Alexander Technique - Eliza Patsalidou

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

I would like to discuss a method for organizing awareness in such a way that a performance can be well-learned without becoming stereotyped and mindless, and hence incapable of change. The key is to be found in the relation between awareness and another conscious state, attention. Awareness , as I conceive it, is a general, unfocused condition in which a person is wide awake and alert to whatever may be going on without being concentrated on anything in particular. Attention, on the other hand, is focused on some particular aspect of the field. It has been compared to a spotlight on a dark stage. William James defines it as “taking possession by the mind” of one out of several possible objects or trains of thought.

Frank Pierce Jones , The Organization of Awareness, F.M.Alexander-Technique, Mornum Time Press 2013

Erasmus+ - Group Mobility of students, ready to fly to new paths of learning , because !

Alexandee Technique session during the workshop on Michael Chekhov's Technique by Kimon Fioretos , which took place from 7-11 April 2025, as part of the Erasmus+ at . How amazing are combined the Alexander and M.Chekhov Techniques. I am curious to find out whether F.M. Alexander was influenced as an actor by M.Chekhov.

An article published by Harvard Health Publishing

The Alexander Technique can help you (literally) unwind - Harvard Health ...

Quote of the week:

The magical thing about the ordering is that-you see it is so hard to put this plainly to you- you give the orders and than this magical thing happens that messages, electrical impulses if you like, go through your nervoussystem in a certain order, and that results in a change in your use.It´s that way on, you see,-the physical habits are all in the nervous system basically, and we don´t realize this.

F.M. used to give that lovely demonstration of this. He used to say if you live in the forest, and you always go from point A to point B, you will gradually wear away a little pathway in the grass. One day you think, well may be there´s a better way, you start going around differently. In time,you have two pathways, and then you decide that the new way is the better way and gradually the grass will grow over the old habit. I think it`s a beautiful illustration, it´s so exact.

Marjory Barlow/ Trevor Allan Davies, An Examined Life,Mornum Time Press, 2002 p.289

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
(selected by Ulli Pawlas- www.alexandertechnik-hamburg.de)

F.M.Alexander, Use of the Self, page18

"After many disappointing experiences of this kind I decided to give up any attempt for the present to “do” anything to gain my end, and I came to see at last that if I was ever to be able to change my habitual use and dominate my instinctive direction, it would be necessary for me to make the experience of receiving the stimulus to speak and of refusing to do anything immediately in response. For I saw that an immediate response was the result of a decision on my part to do something at once, to go directly for a certain end, and by acting quickly on this decision I did not give myself the opportunity to project as many times as was necessary the new directions which I had reasoned out were the best means whereby I could attain that end. This meant that the old instinctive direction which, associated with untrustworthy feeling, had been the controlling factor up to that moment in the building up of my wrong habitual use, still controlled the manner of my response, with the inevitable result that my old wrong habitual use was again and again brought into play. I therefore decided to confine my work to giving myself the directions for the new “means whereby”,[1] instead of actually trying to “do” them or to relate them to the “end” of speaking."

(Ελληνικά)

"Μετά από πολλές απογοητευτικές εμπειρίες αυτού του είδους, αποφάσισα να εγκαταλείψω προς το παρόν κάθε προσπάθεια να "κάνω" οτιδήποτε για να πετύχω το σκοπό μου, και κατάλαβα επιτέλους ότι, αν επρόκειτο ποτέ να μπορέσω να αλλάξω τη συνήθη χρήση μου και να κυριαρχήσω στην ενστικτώδη κατεύθυνσή μου, θα ήταν απαραίτητο να βιώσω την εμπειρία του να λάβω το ερέθισμα να μιλήσω και να αρνηθώ να κάνω οτιδήποτε αμέσως ως απάντηση. Διότι έβλεπα ότι η άμεση ανταπόκριση ήταν το αποτέλεσμα της απόφασής μου να κάνω κάτι αμέσως, να πάω κατευθείαν για έναν ορισμένο σκοπό, και ενεργώντας γρήγορα βάσει αυτής της απόφασης δεν έδινα στον εαυτό μου την ευκαιρία να προβάλω όσες φορές ήταν απαραίτητο τις νέες κατευθύνσεις που είχα σκεφτεί ότι ήταν τα καλύτερα μέσα με τα οποία θα μπορούσα να επιτύχω αυτόν τον σκοπό. Αυτό σήμαινε ότι η παλιά ενστικτώδης κατεύθυνση, η οποία, σε συνδυασμό με το αναξιόπιστο συναίσθημα, αποτελούσε μέχρι εκείνη τη στιγμή τον ελεγκτικό παράγοντα στη δημιουργία της λανθασμένης συνήθους χρήσης μου, εξακολουθούσε να ελέγχει τον τρόπο αντίδρασής μου, με το αναπόφευκτο αποτέλεσμα να μπαίνει ξανά και ξανά στο παιχνίδι η παλιά λανθασμένη συνήθης χρήση μου. Αποφάσισα λοιπόν να περιορίσω την εργασία μου στο να δώσω στον εαυτό μου τις οδηγίες για τα νέα "μέσα", αντί να προσπαθήσω πραγματικά να τα "κάνω" ή να τα συσχετίσω με τον "στόχο" της ομιλίας.

On the Atlas Joint

What many singers and instructors may not address is the atlas joint, where the spine connects to the skull. It is the highest point of the spinal area. If the singer employs tension near the atlas joint, the tongue often tenses simultaneously. There is also transferred tension to the upper part of the sternocleidomastoid muscles.

Exercise: Instruct the singer to sing a small scale, gradually work higher and higher. At some pitch level, the singer will often lock the muscles around the atlas joint. This blocks easy access into the high range. I instruct the singer to repeat this exercise, sometimes moving the head slightly side to side in a small motion. Eventually the singer's body will learn to release this area and more freedom will come into function in the high range.

I tell singers, "If you look at the picture you will see that it is NOT good to tuck the chin or straighten the curve of the neck too much. You can have a long neck WITH the curve in tact.

Have a nice day. David

Thank you for your presence and your commitment during the Alexander Technique workshop yesterday at Re-MindBody studio.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

Just to recap, in ordinary everyday life, we suffer from weight, we suffer from being heavy, from being relatively immobile. We can say we suffer, because we are creatures constructed for movement.

Movement is what our lives are all about. You´ve got to mobilize weight and control it, and regulate it, and you do that by and through energy.

So, learning to use yourself properly is learning to regulate direction and control the flow of energy.

Walter Carrington, Thinking Aloud, Mornum Time Press, 1994 p.24