Never Mind About That…

 

This phrase is one that appeared at specific moments in my studies with Marjorie Barstow.  She seemed to use it when someone had thoroughly analyzed a particular response/behavior and had previously been able to solve the “interference” with a constructive coordinated response.  In the moment of the lesson, what was needed was a reminder that “you know what to do.”

Once I was doing a monologue in one of her workshops – Hermia from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

“Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.”

As I described to Marjorie how I was interfering with my ability to do the acting  – worried about not being loud enough, not being excited enough, not being funny etc.  – all things that I had worked through before, she just stopped me, suggested that I “never mind about all that, just use the Alexander Technique and do what I knew how to do.”  It worked very well.

I use that phrase when I am teaching in the same kind of situation.  The phrase doesn’t help when students haven’t done the homework about what is going on; but when they have, it reminds them to use a bit of “will” to do what they already know how to do.

It is a phrase that I also used for myself when I began to teach with Marjorie in London after the Second International Congress of the Alexander Technique.  While those of us who studied with her knew how rigorous learning to teach the Alexander Technique with Marjorie Barstow was, we were outsiders in London.  The people taking the workshop didn’t know (and perhaps some still don’t know) that she was an exacting taskmaster regarding teaching. 

Before the first group that I taught there, I was fussing at myself – worried that I wouldn’t represent Marj well, worried that people might get angry, that I wouldn’t find the right words etc. etc.  Then I recognized what I was doing and said to myself, “Never mind about that, do what you know how to do….” It worked very well.

 I had been preparing for years for that day.  I suppose that one of the values of being considered an “outsider” was that I took responsibility and take responsibility for bringing my best work to the teaching room every day.  The quality of what I do, of what I invite my students to do, is my substitute, if you will, for being an “insider.”

It is also what Marjorie Barstow insisted on when she taught me to teach.  “You are teaching as soon as your student sees you.”  If you wanted to teach, you needed to “delicately insist” that you consistently met the teaching moment with constructive consciousness. 

Each year at the Friday Harbor Residential, a theme seems to emerge from the work.  A few years ago, it was the “pink elephant”.  ( i.e. If you don’t want to think of a pink elephant, you need to think something else.)

This year’s phrase emerged when one of the participants echoed something that she had heard me saying several times – “you might as well think of the Alexander Technique….” I found out how deeply “you might as well” is in my process – I found out that I say it a lot. By the end of the residential, it became a whole group refrain.

I do remember as I was learning the Alexander Technique that I did consciously develop the idea. I had a day job at a bank – it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, and I thought I might as well use the Alexander Technique as I did it.   I know I think that in lines at airports and when I am in the dentist chair too – I might as well play with what I know.

One day someone told Marjorie Barstow that she was bored.  In one of her seemingly enigmatic responses, she said “I don’t know what that is.”  Perhaps “might as well” was part of her process too – using the Alexander Technique can bring interest/inquiry, and perhaps amusement,  to all moments.

(The picture is from one of my morning walks before the fog lifted.)

Some years ago, a few of us wanted to know when Marjorie Barstow's birthday was - she wouldn't tell us - and we wanted to be able to surprise her.  During class one day, I was dispatched (a selection made by the reset of the students) to find her driver's license and, hence, her birthdate.  I hope I read it right - I was in a bit of a hurry - for after that, every August 25th , we celebrated her birthday.  (Easy for me to remember as this day is also the date my mother was born - perhaps the two of you can party together in the world you are now in.)

Each day I am grateful for her and grateful for her teaching.

In looking for something she said to post today, I found Robert Rickover's reposting of this aphorism from Direction Magazine -

I can’t teach anything that I haven’t done myself. I may not always do it, you know we don’t always do what we should (life would be very dull if we did). But I know when I want to have more freedom, I know what I can do and what I must do, then I make the choice of whether or not to do it.

 

I am just back from a vibrant residential workshop at XXG Sanctuary in Snohomish.  I am grateful to the organizers, the participants, and those who made the Sanctuary such a beautiful place to host an event! 

All Alexander Technique lessons, classes, and workshops are what I call “deep play”, and my experiences last week renewed/confirmed the transformations possible when we –as adults- choose to give ourselves time to play outside the bounds of our daily lives.  (The term, deep play, comes from a Diane Ackerman book of that title.) Following are excerpts from an article I wrote about it:

Above all, play requires freedom. One chooses to play. Play’s rules may be enforced, but play is not like life’s other dramas. It happens outside ordinary life and it requires freedom. (Ackerman 1999, p. 7)

Deep play describes my preference for creating a learning situation that calls on the desire to learn, inviting curiosity to lead the enquiry. Deep play is full of trial and error, full of finding out that one thing accomplishes desire better than another. The teacher provides the learning environment, the feedback, the information, the model, etc.; and the emphasis of deep play is on the joy of discovering the new, more skilled way to do what you intend.

…Play is how we – and many other animals – learn to perform our daily tasks. It is how we learn to survive, to socialise and to improve skills.  Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga who was interested in the play element in culture, defines it:                       

Play ‘is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exultation and tension accompanies the action’ (Ackerman 1999, p. 3).…

If we use this definition of play … every Alexander Technique class, workshop and lesson is play. “Deep” play emphasises that play can facilitate significant, i.e. deep, change.

(Kentauro posted (and probably took) this picture from the Residential on Facebook.)

...In the past few weeks you might have been right!
Many of the lessons and classes and workshops that I have taught have been in my unified field of attention as I write.  I am grateful for this rich playground of ideas and explorations! 

...this is a brief pause in my writing as I get ready for the next edit!  (If I owe you an email, you will hear from me "After July 1."

As I went to my writing nook to start edit my several -inch thick manuscript to ready it to send it to my publisher, I had a split second of "oh my! I have never edited anything this large" and then laughed because  I instantly converted it to  - thank goodness I know the Alexander Technique because I know how to whole-self move step-by-step through a process.

Which seemed both apt and a bit "duh!" since the book is about the Alexander Technique.

and yes, I am very grateful to have this process handy whenever I need it.

A great video of the Conference produced by the the University of Melbourne and Victorian College of the Arts.  (You get to see a bit of the Keynote Speech that I gave.) Thanks, once again, Tony Smith for your stewardship of this great conference!

(this post is from last week....I couldn't access my website from Japan for a while.)

With a free morning in Tokyo, I headed off into the Subways to find Kameido Tenjin Shrine.  The Wisteria are in bloom, and this festival celebrates them.  The festival grounds were full of covered carts, waiting until later in the day to open and offer food to the festivities.  People were arriving, however, and we all got to experience these delicate flowers streaming overhead.

Their English website says these Wisteria have been familiar since the Edo Period in the 17th to 19th century.  Perhaps appropriate to purpose of my visit, the shrine is also conducing “the special ritual of praying for enhancing better schoolwork.”

On Sunday and Monday, I was gifted by many questions that invite me to enhance my “schoolwork.”  So wonderful to be asked over and over again to see the world, your ideas, and your material from another angle.  Monday’s workshop was a Teacher’s workshop—a group of teachers gifting each other with new perspectives.  The group itself was potent—teachers were there who have been part of the school since the beginning (all cities represented) to the newest.

One of the questions brought to consciousness something that I remember “suddenly” understanding as I watched my teacher teach.  I realized that one of the elements that seemed to be part of her ability to observe was also her willingness to be observed.  In my current exploration regarding observation—omniservation—we used the Alexander Technique to be omniserved while omniserving.  (And I thank my Japanese translators for their expertise and flexibility!)

What I love about the Alexander Technique is how it solved a problem I had as a young performer—I could do things great in the studio, but when it came to doing them live onstage, I frequently failed to do what I knew I could do.

Luck and Sidney Friedman (who was my Acting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis) gave me Marjorie Barstow as my first Alexander Technique teacher.  As a result, I learned the whole process of the Alexander Technique in direct relationship to what I did in life and art.  I can’t remember the details of my first workshop—I know that I walked, I would guess that I did a monologue.   I know the changes in my fellow students as they were applying the work to their acting was a big part of convincing me that I wanted to continue to study.

I was quite surprised when I heard that not everyone taught Integrative Alexander Technique.  I believe that teaching from the perspective of the desires, activities, and interests  of the learner is a more accessible and practical way to reach people with this  effective tool.  Plus if you teach the process in an already integrated form, then there is no extra step between learning the process and applying it.

Here are two videos with integrated approaches:

The first is a video about Glenna Batson and Sarah Barker’s work with senior citizens.

The second is a video choreographer Louis Gervais made for a final project in one of my Alexander Technique classes at the University of Washington.

An active area of inquiry has to do with how our involvement with 2-dimensional media (tv, video games, phones) affects our coordination and our ability to embody 3-dimensional ideas.    As I started investigating this, I included myself.  I did experience television as a child.  How did I interact with the medium when I was small?  When I asked myself this question, I laughed.  What I remember is that I never sat down to watch television.  I stood up and acted it out with the actor on the screen.  And my favorite was Annette Funicello.  If she wasn’t in the piece, I was watching, I would find someone else to act it out with…and I was always happiest if it was Annette.  I moved with her. (I wonder what my siblings thought!)  In retrospect, and in celebration of her life, I am grateful that she inspired me to move rather than passively receive my “tv”. I am also constantly grateful that the Alexander Technique provides a tool that helps us make choices about how we interact with the screens of our life.

(For an article on this topic, click the articles tab for the issue of Direction called "Paradigms of Self.)