a space unknown to them. You have to remember what’s most important; to draw the viewers eye to the inner life of the student.

Now videography, something Anchan taught himself how to do, poses formidable challenges. Movement can be distracting, and words too. Photographs have power. Catching a moment, one moment, the moment of transformation, within stillness, within silence, suspended there in front of you with all the time in the world to enter into what you are seeing, and to be moved by it.

Anchan had an idea. He thought, “what if I could make a wordless video that showed not only the transformative moment, but the transformative movement, without losing the beauty and the stillness of photography?” And with that question Anchan made, The Touch.

But Anchan’s much more than a photographer. He’s an Alexander Teacher in his own right. And a good one.  Not only does he have a better eye than most Alexander teachers, he knows how to teach what he knows. It’s moving to watch Anchan with his kids, how he gives them the time and space to figure things out for themselves, and only interjects a suggestion when needed. He knows when and exactly how much encouragement to give, and he knows when it’s not needed. 

Anchan’s always there. He’s ready to serve. He makes things work. He’s generous. He overflows with generosity.

We were young men when we met, and though Anchan is a good ten years younger than I am, we are both decidedly older, no longer young. But rather than growing tired after all these years of dedicating ourselves to making the invisible visible, to making people see the power of touch, the beauty of Alexander’s work, we’re becoming ever more engaged in this undertaking. We keep getting closer, and closer.

In this short video, made by Anchan, entitled The Touch, you get to see how Anchan sees, and what Anchan loves. You get to see what the students are seeing.  And you get to see the students seeing what they are seeing.  See that, and you will see why I have faith in young people. Those students are delighting in the power and beauty of teaching through touch, something Marj Barstow passed onto me, that Alexander passed on to her,  and that I will continue to do my best to pass on to my students for as long as I am able.

I could tell you much more about Anchan, but I won’t. Let The Touch speak for itself.

Watch The Touch.

Tell us your impressions.

We welcome any and all feedback.

https://www.facebook.com/akihiro.tada.5?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/bruce.fertman?fref=ts

www.peacefulbodyschool.com

Sometimes I really wonder about my voice. I don’t know why it’s so high, Atsuko says. Sitting together, eight of us at a Spanish restaurant in Temma, Osaka after a day of study, I notice when Atsuko speaks she looks like a little girl, a cute tilt of the head, sparkling eyes, a happy smile. Who knows, I say. It could be structural. Then again it might not be. What does your voice sound like to you, I ask? It sounds like everyone else’s voice. Just normal, she says.

You know Atsuko, what your voice sounds like really doesn’t matter so much. You’re expressive emotionally, articulate, easy to understand. It’s like your voice is a piccolo, that’s all. When you first hear a piccolo it sounds weird, too high, but then if someone is a good musician they can make beautiful music with that little instrument.

I’m wondering why, to you, your voice sounds like everyone’s else’s. If you hear your voice as the same as everyone else’s voice, you’d have little impulse to change it.  Alexander said, The hardest things to change are the things that don’t exist. Atstuko looks puzzled. You see, your high voice doesn’t exist for you. As far as your ears are concerned, you don’t have a high voice.

Atsuko, sing for me. Sing some little song you like. Without any hesitation, the sparkling red wine having loosened everyone up, Atsuko begins singing Sukiyaki, Ue o Muite Arukou. Astuko, do you know a song that has a fuller range, some lower notes. Mari, sitting next to her, begins singing a song I don’t recognize. Astuko knows it and joins in. Without effort she drops down into the lower notes. Do you hear that Atsuko? She looks surprised and nods yes. Sing it again. She does. There it is again! Did you feel that? That may be your real voice, what your voice sounds like when you’re not holding it up.

We were all relaxing, eating Japanese tasting tapas with chopsticks. The sparkling red wine the restaurant had given us for free to lure us in was now finished and beer mugs had mysterious appeard in front of everyone. I went no further, as captivated as I was by Atsuko’s changing voice. Class was over, but in class I had told several stories of spontaneous Alexander lessons happening to me, when with my teachers, outside of class.

There you go you guys, I said lifting my beer mug.  An Alexander happening. A Bruce story. Whatever. When the moment’s right, use it, pass it on.

By Karen Riley

This post is mainly for the Marketing The Alexander Technique Facebook folks.

You never know.

I was in Santa Fe, admiring an artist’s work that had a bit of a Japanese flair to it. I mentioned it to her, Karen Riley, whereupon she told me she had lived in Japan for some time and still edits for a Japanese magazine. When she found out what I did in Japan she asked if she could interview me.  Basically she pulled a lot together on her own by information she gleaned from my blog and websites. Then together we fine tuned it. It wasn’t difficult. Eye-Ai is the only monthly publication in English devoted entirely to Japanese entertainment and culture. It’s been around for 35 years. It’s a pop culture, youth oriented magazine, very lightweight, not a magazine I thought would be the least bit interested in what I’m doing.

But why not? That’s often the right question to ask. You never know. It goes out to 5000 readers. One reader might be interested. That’s fine. Nothing lost.

Now I have a finished piece and will submit it to the Kyoto Journal and to the Japan Times, both for English readers.

Why not?

https://peacefulbodyschool.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/interview_2.pdfinterview_2