However, in retrospect it also seems that this could be a form of conditioning. "inhibiting" in order to be directed and moved by the teacher. The extreme opposite approach, which was how I was taught, is simply to give pupils the experience first and wait until much later to try to get them to participate in any further way than merely leaving themselves as free as possible (i.e. This approach to teaching was objected to by my teachers as a form of "conditioning," and I was inclined to agree with them. They usually notice a subtle change in the resilience of the finger, without actually having "done" anything other than "project that message from the brain to the mechanism." Then, while leaving the hand and finger still, I ask them merely to "think of" or "imagine" that finger pointing more in the direction it is already pointing. I ask them to b aware of the direction one of their fingers is already pointing while their hands are resting on their lap or on the arms of a chair. Sometimes "directing" was also explained as "wishing," but never as "imagining" or "visualizing." I have found the word "intending" useful in my own teaching as a description of "directing." The phrase "an act of attention alone" is also very effective in the first lesson situation for describing the process, and I usually demonstrate this with an illustration from my 1975 master's thesis to give beginning pupils an experience of directing. "Directing" was described to me by my first teachers as "thinking" as opposed to attempting to "do" something to achieve a result in the neck-head-torso-limb relationship. Later I will give examples of various perspectives on the use of "directing" or "ordering," but for purposes of clarity I would like to begin by making a distinction between the two terms. Some teachers are opposed to any silent saying of the words of the directions, while others feel that it should be an integral part of learning the Technique. In my experience, while working with a number of teachers who knew Alexander personally and had extensive work from him, I have found a lot of controversy and discrepancy over the definition of these two terms and over how they should be understood and used in the teaching situation or when advising pupils on how to carry on by themselves with the Technique. Sometimes teachers use the terms to refer to a silent, verbal process, and sometimes they use the terms to mean a totally non-verbal process. Whether working on yourself for one or all of the above purposes, the process involves what Alexander called "directing" or "ordering." He did not make a distinction between the two terms in his writings, nor do most of the senior teachers who trained with him. private teaching has obscured the subject of working on yourself even further. Unfortunately, much of the controversy in the past few years over group teaching vs. Actually, it should be one of the main things learned in a course of lessons-not to mention in a teacher’s training course. Most pupils and even many teachers are at a real loss when it comes to the process of working on themselves. Focus in teaching is usually placed on applying the principles of the Technique to the activities of daily life or upon the cumulative effects and changes brought about by a teacher's hands during a lesson. However, working on yourself on your own is the side of the Technique that is most often neglected, if not ignored completely, in both the writing and the teaching of it. Of course, both processes overlap and can reinforce each other. "Working on yourself" involves taking an extended period of time on your own solely to promote the integration of your self as a whole, as distinct from applying the principles of inhibition and direction of the primary control to specific daily activities.
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