“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”  – Maya Angelou

Living in a world that is increasingly more complex, challenging and overstimulating can lead us to experience extended periods of anxious reactivity. Gaining the skills to successfully manage our responses allows us to regain flexibility and agility to live with “grace under fire”.

The Alexander Technique is a century-old method for helping us feel and function at our best. The technique teaches us to improve self-awareness and harness the ability to choose our actions in response to the world around us and within us. One of the hallmarks of F.M. Alexander’s discoveries is the concept of “inhibition”.

Alexander defines this as a process that allows us to stop and prevent unwanted habits that are unhelpful so that we can redirect ourselves to more constructive and healthier paths forward. This foundational skill can be applied to any activity and helps bring us from a reactive state into the realm of possibility to choose our response in any given situation.

Habits and Inhibition

 We might define reaction as an automated response to a particular stimulus with no space or time in between stimulus and response. Alexander called theses automated responses habits. To be clear – habits themselves are not inherently harmful – they can be super helpful! The point we want to be able to differentiate is whether those auto-pilot habits are helping or hurting. When the response is automated, there is no choice for change, so you get what you get.

Within the liminal moment in between stimulus and response is the richness of choice through the process of inhibition. Responsiveness in this context implies the space and time for choice, and the flexibility to create new responses. The agency to choose is alive and present.

So how can we insert time and space into that liminal moment?

Taking Our Time – Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Did you ever play the game “Simon Says” or “Mother May I?” when you were younger? Both of these cherished childhood pursuits actually utilized the inhibitory process. In both games, we learned to wait to respond until we got the go-ahead-it’s-ok-signal. We soon learned that automated responses – and rushing ahead – usually resulted in losing the game. In that moment of waiting, we were not passive, we were patient and attentive – we were ready.

But how often do we rush ahead and ignore the signals of when it’s ok and when it isn’t?

I have a favorite story about rushing I love to share with my clients. I was visiting with my great-aunt Jean in Florida and wanted to take her out to lunch. As we made our way to the parking lot and my car, my 90-something-year-old great-aunt started barreling across the parking lot to my great dismay! She had taken off before I had a chance to take her arm and I was terrified she would fall and get hurt on my watch. Luckily, she made it to the car safely. But I learned something important that day.

What I realized was that my great-aunt was fearful of crossing the lot, and her automated response was to speed up and get it over with as soon as possible.

It’s easy to see that speeding up made that situation more dangerous, yet my beloved aunt’s auto-pilot response is super common. Ask any public speaker or performing artist about the problem of speeding up when they are nervous.

Just like in the story of the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady does win the race.

Learning the Skills

Just the other day I watched with a smile as my neighbor taught her three young daughters to stop at the curb, wait, and look both directions before crossing the street. She was using the process of inhibition – taking a moment in between getting to the street and crossing the street – to maximize safety. I smiled because we don’t automatically have that skill, we have to learn to use it.

Slowing down, in this regard, does not necessarily mean changing your speed so much as inserting a moment of choice between stimulus and response. Alexander called those in-between moments critical moments because they are critical in determining what happens next.

We know through experience that good preparation helps us succeed at school, at work, onstage, and in all we do. Think of those critical moments as preparatory moments. There is a treasure trove of possibilities we can unleash when we learn to use these moments for our best preparation.

Stopping Versus Pausing

While stopping is a central idea to Alexander’s process, the word Inhibition itself has a very different cultural connotation in 2024 compared to when Alexander was writing his books in the early 1900s. Not being a classicist, I prefer to let my language choices evolve as my understanding and experience continue to evolve.

“Pause to Choose” has become my favorite refrain most recently. For me “pausing” implies a readiness that is neutral with the options for redirection and change. In contrast, the notion of “stopping” connotes a disengagement and loss of momentum and potential. This is like putting your car into Park as opposed to Neutral. Once the car is locked in Park, it is disengaged and won’t go anywhere, while Neutral leaves all options open.

In addition to distinguishing stopping from pausing, linking the action of pausing to the action of choosing is essential, since stopping alone is missing the point. We don’t stop to stop – the stopping (or pausing) has a purpose. The purpose is to assess what is going on in order to access full choice of where (and how) to go next.

Choosing – What is Your “Yes Plan”?

In the pursuit of transforming reactivity to responsiveness, the trickiest part is what we’ve already covered – stopping (or pausing). Hooray! Simply interrupting the automated response can be remarkably powerful – yet as stated above, the ultimate goal isn’t the stopping, it’s the redirection. The pausing creates the space for choice. How and what we choose has a huge impact on what transpires after the pausing.

We literally do what we think, and negative thoughts actually steer us to the negative. “When we use negative language, we support a fixed mindset – we create a rigid, pre-determined outcome that I tease my students is akin to giving yourself a life sentence. Open-ended and positive language helps support a growth mindset and helps emphasize what is possible and abundant. It can open up a world of possibilities.”

F.M. Alexander called this process of choosing constructive thinking. When we use our constructive thinking, we aim for what we do want, instead of avoiding what we don’t want. Avoidance tends to be motivated by fear, and so our negative language can unwittingly steer toward our fears.

Practical Application: Moments of Transition

 Statistically, one of the greatest risks for seniors is falling, and the greatest risk for falling are moments of transition – such as going from sitting to standing to sitting or sitting to standing, or turning. Let’s explore the transition of sit to stand to practice our skill of pausing and choosing.

Let’s choose balance as our primary goal for this transition, and use pausing to choose balancing our head fully over our base in each transitional moment.

1. Take a moment to notice where you are. Notice where you are touching the floor and chair beneath you.
2. Now observe where your head is balancing at the top of your spine and gently ask your head to drift back in space so that it is fully over your sit bones – your base.
3. Ask your head to rotate forward and as it begins to nod forward invite your torso to roll forward on your sit bones. Enjoy the sensation of your torso weight transferring to your feet on the floor.’
4. Notice where your feet are and invite your feet to gently push into the floor to send your whole head upwards towards the ceiling, allowing your whole body to follow. Notice when your head arrives fully upwards and backward so that your hips and feet are catching your head weight.
5. Notice where you are in space – gauge the distance from your head to the floor, from your back to the wall in front of you, from your head to the ceiling above, and from your front to the wall behind you. Look at the horizon as you sense the weight of your head landing through your feet to the floor. Choose somewhere in your space you’d like to walk to.
6. Let your eyes lead your head in the direction you’ve chosen to travel, and allow your whole body to fall. When you arrive – pause again and notice where you are and where your head weight is balancing over your base – your feet.

Now Assess Your Experiment

Take a moment to assess your experiment. How did it feel to pause at each transitional moment? How balanced did you feel throughout the process? Did seeking balance help improve your balance? If not – be patient and repeat the experiment.

Sometimes slowing things down and trying something new can make us feel tense and impatient, so be kind to yourself and remember-  we get good at what we practice J Choosing a transitional moment every day to practice your pausing and choosing will make you a pro in no time!

 

 Contributed by: 

Ariel Weiss is a certified Alexander Technique teacher who has nurtured a lively private practice in Philadelphia since 1988. Trained as a dancer and choreographer, she delights in helping people learn to move freely in cooperation with their structure so they can feel and function at their full potential.

In addition to her private practice, Ariel teaches seniors at Crosslands retirement community, coaches musicians at The Curtis Institute of Music, and coordinates a wellness program for ENT surgeons at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Ariel presented her TEDx talk Posture myth-busting: it’s easier than you think in 2021 and her 6-week introductory online workshop for Friends Life Care titled Living in Balance is available to watch here: https://www.alexandertechniquephiladelphia.com/resources. Learn more about Ariel and Alexander Technique at www.atphila.com or email ariel@atphila.com.