We have moved through these short articles fleshing out the 5 “pillars” of the Alexander Technique (AT) as pointed to by Patrick MacDonald - one of Alexander’s direct students.
Not that any of this is a linear path, but I think finishing with Primary Control is fitting as it is also where it, and all life, begins.
To review - the five are (and here they are linked to the corresponding post):
Recognition of the Force of Habit
Recognition of Faulty Sensory Awareness
Primary Control
As Janet Jackson said “I’m in Control and I like it.”
Now, Control is a tricky word. Control might bring up ideas of grasping or forcing or something very different than the felt experience of what Alexander was talking about back in the Edwardian age.
Primary Control can be defined simply as “the ability of the spine to lengthen and gather in response to the breath.”
I mean, I say, simply but does this concept of reconnecting with the energy that moves the body even in repose, even in sleep, even before (speaking in utero) before we had what we consider a body - does this concept ring true?
Another way of thinking about Primary Control might be to reframe it as “Primary movement” - what moved first - and this is slightly stepping on St. Thomas Aquinas toes with the “Prime Mover” proof for the existence of God, but leaving religious deities out of this - if you are a parent and you have put your young baby down in the crib and you come back and that baby is clear on the other side with its head against the flat surface of the board - the spine did that.
As you lay in bed, before you fall asleep, perhaps you have had the sensation of listening to your own body move against the pillow, against the bedclothes - this is your spine lengthening and gathering, your body is connected to your spine - whatever way your particular body works - there is a connection there.
And AT, all 5 of the pillars spoken to so far this year and on into the future, is here to bolster that connection. AT is here to help unlearn all of the conditioning that shuts down this natural ability of the body to move freely, that undulation, that reverberation, that, literally, original vibration, that is the way you move - the way that you as an individual move - devoid of all the “sit up straights” absent all the “beauty myths” and letting go of “when I finally am X I will feel Y” - just as you are.
AT works to clear away what we learned and embodied on accident and allows intention to guide us back to the primary movement - this primary control. Not so that we can then be “done”, so that we can say “i did it” and move on, but so that we can live there - allowing the natural rhythm, the natural grace, the natural power of the body to aid us in our intentions - and sometimes the body will let us know when we are aiming at something currently beyond our reach. There is no linear path - but there is certainly the map of the body that we continually co-create using the present moment and the body to allow us to continue to make decisions on how we meet the next moment that is already here.
If you are interested in learning more, I am excited to share - check it all out on www.balancelab.com