February 10th, 1978
Free image by Victorien Ameline
Focus. How we move out of focus. Eyes show where a person is at period closed eyes internalize the experience and separates us from life. Alexander technique should enhance your daily life. You bring it into your life.
Concentration: we have been taught wrongly, we always have new things coming in but the force underneath is still there: example: looking at waves coming in on the beach. The beach is always there, the ground, the waves, are part of the movement. In Alexander, the ground, the underlying focus is yourself. Everything is added as it comes into the moment. All of the other things are there but the constant is the self.
You have to let everything in, in order to let it pass through. Like wind, if you fight it, you'll get cold period if you let it be.... There is a correlation to meditation as opposed to “concentration”.
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.