Michael: After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s where I studied theatre, I went to acting school at The Bristol Old Vic in England. This was followed by an intensive one-year study at the International Academy for Continuous Education near Oxford, which changed the course of my life. This was an experimental school based on the Fourth Way work of Gurdjieff.
The director of this academy was J.G. Bennett who was a friend of Walter Carrington. While attending this academy I had 50 individual Alexander lessons within a ten month period. That absolutely changed my whole way of thinking. There I also studied the work of Shivapuri Baba, one of the first modern Yoga masters to teach in the west. In the Long Pilgrimage (1965), J.G. Bennett states that one of the principal duties that Shivapuri Baba taught was the importance of physical duty, maintaining body and mind through proper livelihood.
This statement struck me to the core and I asked myself how I could do this in my life. It became obvious to me that training to be an Alexander Technique teacher would fulfill this wish. I completed Walter and Dilys Carrington's Alexander Technique teacher training in London. A few years after moving back to the USA in 1979 I started to study Viniyoga with a friend of mine, Sonia Nelson-a Yoga teacher and student of TKV Desikachar. This work continues to this day.
Sigrid: I was also introduced to Yoga in the late 1960's, first through meditation and study, and then through asana practice-the practice of postures. Several of the great messages of Yoga-that we are interconnected, that our actions affect not only us but everyone and everything around us, that we have a life's work that is uniquely ours, and that our most challenging practice is to live mindfully from day to day-resonated very deeply with me.
I began practicing Yoga in my late teens, and after several years, I trained to teach and was certified in 1980 by Cheryl Harriman, a student of Indra Devi. I first heard about the Alexander Technique in the mid-seventies when I was coaching opera at UCLA. An Alexander teacher came in one day to work with some of our singers, and I was fascinated with the transformation in the depth and quality of their vocal expression. Later, after years of encouraging my voice students to study the Technique, I took up its study myself and became a teacher. This seemed an appropriate step to take, because the Alexander Technique also provided a means to bring balance into peopleŐs lives.
I didn't realise how closely related Yoga and the Technique were until I became a serious Alexander student. Then the parallels between the two disciplines became obvious.
Sigrid: Yoga goes far beyond movement. It is actually one of the six major philosophical systems of India, and as such deals extensively with the human condition, how we are responsible for our tribulations, and how we can free ourselves from them. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali deal extensively with the nature of mind and with man as a psychophysical being. Only two out of 195 sutras mention asana. The popular notion that Yoga is about getting into odd postures and stretching out is a consequence of asana being the one truly visual aspect of Yoga practice. It is difficult to photograph the "inner work" of Yoga.
Michael: I agree with this perspective, Yoga today is so often reduced to asana which is then further reduced to "physical exercise". I like to call the Yoga we study, Viniyoga, a "full spectrum Yoga". In other words, not only do you do asana, but also breathing, chanting, and meditation, so the whole thing has a gestalt to it. It's really Yoga beyond the mind, beyond the conditioned self. Asana is simply a way to get the physical body tuned and to focus on the self, to be integrated in a psychophysical way. One definition of the word Yoga is to yoke or link up. So what you are doing here is linking up the whole sense of the human being, the mental, the emotional, the physical, the spiritual.
Sigrid: Yes, formulating a clear intention and linking it to action. Another definition of Yoga is to quiet the activities of the mind, so that our perception becomes more clear and accurate, to be present and attentive so we can observe our samskara-our patterns and our conditioning-and not be caught in their web. The message of Kriya Yoga-"the Yoga of action"-is, to be free of our conditioned existence-we need to pay attention so we can positively and intelligently direct the changes that inevitably occur in our lives.
Michael: I would say yes. In a way, I call the Alexander Technique-Yoga.
Michael: Yes. For instance, when I work with students who are caught up in the shoulders I want to give them a simple movement to help with their flexibility. First I bring them back to the Alexander principles of self observation, inhibition, lengthening, and widening. I then might draw on Yoga and do some simple arm raises connected with their breath. I make a very clear distinction that they're applying the Alexander Technique to this simple movement and it helps them with their range of motion. They become more conscious and experience more flexibility.
Sigrid: I think of scenarios like these more as explorations of movement in terms of awareness, inhibition, and direction. My sense of asana is that the movements are somewhat more systematic and well defined. However, movement with attention to the breath and to the experience is definitely Yoga, and explorations like these form the basis of asana practice for my students. In our Viniyoga tradition where the practice is constructed around attention and awareness and any asana can be adapted, this distinction is almost a moot point.
Michael: For example, a person says that they're having a hard time while they're driving on the freeway looking over their right shoulder at the blind area. What I can do that may help is seat them on a chair and do an arm raise on inhalation and a twist to the side on exhalation. I can get them to work with very delicate spiral movements. That would be an adaptation of an asana. I want to give them the experience of maintaining their length as they do the spiral action so that the next time they are driving on the freeway, they think a little bit. They stop, they come back to their length, let their eyes look, and have a sense of increased integration through their primary direction. People tend to oversimplify the Alexander Technique-ten minutes in a chair, ten minutes on a table, ten minutes in a chair in a thirty-minute lesson. This is fine, but what about spiral movements, lateral movements?
Michael: They could and they do. However, Alexander teachers fall prey to the tendency to become habitual within their patterns of teaching and Yoga lends itself well to exploring a full range of movement.
Sigrid: Unless a student is already engaged in activities that incorporate more extensive movement, or there is a specific intention on the part of the teacher, I think the tendency in a lesson is to stay with linear movements. Practicing asana definitely changes the way we think about movement.
Michael: I don't think there are shortcomings in the Alexander Technique, I think there are shortcomings in teachers-people get very limited in the way they teach. The technique is applicable to everything.
Sigrid: I think the traditional way in which the Technique is taught is extremely practical. Linear movement-in and out of the chair, walking-is a good starting point because the context is simple. We just shouldn't get stuck there. As soon as you walk to the end of the room and turn around there's a spiral. A new element is introduced and one way it can be further explored is through the use of simple asana.
Michael: When a person comes for an Alexander lesson, they have come to study out of their own initiative, so usually I wouldn't impose or even offer a Yoga practice. If it came out of their own interests and they asked for an application of the Alexander Technique to their Yoga practice I would gladly do it. As an Alexander teacher in a delicate way I might even suggest to certain students, "You sit in the car for hours, you're at a computer all day, maybe you should try Aikido, Yoga or, perhaps even Feldenkrais!" Something that broadens the movement pattern.
Sigrid: This is a very interesting question. I've had widely differing experiences depending on the person's Yoga background. I have worked with many people trained in our Viniyoga tradition, who are taught to be present, to pay attention to their habits of thought and movement.
It has been my consistent experience that talking to and putting hands-on Viniyoga people has been extremely easy. They understand immediately what is going on, and they can apply the Alexander Technique principles to their benefit in their Yoga practices.
On the other hand, when I work with people from outside our tradition, I often encounter people who are, dare I say it?, not so well trained. There is what I would call a current crisis in Yoga in the west. One teacher training program in our area certifies people after two weeks, another after only two days. People trained in this way generally focus only on the external aspects of practice-how do I look in this posture, how long can I stand on my head, can I stretch further than this guy sitting next to me?
Add to this the fact that many people are practicing the same sequence of postures day in and day out, and you have a recipe for disaster. Their routines can become so automatic that their minds go elsewhere-maybe they're thinking about what they're going to have for dinner while they're practicing! People whose minds are running in this track are some of the most difficult to work with, because they endgain terribly.
Michael: You see, traditional Yoga was taught one on one, except to children. Group classes developed in the west and created a watered down version of Yoga, which fits our instant, consumer-based society. Sadly, this concept of group asana classes has now filtered back to India.
The insight an individual can have in a one on one student-teacher relationship can really enable learning to happen more quickly and deeply. What happens when people study the Alexander Technique and attend Yoga class simultaneously is that they actually enhance their Yoga understanding of themselves in a psychophysical way because theyŐre getting that personal attention in the Alexander lesson.
All you have to do is go into any group asana class, where there are twenty-plus students, and look at what's going on. You will see all sorts of unconscious patterns of interference. I've observed that people are basically divided into two different categories. There are those who have the ability and desire to learn.
The others get great security out of their own little discipline-package and get very defensive if you try to go beyond that. In all systems, whether in the Alexander world, the Yoga world, or the Feldenkrais world you get this type of thinking. ItŐs where people are coming from inside. I call it the round brain versus the square brain syndrome.
Sigrid: Curiosity and a thirst for knowledge create an amazing potential for discovery, as FM's own saga demonstrates. For example, Erich Schiffman, a wonderful Yoga teacher who has studied with both Desikachar and Iyengar, has woven the concepts of direction and non-doing into his practice. He has a lovely book called Yoga, the Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness 1, in which he talks about direction as "lines of energy". I don't think he knows anything about the Alexander Technique, but he is awake to his experience, as were his teachers.
Direction is one of those open secrets that are there for anybody to discover if they are sensitive, attentive, and practicing consistently.
Sigrid: This is where we began our discussion, isn't it? It all comes down to your intention-in Yoga this is called bhavana. For a practice to bear fruit your intention must be clear.
Michael: If my intention is to come with a glass that is empty, there is room for learning, to take material in. If I come with a glass full to the brim and I am interested only in demonstrating how much I think I know, then nothing is going to happen.
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Qualified as an Alexander Technique teacher under Walter and Dilys Carrington, London 1978, certified as a Feldenkrais practitioner under the direction of Moshe Feldenkrais in USA and Israel 1984. Master class training with Marjorie Barstow from 1981-1993. Founder and director of the first three International Congresses on the AT and current chairman of the International Congress Board of Directors. Trained in Viniyoga Tradition by Sonia Nelson and TKV Desikachar, since 1984. Alexander Teacher training Institute of Los Angeles, Board of Directors and teaching staff, 1987-present.
A native of California, she has studied historical musicology at UCLA, Sanskrit and Indian philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, Germany and biochemistry and pre-medicine at the University of Maryland and CSULB. She was certified to teach the Alexander Technique in 1997 at the Alexander Training Institute of Los Angeles. Sigrid has studied and taught Yoga for over 25 years and counts as her teachers Cheryl Harriman, Indra Devi, Gary Kraftsow, Sonia Nelson and TKV Desikachar in Madras. She currently teaches the Alexander Technique, Yoga and Vedic chanting in Redondo Beach, California and is a member of the faculty at the Alexander Training Institute of Los Angeles where she teaches anatomy.
Was certified to teach the Alexander Technique in 1977 by Frank Ottiwell and Giora Pinkas. She has taught the technique at the USA School of Theatre, California State University at Los Angeles and to the general public through workshops and lecture/demonstrations. Lyn is currently the Director of the Alexander Training Institute of Los Angeles and has a private practice in Van Nuys and Santa Monica, California.