Back Pain Solutions II:
Posture-Movement Education
(Part Two)

Importance of Sensation/Perception
Our sensations/perceptions play a major role in our posture-movement habits. Observing himself and others, Alexander noted what his student Macdonald called “faulty sensory awareness.” We may not have an adequate sense of what we are doing with ourselves. Someone who mistakenly perceives himself as already having good static and dynamic posture will not see the need to correct it.

Before and since the time that Alexander presented his system, others working in the field of posture-movement education have been aware of the fallibility of our senses and the importance of improving awareness in relation to our posture and movement.

Dr. Mathias Roth, whose work influenced Spicer (and quite likely Alexander as well), published An Essay on the Prevention and Rational Treatment of Lateral Spinal Curvature in 1885. Roth noted: "The majority of patients suffering from various forms of spinal curvatures are not aware of their abnormal position; they feel straight while in a crooked position, and while the spine is curved; the spinal curvature is usually accompanied by compensating abnormal position of the head."22

Roth advises that with training, sensation can become a more reliable guide to posture and movement:
"The majority of patients being unconscious of their abnormal position, the first object to be obtained is to change the false mental impression they have in believing themselves straight when they are crooked, and feeling crooked when placed in a normal position. The second object is to enable the patients to retain the normal position, which at first causes the sensation of being crooked."23

In keeping with this, Alexander worked at developing hands-on teaching methods to help students gain more trustworthy sensations/perceptions related to better body use. As he said: "Surely...if it is possible for feeling to become untrustworthy as a means of direction, it should also be possible to make it trustworthy again." 24

Inhibition
In The Use of the Self, Alexander described how he gradually became more conscious of the abnormal positions and movements ruining his voice. He also gradually began to change the false impression he had of his posture and movement and to experience better, more normal positions.

However, once he had begun to realize a better way of using himself while speaking, he found that he couldn’t retain it. He still often continued with his old, bad posture-movement habits.

These included pulling his head back and downwards on his neck. At the same time he would compress and tighten his throat, puff out his chest and ribs, arch his back and tighten his legs and grip his feet on the floor, among other things. He could see and feel that this excessive effort interfered with his breathing even as it involved greater and greater pushing to get his voice out.

Observing the effects of faulty sensory awareness in himself, he also saw that his problem was not simply ‘physical’. It started with his intention to speak. As soon as he formulated the idea of speaking he could observe himself tightening his neck, pulling his head back and down, and initiating the rest of his pattern of excessive tension.

Alexander experimented with pausing before he actually spoke. While he did this, he consciously focused on not going into the old pattern. This idea of pausing, or stopping and not doing some intended action, had been applied by others 25 and became an important aspect of what Alexander taught. He called it “inhibition,” a term used in various works of psychology available at the time. Alexander combined inhibition, or delaying the immediate response to a situation, with what he called the process of “sending directions.”

Sending Directions
While Alexander observed himself with mirrors—as recommended in the physical therapy of the time 26—he practiced sending “directions” or “orders.” These were subvocal instructions that he gave to himself, which included negative directions. He thus reminded himself to delay his response to speak and to not pull his head back, etc.

Alexander’s negative directions qualified as, in William James’ words,“inhibition by repression or negation.” James had pointed out the danger of focusing too much on what not to do where “both the inhibited ideal and the inhibiting ideal...remain along with each other in consciousness, producing a certain inward strain or tension there.” 27

Alexander wisely sought to reduce this strain by also sending positive directions—positive subvocal verbal instructions for proper use that he gave himself. The words served as aids for him to direct his attention to himself: “Let the neck be free, to let the head go forward and up, to let the back lengthen and widen.”

This second, positive use of directions allowed him to practice what James called “inhibition by substitution,” wherein “the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits, and the latter quickly vanishes from the field.” 28 The positive instructions for good use helped him substitute for, and supersede, the poor use. This positive use of directions may have greater usefulness than the negative.

James noted: "It is clear that in general we ought, whenever we can, to employ the method of inhibition by substitution....Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good."29

Continuing to observe himself in the mirror, Alexander could confirm that he was not doing what he didn’t want to do. He could also see that he was doing what he wanted to do. His sensory awareness became more reliable. With practice he found that he could continue his good body use while speaking and with other activities of daily living as well. He could thus avoid the habitual strain to which he previously had been accustomed.

James had written “To think...is the secret of will....”30 Whether Alexander read William James’ work directly is unknown. But the ideas of the new psychology, research in hypnosis, as well as popular watered-down versions of this work involving so-called mind cures, etc., were in the air. Earlier medical practitioners like Roth had emphasized the importance of sensory awareness and the conscious direction of will to deal with posture-movement problems. Again, more ancient practitioners had gotten there first. The Chinese Qigong classics advised: “Use intent, not force.” 31

Did Alexander re-discover this completely on his own? Who knows? Nonetheless, it is a powerful notion which he used and taught to others. Posture-movement habits can best be improved not with stretching or strengthening exercises (force) but with the ‘exercise’ of thought and awareness (directed intent) in daily life.

Alexander’s Contribution
In seeking to solve his own vocal problems, Alexander brought together the notions of direction, inhibition and the other elements discussed previously into a unique system of posture-movement education.

A strong sense of ethical concern permeates his approach —characterized by the realization that ends and means exist inseparably from one another. In connection with your everyday posture-movement habits, if you use stress-inducing body mechanics as your means, the ends you actually achieve will more likely include pain and inefficiency. Aldous Huxley, who took lessons from Alexander, pointed out that this can serve as a exemplar for the larger area of human ethical action.32

Alexander’s contribution to posture-movement education has been well-summarized by posture-movement researcher and Alexander Technique teacher Ron Dennis:
"In what must now appear as a variously-sourced synthesis, Alexander's creative contribution needs clear acknowledgment. If he did not, on the one hand, singlehandedly reveal an entire new field of endeavor, he did, on the other, succeed in fashioning, from heretofore disparate elements, a distinctively harmonious system, one praised by contemporary physicians as 'a very advanced craft and a very subtle philosophy',* and one moreover imbued with an ethos of self-help not merely for symptomatic relief but for the very rightness of it all. This ethical aspect of 'the Work' may well have been what drew such eminent thinkers as John Dewey, Aldous Huxley and George Bernard Shaw, as well as numerous others, to it." 33
[*The reference is from The Use of the Self, Appendix, Letter of May 8, 1930, from Drs. Cameron, Douglas, et al.]

The Skill of Everyday Life
A. N. Whitehead wrote that “Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”34 We easily recognize the skill involved in the feats of Olympic and professional athletes. Yet most of us do not recognize the complexity of skill involved in the the most obvious activities of everyday living.

C.S. Sherrington, an ‘unusual mind’ who helped found modern neuroscience, once observed:
"[Standing] requires among other things the right degree of action of a great many muscles and nerves, some thousands of nerve-fibres and of perhaps a hundred times as many muscle-fibres. In doing so my brain’s rightness of action rests on receiving and adjusting pressures, tensions etc. in various parts of me."35

Our everyday skilled acts may involve unnecessary effort that can have cumulative harmful effects on how we function.This can contribute to back pain, among other problems. Sherrington also observed:
"Breathing, standing, walking, sitting, although innate, along with our growth, are apt as movements, to suffer from defects in our ways of doing them. A chair unsuited to a child can quickly induce special and bad habits of sitting, and of breathing. In urbanized and industrialized communities bad habits in our motor acts are especially common."36

Perhaps because we do not usually think of our basic acts as skills, we do not take advantage of the possibilities for improving them. Dennis has emphasized that posture-movement education, as exemplified by the Alexander Technique, focuses on helping you acquire greater skill in your mostly unconsciously acquired activities of daily living.37 In developing your posture-movement skills, you can reduce the stress on your back and other parts and improve your level of efficiency and comfort.

Posture-movement therapy, discussed in the previous chapter, focuses on using particular postures and movements to alleviate specific symptoms. It provides an “exercise” approach for dealing with your back problems.

Posture-movement education, because it focuses on awareness and intent in your everyday activities, provides an “un-exercise” approach—as Dennis has called it—to enhance your posture-movement skills.38

In Part II (the next three chapters) you will learn how your back is constructed. You will find out what happens when you experience pain. You will read about principles of learning applicable to controlling your pain and your body use. These chapters may seem a bit theoretical and you may be tempted to skip them to get to “the good parts.” Of course, you can do so if you wish and still benefit from what you read. However, I suggest that, if you read these chapters first, you will have more of the necessary background for understanding the “exercise” approach of Part III and the “un-exercise” approach of Part IV, which follow.

Chapter 4 (Part Two) Notes

22. Qtd. by Staring, p.39

23. Ibid, p. 40

24. Alexander, The Books of F. Matthias Alexander, p. 420

25. Staring, p. 170

26. Staring, p. 40

27. James, pp. 192-193

28. James, p. 193

29. James, pp. 194-195

30. James, p. 187

31. Cohen, p. 93

32. Huxley, “The Education of an Amphibian” in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and other essays, pp. 15-16

33. Ron Dennis, Personal Communication, Oct. 25, 2000

34. Science and the Modern World, p. 5

35. Sherrington, Man on His Nature, p. 153

36. Sherrington, The Endeavor of Jean Fernel, p. 89

37. In recent years, Dennis has suggested the notion of “skill” as a foundational formulation for posture-movement education. Dennis has characterized the achievements of Alexander and others in terms of their expansion of the possibilities for acquiring and improving the skills of body support and movement in everyday life. See Dennis’ articles, “Primary Control and the Crisis in Alexander Technique Theory” and “Poise and the Art of Lengthening.”

38. See Dennis’ definition of the Alexander Technique in the first chapter of this book.

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