Meditation in Movement: The Alexander Technique

Hello everyone, we’re going to talk about— the topic today is the Alexander Technique meditation in movement. So I’m going to explain what it’s all about, but if you don’t know me already, my name is Tom and I’m a dancer, and I’ve been a dancer for a long time, and I’m a dance teacher. The Alexander Technique is something I encountered probably 7 years ago, and it’s a form of practice that changed the way that I dance, but also the way that I move around life.

Now, back then, I was not really a meditator, but now, getting into Buddhism more and meditating weekly and daily, I can see a lot of connections there. And seeing that, I wanted to share that with y’all. And hopefully you get something out of it that helps improve your practice the way it improved mine.

Uh, so anyone here heard of the Alexander Technique? 1, 2, 3. Okay, nice. So you’re gonna learn something new.

Awesome. The Alexander Technique was devised by a guy named Frederick Matthias Alexander in the 1800s, late 1800s. He was an Australian actor.

Now, actors back then did not have amplification systems, and we’re talking about theater. So when you were acting, you had to project your voice so that people in the back would hear you. Also make grand gestures so they could see you.

This is why all older acting was so extravagant and exaggerated, right? So Alexander, he was an actor and he had a hard time projecting his voice. So he started going to doctors to figure out if they could help him, and nobody could really give him any tools that would be helpful. So he went on a self-exploration journey for about a decade and developed his technique.

He found out that when you align your body in certain ways, you can make the use of the body more efficient. And by doing that, specifically loosening up certain areas like around the neck, you can align the body to use your breath and project your voice further. So, but specifically for him, it was the tension here, which we all know sometimes.

Like, for example, when we wake up, sometimes we have a lower voice. ‘Cause all the muscles are kind of relaxed and we’re able to get lower and project further like I’m doing now. So he devised this technique and started teaching it to actors and he did it in England.

What is this about? What is this technique about? I want a volunteer to show you some things. Please, come. So, you’re gonna stand right here.

Thank you so much for being a brave volunteer. So you’re gonna stand sideways, like so. I want you to stand up straight, you know, have good posture, whatever good posture means to you.

So, in Alexander Technique, the first principle is the primary control. So everything in the top of the head, this is the primary control. If we are able to balance the head, loosely, freely on the top, the rest of the body will align itself.

Now I want you to point to where the top of your spine is. Right, you’re pointing to the, to the back. Most people would say either here or up here in the back of the head.

In fact, all of you take your fingers and put them here right in front of the ears, right where they start. If you connect the fingers in the middle This is where the top of your spine is. Okay, right here.

So that’s the atlas, the vertebra that holds the world, holds your spine. This is where it is. So if we go from here and try to imagine that our head is floating, right, then what happens is we start feeling a chain reaction.

But this is the primary control and our spine curves throughout the body. There’s a curve forward here, and then it goes backwards in the thoracic spine, the upper back. It goes inwards the lumbar, and then goes outwards again.

So it’s supposed to go like this, and we’re trying to loosen it up. So that’s the primary control. Uh, now most of us, when we think of posture, as I said with Michael, he was immediately going with the chest Forward.

We’re testing up a little bit. So what we’re trying to do is actually this. Most of the time we’re operating from the front of our body.

So I want you to try and loosen your sternum and try to think more from your back going up. Yeah. Right.

So this is, this is the tricky part because even as I’m saying this, now we’re trying to do. So the second principle is end gaining. We’re trying to not end gain.

What does end gaining mean? It’s kind of an old word. It means don’t go for a goal. You’re, you’re focusing on the means, the journey to get somewhere.

So instead of saying I’m trying to be here, I’m going to try and let the head float, let the sternum soften, let the shoulders rest in their place and let the knees be loose. One of the things we do is kind of play with the knees here. Thank you so much, you can— so an Alexander Technique session would be a practitioner or a teacher demonstrating how to walk, how to stand, and how to sit.

Which is really funny. It’s a re-education. The point is to break habits and re-educate the body from all the, the, uh, maladaptive ways that we use our bodies nowadays, which we all know, especially with phones and computers.

So, um, that is the, the gist of it. Then a couple of more principles that you may have forgotten, but Oh, very important one, the faulty sensory input. Don’t trust what you see.

Don’t trust your senses. This is part of the be, you know, posture. I’m feeling like I’m up here and strong, but when in fact we’re overusing our muscles.

Our brains only recognize normal for us, right? You can’t possibly know just by feeling that you’re completely upright and in the best posture. This is why we use mirrors or someone else telling us, at least until we get a sense of how the desirable normal feels like. That makes sense.

So that’s— those are the main principles, and I’m going to get into how it disconnects to meditation later. But another thing I want to say that immediately connected this to meditation for me is the pause. So pause is a word that repeats a lot in an Alexander session, and it’s something that goes with you the whole— throughout the day.

This is how you practice. So it’d be pause, I see everything. This is kind of a soft focus seeing the peripheral vision, seeing everything in the room.

And that pause takes you out of your body, out of, out of like the thinking mind, and out of I’m trying to hold my body in certain ways. So whenever you find yourself doing something to get somewhere, you pause. If I wanted to stand up, most of us, if we wanted to stand up, how would we stand up? Either like this, or, you know, there’s a lot of pushing.

There’s a lot of eagerness, right? So in Alexander Technique, I would pause. I see everything. And I’m gonna let my body stand up.

It’s kind of funny to say that because, of course, you need to do something to stand up. Muscles are going to be activated, but the intention changes how it happens. Yeah, and you’ve— through practice, you find yourself pausing, and then standing up feels like, hmm, I still pushed a little bit, but— and you just practice sitting and standing.

So pausing is a very powerful tool. So how do I want to do a little demonstration with everyone and give you some of the imagery that we’re using? Because this is how you can practice and maybe feel at least one of those principles for yourself. So what we’re going to do is everyone’s going to stand up and we’re not going to snap, nothing crazy.

We’re just going to do some slow walking as if we’re doing a walking meditation. But I’m going to call out a couple of imageries, and one of them may resonate with you, and some of them may not, or maybe all of them will resonate. So let’s stand up.

Okay, and we want to space out a little bit, so I’m going to do my best to project my voice. You can hear it. All right, so the first thing we’re going to do, everyone, we’re going to, we’re going to stand in place and we’re going to pause.

We’re going to do that pause, and the mantra that we’re saying every time we’re pausing is, “I see everything.” Say to yourself, and I want you to check your peripheral vision, really see everything in the room. And from there, you’re gonna, you’re gonna take yourself for a walk, just a very slow walk.

Yes. So as we’re walking, just traversing, we’re gonna think of our heads being like balloons from the top of the spine, imagining that floats up and is connected by a string to our body. The head is a balloon filled with helium and it’s floating up, and the rest of the body is hanging from it.

And now we pause. Now we stop in place. You do that pause, take the whole room in, get out of your head for a second.

And get back to the balloon imagery. And we let the head float and walk with it. How does it feel to walk with a head that’s a balloon? Now, as we’re walking, I want you to keep that head like a balloon and With every step, we’re gonna feel that our feet are much wider than they actually are, and they’re softer, almost like you’re squishing your feet on the floor every time.

Big step, and the floor is holding you. And pause. Look, I see everything.

Find the head like a balloon. Find the feet really soft on the ground, really squishy. And you take those things for a walk.

I’m going to do one more image. I want you, instead of thinking that we’re taking our chest forward as we’re going, we’re going to imagine that we’re being carried away from the back, like somebody’s putting their, their hand on our lower back and gently guiding us forward. But everything goes at the same time.

It’s not a strong push. Just giving us propulsion from the center of our body. The head is like a balloon.

The feet stay soft. And pause. Yeah.

Okay, thank you for your participation. And return to sitting. Notice how you’re sitting as you’re sitting, just for noticing.

Yeah, almost everyone did. The same thing, right? Whereas again, I would, if we did it Alexander way, I would walk, I would walk to my chair with that imagery. I would get here, say, I don’t even want to sit.

I’m just, just going to stand here and, and I’m going to let, let the sitting happen, right? And of course I got a cushion so I can drop into it a little bit, but this is something you learn how to modulate within your body over time. And as you can see, it’s a practice you can do doing the simplest things. There are many more imageries, like a pendulum swinging between your legs that kind of balances your body as you’re walking, or letting the ba— the rotation happen as you’re walking, or letting the sternum float up.

Every week or so, I would find a new image that that would help me have less effort and find the most efficient use of my body. So I actually— it helped me get rid of a lot of back pain, but also, uh, have a lot more peace of mind, because now instead of doing all the things, I would pause before I would do them. Sounds familiar? Um, so How does this apply to meditation? Maybe some of you can already see some parallels.

The first thing that applies for me is the breath as feedback. In this practice, when you find yourself taking a deep breath, this means that your body’s achieved some, some level of relaxation. So you’re not trying to breathe, you’re letting the breath happen.

And all of a sudden, ah, okay, I released something. That’s how you get the feedback versus feeling, right? The breath tells you. And in meditation, I find that to be the same.

When I’m sitting, I’ll sit initially with a lot of tension. I’ll pause a few times, and then I find myself taking a deep breath. I’m like, okay, something, something’s going on, something’s loosening up.

And less doing, more efficient use means I can sit for longer and I can walk much more easily. I don’t know if you ever experienced some wobbly when you’re walking, doing a walking meditation, you’re walking really slow, but this image of having really wide feet, like going out and really soft I can, I can play with walking meditation better. Pauses, of course, are always welcome.

I think everyone who’s meditated knows to pause at certain times and take a mindful moment. So that’s a great opportunity. And lastly, the detachment from feeling.

And moving towards observation instead of trusting, hey, this is, this is how I’m supposed to feel in my posture and it’s really tense. We use observation to retrain ourselves and also in real time when we’re pausing to observe all the change. So it seems that I was meditating even before I was meditating using this.

And I incorporated it in all my dance practice. So yeah, I think this is pretty much everything I wanted to share before, before we get into some discussion. Uh, did anyone have questions?