Being Aware of Your Body
Sometimes I wonder about how influential a person one doesn't even know can be on one's life just because one happens to be a fan of that person's work and art. During the talk (see my report here) at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London in 2005, Alan Rickman mentioned as an aside that he used the Alexander Technique. I didn't know what it was but found out that it is part of the training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which Alan Rickman attended. Back then I came across the following quotation in the RADA centenary brochure:

Alexander Technique is a method by which you can learn about the relationship between neck and head, how to release unnecessary tension and why it is vital for good voice projection; about the body’s strengths and weaknesses and how to maximise the first while minimising the second.

In another context Alan Rickman mentioned during that talk that he thought that it was important to align one's head and body in order to be happy. Somehow I mixed these two things together and was rather intrigued by the idea of this Alexander Technique, but I believed that it was something that only actors learnt and used for their work. Only later did I realise that the technique isn't restricted to actors and drama schools, but might be useful for everyone.

Therefore, when I learnt that there would be a two-day workshop at the local adult education centre to get to know the basics of the Alexander Technique, I didn't hesitate to sign up.

It took place last weekend. As far as I understood it, the Alexander Technique is all about getting a better understanding and awareness of your own body so that you can change the way you move, which will then lead to you being less tense and more relaxed.

For example, the teacher showed us what a skeleton looks like, how long the spine actually is and where the muscles lead to. Of course, I have seen a skeleton before, but I can't say that I've always thought about which bones, joints and muscles have to do the work whenever I move.

It seems that the idea behind the Alexander Technique is that by thinking about what and why you're doing something and by being more aware of your body, your movements automatically will change for the better. For example, we were asked to walk around the room and imagine that we had different kinds of tails: that of a duck, a frightened dog and a dinosaur. Then the teacher asked us whether our way of walking changed depending on which animal we thought about. I was astonished to find out that the answer is, indeed, yes. The changes are subtle, but I'm convinced that with time one would start to walk slightly differently. (Obviously, the ideal way is to imagine that one has a dinosaur tail, because that would lead to a more upright posture.)

Apparently, there are no rules in the sense of that certain movements and postures are completely forbidden. The teacher explained that it's more about knowing that one has a choice. If one wants to, one can slouch on a sofa for a while, but one doesn't have to because one knows how to sit more economically. The teacher didn't really talk about wrong movements and postures, but she explained that many of them were uneconomically and that one needed a lot of strength for them, which then would lead to feeling unnecessarily tense.

We also did several exercises where we had to concentrate on certain body parts, for example our shoulder blades, in order to actually become aware of them and then relax them. The teacher would sometimes touch us to help us focussing on that body part, and, indeed, sometimes I felt that I managed to let go for a moment and be more relaxed.

The fact that I attended that one workshop doesn't mean that I now will move differently than I did before. It probably would take months and years of lessons to actually change that. But I hope that I will at least remember a few of the lessons.

I also borrowed two books about the Alexander Technique from the library today. I doubt that I'm going to read them from cover to cover, but I plan to at least leaf through them and read up on certain details.

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On a totally different note, has anyone read Zadie Smith's novel On Beauty? I got it from the library as well. I was intrigued by the opening line (″One may as well begin with Jerome's e-mails to his father.“), because I couldn't help noticing that it bears a strong resemblance to the opening line of E M Forster's Howards End. Does anyone know whether this is just a little homage or whether Smith's novel is actually a reworked version of Forster's book?