The Effort of Focus

AKA Doing nothing is a persistent choice

I thought I would take a little time away from the drawings to mix up the flow of stuff and things. On the one hand, it’s great to have a visual aid when I write about the back or the knees. On the other hand, I don’t want you to think that the Alexander Technique is some kind of exercise program or anatomy course!

Last week during one of my lessons, I asked my student to lie on the table and imagine:

You gently allowing your muscles to let go,

as if you are doing a trust fall into the table.

While giving this instruction, I had my hands on the head, neck, and upper back and felt that things were going well. I could both sense a decrease in muscular effort and see a gentle expansion of the thoracic cavity (aka the rib cage).

At this point, I moved away from the head, neck, and back and placed my hands upon the left knee. Almost instantly, I could see the student’s attention shift from the overall trust fall to the more insidious thought,

“Oh I have a history of left knee pain. I want to pay extra attention to what John is about to do so that I can really figure out this bugaboo of mine!”.

When this thought entered the mind of the student, the expansion of the rib cage began to stop and the breathing became a little more controlled. I could also see the eyes go into a typical PAY ATTENTION mode. The whole shift in attitude happens quite quickly and for the most part, it’s something that none of us really think about too much.

But cultivating this shift in attitude towards the trust fall is the cornerstone of the Alexander Technique.

It isn’t so much that there is a highly prescriptive “correct” attitude that you should have with yourself; it’s that there are certain features of attitudes that block learning.

Instead of remarking on all of the features that I think are good / bad, I gave my student a new thought to explore:

Imagine that a movie is being projected onto the ceiling.

All you are doing is watching a movie and allowing all of the sights and sounds to come to you.

Just allow the trust fall to happen and watch the movie.

Within moments, the student’s attitude shifted away from PAY ATTENTION NOW and the left leg stopped gripping up into the hip. There was a particular type of quiet that began washing over the student - the type of quiet that we love in an Alexander Technique lesson - and even though they could not have described much of what was happening, they had just taken the leap and chosen something new. This is the IT factor that I hope you can experience for yourself.

Choosing to Focus

After this table turn - and the entire reason behind today’s story - my student remarked that they felt very tired. They felt like their brain had just done a whole lotta thinking. It was surprising to them that “doing nothing“ could feel like a whole lot of something.

I’ve written in the past that we don’t want to concentrate our thoughts. FM Alexander writes about how the thought of concentration seems to take all of our selves - our interconnected mind, body, and soul - and condenses these things into a pinpoint. We tend to stiffen up, hold our breath, and block the world out. Is there a difference between the concentration that FM warns us about and the persistent movie-watching imagination experiment that I gave my student?

I believe the latter is not an exercise in concentration but a practice of FOCUS.

Focus is what you can see clearly in the clips of Sammy Davis Jr., Dennis Bergkamp’s heads up play, or here in Arthur Rubinstein:

When you practice focus, you are making a choice about how you think. This is a new skill and I would expect it to be quite tiring for you in the beginning. You don’t have to play the movie watching game that I’ve described, but it’s about the best analogy I can cook up these day.

Give it a shot and let me know if that kind of thinking feels different to you! It should feel very quiet and sloooooooow.

Get In Touch

Have a question about this post? Ask in the comments below or hit the like button. You know, all those good social interaction things for the algos!

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.