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DIRECTION Freemail
November, 1999
Volume 2, Number 4
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In This Issue
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1. NEW "YOGA" ISSUE - Issue Editor Ken Thompson invites you to contribute to an upcoming issue of DIRECTION.
2. GET A REDIRECT EMAIL. You can have <you@alextech.net> redirected to anywhere you like. Free.
3. BLINK OF THE EYE, TREMOR OF THE SOUL - This is the short version of a talk delivered by Richard "Buzz" Gummere Jr.
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DIRECTION is seeking writers to contribute to an issue that will look at many of the connections and principles between Alexander Technique and Yoga.
Yoga has a good track record going back through thousands of years, there is also a great deal of Eastern thought is incorporated in yoga philosophy.
Is there place for a philosophy in the Alexander Technique?
Is there any overlapping of some of the principles in Alexander Technique and yoga practice?
Example:-
Yoga is not about acquiring knowledge, but a removal of ignorance! (of one's True Self).
Alexander is not about being right, but avoiding going wrong! ("To know when we are wrong is all that we shall ever know in this world" - FMA)
Example:-
'Conscious Guidance and Control' (Man's Supreme Inheritance). 'Yoga is the control of thought-waves in the mind' (Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms)
Example:-
"We only want to gain our end in the process of ordering our heads forward and up, our backs to lengthen and widen, and so on." - FMA.
"With upright body, head, and neck, which rest still and move not; with inner gaze which is not restless, but rest still between the eye-brows;" - Verse 13 Chap. 6 Bhagavad Gita
Is there any connection between FMA's evolutionary view of his discoveries, and the Eastern view of Karma and reincarnation?
Has there evolved a modern western approach to yoga practice? And if so what would be some of the main features of this compared to the eastern attitude, particularly those from India?
Are there any writers out there who see similarities between Alexander's work and the raising of 'use' up onto a conscious level, and the yogic thoughts of people like J. Krishnamurti, Swami Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Sivananda, Sri T. Krishnamacharya and others?
If you have any thoughts on any of the above that interest you, and would you would like to contribute to the "Yoga" Issue of DIRECTION, please contact Ken Thompson, issue editor - mailto:Ken@directionjournal.com
If you prefer to go to our site and send us your comments from there go to:
http://www.directionjournal.com/yoga.htm
All the information above is permanently held there, together with a form for you to send your comments on to Ken Thompson.
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DIRECTION is working on building a new web site for the Alexander Community.
Early next year it will start offering an extensive database of information in Japanese. But we won't forget English.
Although it now only exists in rudimentary form, later in 2000 our new site will include almost the entire database of DIRECTION, our Alexander Directory of Alexander Teachers worldwide together with a downloadable gallery of copyright free photos of Alexander and related persons, events and activities.
As part of our opening promotion for this site, we are offering to install and maintain a free database of "redirect" email addresses.
NOTE: This offer is only open to qualified teachers of the Alexander Technique. Criteria for this can be found at:
http://www.directionjournal.com/criteria.htm
Unlike an email address you have with Internet Service Providers (ISP) such as America Online, a "redirect" email address is an address that will forward messages to any ISP email address you tell it to.
It is convenient because, if you change your ISP, there is no need to tell everyone. Just change it at our site by deleting the old email, putting in the new one and everything then automatically goes to your new ISP address.
On your business card, letterhead and email only display the "redirect" email address, not your ISP address. If you do this, it means that if you go on holiday to Thailand for instance, you can redirect your email to an Internet server, such as Hotmail, and read your email while away from home.
All our email "redirect" have the same form:
yourlastname@alextech.net
If you want to try it (costs nothing!) just hit reply, nominate the address you want and we will set it up. To begin with, just use it in places or give it to people who may not contact for a long period.
An application can be made by filling out the form at:
http://www.alextech.net/english.htm
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3. BLINK OF THE EYE, TREMOR OF THE SOUL
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This is an edited version of a talk given by Richard "Buzz" Gummere Jr. at the 6th International Congress in Freiburg, Germany, August 1999. The full version will be published in the Freiburg Congress Papers - we will let you know when these become available and how to order them.
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BLINK OF THE EYE, TREMOR OF THE SOUL
by Richard Gummere Jr.
"You can study anatomy or physiology until you are black in the face. You still have this to accomplish: sticking to a decision against your habit of life."
F.M. Alexander
And yet, Alexander craved recognition from scientists. The most distinguished of those who endorsed his ideas was the engaging physiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington. His research carried him along, with the help of a small army of laboratory monkeys, through several epic discoveries, one of them the cardinal importance of inhibition.
Lift your arm, everybody. Good. For us to accomplish that, our excitatory nerves took over. And we cannot lower it until our inhibitors resume their role - there they go - in the democracy of our organism. When the excitors are the "Ins," the inhibitors are the "Outs", but in any good legislature a party that is out becomes Loyal Opposition. F.M. and A.R. Alexander, told by their doctor friends of this neurological politics, and taking it for civil war, used to complain pugnaciously, "The excitahs have gotten the better of the inhibitahs."
Sir Charles Sherrington made the most of both excitation and inhibition. When bored with the laboratory in the hospital where he worked, he would climb to the top of its Victorian tower for parachute jumps. During the first World War, however, his inhibitors prevailed when one day he disappeared, leaving no address or phone , even for his wife. He did come back to replace a lost collar stud - you couldn't buy them in wartime - but disappeared again. He was working in a factory studying worker fatigue, <incognito>: That's inhibition for you.
Today, another eminent physiologist, Benjamin Libet, goes farther than Sir Charles by clocking precisely the interval we're given for inhibition. Let's think in milliseconds. Dr. Libet found the length of a response to a stimulus to be 500 milliseconds - half a second. The phone rings. The first 350 milliseconds of our response are preparation for the action we'll take and we're unconscious of them. We're also unconscious of the last 50 of the 500 milliseconds, that is, our action, which goes off like a gun after you've pulled the trigger. Well, we bought a lottery ticket a few days ago and the phone call might be to tell us we've won. More likely, though, it could be dear old Aunt Polly, who is a <champion> talker. No matter - in that gap between the preparation and the action, 100 milliseconds whizz by in a flash of consciousness. The blink of an eye. Again, let's all blink. Everybody blinked? One quarter of that would be - inhibition time.
What an incredibly small window of opportunity this gives us for decisions whether to try something new and intriguing or to protect something old and familiar. But Sir Charles in his classic tome, <The Inegrative Action of the Nervous System>, glorifies inhibition for its subtle but irresistible command of our lives.
In how many studios of Alexander teachers or friends have you seen our stately skeleton or our gory musculature not completed by another wall chart? Where is the exquisite, spidery nervous system, servant of the brain? Doesn't this omission reflect a dangerous bias in the promotion of the Alexander Technique, today, as body work? Doesn't the habit suggest a departure from Alexander's whole-hearted commitment to the total person?
But hold on - I hear a voice. There it is again. It's got a British accent. It comes from up there, on top of the ziggurat: "Inhibition Time."
Copyright Richard Gummere Jr. 1999
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That's all for now.
Jeremy Chance
Editor, DIRECTION
November 1999
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