The half-hour talks Walter gives to his teacher- training course 
       have been an invaluable source of instruction and inspiration to 
       generations of Alexander teachers. Many people have audio-
       cassette recordings of some of these talks. I have transcribed 
       and edited the following extracts from taped talks to give a little 
       of the flavour of his words and delivery. For me, these extracts 
       convey a sense of the depth and subtlety of Walter's thought, 
       and also the way it is always rooted in practicality.

Direction, 5 July 1985
You remember from The Use of the Self, the most important thing Alexander thought he'd discovered was the effect of pulling down, as we call it, and, by contrast, the effect of going up. When you shorten in stature (pull down) it puts all sorts of things wrong. When you lengthen in stature (go up) it seems to take the strain and pressure off and everything works better. So lengthening, going up is necessary, and for that to happen the neck has got to be free, the head go forward and up and the back lengthen and widen.

Furthermore you've got to find a way of getting it to happen without muscular effort; it's no good trying to push and pull and strain to take yourself up. You've got to talk to it, persuade it to happen. The overall direction, and the most important direction, is up. In order to go up, the neck must be freed and the head must lead the way by going forward and up so that the back can lengthen and widen. You have to want this to happen, and you have to be very clear about what you want.

If you're not clear about what you want, you're very unlikely to get it. You also have to remember you want it, because we want all sorts of different things and our wants and wishes change from moment to moment. If you're going to make a change in habit from pulling down to going up, you have to be very persistent in your wanting. You can't afford to forget, because every time you forget you'll revert to your habit. So there's a persistence and a consistency in the process which Alexander referred to as Direction. Where do words come into this?

By saying to yourself: 'I want my neck to be free' you are helping the situation, although the real want, the real wish is something much more complex than words. The words at least organize your thoughts and wishes in your mind so that you're not, for instance, trying to get your head to go forward and up before you've freed your neck, or you're not just trying to lengthen, forgetting about your head. Words can play an important part in direction. On the other hand words are not just magic spells. It's no good imagining that by just repeating the words like a magic formula, it's all going to happen.

Saying the words alone is not directing. We need to organize the thinking process, but the thinking process is a very complex and tricky business. It's all bound up with one's feelings and perceptions, habits and emotions. Body image comes into it. Not just the obvious physical aspects, but your feelings of self-importance, self-confidence, or the opposite. Who you feel you are, the persona you like to wear, the projection of yourself. How you'd like to be seen by other people, and what you feel is the 'real' you underneath. Amid all this complexity, at a practical level you have the habit of pulling down, shortening.

With a whole range of things that you do and think and feel, you pull down. Now pulling down, as Alexander discovered, has very serious consequences. It's a process that is, quite simply, anti-life. It's destructive of life. So the essential thing you need, that everybody needs, is to go up. And for that to happen you've got to wish it, you've got to direct it. So, in a lesson, the pupil is asked not to do anything.

The pupil is sitting or standing there simply directing, wishing to lengthen in stature, knowing the process involves the freeing of the neck, the head going forward and up, the back lengthening and widening, focussing their thought, intention and wish on that. The pupil should not be bothering about what the teacher's hands are doing or how they feel. The teacher's hands in guiding, moving, freeing and taking up, are facilitating or giving expression to the lengthening process the pupil is wishing for.

As the pupil goes on directing and the teacher goes on working, a result is achieved because the teacher's hands make it easier for it all to happen than it would be for the pupil alone. It is essential the pupil directs, but the teacher's hands open up possibilities of response that perhaps weren't there before. So it is very much a matter of focussing on the primary directions, leaving the rest alone, and not doing anything.

The process of direction is a psychophysical process that involves finding a way in which you can be fully conscious of what you want and fully conscious of the process by which it's going to be achieved, and you can focus on that reliably, without deviation or interruption, until it's become established.

Inhibition, 27 September 1984

People think they've got conscious control when it isn't what Alexander meant by conscious control at all. The only way to get conscious control is by inhibition. Inhibition is the key. Inhibition is the formulation of the decision, the intent, the purpose, here and now, to stop trying to do, to stop trying to perform, to let the machinery get on with it, to let it work, and to stop trying to work it yourself.

When you've exercised this inhibitory control, detaching yourself from the frantic hurly-burly of neuromuscular activity going on in yourself, a little bit of calm thought and objective realisation has the chance to operate. Intentions can be formulated and purposes clearly seen. You're in a position to direct only when you've detached yourself sufficiently from the minutiae to be able to take a cool, objective look before taking relevant decisions.

Rational Thinking, 7 March 1974

People will learn better in a happy, cheerful, calm state. They will not learn so well when they are anxious, worried, frustrated or depressed. When you tell somebody that they're doing something wrong, this immediately throws them. It throws anybody. None of us likes being told we are wrong. We say we don't mind, we may try to kid ourselves that we don't mind, but objective observation shows that we do. Not only do we mind, but we subsequently react to the suggestion to do something by tension, stiffening, rigidity, breath-holding and so on.

When you're teaching a skill, setting out to teach someone to do something, play golf or tennis or the piano, it's clear that you don't want to focus on negative criticism, telling people what they are doing wrong. Rather you want to focus on the positive, encouraging what they are doing right.

What about our point of view? Well, we are not teaching people to do something. This work isn't about teaching people to do something new, it's teaching them to think. Without being facetious, one can say that this is unfamiliar to most people.

People think about thinking and they talk about thinking but they don't really understand it because they haven't really tried it, haven't had the experience of it. You don't get the experience of thinking for people by just thinking about it, or just talking about it. You get the experience for people by creating the situation in which thinking is possible, and to a very large extent we do that with our hands.

The use of our hands is a way of passing on a new experience. I'm not suggesting that we are the only people who ever get this experience. Of course not. If you go to practitioners of skills - artists, athletes, performers - they will have the experience at certain times, that 'it does itself'. Here you are sitting at the piano, you're playing, and it's almost as if it's not you playing the music, but it's playing you. You're not doing it, it's all just happening and you must not interfere with it. But people who are not expert in any particular skill may not have had this experience, or not enough of it to be aware of it.

They say all wise men are of the same religion, and what that religion is no wise man ever tells. So also you could say, all skilled practitioners believe in the same fundamental technique, but what that technique is none of them ever tell. It's their secret, and it remains their secret. They can't tell because you've got to have a way of imparting the secret. It's not that we want to keep it secret. We'd love to share the secret, but you can only share the secret if you can establish some means of communicating the experience.

That's what we Alexander teachers do with our hands. As we succeed in communicating the experience, in sharing the secret, then 'it happens', 'it works', 'it breathes', 'it does it', as long as you don't interfere. In that situation there is no anxiety, no stress, none of the emotional factors that make it difficult for you to accept criticism. Indeed the emotional basis is so switched around that you can watch the ongoing process and say: 'Yes, it would be even better still if I stopped doing such-and-such. If I could avoid that bit of interference'.

This is the state that could truly be called rational thinking. It's an exploration, a discovery of an unexplored country. To bring this about we have to create a certain degree of detachment in ourselves, and it's our emotional reactions that tend to make this difficult.

Question (from a training school student): Isn't Man's Supreme Inheritance reason? Don't you think that that's what the Alexander Technique is about? It allows Man to be reasonable and therefore these emotional reactions don't happen. It allows you the time to be reasonable.

Walter: Well, yes indeed. But when we all look around and look at ourselves, you'd really hesitate to make claim to reason. To me, reason is a vision, it's something that could be and that we can hope and work for. But isn't it a painful process, and how intermittently we manage it!

ABOUT THE WRITER

John Nicholls