I was giving a first lesson to a chiropractor the other day and I was having trouble communicating “let your neck be free so your head can move forward and up.”
The direction made little sense to my student. The idea of directing yourself to lengthen and to widen just wasn’t catching.
It probably took me months if not years of Alexander lessons to learn what it meant to direct yourself.
So what to do with a new student?
One Alexander Technique teacher, Robert Rickover, suggested I use negative directions. Instead of telling my student to think of “freeing his neck” to instead have him tell himself, “I’m not tightening my neck.”
Many people respond better to negative directions. What does it mean to free the neck? That’s not clear. But everybody knows what it means to tighten the neck. So tell yourself, “I am not tightening my neck.”
It’s like traffic laws. They are almost all negative. We instruct people to stop at stop signs and to give way to traffic in certain situations and to drive no faster than 35 mph in certain zones and the like.
Most ethical laws are negative. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal.
