Post Congress Musings
In Honor of All Those Doing Their Best to
Train Future Generations of Alexander Teachers
Part III
Maybe I will figure this one out before I die. I hope so. I may be getting close. In fact, by writing this very essay I may find my way through to the answer.
Here’s the problem.
People want to join the Alexander Alliance Europe, our community/school, which promotes itself, though not exclusively, as a teacher training program in the Alexander Technique, which means we are responsible for training people who enter the school to become Alexander Technique teachers.
In our website we write:
Who We Are – We are an intergenerational, multi-cultural community / school dedicated to creating a safe and loving environment where, through Alexander’s work, people can learn how to become at once, relaxed and ready, soft and strong, light and substantial, stable and flexible, peaceful and lively, receptive and generous, awake to themselves, to others and to the world around them.
Our Mission – Our mission is to train skillful and compassionate Alexander teachers, which we have been doing ceaselessly and enjoyably for 35 years. Together we learn to free ourselves and our students from stasis, restriction, and fixation. We accompany our students into their fluidity, spaciousness and poise, while ensuring their feet rest comfortably upon common and solid ground. We awaken ourselves and our students to a sensory world full of simple pleasures. Our art is human touch, an inexhaustible resource for education, nurturance, and growth. Our job is to gently un-harness deep, naturally organized patterns of vitality within ourselves and our students. This groundswell of energy strengthens our will to live, love, learn, and work generously and freely.
But here is the rub. How can we know if someone has the ability to become an Alexander teacher? The answer to that question is easy. We can’t. At least I can’t. Do we just accept anyone? Yes, almost. I have seen people walk through our doors who I am quite sure will grow into good teachers, and for one reason or another, don’t. And I have seen people who I predict simply do not have the capacity to become Alexander teachers who become very good teachers. And so I accept anyone into our school who is socially mature, self-motivated, and who loves the Work.
So what happens when four years have flown by and it is time for a person to graduate and I feel, for one reason or another, that they do not have the skill to teach the Alexander Technique? And even more perplexing, what criteria do I establish for determining if someone is now ready and qualified to teach others about Alexander’s work? After all, I am the guy who signs their certificates, which read:
For 35 years I have been pondering these questions. And now I am close, very close to the answer, not for the entire Alexander community, but for me and for our community/school. The answer is to be found in the word “impart”. Impart means to make known, to communicate, to pass on, to convey, transmit, spread, disclose, to reveal. It doesn’t say to teach. Hmm…
Okay, what are we responsible for imparting? What are the concepts my trainees must understand and which principles need they be able to impart, in some way, to others to merit graduating from the Alexander Alliance Europe?
Here are the basic concepts, which must be understood, and the basic principles, which, to a significant degree, must be embodied to graduate from the Alexander Alliance Europe:
One. Working with a person in their entirety, with body and being, with movement and meaning.
Two. Sensory Consciousness/Appreciation
Three. Use, Functioning, Structure, and Integration
Four. Alexandrian Inhibition, Directionality, and Primary Movement/Organization/Control.
Five. The Means Whereby/ Ends and Means.
Now, through what means do we as Alexander teachers impart these concepts and principles? We impart them through:
Being – how we are being within ourselves and with our students, physically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually. “The only thing you have to offer another being, ever, is your own state of being.” — Ram Dass
Observation – how we are perceiving ourselves and our students.
Language – how we listen and speak to our students.
Movement – how we move, act, and interact with our students.
Touch – how we physically touch our students.
Let’s put this together now, and in doing so we may just answer our original questions; What happens when four years have flown by and it is time for a person to graduate and I feel for one reason or another that they do not have the skill to teach the Alexander Technique? And even more perplexing, what criteria do I establish for determining if someone is now ready and qualified to teach others about Alexander’s work?
First, I realize that being able to teach the work to someone is one way of imparting the work, but that teaching is not the only way of imparting the work.
If teachers are to be able to impart the work to others via being, observation, language, movement, and touch, do they have to be accomplished at all of these means to be able to impart the work? Based upon my 35 years of training people the answer is, no.
Let me explain why. People enter our community/school with different inherent talents, with different acquired skills, at different ages, and with different life experience. Some are artists, some movers, some healers, and some seekers, or some combination thereof. To use Howard Gardener’s categories, some possess Linguistic Intelligence and are able to find the right words to express what they mean, some possess Logical-mathematical intelligence and are able to quantify things, make hypotheses and prove them, some possess Musical Intelligence and are able to discern sounds, pitch, tone, rhythm, and timbre, some possess Spatial Intelligence and have the ability to visualize the world in 3D, some possess Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence and are able to coordinate their mind and heart with their body, some possess Interpersonal Intelligence and are able to sense people’s feelings and motives, some possess Intrapersonal Intelligence and have deep understanding of themselves in touch with what they feel and what they want, some possess Naturalist Intelligence and are able to understand living things and can “read” nature, and some possess Existential Intelligence and are able to contemplate questions like who we are, why we live, and why we die. I would add a category, Sensory Intelligence and include Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence within this larger category, thus allowing also for Tactual, Visual, Auditory, Olfactory and Gastronomical Intelligence.
So a student may enter the Alexander Alliance Europe with high bodily-kinesthetic, tactual, interpersonal and existential intelligence and pretty much sail through their training. They find themselves having to work hard to acquire the linguistic intelligence they need, but have enough going for them that makes them able to impart the work to others.
You may have another student who enters our community/school with very low bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, low tactual intelligence, but very high intrapersonal, linguistic and visual intelligence, and so if they become able to impart the work to others they will end up finding a very different way of doing so. They do their best to learn how to move well and develop good tactual skills and they make some progress, which proves very important for them personally, but they still fall well short of becoming a person with high kinesthetic and tactual skills.
So the question becomes, “Does this person have the capacity, in some way, to impart the work to others?”
If a man who graduates our school who takes care of his five grandchildren, and who possesses deep inhibitory power while with his grandchildren, and who is by his very being able to calm them down, and is able to create harmony among them, and if he developed these capacities through the course of his training, is he imparting the work to his grandchildren? I would say yes. I would say that counts. Big time. Is he teaching them? No. Is he modeling the work, embodying the work, passing on the work? I would say yes. Should this man who doesn’t move well, whose posture is not great, who hands are not great graduate? I would say yes.
New questions arise. Should we limit our work to that of a profession? Should we have vocational schools, teacher training programs, and/or should we have Life Schools and think of our work not only as a profession but as ‘a Way’, as Aikido is a Way? Aikido literally means, the Way of Harmonizing Energy. Sounds familiar.
For me this is the difference between a Teacher Training Program and a Community/School. It comes down to how we define the word ‘vocation’. In the narrow definition of the word, it means an occupation, a trade, a profession, but in the broader sense of the word it means a calling, a mission, a path. A Way. A Way of Living.
I have chosen to create a Life School, a community/school. Perhaps I am not training teachers, but “imparters”. Maybe there is a difference. And maybe that difference makes all the difference. And maybe it is the answer to my question: What criteria do I establish for determining if someone is now ready and qualified to teach others about Alexander’s work? When I change the word teach to impart I believe I have criteria, valid criteria. Can that criteria be measured? Is there a test?
No, I don’t think so. But to witness over four years a students deepening, this maturing into the principles underlying Alexander’s work can be observed and felt by teachers who spend time with their students. A teacher ‘knows’ when their student is now living the work, the teacher knows when their student can impart the work through who they are, through how they are; they know it viscerally; they can feel it in their bones. It is not something that can be measured objectively, only subjectively. Some graduates will be able to impart the work through teaching and through who they are. Others perhaps only through who they are. The world needs both.
I am well aware this is not a popular point of view within our Alexander Community. For those who are fighting so admirably and intelligently to establish our work as a profession; I offer my apologies. I don’t mean to hamper your work.
What I do mean to do is to open a conversation amongst teacher trainers as to what we are really doing, how we want to do it, how we want to frame what we are doing, and on how we want to evaluate what we are doing. I don’t want to see Alexander schools closing. I want to see them full of students eager to learn, as my community/school has been for 35 years. I don’t want to see schools closing. I want to see them opening, and healthy. Opening up this conversation may help.
I welcome your feedback.
