The Dodman Blog

A lot of people in the Alexander world emphasise the need to understand the complexities of our physiology, and act on that understanding, if we are to have any hope of improving our use. That is, by knowing more about the way we should ideally function, we can somehow make it happen..

Given the obvious difficulty any dissension (of which there is plenty) in what constitutes ‘ideal functioning’ would cause in each of us individually trying to bring it about, it has always seemed to me there might be an

Two things I’ve read recently about the Technique have struck me. The first was the report by the British Medical Journal that:

“Six lessons followed by exercise were about 70% as effective as 24 lessons.”

The other was the claim by Alexander Teacher, Jeff Hall, that:

“We are selling benefits that exist so far up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that there is a very limited number of people who will ever be attracted to it.”

In my view, the chief benefits of the Technique can be summed up as:

The biggest opportunity I see opening up to us is devising a means of teaching the Technique online. I’ve already proved to myself there’s huge scope, just from email dialogue. I can’t imagine how well that could be enhanced, using Skype or its successors. If we can forget about hands on, there’s no obvious need to ever meet a student, in person. Would that be good or bad?

Well, if we can’t teach without using our hands, the main benefit from the online revolution is getting our

A comment I read recently:

“For two and a half days, every waking moment, I gave those directions–and I mean *every* waking moment–except when I was talking to someone, because I can’t give directions inside my head and talk at the same time.

I also added one:  “my neck to relax, so my whole head can move forward and up, my whole body can lengthen and widen and whatever I’m doing to cause that pain I can stop.”

In the middle of the 3rd day, I realized my back didn’t hurt any more.  And it never did again.

I can experience much the same ‘lightness of being’ commonly described as a corollary of Alexander lessons as a result of a many different things happening, such as:

Opening a letter and having an unexpected cheque fall out.
Talking with someone and making a ‘connection’.
Receiving good news.

I’ve just passed a couple of weeks in the presence of several adults and two young children. The adults spent most of their time lounging in various designs of chair, while pursuing a variety of ‘activities’ – reading, computing, talking, eating, drinking; occasionally, they would stand still, doing other activities – cooking, washing up, pontificating; sometimes, they walked about; occasionally, they ‘did’ an intense bout of something more active, like swimming or lawn mowing.

The children spent very little time either sitting or standing still. They did a fair amount of walking and