Spirituality and Alexander-Technik

ANDREAS KREYMEIER - - LEHRER DER ALEXANDER-TECHNIK

                                                              UNTERRICHT IN 10963 BERLIN - KREUZBERG

IN DER   OBENTRAUTSTRASSE 25   - - Tel. 030 - 25297893 - - E-mail : akb.elektropost@t-online.de

Folgender Text entstand nach einem Workshop, zu dem ich auf dem Alexander-Technik Kongress 2011 in Lugano eingeladen hatte. Die dort gesprochene Sprache war Englisch.

“Spirituality and Alexander-Technique”: The Alexander-Technique within the Transformation and Renewal of Civilisation

A workshop presented on the 9th international congress of the F.M. Alexander Technique 2011 in Lugano.

The Alexander Technique provides help and education – reaching very deep – for the individual human being. Here is a place and a work where man and woman can learn to be in contact with their own energy, their self, their personality and their real talents and health. The same can be said about every form of society and nation and sphere of culture. They all need to live and be embedded in their own identity, and not just conform to how western civilisations think they should be and look. The huge catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power station in 2011 shows once more the failure of many aspects of civilisation. And still, many nations are not willing or are not able to give up their belief that their way of thinking, education and technology are reasonable enough to rule earth and nature and life in its many aspects worldwide. A renewing and transformation of civilisation is necessary and can happen when realisation grows that the human being does not exist only on a material level with the brain in the head as the superorgan, with its intellectual capability determining what life is all about, wanting to make the rules for societies worldwide. The growth of spirituality is the most essential learning process today. The intellect, a main tool of civilisation, has a natural limit of perception; thinking does not reach deep enough to understand life in its wholeness.

Therefore my invitation arose for people who want to integrate spirituality into their work with the Alexander Technique, who wish to integrate their experienced reality, their beliefs or inner feelings, what the mind and thinking are all about. Realising in many individual ways that the brain – in addition to other important work – can also be developed to be the opening and the connection to one’s spiritual being and can be in touch with one’s inner knowing and self. From this inner reality, one learns and realises that thinking is not the source of life, but is a very useful and educable servant of life, a great tool. People learn that intuition and many thoughts and wisdom of the heart are not created or somehow predetermined in the brain.

The brain and the entire nervous system are organs of the body, and work creatively as the interface and connection for the physical aspects of man and woman and their non-physical aspects. The wholeness of life is always here, and – when possible, for example when it is wished for – people will grow into this wholeness of their being. To become spiritual means to become grown-up. This wholeness can then be translated by the body into words, speech, ideas, partnership… and all aspects of life. All these dimensions, the body, the soul, the spirit, exist in a permanent and flowing and very often indistinguishable way together as one. And into the growing conscious reality about one’s self, we send the directions coming from the work with the Alexander Technique. In this workshop I did not talk about any religion or any spiritual teachers and schooling. This meeting was for working with the Alexander Technique. I started with the first words of Alexander’s first book. They have a very close connection to our work here.

F. M. Alexander starts his first book Man’s Supreme Inheritance with this quotation by J. G. Frazer, a scientist continuing the work of Charles Darwin on the evolution of mankind:

Our contemporaries of this and the rising generation appear to be hardly aware that we are witnessing the last act of a long drama, a tragedy and a comedy in one, which is silently played, with no fanfare of trumpets or rolls of drums, before our eyes on the stage of history. Whatever becomes of the savages, the curtain must soon descend on savagery forever. (Frazer, in Alexander 1910, p. 1)

Frazer’s quotation was the basis for my stage-play, which we performed in the winter of 2010 with an ensemble in Berlin. It was 40 minutes long and called “The Curtain”. Here, I will tell you just the essence of it. “Frazer’s curtain” is very strong, and politics and the religions of civilisation took it as a fact and as a basis for their way of dealing with the planet, with mankind and life. After the curtain had gone down in front of the savages in act 1, we turned the scenery for act 2 by a quarter of a circle, as if on a turning stage and played the scene again, using the words of Frazer again as the main part of the act. This time everything looked different. The audience looked at the drama this time from the side. And when the curtain falls we see that the uncivilised world, the world of savagery, is behind the curtain as in act 1, and we see civilisation also behind the curtain – on the other side.

The words of Frazer surely talk of a very big problem for mankind, but even more, they only say half of the truth. Frazer could not know that he also placed his civilisation behind the curtain. On Frazer’s side are intellectualism and reasonable results; on the other side are cultures and ways of life that cannot be understood by those who only use their intellect to look at life. (Intellectualism cannot perceive the reality of anything that is beyond the capability of intellectual thinking.) For Frazer, civilisation was of course in front of the curtain and – this is no polemic, just a plain fact – it was first-rate life and culture. The savagery, the uncivilised world, was behind the curtain and was second-rate life, full of superstition and primitive beliefs. This is the limited materialistic classification of earth’s population, born in the heads of those who have no real connection to the many aspects of life in its richness and beauty and diversity. This separation and disconnection of something that belongs together – the whole of mankind – is “the descending of the curtain” for civilisation.

In act 2 shamans and healers and artists started to cure the problems caused on both sides by the separation. We turned act 3 and act 4 again. In act 3 the audience was sitting on the side of the savages. In all four acts we heard Frazer’s words and showed from four different views what they meant for the development of life on this planet. At the end, we cut the curtain down, got rid of it and carried it out of the room.

Work without this curtain can start: thanks to everyone who helped to get rid of this curtain. The transformation and renewing of civilisation starts and grows when science and spirituality – or call it for example orthodox recognised medicine and alternative medicine – grow together. As I said, the brain is also the interface, where soul and spirit can give information to the body. All these three fields of life, which will grow when one is open to them, make up the individual human being.

Here is a good sentence: “Don’t believe everything you think.”

From now on in this paper, I mainly use just key words or key sentences and … dots between them. The words stand for speaking and the dots … stand for practical work which follows, or a short pause.

We have all had a lot of experience working with the Technique. I have some suggestions for the classical way of working as teacher and student and for a meeting with a group of people. Let us start to work with being still for a moment … Just being aware of meeting in this room…

And then find a sound, a sound you like, and sing it. Sing loud. And walk in the room singing your tone … Stand next to someone else and continue singing your chosen tone and be aware that you do not lose it when standing very near to someone else who is singing his or her tone … The Alexander Technique is about finding and using one’s own self. In this moment we are expressing ourselves with the voice, singing our own sound and keeping to it, not losing it when moving around hearing other sounds, and finding it again, when it has become lost. In daily life there can be many situations in which one can lose, or wants to give up, the unique quality of one’s own sound, where one loses one’s own voice, expression, one’s own ideas and talents in order to become more like society or school or friends want one to be.

The missing use, the misuse of oneself, takes away from creating oneself and creating the world outside that one lives in. The sound you sing or the voice you talk with are the vibrations of your body, your soul. The frequencies of these vibrations can be in contact with your innermost … which now can be heard when singing … So please do not give up your sound (or your silence) when you come in contact with other people; it can be a joy to hear you and it brings health … or create together with someone else a new common sound … Try working as a teacher and a student with the Technique while singing your own sound … The flow of sound …

And then let us be quiet again … When giving a lesson, there are different ways to work and different things to say … First I have to realise with whom I am working, what the student can understand, which words will bring contact, what questions are there … Working with the technique is about the awakening of the senses … All the nerves of the body make up a net … this net of millions of nerve cells creates and receives … receiving and creating information for the whole body … The brain is not the place where the entire being of a human being, life and all abilities are determined …

In this work we use the brain in a very creative way. We send directions. We “put” chosen directions into the nervous system … for example, we say “I let my neck be free” … And here I raise a point about the influence of words. It is more precise to say “neck free” or even just “neck” … The three words “I let my” can be full of habitual thinking and misuse … who am I? … what is letting? … what is my? … So I suggest, if you want to reach and create a place or a space or quality, use the word directly, otherwise words might become lost in a big field of nice feelings and interpretations. … Say “neck free” or “neck”. The nerves will carry the word “neck” to the neck. Words are creative energy containing a direction. And the word “neck” reaches and creates the neck, etc. …

Let us work in the classical way, teacher and student … The teacher gives directions with words and hands. Move away from the neck to other parts of the body. Create the body as a place of flowing energy. Educate in the way that your leg does not exist for you because you think of it in your head, but learn to be in your leg with all your self-consciousness. That is a very big difference . We can examine this …

Having (the existence of) a leg in your brain-consciousness, only intellectually.
Being really with the wholeness of your being, your self-consciousness in your leg. Being conscious of having a body and being in the body. This means to bring the life and reality of oneself into the entire body, and not only to have a leg, for example, as a result of the head thinking that “I have a leg” …

Let us work in three steps. First working as a teacher with a student … then working by yourself and reaching through an inner word or a thought a specified part of the body … you travel in your body … And now, the third step or quality, we move in the body from place to place without even saying or thinking the words or places we want to be in. This makes you very fluid inside … be in your leg, your shoulder, your back etc. … you give your nervous system the information where to flow to. This is very subtle … The capability of feeling yourself in the body grows … You can rely more and more on the sensibility of the body when working with the Alexander Technique.

So, let us be silent again … doing no things, doing nothing … start to sing one’s own tone once more within a task … and stop … and sing again as a task, but this time everyone should first start to sing after his neighbour has started, and reach your full sound within about thirty seconds … hear the difference, when being aware of your neighbour, who is aware of you. (Someone has to start!) … The conductor Carlos Kleiber did this when he was rehearsing with his classical orchestra … This way of singing is good when working with a group …

There are good tools to work with. You can find and develop your own … This creatively enriches the Alexander Technique … We always work with the Technique starting with the groundwork that F. M. Alexander found … Stop, and again let us just be silent for a moment …

There is a lot more we worked with in the workshop in Lugano … for example dangling … You sit on a table, and you dangle your legs, then you stop and then you continue dangling, but this time your feet, your toes, your heels lead the whole leg, and you really are in your feet, you do not just think “I have feet and I will move them”. No – you are in the feet … you can say: thinking is in your feet, and you move them and dangle. And you feel the difference. Your feet and the entire body become alive in a very wakeful way …

The main subject of this workshop was to talk about and work on the difference between “just” brain-consciousness and your self-consciousness all over your body … Your leg will “know” when you are in it. It is worthwhile working in this transforming way … one more item … You work as a teacher having your hands on the back of a student … and you invite the student to touch your hand with his back. This can create a new and alert partnership for the student and the teacher.

The work continues …

So we end, with thanks to you all, and creative ideas and answers and help coming from reality to all who work, wherever, within the question “What is reality?”

Thank you, Andreas Kreymeier