Sunday 20 March 2011

Ends and means

FM Alexander brought a method into this world to teach people how to move more easy through life. The best of way of learning this more efficient way of moving happens in one-on-one lesson with an experienced teacher. Alexander himself demanded from his own students to read his books first before he used his hands to demonstrate what he wrote about. When we apply the Alexander Technique, we change how we think about movement, and bring sub-conscious habit into our awareness.

What we think about human beings and ourselves influences our movements through life immensely. Alexander promoted a holistic view of human existence, and used the term 'psycho-physical unity' in his books for this concept. When we imagine ourselves as split into body and mind, we lose the ability to rely on our perceptions to a certain degree. The mind develops an image of our body that does no longer reflect its actual structure, movements become complicated and inefficient.

Alexander identified one important 'cause' of what modern psychology calls 'body-mind disassociation', and termed this principle 'end-gaining'.
When the end is held in mind, instinct or long habit will always seek to attain the end by habitual methods. The action is performed below the level of consciousness in its various stages, and only rises to the level of consciousness when the end is being attained by the correct “means whereby".
The attentional focus shifts to an desired outcome, while the neural loop between motor control and sensory feedback happens automatically. The ability to automatically execute coordinated movement (motor learning) serves a useful purpose, dexterity certainly contributed to the evolutionary success of mankind. Whenever we consciously engage in learning motor skills, we switch this 'auto-pilot' temporarily off, which allows our movement to become more refined in what we want to learn.

Our auto-pilot allows for multi-tasking, so we can walk and talk simultaneously. We can 'layer'  complex motor skills, and easily forget how much time it took to learn any skill initially. The human auto pilot system can only be switched off to limited degrees, the Alexander Technique focuses mainly on the functions relating to the control of our musculo-skeletal system by intention.

The 'means-whereby' Alexander subscribes simply mean to move according our evolutionary design, by minimising our deliberate, yet sometimes subconscious, interferences with our anti-gravity responses. How can you achieve this? By directing your attention to how you do what you do, instead of focussing on 'getting things done', especially in learning situations.

Most of us spend the first years of their life like this, before we started imitating less efficient learning attitudes around us. The focus on the 'mind' in our culture quite systematically neglects the holistic aspect of any human activity, we lose touch with our human nature.

To a certain degree you can claim that Alexander Technique belongs to the cornucopia of 'back to nature' movements, yet not with a revisionist but an evolutionary approach. Instead of bemoaning the good old times, attempting to a recreate hunter-gatherer society or any other variation of the 'back-to-the-cave' idealism, AT teaches to deal with our ever faster changing environment in modern times.

Back to nature according to the AT merely means using our structure in 'natural' ways, refining our instinctual reactions consciously so that our habits serve us, and not harm us. Mankind survived under many different circumstances, often in communities with limited specialist medical knowledge and scientific interest. We tamed (or extinguished) the wild animals around us, reduced the need to toil for a living by technology, and forgot for a while that we're only part of nature, neither master nor slave of it.

'Security in numbers' provides a successful evolutionary strategy, and human history provides a lot of examples how this principle helped as well as hindered the evolutionary progress of mankind. In affairs of society the 'ends' still have more importance than the 'means'. The current 'war on nature' in its emanations as 'war on drugs', 'war on terror', 'war on anti-social behaviour', etc. reflects the obsession of society as a whole with the illusion of mankind and nature as opposites.

Similarly, end and means always go together. The primary focus determines whether an activity is done in an 'end-gaining' fashion or under consideration of the proper 'means-whereby'. When I get up from a chair in an Alexander session, my intention might be: Impressing the teacher, getting over and done with it, figuring out why I can learn something with such a simple procedure, planning my dinner, wondering if I switched all lights out, having a better look on a distant object, or even using my anti-gravity reflexes for most efficient movement.

If we attempt do something consciously, we still pursue a goal. Only the importance of this goal changes. By removing the fixed focus of attention on the end we stand a better chance to move in a more balanced way. If we stop caring for some moments about getting out of a chair, we become able to observe the quality of the movement involved, and gradually improve this quality towards ease and efficiency.

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