February 15th, 1978
Wait for [the] person to respond to your direction. Release the hand into direction. Don't put hand on with intention. Wait for impulse from a student. Anytime you feel like your direction stops, take hands off for a moment.
To correct one sidedness, though we are all one sided, direct into whatever side more clearly is your weak side. Look at your kinesthetic judgment and verify that both sides can support you.
ACAT Graduates and Faculty Members Pearl Ausubel (Judith Leibowitz’s twin sister) Patricia McGinnis and Robert Cohen exchanging work at an ACAT Faculty Retreat. Photo by Kathryn Miranda
Working with putting hands on with [person] on table or on the floor. Judy working with chain of four people. She puts hands on shoulders of the person on the table and waits for their impulse to widen, then she moves shoulders. First person in chair is in [position of mechanical advantage] with released hands and shoulders, the [person] on table.
To release arm, think release into it, don't feel it into release. How do you know what a released arm feels like until it is released[?]
Widening is expansion. The expansion is in the fingers. Keep eyes focused direction forward. See something. [The first person in line], brings palms together while [the person on table] lengthens and widens. Judy takes [the student on the table’s head] out with [the first person in line's] hands when she feels the impulse from [the student on the table]. If you are lengthening and widening with your hands on shoulders, you won't be pressing down or coming down on the body/light arm, balanced, not relaxed. [One student] standing with hand on [the other’s shoulder, who is in the chair], and Judy says to lengthen off of the student in the chair. Don't have to check to see if head is free, or any part of the body, by fidgeting. It is free because you think it is free.
The room has been very quiet period people are concentrating more. The visual effect of the chain is striking.
Idelle Packer, MS, PT, mAmSAT, certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, has been creatively exploring its broad application for over 35 years. In her private practice, Body Sense, in Asheville, NC, she teaches the Alexander Technique in context of physical therapy assessment and rehabilitation. She authored the chapter on the Alexander Technique in Springer Publishers’ Encyclopedia of Complementary Health Practices (1999). Her current passion is Contact Improvisation, a somatic and athletic improvisation form, to which she has been joyfully integrating the principles of the Technique over the past fifteen+ years.