F. Matthias Alexander: The Man and His Work (Memoirs of Training in the Alexander Technique 1931-34) 0913111151

Table of contents :
List of illustrations
Author's note and acknowledgements
Author's preface
John Dewey on F. M. Alexander
Part One: Training with F. M. Alexander 1931-1934
1. My introduction to Alexander's work
2. My first series of lessons
3. Early days of the training course
4. Gradual change in my outlook on Alexander
5. Our progress in learning-some of the changes the work brought about in pupils
6. Alexander and opportunities
7. The Merchant of Venice
8. Learning to be teachers
9. A personal experience
10. Postscript to the teacher's training course
11. My teaching experience in New York City

Part Two: Alexander's discoveries
12. Alexander's discovery of the HN & B pattern
13. Detailed discussion of the head, neck and back relationship
14. Other discoveries of Alexander's
15. Alexander's technique of inhibition

Citation preview

Ir

r I

F. MATTHIAS ALEXANDER: THE MAN AND HIS WORK

L ULIE WESTFELDT

F. MATTHIAS

ALEXANDER

I. F. M. Alexander at 72, September 1941

F. MATTHIAS ALEXANDER THE MAN AND HIS WORK

BY

LULIE WESTFELDT

centerline

£ress

Published by Centerline Press, 2005 Palo Verde A venue, Long Beach, California 90815

Text Copyright (C) 1964 by Lulie Westfeldt Forward and Introduction Copyright (C) 1986 Centerline Press Published by special arrangement with the Estate of Lulie Westfeldt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from Centerline Press.

First published in paperback by Centerline Press, October 1986 ISBN 0-913111 -15-1

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to CATHERINE

WIELOPOLSKA

with love and gratitude

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge and thank the friends and pupils who have helped me so generously in the many problems that have occurred in the writing and the launching of this book: Jim Becket, Jane Lillibridge, Mrs John Knox Jessup, Jr, Rick Williams, Dr and Mrs Clark Foreman, Dr and Mrs Donald Mainland, Dr Millard Smith, Mr and Mrs Robertson Davies, John Black, Dr David Wolfe, Mrs Leconte Du Nouy, Mrs Alfred Wielopolska, Mrs Lawrence Saunders, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for permission to reproduce plates 4a, 4b, 5a, 5b and 6.

JOHN ON

THE

WORK

DEWEY OF

F.

M.

ALEXANDER

John Dewey wrote introductions to three of F. M. Alexander's books.Thesequotationsarefrom two of them. 'It bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to life.' ( Introduction to The Useof the Self)

'It contains in my judgment the promise and potentiality of the new direction that is needed in all education.'

(Ibid.) 'Personally, I cannot speak with too much admiration-in the original sense of wonder as well as the sense of resp ect-of the persistence and thoroughness with which these extremely difficult observations and experiments were carried out.'

(Ibid. ) 'Mr Alexander has demonstrated a new scientific principle with respect to the control of human behaviour, as important as any principle which has ever been discovered in the domain of external nature.' ( Introduction to Constructive ConsciousControl

of the Individual)

CONTENTS

Introduction - Troup Mathews Forward - Alice W. Mathews Author's Preface

SECTION

V

15

I

My Introduction

to Alexander's

Work

My First Series of Lessons Early Days of the Training

21 34

Course

Gradual Change in my Outlook

46

on Alexander

54

Our Progress in Learning - Some of the Changes the Work Brought about in Pupils

66

Alexander

72

and Opportunities

'The Merchant Learning

of Venice'

78

to be Teachers

84

A Personal Experience Postscript

SECTION

II

Alexander's

Discovery

Detailed Discussion Relationship Other Discoveries A lexander's Summary

89

to the Teacher's

Training

Course

of the HN & B Pattern of the Head,

95

125

Neck and Back 133

of Alexander's

Technique

of Inhibition

and Evaluation

142 147 152

APPENDIX Clarification

of Terms [I and 2)

Comments of John Dewey, and G.E. Coghill

159

Sir Charles Sherrington 160

ILLUSTRATIONS I. F. M . Alexander at 72, September 1941

frontispiece

2. The author in June 1929

The author in August 1933

facing page 48

3. F. Matthias Alexander, 1939

Egyptian figure showing the integration of the pelvis with the back

49

4. An

128

5. How the arms are placed when the pattern is working

The kind of knee-thrust a man has if the pattern is working

129

7. A figure in armour showing the extraordinary grace in walking if the pattern is working

129

6.

8. A statuette which shows some of the deformities the

body can get into when the pattern is not working.

144

NOTE

The Pattern discovered and made active by Alexander, in himself and others, has, at all times, existed in human beings. Often we see its manifestations represented in art-be it stylized art or representational art. In the Winged Victory of Samothrace, for example, we can all see the upward flow of energy within the human figure to a marked degree. I am including a few pictures that illustrate certain manifestations of the pattern which we will discuss in the book.

FORWARD After World War II, when I had returned to live in New York City, my family and I were in frequent touch with Lulie Westfeldt. We had lessons with her off and on until the end of her life in 1965. For much of that time, she was the only teacher of the Alexander Technique in New York. Lulie was my former wife's aunt on her father's side. Lulie was of very short stature and slight of build. She had had polio as a child and had undergone several orthopedic operations, which ultimately aggravated her difficulties. From time to time, as one observed her going up a step, or perhaps moving a chair, one was suddenly reminded of the extent of her physical impairment. But no sooner was the specific difficulty overcome than the sense of her limitations vanished, and one's impression of Lulie was of the brightness of her gaze, the clarity and grace of her gestures, the buoyancy of her bearing. She had come, through her work with F.M. Alexander, to value herself in a very positive way and she enjoyed dressing colorfully, with care and good taste. She loved hats. Her property in Sandgate, Vermont provided a cool, crisp, and beautiful setting that suited her. In the field across the fast running stream was Ruby, her temperamental Welsh pony. Despite the weakness in her legs, Lulie had a good seat and excellent hands, and she rode Ruby with verve and impunity for many years. Another of Lulie's loves was Daphne, her Siamese cat. We, Lulie's pupils, were often compared unfavorably to Daphne. When Lulie wished to demonstrate the Alexandrian meaning of "directions," she would touch Daphne's head and bid us watch the head rise to the touch, watch also the propagation of movement down the spine to the very tip of the tail. Lulie thought that of all vertebrates, none more than the cat exhibited the freedom of movement, the sinuousness and flow of intentionality, the exquisite economy and precision of movement that the Alexander Technique invites humans to experience in themselves. When one was working with Lulie, one could not mistake the poise which her presence exuded for a mechanically perfect uprightness. Her physical deficits were obvious; one realized that her poise came from a constant, sharpened awareness of the world around her. One perceived that she had learned and was engaged in teaching others; that maintaining a state of poise is an ongoing, heightened awareness, a skill constantly being honed. As a result

ii

of this quality in her, and despite her manifest difficulties and impediments, there was an aliveness and an ease about her that still dominates my memory of Lulie. At the time I was working with Lulie, I was also intrigued by the recent translation into English of the works of Dr. Wilhelm Reich. My readings and my work with one of his colleagues led to my finding points of strong resemblance between Alexander's conception of man's misuse of himself and Dr. Reich's conception of Body and Character Armor. I felt then that the dissolution of "armor" and its replacement by mobility might be attained by means which Alexander advocated. To my surprise, Lulie had read Reich quite closely. We discussed his work, but Lulie was put off by later developments in his work and did not pursue this interest. My interest, based on personal experience with a therapist, continued. The Alexander Technique teacher's essentially preventative touch and verbal directions lead the pupil to a heightened awareness of the impulses of tension which impede his freedom of movement. When these impulses can be recognized, the pupil finds that he can gradually come to experience the release of these habitual tensions as a flowing sensation of internal movement (Reich's Strumung), a releasing of tension into activity, a rediscovery of ease and freedom to move, an achievement of conscious process replacing impulsivity, ease replacing effort. When we say of a task that it is easy, we think we are describing the task itself; but that is misleading. The word "ease" refers to the experience we have in ourselves as we perform that task. Only when we have achieved a skill in the performance of a task can we experience that task as easily performed and hence, an "easy" task. John Dewey, in a passage in which he acknowledges his indebtedness to F.M. Alexander writes: Only when a man can already perform an act of standing straight does he know what it is like to have a right posture and only then can he summon the idea required for proper execution. The act must come before the thought, and a habit before the ability to evoke the thought at will. Ordinary psychology reverses the actual state of affairs. This important concept applies particularly to Lulie and to others who have suffered serious injury or any other debilitating trauma; for trauma and its attendant pain leads to tense, adaptive mannerisms that can themselves become habitual. Skill can be described as a progressively achieved habit that brings with it the concepts needed for optimal execution of a task.

iii

The skill in standing, walking, and sitting, which Lulie had acquired in childhood, no longer served her when her muscles and nerves were damaged. She needed to rediscovery optimum use of herself, taking all her deficits into account. To achieve this, she needed Alexander's principles; she needed his guiding hands and verbal directions in order to rediscover a good use of herself, taking her serious deficits into account. I believe that these considerations illuminate another concept: all Alexander teachers make use of their own gradually achieved awareness of the difficulties that they have had to overcome in themselves. In fact, it is the surmounting of these personal difficulties that confers the personal insights that form the basis of their skill in teaching others. Lest these references to physical injury tend to overemphasize the physical, postural aspects of the Alexander Technique, let me quote once more from John Dewey:* After we get to the point of recognizing that habits must intervene between wish and execution in the case of bodily acts , we still cherish the illusion that they can be dispensed within the case of mental and moral acts. Thus the net result is to make us sharpen the distinction between non-moral and moral activities, and to lead us to confine the latter strictly within a private, immaterial realm. But in fact, formation of ideas as well as their execution depends upon habit. If these ideas be true, we must, in consequence, be more inclined to accept and even to look with sympathetic interest on the diversity in teaching styles of various individual teachers and schools of teaching of the Technique. We teachers of the Alexander Technique have entrusted to a few, basic principles of immeasurable importance to mankind. We are not, in my opinion, the guardians of a narrow and welldefined orthodoxy of the means of applying these principles. As Aldous Huxley had perceived when he was writing Eyeglass in Gaza: we can become responsible for our actions by becoming responsible for our habits - which means becoming responsible for our characters; and this, in turn, defines personal freedom: freedom to choose for ourselves, not being the victim of our own structures of compulsion in our emotional, cognitive, or physical behaviors. In February 1931, at Ashley Place in London, a group of twelve gathered together to begin their formal training in the Alexander Technique. Lulie reports that they all felt that the day

iv

was corning soon when Alexander 's work would be universally recognized. Now, fifty-five years later, I, for one, still believe in this dream. There are now over a thousand teachers and thirty-six training schools functioning in seven countries. It is no longer a question of instant recognition and acceptance that we anticipate. We now look and plan for an organic, growing, international movement, the organization of which is only now beginning. Our thanks to you, Lulie Westfeldt, for your foresight in being there in London in 1931, for your courage in the face of difficulties, for bringing the work here to New York, for this book in which you record your personal memories of the man, F.M. Alexander, and for your pride and confidence in his work. You have left us the only contemporary record of the first Training course and of your early experiences as a teacher in New York; we are the richer for this historical background. I am glad you are back in print. Troup Mathews New York City September, 1986

V

INTRODUCTION Lulie Westfeldt, my father's sister, was part of my earliest life and memory. As a child growing up in New Orleans, I remember Lulee (our nickname for her) as an affectionate and humorous aunt who, in spite of the developing humpback and spindly legs, the result of childhood polio, was to me a figure of some glamour. Perhaps it was because she had a car - a Model T? - some years before my family did, or perhaps because I often saw her against the shadowy background of our greatgrandmother Ning's home, which was always in a twilight, with shutters bowed against the sun and heat, snowy mosquito barres looped back for the day on the testered beds. Besides Lulee, there was Ning, white-haired, black-dressed, slim and straight at 90; the grayer, dumpier figure of Tante Minnie, Ning's younger sister; and most exotic, Maggie, an Irish, not a black woman, in the kitchen. In the New Orleans of that day, money was not a prerequisite for being in "society". After graduation from college a young woman from one of the old families would have made her debut, in a gingham dress if need be. Lulee, a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Newcomb College, was too severely handicapped to consider exposing herself to the demands of a debutante's life. Pretty clothes would have been a problem because her torso, of normal size, looked heavy and outof-proportion to the pitifully short and thin legs. She would not have been able to stand in receiving lines, nor dance till two o'clock in the morning, nor make a to-the-floor courtsey when presented to the Queen at a Mardi Gras ball. Ning, who brought Lulee up after the death of her parents, was of that generation of Southern women who had held families and households together while their men were off fighting the Civil War. For many years Tante Minnie, a spinster, has contributed to Ning's modest household by working as the librarian at Tulane University. With these examples of strong, resourceful women, it is not surprising that Lulee chose, instead of a debut, to take a job as a social worker at Kingsley House, a settlement house, and, handicapped or not, to refuse to be house-bound by her disability. The addition to her salary of a small income, left her by her father, made it possible for Lulee to travel - always her great pleasure - frequently in the Northeast, and several times to England and the Continent.

vi Sometime during the 1920's Lulee stayed in New York City for an extended period of time, but whether she was working or taking graduate courses, I don't know. Lulee's returns to New Orleans were always special event, involving eager speculation about possible presents as we made the long drive downtown to the vast echoing shed of the L & N Railway Station at the foot of Canal Street. The most notable return, however, was in 1935 after she had completed the training course in the Alexander Technique in London. My brother says that he remembers watching someone approach us from the train and for a moment not recognizing her as our aunt. I was then in my teens and remember vividly the impression Lulee gave of attractive well-being, with pretty hair, smart dress, and the most elegant tiny shoes - gone the humpback, gone the lurching gait. The initial impression was perhaps of an unusually small woman, but certainly not an unusually handicapped one. There was an air of optimism and vitality about her and she had need of both as she set about trying to secure a license to teach in New Orleans. Lulee had given a number of demonstration lessons in the Technique and there was every indication that she could develop a successful practice. Unfortunately, permission was denied. She was also unable to obtain permission in Atlanta, her second choice. New York City posed no such difficulties, so to New York she went. The move was successful for several reasons, I think. First, of course, her income, which enabled Lulee to live, albeit very economically, while she was establishing herself. She also must have felt liberated to an unimaginable degree, by the Technique, with energy to put into the endeavor which would not have been available to her before. Finally, Lulee had a talent for keeping old friends and making new ones, so she was not going to New York as a stranger, but returning to a place she knew and to a wide acquaintance in that part of the country. That Lulee could leave the cocoon of family and background without breaking connections with them required not only courage and determination, but a sensitive intelligence, which I only began to appreciate when I, too, was living in New York with my then husband, Troup Mathews, and our four daughters. Lulee used to come to us for holidays; and later, when the children grew out of babyhood, she would have various combinations of the six of us to spend part of our summer vacations with her at Sandgate Way, her Vermont home.

Vll

It was during those years that I realized the fine quality of Lulee's intellect and integrity. Respect for the individual was combined with a warm feeling for family. She read widely and thoughtfully, and enjoyed art with a discriminating taste and as a painter herself. She had an abiding love for the land and was profoundly religious. If she sometimes judged others severely, neither did she spare herself. She was free from cant and could be devastatingly frank. For someone whose approach was as tentative as mine, this last was upsetting - the impulse was either to shrink or to take offense. When I understood that Lulee was being honest, not angry, and respected the same honesty in others, a door opened and she became by good friend. A foolish reticence, as I see it now, prevented me from asking Lulee for Alexander lessons - some unformulated feeling that I shouldn't intrude on her professional domain - nor did Lulee suggest teaching me fro, I have no doubt, a similar reluctance of not wanting to intrude upon me; but then our daughter, Christine, was having difficulty learning to write in school, Lulee gave her lessons in the Technique with some alleviation of the problem. While the lessons continue her writing became freer and less cramped. Troup also had lessons during the summers, and both he and Christine have gone on to become teachers of the Technique. Lulee always taught in the summer to accommodate pupils who lived too far from New York City for a regular schedule of lessons, but who could combine an intensive course in the Technique with a Vermont vacation. In the early 1960's a new element was introduced to Sandgate Way when Lulee began writing a book on "the work", however, she managed her energies so that summers continued to include time for her painting, horseback riding, family and friends. Unlike Ning's home, Sandgate Way was never twilit. Clear mountain light shone through the window, and color flowed through the house, from which one moved easily out-ofdoors to the garden, to the trout stream, or to the pastures to watch the horses. Like the colors, time flowed and there was, to me, no sense that time was running out. Lulee's last year was an extraordinary valedictory. Her book on Alexander and his work had been published; she ahd gone to New Orleans where she had been honored by old friends, and had been to Tngland where she had visited her halfsister and met with Alexander colleagues. When Lulee returned to this country at the end of June, she was quite clear that

viii Sandgate was where she wanted to be and that we could join her for the weekend. She waited for us to come, and died on Saturday afternoon, July 4th , 1965. Her affairs were entirely in order. It is with the fondest and most grateful recollections of Lulie Westfeldt that I welcome David Alexander's re-publication of her book. Alice Westfeldt Mathews Sandgate Way June, 1986

AUTHOR'S PREFACE In the summer of 1904 there appeared upon the London scene a young Australian named Frederick Matthias Alexander, the originator of a unique system of physical and mental reeducation which he called The Alexander Technique and which is the subject of this book. Alexander visited the United States twice and was sponsored by such men as James Harvey Robinson, John Dewey, who wrote introductions to three of his books, and the biologist G. E. Coghill, who wrote a foreword to his fourth and last book. It was in England, however, where he lived, that Alexander's work achieved wide recognition, as is attested by his obituary notice in the London Times of October 11, 1955. I quote it in full: 'Mr F. M. Alexander, "F.M." as he liked to be called, died at his home in London yesterday at the age of 86. An Australian, he was born in 1869 and after some experience in secretarial posts in Tasmania and Melbourne, set up as a professional reciter. He developed some difficulty in voice production early in his chosen career which orthodox treatment failed to cure. After long experiment he evolved a system of muscular control which he found had very much wider application in the age-old controversial field of mind and body. His technique, which he first taught in Melbourne and then in Sydney, attracted wide attention and he came to London in 1904 to seek an even wider field for his endeavours. In this he was not disappointed, for one of the first to consult him was Sir Henry Irving. Thereafter he had a great connection with the stage and this, as time passed, was extended to many other spheres. Among those who consulted him were Viola Tree, Constance Collier, Lily Brayton, Oscar Asche, Matheson Lang, Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, the late Lord Lytton, Archbishop William Temple and Sir Stafford and Lady Cripps. Among his published works were Man's Supreme Inheritance and Constructive Conscious Control ef the Individual.' As a student and teacher of his methods, I should like to

16

F.

MATTHIAS

ALEXANDER

emphasize at the outset that the 'system of muscular control' mentioned in The Times notice is based upon a discovery of revolutionary significance that Alexander made in his study of the human organism. After nine years of experimentation upon himself and others, he found that a certain dynamic relationship of the head, neck and back can be brought into operation; and that this relationship, or pattern, integrates all bodily movement bringing about the best use of the whole organism as well as of each specific part. In a very few human beings this relationship works perfectly; in many more it works imperfectly, and in the greatest number it can hardly be said to work in anything but a vestigial fashion. The relationship exists potentially in every human body except in cases of extreme pathology or where certain forms of drastic surgery have been used. Even in individuals where it has been damaged by disease, surgery or malformation, it can be re-awakened and put to work when it has fallen into disuse. Because of the intimate association between use and functioning, such restoration is followed by improvement both physical and mental, 1 sometimes to an amazing degree and in realms where it might not be expected to penetrate. Alexander called the pattern he discovered the Primary Control. The term is not a happy one as it is ambiguo_us and lends itself to misunderstanding. In this book it will be called the HN & B pattern, the letters HN & B standing, of course, for the words head, neck and back. One of my most difficult tasks in the pages which follow is to explain the importance of Alexander's discovery without seeming to make absurd claims for it. For those who are unfamiliar with his work and think that I have overstated its results, I can say that I, personally, have benefited from it far more than I expected or hoped. It is true that I had not hoped for much. At the age of 7 I had had poliomyelitis and I went to Alexander when I was S4 years old. Behind me lay disheartening years of surgery and other orthodox therapies that had not only failed to improve my condition but had left me with added physical handicaps and disastrous psychological scars. The practical application of Alexander's Technique re-made my life and I have seen it benefit and often re-make the lives of hundreds of 1

See Appendix, Clarification of Terms 1.

INTRODUCTION

17

other people suffering from a great variety of functional disorders. But my harshest critics are likely to be those who are familiar with Alexander's work and having seen its results for themselves will charge me with calculated understatement. To these I can only say that I prefer it so. The reader will probably wonder a little how Alexander's discovery applies to him. The words used in describing it may call up to his mind a rather dull limited region, and it may be hard for him to see how anything like this could give help and power in meeting ordinary day-to-