Why Am I Drawing Skeletons? Part 2
AKA Tying the articles together
Welcome to another recap post!
Earlier this week I took the time to write a little reminder. I was not really attempting to describe what the Alexander Technique is but to instead frame the problem that many of us feel we have. I then describe some of the general tools I’ve written about that can help you better understand the sensation of pulling down.
In last week’s post, I referenced a grand total of 12 out of 114 articles that I have written. You could absolutely STILL be confused at what we are doing if you haven’t had a lesson and you haven’t been reading this series of articles from the beginning. I have had many folks look at this abundance of stuff and just say,
“Who has the time for all of this! I just need to be fixed NOW.”.
Honestly, I very much empathize with this need for a quick fix. If you have found yourself dealing with a little niggling pain or have a serious injury, you don’t necessarily want to read 114 articles on ANY TOPIC without some bonafide guarantee that you aren’t wasting your time. For those folks, I’d say it’s best to just take an hour to sit down with a great teacher and have an open attitude; either the teacher can help you or not.
Technique, rhyme, and reason be damned.
If however, you are one of my readers, you very likely have already come to a decision. You are not looking for a quick fix. You are not turning a blind eye to your discomfort and hoping that it magically goes away. Instead, you have decided to invest in yourself.
How Do We Invest in Ourselves?
Self investment and self improvement can take a variety of forms. You could view this as either going back to school for another professional degree or reading a piece of terrific literature.1 In Alexander’s case, he wanted to heal from a vocal injury and ultimately discovered that his attitude towards himself - and learning in general - helped shape his ability to identify how he either stiffened himself up and created an injury or freed him from habitual strain.
When Alexander set out to figure out what caused his injury, he did not assume that he had bad posture which needed correction. Instead, he writes that he believed that he was doing some strange/harmful behavior on stage while he was performing. His investigation into his behavior rather than his pure posture is what ultimately set him on a compelling journey of self discovery.
This subtle - but critical - distinction is part of the reason why I draw SKELETONS!
How Can We Observe Behavior?
In order for you to STOP and consider what your behaviors are, you must have some way of knowing what you are doing. To learn this, I suggest you use mirrors (part 1, part2) just as Alexander did to come to know what your habits are (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). The posts on habit should give you some vague sense of how the position of our bones relative to one another can affect the sensations of tension, pressure, balance, and contact (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5); both within ourselves and our environment.
One of the single most important things you can do during your investigation is to WITHHOLD JUDGEMENT and MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO CHANGE ANYTHING. This part of our development is devilishly tricky to pull off for many people. All too often we are primed to try and do the ‘right’ thing in life as quickly as we can. When we rush to make a change, we can often find ourselves making half-baked adjustments that give us the veneer of change without really get at the root of things.
The Primary Control as a Window into the Root of Things
In my second post, I wrote about What Poise Looks Like. If I could ask any of my students to check out anything that I have written, it is the 3 videos in this post. I have watched these videos many times and I must say that they have greatly helped me understand what potential I lost due to injury.
What you see in all of the videos is a particular coordination of the head, the neck, and the back. You will see these 3 zones working in concert at all times.
What I See
The head leading and the body following
A voluminous organism
What I Do Not See
The neck pushing the head up
The upper back pushing the neck up
The middle back pushing the head up
Knowing what our potential coordination and grace can be is one way of better identifying what a harmful habit looks and feels like. In the Sammy Davis Jr. videos, you will NEVER see him drop into dead weight or stiffen up into concrete. I can see it by the lack of “basement” and “penthouse” that I describe in my Elevator Game series. When YOU can learn to feel “basement” and “penthouse” within yourself, you will have a better and better ability to prevent it.
Yeah That’s Cool…
But How The F*ck Do I Actually Break My Habits?
This question is getting us closer to why I’m drawing BAD ASS ROCK AND ROLL skeletons. In order for you to actually come UP out of your habits of strain and pull down, you need to be able to play Lazy Jenga. Lazy Jenga is my personal term for unpacking and implementing FM Alexander’s directions.
The basic premise of Lazy Jenga is that since we balance from the top down and since there is NOTHING above our head, we can most easily begin the process of NOT pulling down by asking the head to not be so tightly bound to the top of our necks. Freeing this very top joint - the atlanto-occipital - even partially will grant us better overall balance and access to the other bits and bobs of our bodies.
If you attempt to move your hip in isolation and your atlanto-occipital joint is locked, you will almost surely feel stiffening transfer from the hip to the middle back or you will feel you are losing your balance.
UGGHHHHH THIS DIDN’T TELL ME HOW!!!
Yeah, I know… all of this writing and I don’t have a clear HOW yet. This is why I’m attempting to draw all of these skeletons. So far, I’ve been able to share a few essays with you on How to Allow the Neck to Free (part 1, 2, 3). These essays address Alexander’s first direction (at least partially). But in order to convey to you the meaning of the second and third directions (head forward and up, back lengthening and widening), I just need more detailed drawings so that you can see what your structure is and how it can balance.
In a lesson, a skilled teacher can place hands on you and demonstrate all of this stuff in roughly 45 minutes. It can be a real information wholloping leaving you with a sense of great calm and alleviation. However, actually remembering what happened is another matter entirely!
OK Fine. But I Want to Exercise!!!
The damned trouble with this work is that there both ARE and AREN’T any exercises to do! I have had long periods where I would go for walks and practice squats and feel like I was learning about my habits and figuring out how to pull down less. But lately I find myself simply standing in front of the mirror for roughly 15 minutes while thinking about my overall balance and calm (and directions).
I have found the more lucid my thoughts become, the more I can simply stand (not statically), fly my helicopter, and feel the head lead my entire self out of compression. I will literally see my shape change before my eyes. It’s a slow process, but highly effective (and not at all my original idea…).
So I hope this post (and last week’s) goes some way to clearing up where we are going. As ever, do reach out in the comments if you have questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!
Get In Touch
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.
I do not count reading ACOTAR as self-improvement. That’s just fun for some folks and that’s totally fine.
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but really… let’s be honest… This is like if Fabio was a winged elf and was in a love triangle…
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I’m really not trying to hate on ACOTAR this much… I watch plenty of anime so I got my own weird shit that I’m into… But NONE of it is self-improvement.