Thursday, March 16, 1978

Head direction is the lengthening of the spine and the poise of the head, which you maintain in every moment.

Student: “Do you think it has to be thought of all the time?"

Judy Leibowitz: “Oh golly no.”

But our kinesthetic awareness does become more educated. That you don't always have to work in it, you can get there.

Student: “Can change happen if a student comes once a week?” Yes. They can get it, then the issue is how much they decide to use it.

Judy Leibowitz: “Think of the muscles as an envelope in which the skeleton is suspended. If you put a slice of paper in an envelope that is too small, it is going to curl up. You have to enlarge the envelope to contain the skeleton."

How to get started to take the experience away from the lesson. Judith talked about the power of the words to give an experience, even when the student is naïve and the Alexander words are not understood.

Even without giving oneself a lesson, which can speed up the experience. The experience can be gained by the student.

One gets signals from the body (holding, pain, etc.) which may remind one to work. Even if the student doesn't carry the work into specific activities, the poise of the head on the spine, the repetition of the words is powerful.

In every moment, continue the poise of the head on the spine. When you are freeing your neck, you are releasing the tensions to prevent pressing down at the base of the skull. The head will instead be able to poise, rotate slightly forward for the face to hang perpendicular to the floor, the nose straight out in front.

“Forward an up”. Forward frees poise of the head for up. The release of the neck is a forward experience.

Judith defines torso as the hip joint to the occipital joint.

Specifically in release; neck suboccipitals are released, other muscles. Attachments of the neck are then in line to be released. If you come in with a doing hand, all you feel is your own doing. You don't feel the student.

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.