The Model we Use

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Recently, on the private forum managed by my students, C. proposed to study statistically how badly F.M. Alexander was employing his technique on all the photographs that show him in the gestures of everyday life. I said that I was not interested in finding how many times the supposed “model” had flaws.

I will explain here that I do not regard F.M. Alexander’s pictures has the “model”. To me, the pictures are just different expressions of the model, i.e. each picture is an expression of the internal model as well as an expression of the difficulty at projecting the internal model in real physical form.

F.M. Alexander never gave us the plan of the intellectual, reasoned model I stubbornly say he used, but in the third part of this answer I will show the sceptics

  1. how we can make absolutely certain that he had no somatic, first person embodied cognition of the correct use of the self, and,

  2. how we can experiment and decide whether he used a geometrical model or not when he so wanted.

It is abundantly evident that he never intended to transmit his model clearly and thoroughly. He really did his best to hide a few hints in his books and he gave us leave to experiment the way we wanted to find out how the correct use of the mechanism of the torso could be constructed with concerted decisions of movements.

Yet when I say that I am interested in the mental model, I don’t think that the point is to study something academic that is outside of ourselves and outside of our deliberate, reasoned physical activity. The point is to study and question how to develop an intelligent interest in the working of our own psycho-physical mechanisms. The mental model has very little worth in my eyes outside of the sphere of self-experiments of guidance. I can discuss for hours about how the spots we call the “ribs-8” and “iliacs” can be represented on a diagram, why I was drawing the diagram differently three years ago, but as long of my collocutor has not yet started to follow a self-discipline of experimenting with conscious guidance the deliberate direction of the movements of these spots, I do not see how the discussion could be leading in the right direction. Such questions have nothing to do with the intellectual inquiry I recommend; it does not help the collocutor to explore how his own will, directed in a rational way1, could effect the desired change, and bring about a concrete physical manifestation, aided by mechanical principle and a proper self-manipulation (mental manipulation2). This kind of sociological approach would never help him to experiment and learn how to translate a series of intentions of movements [“directions”] into performed simultaneous movements which bring about the desired flexibility and extension.  

My point in participating in this Forum is to find any other subject that will draw out our “spirit of inquiry“. By that expression, I do not mean to get drawn into any sort of philosophical conundrum but to sharpen our willingness to self-experiment with different theories in employing the mechanics of the psycho-physical organism. If I find that the discussion drifts into sterile bickering, I am out. I already said to C. in a personal correspondence that I was not interested in his crusade of asserting whether the “line of Unity” was exactly specified in the Delsarte’s writings or not. No matter how much he might be disappointed, I have decided that the subject is taking us away from the real work, the point of which is for each of us to find the incentive to work and experiment with our developing capacity to command the concerted movements of the parts (and even better in front a camera) to find out what sort of conscious guidance and control we can develop over the directions of the mechanisms of the torso and limbs. I am not trying to shut him up as he suggested, I am shutting myself up.

Very few people suspect how laborious it is to start experimenting on one’s own, creating a self-discipline3 of controlled experiments with clear orders and precision in the plan and in measurements. Believe me, I am quite advanced in this and I can tell very quickly whether a student of mine is experimenting on his own or not on a regular basis and whether she/he is developing an intelligent interest in the planning of his/her experiments.

The shocking truth is that most do nothing of the sort, not before a long time and not before building the self-speech accuracy, the mental calm and strength that is required. We can get all heated up in a debate, but the debate will help nothing in the next controlled experiment that we will perform this morning, or tomorrow or the next day (or even later or never if we do not constrain ourselves to start experimenting). The possibility of postponing indefinitely surely exists too. I know that reality and I understand the difficulty we are facing to bring ourselves and our students to start and keep up experimenting with the work. I thought that this forum could help us sharpen our spirit of controlled experiments.

The new use of words and the kind of reasoning that are involved in the experiments of conscious guidance and control have nothing to do with an historical or sociological approach. Exploring how we can subordinate a series of simultaneous acts to a series of verbal instructions is the psycho-physical new territory that F.M. Alexander has opened for us.

The funny thing in this is that, for all his flaws, you must admit that F.M. Alexander has been quite good, in the long run, in bringing out in people the desire to experience in employing the mechanics of the psycho-physical organism. At the same time, he said to us: “none of you want the discipline” and this little aphorism makes me suspect that he was caught in a vicious circle: he knew that

(A-) it is difficult, counter-intuitive and mind-bending to construct a self-discipline of controlled experiments [and not experiments controlled by feelings] with one’s own guidance of the concerted movements of the different parts of the torso,

(B-) most of us, that is before any training, want the result, to be able to DO no matter the means, and to find an issue out of the predicament with possibly a feeling reward (feeling light, feeling in charge, feeling confident…), so he gambled that:

(C-) it may be necessary to give people what they crave to get them slowly to accept what they fear most but which is the real thing.

This gamble he lost.

The internal model

A long time ago, I came to see by reasoning that, sometimes, when he was using himself well, F.M. Alexander’s picture could be seen as a physical expression of the mental model which he tried to describe in his books with many aspects of his reasoning regarding the mechanical working of what he calls “a satisfactory use of its own mechanisms”.

The faults I could see in other pictures of himself were only confirming that his capacity to readjust the different parts of his torso was not the result of a somatic drill, a learned reaction that had become automatic, that is, it was NOT a reaction guided by an accurate sensory memory of what should be right. The faulty adjustments confirmed that the correct concerted directions of the movements of the parts must be the outcome of a conscious decision that would only take effect if the operator remembered the rules and was sufficiently experimented to project them in activity.

I started then to create experiments and tools (instructions, diagrams, video measurements, etc.) to conduct the experiments to see how my decisions of movements could influence the “machinery”.

This brings me back to the notion of “model” which so bother C., certainly because he has the impression of having been led by the nose and of having imitated a poor example all these years since he started to get interested in the F.M. Alexander technique.

When I employ F.M. Alexander’s pictures as “model”, it is not in the sense of a perfect example. It is more as a challenge. When I film myself in the performance of the procedures of conscious guidance of the mechanism of the torso which I share with all my students, after taking a still picture from the film, I compare the measure of the angles in my performance with what I see of F.M. Alexander shape.

Sometimes, F.M. Alexander’s projection is not perfect in all the geometrical characteristics I have reasoned out of his WRITINGS (or invented if you prefer) during the last twenty years, and neither is mine, despite the fact that

  1. I have developed an arsenal of verbal instructions which F.M. Alexander certainly did not have and that

  2. I use video tools and image measurements systems which he could only dream about.

My projection should be so much better than his and then, it is NOT. This is what I call an humbling situation. The latin root of humble means “close to earth” and “unaffected” by the emotional winds which soars when we engage in debate and hubris. What else than to go back to basics and start again with controlled experiments? When you find out that of all the qualities you thought you had, nothing much is left of them in the fire of the experiment, you can start afresh to experiment and control what is possible for you or not, and how you could teach yourself and invent better instructions, better tools or different ways to say the instructions to yourself. First of all, you want to keep your initiative propped up by the proper fuel and end up with more dedication to the real work of experiments.

the question of the original model

The principle of balance in series of movements is of the greatest importance in the study of gestural poise“. So little is left to indicate what the man (F.M. Alexander) was really doing [to obtain the geometric relations between the different parts] and although dogmatic assertions are no doubt dangerous, it is at any rate obvious WHAT he was NOT DOING.

No statistical analysis is necessary here. And I can prove it with a simple experiment.

If you had another lesson with me, I would show you with great precision what it is you do in the same gesture that he is seen NOT DOING. The example of the frog dance [squat] is another pons asinorum or inescapable rock on which the teacher on the somatic plane can only witness his own shipwreck. There is strictly nothing you can imitate of him to improve your gesture. Nothing that you want to feel can make you repeat how he moves according to geometrical law without doing what you would need to do to go down. It seems like a fairly sweeping statement don’t you think? It is because I know what I am talking about: I have been there myself and failed.

If you want to imitate what he does, you will have to learn the alphatet of conscious guidance. And this does not depend only on your teacher (see the end of the post).

Geometrical analysis of the Frog Dance

Let me give you an idea of what I mean. When you observe and measure F.M. Alexander’s gesture of which you see only the end “position” on the left, you find that he can keep the angle at his back (from the sacrum plate to the vertebral process of the 7th Thoracic) CONSTANT when moving from Monkey (the “new monkey” shown on the right of the picture and not what you call Monkey in the modern AT) to the Frog position of mechanical advantage. This is possible at the condition that the operator is capable of commanding the movements of the spots in question so that they are going down or up at exactly the same speed. What the 19° on his back means is how little F.M. Alexander needs to incline the torso and how little weight he can allow to act forward of his ankle without falling backward. It is very simple to measure that angle with a stick, even when you are performing the gesture, to control whether you can keep that angle constant or not.

The plot in the procedure of the frog dance is as easy to measure geometrically as it is difficult to command in practice. Take the lowest and highest red spot drawn on the bony structure of the mechanism of the torso: you just need to check that these dots simply follow the same vertical trajectory in the gesture from the Monkey to the Frog and back up again.

I only saw two pictures and one little film of F.M. Alexander performing that gesture. Yet, contrary to my colleagues, I used the language of geometry to observe what I was seeing as well as WHAT I COULD NOT SEE. What I discovered was ASTONISHING.

  1. with no MEANS whereby directing the research into a solution to the psycho-mechanical problem represented by Alexander’s frog gesture, what I saw is that the gesture is just IMPOSSIBLE. I, a full blown STAT teacher (and long time aikido practitioner), could not come anywhere near the same mathematical organisation after hundreds and hundreds of attempts. I was on my bum as soon as I tried: what the old guy was NOT DOING was just impossible for me or any other person I had met. I have coached a score of dancers, gymnasts, martial artists or modern Alexander technique teachers to try and imitate the gesture, but with a single look at the trajectory of the geometrical spots in their attempts, it is obvious that, when they think that they are going near “it”, they are just daydreaming and taking their wishes for granted —they do not even feel when they are out of track. As a matter of course, when they imagine improving, they are in fact going in the wrong direction;

  2. the first and greater problem is not the difficulty of the gesture in itself, but the fundamental problem of balance, of equilibrium in space and the involuntary reaction that it entails. This discovery lead me to the next item in the list;

  3. the second thing which goes totally countrary to intuition, is that I found [after the many failed experiments I told you about] that F.M. Alexander must be directing more movements into the gesture rather than less. He is inhibiting the mental habit of correlating and compacting the series of movements which enter into the gesture and which “feel” that one is doing the necessary “right” act. 

    And it must be kept clearly in mind that the whole of the old series of movements has been correlated and compacted into one indivisible and rigid sequence which has invariably followed the one mental order that started the train ; such an order, for instance, as ‘Squat or flex the legs.’ [I have changed the last word of this sentence to fit with the subject.] (Alexander, F.M.; Man’s Supreme Inheritance, (Second Ed. Revised, 1918), p. 138)

    I became certain that he had the gesture de-composed and re-composed with more movements that those which meet the eyes. I then remembered a student of F.M. Alexander who called his book “invisible exercise” (Lee, G.S., (1918)). I thought that it should be more like “invisible movements”, the necessity to increase the mobility of the postural chain, that is finding a way to command and incorporate definite and appropriate movements (A) which create and control contact forces (friction use) and (B) movements which create momenta6 to counteract the perturbation of body balance (voluntary anticipatory postural adjustments). This pointed to the fact that F.M. Alexander must have developed a higher, more complete order of activity and a new power of control (that I lacked).

  4. Also, it became clear that I must unlearn the conception inculcated in my psycho-physical understanding by my modern Alexander technique training: the more movements of the bones, the less “release” of the tissues there could be—I was after “due tension7” or the “power of springs” everywhere in the anatomical structure (from the toes to the top of the torso) and no part should be set in a slack mode, if I was ever to imitate the Alexander frog dance. It was suddenly obvious that I did not know anything about how that would feel—and neither did any of my modern AT teachers; the quest must be done outside of the realm of feelings.

  5. Finally, I hit on the most unexpected solution or better, the most unexpected path to a solution: mathematics must be involved or at least a language of geometrical nature which would draw gestures (simultaneous movements) according to geometrical principle and not from spontaneous acts.

After twenty years of patient experiments and discoveries, I am still 2° from attaining the master’s geometry. So when I hear some teachers talking out of spite about F.M. Alexander’s lack of knowledge and poor moral drive, it is clear to me that they do not know what they are talking about (as soon as they are going to read this, I bet that they will affirm that there is no linkage between knowledge of conscious guidance and control and moral drive!). Even if they do not see it, the link exists: it is simply self-discipline (the potential of training oneself to act in accordance with established Principles, Rules and Orders).

A word of caution to finish. I cannot teach you to squat in one lesson. Before approaching the squat many lessons are needed and even then, in such a pons asinorum, all depends on the self-discipline you construct during the lessons and how much you are prepared to alter your conceptions and fight the old rulers (the habit of finding your rewards in the feeling sense).

What I need to say is that just having lessons with me is not enough, you must make these lessons a pretext for your own work and experiments. With some pupils I started to teach the frog dance but quickly stopped when I understood that they were not going to take the matter into their own discipline. It was just pointless! What is funny is that each time I stopped the lessons on this topic, the students never came back asking for more…

Footnotes

  1. “I then explain to him that his own will (not mine or some higher will) is to effect the desired change, but that it must first be directed in a rational way to bring about a physical manifestation, and must be aided by a simple mechanical principle and a proper manipulation. (Alexander, F.M.; Man’s Supreme Inheritance, (Second Ed. Revised, 1918), p. 145)
  2. I cause him [myself] to rehearse the correct guiding orders, and after placing him [myself] in a position of mechanical advantage, I am able by my [mental] manipulation to bring about, directly or indirectly as the case may be, the desired flexibility and extension. (Alexander, F.M.; Man’s Supreme Inheritance, (Second Ed. Revised, 1918), p. 144)
  3. Discipline is the practice of training oneself to act in accordance with established Principles, Rules and Orders. Self-discipline means the constant drive to train oneself to obey one’s own orders and refine these orders when the performance is not in accordance with the plan.
  4. Of course the teacher’s manipulation will have given him previously the reliable sensory appreciation in this connexion.
  5. Of course the teacher’s manipulation will have given him previously the reliable sensory appreciation in this connexion.
  6. a momentum is the speed of an object multiplied by its weight. It is also called the “quantity of movement in physics.
  7. “For relaxation really means a DUE TENSION of the parts of the muscular system intended by nature to be constantly more or less tensed, together with a relaxation of those parts intended by nature to be more or less relaxed, a condition which is readily secured in practice by adopting what I have called in my other writings the position of mechanical advantage. (Alexander, F.M.; Man’s Supreme Inheritance, (Second Ed. Revised, 1918), p. 19)