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The Four Alexander Questions

Not the four Passover questions, the four Alexander questions, the four Alexander questions I have for our Alexander community.

1. If we all know Alexander’s work is not about getting in and out of a chair, if we all know it’s primarily about how we react to stimuli from within and without, then why do we, as a community, do so much getting people in and out of chairs? Stimuli from within are thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Sometimes tough thoughts, self deprecating thoughts, or judgmental thoughts, emotions like anger and fear, sensations like pain. Stimuli from without is stuff like, an audience that you are about to perform for, or five black belt aikidoists who are poised to simultaneously attack you, or a cranky boss, or your computer crashing, or a kid that won’t stop crying, etc. 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 someone in and out of a chair?

2. We all know that Alexander would not be crazy about how much we, as a community, spend our time working with students lying down on a table, but we are doing it anyway. Why is that?

3. And we know that Alexander’s work is not about movement for movement’s sake yet, as a community, we have been quite focused on how we move. Once my mentor, Buzz Gummere, a man who trained with F.M and A.R., with Marj Barstow, and with Frank Pierce Jones, told me I had become a great movement teacher, and then he asked me a pointed question, which was his job as my mentor, “But Bruce, does that make you a great Alexander teacher?” That question haunted me for many years, which, I am sure, was Buzz’s intention. So why are we so preoccupied with how we move?

4. The fourth question. This is the big one for me.

Sometimes I get Alexander teachers coming to me for lessons. That’s an honor. I notice that many of them move self-consciously. They sit down perfectly, in the prescribed manner, and something in me cringes. I tell them straight away that I never watch a person get in and out of a chair, so not to worry. Usually they look at me wide eyed, and then laugh out loud. I can’t always, but if I’m lucky I can get an Alexander teacher out of this trap. If I can get it across to them that our job is to free ourselves, and that it is our bodies job, via increasingly accurate, reliable, and refined kinesthesia, to figure out how to move itself around comfortably and enjoyably, and spontaneously, without over deliberation, then something shifts. I tell them it is not our job to choreograph our movement life down to a tee, no matter how precisely and perfectly we can do it. A three year old kid with a healthy, conventional nervous system, moves so well and so spontaneously and so unselfconsciously, and that’s why it’s such a joy to watch them. So my last question is, how do we learn to move through our lives consciously but not self-consciously? How do we occupy ourselves without becoming preoccupied with ourselves?

 

Written by Bruce Fertman

Bruce brings 60 years of study as a movement artist and educator to his work having trained in gymnastics, modern dance, ballet, contact improvisation, the Alexander Technique, Tai Chi Chu’an, Aikido, Chanoyu, (Japanese Tea Ceremony), Argentine Tango, and Kyudo (Zen Archery). For the past 30 years, Bruce has been helping people experience the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual life. He founded the Alexander Alliance in 1982 and Grace of Sense in 2019, his online community-school. Author of Teaching by Hand, Learning by Heart, and of The Way In ~ The Way Out, Bruce is currently co-authoring a book with Michael Gelb for New World Library entitled, Walk – How to Discover Comfort, Vitality, and Inspiration in Every Step.
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