Alexander said, “Prevent the things you’ve been doing, and you are half way home.” This implies that Alexandrian inhibition takes you half way home, and that a deep understanding of directionality gets you all the way home.
In 1994, on one particular day, while training my first batch of trainees at The Alexander Alliance in Kyoto, I discerned what the Primary Pattern looked like, if one were to be able to see it. It was a double helix, volutions, elegant whorls. There were two main complimentary opposing directions, directional threads that weaved their way from the head down to the ground, perfectly balanced by directional threads that weaved themselves from the ground up to the top of the head. I was seeing before me a most delicate and powerful braid, a fluid web of support.
That day a guest visited the class. She sat silently, all but invisible, for four hours and watched. At the end of class she approached me and thanked me for allowing her to observe. She said she found the pattern unadorned, graceful yet powerful. While watching she said she could see red salmon rising up within tall waterfalls. She bowed and left. I never saw her again.
From that day forward this pattern of human directionality was referred to within the Alexander Alliance as Salmon Rising/Water Falling.
On a cold, snowy night after finishing my work in Japan, I slept long and deep. When I awoke, I looked out a small plane window into the bright sun. It was summer, in Australia. I invited Erika Whittaker to attend one of my workshops in Sydney, wanting the benefit of her observations. After the workshop I asked Erika what she thought about my new way of conceiving Alexander’s directions. She said what I was teaching was indeed Alexander’s inherent directions, but that I was getting it across to people in a way that was more articulate, more beautiful and more comprehensive. She said she preferred my use of natural metaphor given that we were natural and that our work was about naturalness. She then proceeded to give me concise suggestions for which I was most grateful. I felt confirmed. I was on my way.
This obsession continued, to the dismay of some of my students, (as this obsession was relentless), for 15 years before I was ready to move on. But during those fruitful years, my vision of human directionality grew ever clearer. I was able to give my students vivid experiences of this pattern at work within them. I taught them to see this pattern in others. Most satisfying of all, I taught my students how to sense the functional beauty of this pattern through their hands, and how to enliven and engage this pattern within others. Increasingly they came to understand what human integration looked like and felt like.
Recently I have begun to perceive another directional design comprised of moving spheres within the body. This model of human directional life is new and relatively unexplored, but full of promise. These two directional systems, the helical and the spherical, are themselves interwoven.
If you are an Alexander trainee or teacher and curious, or perhaps even joyfully obsessed with human directionality as I am, then I can speed you on your way, I can give you the benefit of my years of investigation, and contemplation, into how we are directionally designed.
Five Day Coyote Home School Retreat
July 1 to July 6, 2014
Cost: $1250. Includes classes, food, lodging.
Size: Limited to four students. Register Early!!!
