mindfulness article - Craig Thompson: Alexander Technique and Mindfulness

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Alexander Technique and Mindfulness Practice

Alexander Technique is a very powerful tool which works well with many avocations, vocations and situations but is particularly suited to augment mindfulness practice. It is really an advanced training in mindfulness. We in modern society are so separated from our bodies that people undertaking a practice of mindfulness have no way to bring the body along properly. Alexander Technique can provide many tools and skillful means with which to facilitate the process. Sometimes it is a bit tricky to write about the Alexander Technique compared to doing it. Hands on is a very easy way to communicate the principles, especially for the uninitiated.
I might introduce a couple of Tibetan cultural concepts which have helped me with the principles. They talk about drala. Drala can be very complex but in it’s simplest concept it can be translated as “above aggression” or above conflict or above duality. In Alexander technique we learn mindfulness and join it with an idea of drala.
Alexander expounded a beautiful little truth with profound implications. “If you ask the body to do something gently, it will do it.” We just practice in a simple way to inure in ourselves a somewhat radical idea of space in our thinking and a certain lightness of being. We practice along the lines of “My head goes toward ease.” We really study ourselves and our use as if that were the crux of the matter. We try not to be too biased in our study so that we are interested in signs of ease of use but just as much in signs of how things may have gone awry in our habitual use. As Marjorie Barstow used to say, “It’s just so interesting.” I think people suffer in their attempts at mindfulness practice from a certain lack of joy, energy, and light touch. Also, they just get eaten up by the unending nature of habitual patterns and are not able to develop this kind of communication with the right kind of process. Any kind of mindfulness practice is great but why not lead the practitioner to amazing success and an impeccable positive feedback loop?
Alexander says, “I am going to teach you how to think,” but it is a kind of twist because he means mindfulness. Mindfulness can be highly facilitated if one learns to think for oneself in this manner. Usually one would take individual or small group lessons from a teacher but live video work is gaining some currency. Once you have grasped the idea then anything works including books and videos.
For any being who has a spine, an important principle is that “the head leads and the body follows.” We make critical use of this truth. We try to lead all movement and all non movement with this principle. Just by using a thought of the head going toward ease we alter the entire landscape for mindfulness practice and move us toward higher states of being and learning. We start to tune in to the whole point of all of this work. The point is to cheer ourselves up a little bit and to let go a little bit.
The head is the weight of a ten pound bowling ball. Most people have a death grip on their bowling ball. This is not a recipe for success in the mindfulness endeavor. It is a reasonable place to start but it would help a lot to get smarter quickly. There are forces of gravity and ignorance which are difficult to overcome. We have spent a lot of time getting ourselves in a tight spot. A skillful mindfulness practice can unwind all of that and show us the drala principle very nicely. If we can become rather skillful about how we go about things, it will be better. A good place to start is to see about getting that bowling ball to balance delicately, nicely, freely on our shoulders. That just frees up everything. Our whole body wants to follow that direction toward ease, energy, freedom, trust, and joy in learning.
We could describe the Alexander Technique (and perhaps mindfulness) as a five step process.
1. Noticing
2. Constructive Thought/Direction
3. Gap
4. Moving in an old or new way/perhaps releasing into a new way
5. Noticing/ Noticing/ Noticing all along
We are big on noticing to begin with. We notice how we are in our bodies. Is there a sense of ease or alternately a sense of tightness? Where in the body do we notice this? How is our neck? Tightness in the neck is the bane of humanity, at least civilized humanity. Tightness will be everywhere then. Alexander can be practiced without movement but a bit of movement, especially done rather slowly or at least in a new and freer way, can be quite illuminating and fun. Before we move, and that is always the crucial point. Before we move we use our thought. It might be non-thought in some sense. This kind of use of thought leads us to true space and non thought. Alexander calls it inhibition. I think a useful concept is the Tao, or in Buddhism, Buddha Nature or awakened mind. My mindfulness teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, talked a lot about the gap. We notice a gap and do not cover it up. That gap is called the nature of mind, an effortless space of non struggle, even when seeing something that looks like less than freedom. Because that gap leads directly to freedom. My school has a saying, “We make one mistake after another until we attain enlightenment.” Sometimes we say, “Not afraid to be a fool.” We are not afraid of being wrong or of discovering that our use is less than ideal. Really, that is where the wisdom grows. Many people shrink into the ego by always wanting to be right, the best. We give up on protecting the ego in that way and enter into a field of learning, unlearning, and interesting surprises about how things are. The dharma means “how things work.”
One has a joint where the skull attaches to the first cervical vertebra. We pay attention to our quality of use of that joint. As that begins to free up, we gradually expand our attention down the spine as each joint in turn begins to acquire a quality of freedom (or the very interesting proposition that it does not yet). Again and again, with the gentle and skillful direction of our teacher, and most importantly, through our own practice of the principles and execution of mindfulness, noticing, we perform an endless series of little experiments. We learn to enter into the practice, letting go of ignorance or trying too hard. A light touch and perseverance become our hallmarks. Sometimes it’s difficult to become easy.
Another Tibetan concept I might introduce to you is the idea of lungta. We translate that as windhorse. We are riding a horse of wind or wind energy. It is an analogy for mind and the nature of mind. We have this energy system which constitutes how we feel at any moment as well as our fortune, luck, health, prosperity, and sense of well being. It has to do with a lot of things but it is how we are handling our body and mind and the fact that we have something to learn about how to be skillful with that. It is our mindfulness, our approach to mindfulness. Our awareness is growing out of our mindfulness practice. In the West we have the idea of Pegasus, the winged horse. It’s the same concept. An analogy is a flag. There’s a lot of energy, movement, a sense of upliftedness and drala. There is joy in climbing higher and gaining freedom. At the same time the flagpole is very solid and planted in the ground. It is thoroughly grounded. We are free to soar and conquer, but at the same time our mindfulness is really planted on this earth. It comes up out of the solid ground and never loses that important connection. When our lungta is down we may become depressed or ill. We may become sloppy in our mindfulness practice. At the same time our mindfulness practice is refreshed and energized by the fresh breezes we encounter. Wind denotes energy, spiritual power, but also the rather fickle, flickering nature of the mind. It is difficult to control the wind. The symbolism of the horse is very complex, but it is steadiness, bravery, hard work, skill, capability, and intelligence. The Tibetans say the horse symbolizes all of man’s dreams and highest aspirations.
Alexander Technique is so effective because it really raises our lungta. It releases a great deal of energy that has heretofore been blocked. That’s the thing you cannot explain to people but rather they must experience for themselves. It teaches one how to ride the horse of freedom from laziness.
Alexander says to do three things every day. You can start with 5 minutes each and build up. This first mindfulness exercise is to do some small movements, done pretty slowly or not so slowly sometimes but done rather consciously, using the 5 step process. It is best to start with just isolating the head and shoulders, really the head and neck. Alexander’s original directions were “My neck releases to let my head ease forward and up.” Forward here is a slight rotation of the head. In Zen they say that the nose points more toward the heart. Marjorie Barlow, Alexander’s niece, says “The head wants to move away from the body just a little bit. Let it.” It is easiest to start with just little movements of the head side to side just as you would in normal life but done as an exercise in mindfulness. You could follow that with looking up and looking down moving the head on it’s axis. It goes on and on working slowly down the spine. Alexander’s second set of directions go “to let the whole back lengthen and widen.” The whole back will very subtly lengthen and widen to the sides with the work. The little bit of spaces that you are opening up are an amazing revelation and provide tremendous leaps into freedom, ease, awareness, energy, playfulness, gentleness, inner strength, and joy.
The second one to do every day is to work with one’s breathing. Alexander received tremendous press attention in his day. He taught many of the chic people, artists, and the intelligentsia of the day (his heyday was the teens to the thirties) and was dubbed the “breathing man.” His approach to breathing is called “the whispered ah.” I think it is a truth of life that letting go happens largely with a letting go on the outbreath. A lot of meditation and mindfulness-awareness practice is based on this principle. It will serve you well to learn this deeply. It might be the secret of all secrets. There is a lot to the whispered ah and it is often practiced with an opening and closing of the jaw but at it’s simplest, you just sit still and breathe normally You make an attempt to hear yourself make an ah sound as you breath out. It does not have to be very loud, as long as you can hear it. You breath in normally. It resembles meditation somewhat. You could mingle those. I myself have done so very profitably. After 30 years of mingling those I came to believe that if I could hear myself on the outbreath I was letting go. If not, then it was not letting go. Since mindfulness is a lot about letting go, this is gold.
The third one might be termed “Alexander walking” or just walking. But it is walking with a difference. I say that I walk as slowly as possible. It’s just the opposite of being in a hurry. It is mindfulness-awareness walking. The only goal is to let the neck be free and just sort of see what happens. Observe how one uses oneself and maybe play around with little experiments. I study macrobiotics also and they teach that one of the main principles for health is a 30 minute walk outdoors every day or often. It’s like a little meditation and really clears the mind and just cheers one up. You can add a lot of ideas to your walk but also you can not clobber it up too much. After the head becomes free and the shoulders let go a bit to widen and after the whole back lengthens and widens, the next release is for the limbs to come out and ease away from the body. One could think of a turtle. Our head and neck are crammed in to our bodies and our limbs are also. It is not necessary. “The arms want to release out and away.” Just letting the arms swing nicely and there’s a little natural unwinding twist that can happen. “The legs want to release forward and away.” Sometimes we use the knee as a touchstone. We let the knee be long in relation to the hip. We let that release. Just walking around with no purpose but letting the neck be free will really lead you into a virtuous cycle.
Our civilizing process has produced people who have lost their way, kinesthetically speaking. We are far removed from the natural state in a way that more indigenous cultures are not. We have some very subtle habits of body and mind which are causing us to suffer and frustrate our efforts to get out of suffering. Our head and shoulders want to follow the principles of heaven. Where our head goes, everything will follow. We are so bound by habitual patterns. They are in our body as well as the mind and they are most subtle. One is convinced to plunge into such a study because of the tremendous sense of well being that one experiences. Please embark with me on this exciting journey. You will not find anything superior to this. If you do, just mix it with this work and you will prosper. Alexander work is the magical skillful means and wisdom that combines with any practice or human activity.
Craig Thompson has been practicing the dharma and teaching and studying Alexander Technique for 47 years.
Craigtom@aol.com
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