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DIRECTION Freemail
April, 2000
Volume 3, Number 2
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In This Issue
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1. DIRECTION NEWS - Message from DIRECTION's Editor, Jeremy Chance
2. ARTICLES ONLINE - A selection of articles from our Spirituality Issue I (Vol 2 No 6) are now available online.
3. RUNNING ISSUE - Issue Editor Andrew Woodward talks about the issue of DIRECTION on "Running" that he is putting together.
4. FREE WEB HOSTING - DIRECTION subscribers who are listed in the Alexander Directory can have a web site hosted free.
5. GARLICK REPORT - This article by Dr David Garlick discusses spirituality from the point of view of a Scientist.
6. FREEMAIL ARCHIVES - All past issues of FreeMail, including this one, are now available online.
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Sorry we missed the March issue of FreeMail - it happens. This is a bumper issue to make up!
For those of you who subscribe, the newest issue of the DIRECTION will be out soon. It is "Multiculturalism" and features many writers discussing issues faced when working in an alternative cultural environment.
Our Alexander Directory (MD) is also being updated for mailing out with this issue. Over 600 teachers now subscribe to this international database of teacher listings. Every training school, society, publisher and trainee is also listed for free. Teachers, if they subscribe to DIRECTION, pay only $US20 for two listings and a web entry.
Our online database of entries is now being beta tested on the Internet. Soon we will announce its availability. Alexander teacher David Billingham, designer and webmaster of STAT's site, is overseeing its development in cooperation with DIRECTION's webmaster Nick Chance.
DIRECTION subscribers will be able to update their entries directly online, ensuring that this Directory is the most up to date and comprehensive listing available on the web.
To ensure your listing in the published version (and the coming web site) make sure your subscription is up to date, and you have booked yourself into the Alexander Directory.
To check your subscription/MD status please mailto:direction@directionjournal.com
To order a subscription/MD entry online go to new_order/orderform_1.php
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With every new issue of FreeMail we will be announcing the availability of new articles at our web site, slowly building towards the largest database of quality articles on Alexander topics available on the web.
Please let others know about these free offerings. Here are the latest offerings:
Stepping Off A 100 Foot Pole - Beyond the Limits of Reason & Faith
written by Daigaku Rumme
Trust & belief:
do these belong
to Alexander work?
Science & religion:
Are they different?
How? A monk
explores.
written by R. D. (Bob) Walshe
What do John Dewey.,
Krishnamurti, Lao Tzu,
Gurdjieff, Rudolf Steiner,
FM, A. E. Housman and
humanistic psychology
all have in common?
This article tells.
written by Dr Tristan D. M. Roberts
This article
discusses the
meaningful usages
of some terms that
are nowadays
often applied
incorrectly.
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Continuing our introductions to future issues of DIRECTION, Andrew Woodward discusses his approach to the issue on Running and asks for your contributions...
You can keep a copy handy by bookmarking this page -
http://www.directionjournal.com/coming/running.htm
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Edited by Andrew Woodward
The original working title of my issue was "Running and Fitness" , but I would like to change it to "Running". Why? Because one word is shorter than three, but also because the concept of fitness is such a general concept. Probably all of the AT is about fitness, for any number of activities. I do believe there is scope for a future issue on "exercise", a word which Alexander did not like. But if you look inside any gym, you will know that the AT has an application.
Back to running. Running is a very specific activity, at the end of a continuum from lying/standing/walking. Everybody runs or has run. There are those who jog or run for general fitness, and a smaller number who run competitively, at a higher intensity. I'd like the issue to cater for all of these groups, and for AT teachers who want to teach runners.
David Garlick has an expertise in the area and has agreed to write an article. He will explain how the AT helps you to run more efficiently, with a minimum of physical effort.
I will write an article which makes use of my own experience as a competitive athlete and track coach. Previous DIRECTION issues on music, dance, equitation, etc., have helped to disseminate to the Alexander community the pedagogical techniques of these disciplines. Track coaching also has particular techniques which though not essential to an AT teacher, can be useful. I will talk about some of the basic concepts of coaching runners, and some of the traps. Eg., running is a bi-lateral activity, not unilateral like most of the Procedures; runners often don't want to stand still; running is a dynamic activity which involves cyclical flexion/extension/rotation of the whole spine.
I'd like one article to be about a celebrity/elite athlete. I found a book written by a Vicki Peterson, entitled "Strategies of the Champions", which included a chapter on the AT. The book stated that Edwin Moses and Joan Benoit (both Olympic Gold medallists based in the LA area) had had AT lessons. My so far incomplete enquires have failed to confirm this statement. The publisher told me that the author (Vicki Peterson) was dead. I attempted to contact Edwin Moses when he was in Sydney last year, but did not get a reply. I have yet to contact Joan Benoit. If anybody can help me in this search, or knows of another elite athlete (or their teacher) who could write an article/be interviewed, please contact me.
If any of these areas interest you, please contact the issue editor:
Andrew Woodward
1/6 Wulworra Avenue
Cremorne Point NSW 2090
AUSTRALIA
Tel. +61-(0)2- 9953 0195
Email: mailto:woodward@directionjournal.com
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To read about - and contribute to - other future DIRECTION issues, go to:
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Until we change our minds, we are offering free web page hosting for DIRECTION subscribers who are listed in the Alexander Directory. This means you can have a free web site called:
http://www.alexandertechnique.net/at/YourName
Looks professional doesn't it? Well, it's free for MD subscribers. All you have to do is email us the HTML-ready pages and we will load them up. You get your own folder so you can throw up as many pages as you like - we doubt you'll reach our limit.
To check your current status mailto:direction@directionjournal.com
To subscribe and get listed in the Alexander Directory go to:
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Dr David Garlick, a medical research scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has been a regular contributor to DIRECTION since its inception.
Every issue he discusses scientific concepts in relation to Alexander's discoveries, as well as continual updates on his own research into the "underlying mechanisms" of the Alexander Technique.
This article is also available online. You can bookmark this address to read it later in you browser if you wish at:
http://www.directionjournal.com/spirituality/garlick.htm
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by Dr David Garlick
As a physiologist I must acknowledge my limitations. It is enough of a challenge for a physiologist to contemplate the brain in all its complexity and wonder about the interplay of the mind and brain.
Descartes provided a watershed in our thinking about human nature, in stating that there were mechanisms which could be described for the body and the brain as realms for scientific investigation, but the mind and soul were something else.
Concepts of spirituality go even further beyond the limitations of science, into realms of intuition and complex insights and values.
Apropos of these thoughts, I was reading a dictionary entry for an interesting thinker, Maine de Biran (1766_1824). His life's aim was to produce a major work on the science of man. He was not able to produce such a major work but he developed some seminal concepts which proved to be the forerunner of later scientific Alexanders.
At the end of his life he was critical of his writings as being too schematic and too limited. Interestingly, this is a criticism one can level at science, although science is important for its powerful testing of ideas, and its discipline on the human mind to be rational as far as possible.
De Biran acknowledged that his work, similar to that of science, ignored the religious and social dimensions of human existence.
Nevertheless, one aspect of de Biran's work impressed me. He recognised the importance of introspection as a tool of science. It leads to important observations - exactly the tool that FM Alexander used in his observations.
De Biran noted the importance of 'the will', of 'willed action'. In this concept lay the understanding of human psychology. The mind operates on the body by 'willing' action. Muscular activity occurs as a result of the mind 'willing' an action. The mechanisms for bringing about the muscular activity are entirely sub-conscious.
The mind 'wills' an action, and this leads to a circuit that calls on programs at lower levels, which then return to the cortex, to activate the nerves that will act on the neuromuscular mechanisms which will bring about the activity.
One could say that we are prisoners of our sub-conscious with the programs that are laid down there. One could say that - but it need not be true.
As Alexander discovered, it is possible to bring about alterations in those sub-conscious programs by bringing to consciousness the normally sub-conscious inputs from the muscles and joints, the proprioceptive inputs. Inhibiting the output of the programs enables more appropriate programs to emerge.
Maine de Biran was not able to bring spiritual concepts into his scientific description of human nature. Science does have its limitations, although it is a safeguard against irrationality. Nevertheless, de Biran established a line of investigation, introspective observation, that was used so outstandingly by Alexander in his observations on the interplay between the mind, the brain and the body.
Dr David Garlick,
Dept of Physiology and Pharmacology
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
mailto:garlick@directionjournal.com
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All past issues of FreeMail, including this one, are now readily available at our web site. Have a look -
http://www.directionjournal.com/fmarchive
A clever technique for keeping this information handy is to simply bookmark FreeMail by using the "Add bookmark for this link" command on your browser and then select it next time you feel like a little Alexander reading.
To do that now, bookmark this link -
http://www.directionjournal.com/fmarchive/index.html
That's all.
Jeremy Chance
Editor, DIRECTION
April, 2000
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