Comments

Positive Thinking – Just Say No?! — 7 Comments

  1. Hi imogen,
    happy alexander days.
    I think saying NO better, can be done easily by practicing fm technique.
    Iam imagining the alexander teacher always says his student like,
    NO No no no …..while getting up his student up from the chair.

    1.The teacher remembers and says to the student ,NO This is your neck.
    2. NO this head should not come this way
    3. NO NO ….this torso goes up like this and widens like this.
    Wait wait wait….inhibit inhibit the neck that way …no no no ,
    what you are doing ?
    Again he remembers his student ‘this is your neck’ , the head moves like this
    one after the other all together.
    The student now achieved his end.

    What a beautiful no?
    I liked this blog post.

  2. For me this is about the whole area of stimulus and response. It reminds me of a story my AT teacher trainer used to tell about an interaction with his teacher, Marjorie Barstow. They had a lesson where she would say “Move your arm,” and my teacher would reply, “No I will not move my arm, but I will allow my neck to be free so that my head can move forward and up…[directions shortened here for brevity!] … S that I can move my arm.”
    One of the things that came up in the Alexander Technique and the Performing Arts Conference in Melbourne this weekend was the idea that a direction such as “free your neck” is just another stimulus, and you still need to inhibit your instinctive response to that stimulus as all others. I think that is the value of the negative direction.

      • Just realized I never replied to your comments, Jen. I love your anecdote about your teacher and Marj Barstow. I think I’ve always known on some level that “free your neck” is a stimulus – as is absolutely anything really. I have a huge tendency to tighten more when I hear the word “neck” – the negative directions have helped a lot!

  3. Hi jennifer,
    you got some interesting point, ‘let the neck be free’ is still a stimulus.
    So, here you are saying the direction is the stimulus.
    May be you are true, who knows?

    The direction itself is a stimulus. So,
    what ever you are directing our self is stimulus.
    And we have to inhibit that stimulus following the means whereby.
    Thanks for this interesting comment.

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