Reading report no. 1 - September 30th - Ariel GS Mendez
In this reading report I will talk about the books by Conable and Jankowski. It
will integrate the chapters 1 through 7 of How to Learn Alexander Technique, with
interjections of my personal experience and quotes from the book What Every
Musician Needs to Know About the Body, the revised version by Jankowski.
Chapter I: How to learn Alexander Technique:
Alexander Technique as a practical method to improve ease and freedom of
movement, enhances performance and refines kinesthetic sensitivity. There are
some concepts that might be known before digging into this technique:
-
Primary control: inherent and intrinsic mechanism for balance and support in
the body
-
Downward pull: interference with the intrinsic sources of balance and support.
Pattern of tension that compromises the primary control. It is the whole body
contraction.
-
Constructive Conscious Control: inhibit the imposed pattern of downward pull
and consciously cooperate with the primary control in movement, sitting and
standing.
-
Laws of Human Movement
-
Habituated tensing of the muscles of the neck tenses the whole body.
Release of the whole starts with the neck
-
In movement, when free, head leads and body follows with the spine in
sequence
Keeping this in mind made us understand that other muscle groups
accommodate, but this is not the case with the neck, because of global tension.
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 1
Also, there is a line of gravity around the body, but the spine is not a straight line,
because it has natural curvatures. When downward pulling, the head is not in a rest
position and the mobility of it is restricted to the point of the muscles tightening. The
downward pull gets back to balance when the head is forward the spine, as well as
the thorax and pelvis.
Chapter II: Downward Pull
Conable explain part by part how the downward pull manifests in the body.
Starts with habitual tension in the neck, jaw loses mobility and juts in opening
position, tongue and throat tightens, vertebrae are jammed together and nerves,
blood vessels are pressed, creating susceptibility to tension. Spine loses range, arm
structure is distorted and shoulder blades are pulled together, narrowing the chest.
Back shortens and narrows, knees receive more pressure because of this. Legs are
perpendicular at the arch, food torques, heels pulling to the inside.
In my personal opinion, downward pull is like a defense or even coping
mechanism. Is the body preparing to receive a hit, or the little child preparing with
their body to be more compact, smaller in order to receive a yield from its parents.
The book explains it as habituating submissive posturing, which makes sense to me,
but I prefer to understand it as an instinctive response, related to our reptilian brain
(according to the Triune Brain theory, by Paul McLean).
Chapter III: Laws of the Spine
● Head must lead: Head as the top end vertebra, is larger to accommodate
facial expressions and parts of the face. Head leads from the joint of the head
with the top vertebrae, Occiput with the Atlas (AO Joint)
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 2
● Vertebrae must follow in sequence: Just if the head leads, if some part of the
spine is frozen by tension, it will skip over the frozen part. When we unbend:
the head must go forward and the whole spine lengthens
● Spine must lengthen: Spine either lengthens in movement or shortens.
● The bent spine should distribute moventent equally among the joints.: It has to
move as a whole, otherwise it generates pain when in a sustained position. If
the movement is distributed evenly, it generates an easy curving across the
vertebrae.
Jankowski talks about the spine and its extension from the base of the skull to
the tip of the tailbone. Vertebrates increase in thickness and girth from top to bottom.
We also need to consider this part of the body as a segmented element, with
cushions between the vertebrae called disks and with other connections with other
structures, such as the skull, ribs and pelvis. The curves of the spine are called
cervical, thoracic and lumbar, and the spine bi itself contains the spinal cord and
nerve bundles. In terms of functions, the spine is weight bearing and load delivering.
The spinal curves respond to coordinated and intentional breathing.1
Chapter IV: a model of the Alexander Technique
We need to negotiate a range between tenser and freer, in which we
negotiate it and shift it. From tense to free playing we might need to return to familiar
strategies, until assimilating new use. I will provide my brain with visual feedback to
augment kinesthetic feedback and increase freedom.
In this section there is a quote that I loved: Brains thrive on feedback. And this
goes in the same teaching philosophy that my former tuba teacher uses. In order to
make significant learning when performing an instrument, we must have immediate
1
Jankowski, Bridget. What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body – A Practical Application of Body
Mapping to Making Music. Revised Edition. GIA Publications, 2023. p.21
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 3
feedback when playing. In my personal experience, I started recording myself and
having external audio input from my playing this semester. I consider that has
improved my way of thinking about my sound. Getting physical, this immediate
feedback is even more important, because the sound of my instrument is on my
mind, but is thanks to my body acting in the most optimal way, involving a very
different set of muscles to create an action, the reason why I create my sound.
Chapter V: How Alexander Teachers use their hands
Alexander teachers teach with their hands. The author makes the distinction
between teaching and treating. AT teachers do not treat students as chiropractors,
hands are another teaching aid. Treatment situations success depends on the treater
and the appropriateness of the treatment. Students who fail are liable to suspension,
and teachers are not responsible in the same way the doctors do. Students should
not imitate the attitudes of patients or clients.
Chapter VI: Kinesthetic Sense
We hear and see culture transmitted knowledge, but the kinesthetic
distinctions are unique to us. The kinesthetic sense is considered the sixth sense. It
tells us about our body, the position and its size, if it is moving where and how. It is
also the ability to notice and be aware of the kinesthesia of the part within the whole
body. When developing with AT the ability to bring body feeling into consciousness in
a comfortable, ongoing way. Our own kinesthetic experience helps us, as Alexander
said “You can do what I do if you do what I did.2”
In body awareness, the tactile sense is in the skin, is the feeling of hot, cold,
textures, and pressure. Sometimes musicians are handicapped by an overreliance
on the tactile. Actors and dancers might be very tactile, and when tactile is married to
2
Conable, Barbara and William. How to Learn the Alexander Technique: A Manual for Students.
Portland, OR: GIA Publications, 1995, p.25
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 4
kinesthetic (muscle and skin connected) the art is leveled up. Proprioception is a
grab bag term inclusive of every bodily sensation and awareness, to sense the self.
Some pain is use-related, and some kinesthetic sensations, when threatened, could
be lightly. Discomfort free environments should be a goal on AT. Pleasure: the body
is a permanent source of pleasure, but is reduced by a downward pull, primary
control is pleasurable
Then, the author uses other elements such as micromotion: a component of
body awareness related to pleasure, it is small muscular activity that gives the
sensation of motion in still positions Emotion: a sensation that lets us experience a
response. Processing it correctly will permit it to accept it and report it. This
eventually means it will facilitate the process toward freedom and awareness. When
therapists receive AT, if they feel physically uncomfortable, their span gets distorted
in just auditory and visual perception. Hunger and thirst: body awareness is fullness,
and we need our fundamental responses. Hot and cold: are not only skin related, but
muscular. Energy: it supports the primary control. When talking about energy flow we
give them kinesthetic qualities under the student's control. Yoga cultivates energy.
The fixation should not be in the energy, but in the experience and embodiment.
Unified Field of attention: is the ideal gestalt for Alexander learning. Children don't
split external information from inside. In AT or in the artistic performance, don’t work
being overly introspective and overly extrospective.
Jankowski is a little more specific about the six senses. Gustatory and
olfactory are two senses that don’t affect making music. Auditory is the sense of
hearing that is used to discern the qualities of our sound, the visual sense is used to
discern input from the entire field of vision, tactile is used to discern pressure, texture
and temperature. This is not only the sense of touch with the receptors in skin, but
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 5
also we have mucous membranes of the nose and mouth. Finally, the kinesthetic
sense is the sense of movement, size and position, with receptors in muscles,
connective tissue and joints. It is used to discern the quality of our movement.3
Chapter VII: Your body map and how to correct it
If our body map is inaccurate, we can correct it! Body mapping is the work
that I do once I understand what I am doing. This is a complement to AT. Body map
idea is information about myself, the map is what shapes our experience and we can
change it only by a conscious effort.
The example about tendonitis on the elbow felt very personal to me, and it
makes more sense, now that I overcame an injury because of this. Tennis elbow can
be a consequence of the misunderstanding of the rotation of the lower arm. If it is
understood from the rotation around an axis on the thumb side of the arm it can
tighten muscles and put a strain on the elbow joint. The rotation is on the joint of the
little finger side of the arm. As this career turning event, several mapping errors have
serious consequences.Three basic body layers: bone, muscle and skin. Bones give
us shape, muscle has the function to move and stabilize. skin is the container and
agent of contact.
Conable also makes an approach to every part of the body. It starts with the
neck, which is all the head moving muscles, back, front and sides. It contains the
throat inside, if the neck muscles are tightened, my throat would receive some
tension and will narrow my voice. When reading this, I did draw the body map, and
then the neck, but after that I touched it with awareness and I can say it makes a
very big difference, because as the author says: we think we have a donut in there,
not a functional unit. We don’t realize there is a neck. And When we do, everything is
3
Jankowski, Bridget. What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body. P.24
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 6
larger and freer. Alexander says “I wish my neck to be free so that my head may
move forward and up so that my back lengthens and widens.”4
The jaw is as interesting as the neck, but as in class we talked about: if we
think about two jaws, that leads us to downward pull. We have just one jaw, it is
another limb as the legs. In the skull, we have the spine hole, which makes us the
only vertebrates whose head balances at the center, between the front teeth and the
base of the skull. Regarding our back: those are considered the expression
muscles, portraying character and grace, but they are impacted by the neck,
because it will shorten and narrow the back. Our support is centralized, with the
important organs in between. Our backs don’t hold everything forward and up.
Body Mapping (according to Jankowski)
Body Mapping is the framework for integrated movement to improve music
making and alleviate pain and injury., it makes it easier to create a satisfying musical
performance. This author considers that with enough knowledge of the body in
movement it is most efficient to teach and learn musical skills, as well as organize
the body around a musical intention. Jankowsky presents this as a self
representation in the brain, including structure, function and size, also considered a
body scheme and neuronal self-representation. The practice of body mapping is
correcting and refining this body map to find graceful and coordinated movement.5
Somatics is the study of the body in movement. When we acknowledge
ourselves as movers, it helps to improve musical ease, accuracy and
expressiveness, as well as help them avoid pain and injury.6 Musicians must be
taught with a somatic foundation about: movement as something that needs to be
trained, as well as the kinesthesia and attention and inclusive awareness of the
4
Conable, Barbara. How to Learn the Alexander Technique, p.43
5
Jankowski, Bridget. What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body. P.. 17
6
Jankowski, Bridget. What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body. P.16
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 7
internal and external information. Inclusive attention is a quality that must be
cultivated as a state of being that will instill calm and confidence on the performance.
There are three kinds of awareness
-
Introspective awareness, an awareness of ourselves, and everything internal
to our bodies.
-
Extrospective awareness, which is everything outside, like our environment
and the people that surround us.
-
Inclusive awareness, which, as stated before, is receiving both the
introspective and extrospective information.7
Jankowsky's edition is more straightforward with the concepts, in this case the
conversation that we have had in class with attention and awareness has become
more nurtured with this section of her book. I am an advocate of having awareness
when we are practicing, not only on the music but on the performing act by itself. It is
not just the fact of producing music because we like it, but also what it represents, as
a physical and social action, as an experience that involves so many synchronized
elements in our body.
7
Jankowski, Bridget. What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body. P.24
Ariel GS Mendez - Intro to the Alexander Technique - 8