Joe Armstrong
May 1999
Revised Juen 2022[3]

 

 

 

Inhibiting is really the cornerstone of the Alexander Technique, but it is also extremely challenging to bring it fully into daily living. And even though the word has a fairly negative meaning in everyday language, inhibiting actually becomes something very liberating as we use it in the Technique because it essentially means leaving out or reducing to a minimum whatever we might be doing or thinking that could keep us from our fullest psychophysical integrating at any given moment. Alexander, himself, liked to say that inhibiting gives us not only "freedom of thought and action," but also "freedom IN thought and action."[5]

 

 

ILLUSTRATION

 

After you read this paragraph, set these pages down and give yourself a few minutes to notice what happens when you come to your next impulse to do something—even if it is only raising your hand and arm to scratch your head or shifting your weight because your feet or sitting bones are tired. Once you feel you have made this observation, pick the pages back up again to go on reading the next paragraph.

 

 

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Did you respond immediately to the impulse to move, or did you take some time to consider doing it in a way that helped you to stay with your overall going up and lengthening and widening? (I am assuming here that you already have some experience of going up from having lessons in the Technique.) Inhibiting is what you have done if you took that extra time before responding—especially if it helped you to make your response in a more balanced and integrated way.

 

In its fullest form, inhibiting gives you the option of keeping at bay all immediate ways of responding that are automatic or habitual—whether they happen only in your thinking or in actually doing something. (Usually the two activities are much more closely bound together than we realize.)

 

When you can refrain from responding automatically and habitually—in the face of any kind of demand—by staying fully free instead of tightening and clamping down, then you have a much better chance of responding in a way that is most balanced, most true to the moment, and most humane, even if you choose to go ahead and make the same response you were about to make automatically. So inhibiting can also provide you with more of a chance to have a greater wisdom and integrity as your basis for whatever you do or however you respond—especially when you see that you don\'t really need to respond at all, or that it would not be best for the situation if you do. Or you might realize that you don\'t yet have all the facts or information you need for thinking or acting in the most constructive and productive way and that you need to be able to wait openly until you have a fuller perspective. Creating this space between stimulus and response can unmask all sorts of "incorrect conceptions,[6] unduly excited fear reflexes, and fixed prejudices"[7]—to mention only a few of the negative attributes that Alexander saw as getting in the way of intelligent living.

 

To clarify inhibiting in his writings, Alexander quoted the Nobel prize physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington who wrote in The Brain and its Mechanisms,[8] "often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one, because inhibition is co-equally with excitation a nervous activity."[9] Therefore, we see that inhibiting is even considered by scientists to be a very basic function in living. Some processes and actions need to be suspended—at least temporarily—so that others may be carried out most efficiently and effectively.

 

Of course, inhibiting alone is not enough to create the full freedom in responding that we are looking for with the Technique, but it is the beginning, the starting point. It needs to come first. When you can delay your automatic responding, this then gives you the best chance to direct yourself to go up, lengthen, widen and integrate according to Alexander\'s discovery for using yourself as a whole. Then that integrating itself actually becomes your gauge and basis for choosing more wisely and responding more humanely.

 

 

LEARNING TO INHIBIT

 

In Alexander lessons when we use the action of getting up from and sitting down on a chair, inhibiting is actually the most basic ability we are trying to help pupils to learn and develop. These two seemingly simple everyday actions also reveal a lot about how the character of all your responses serves you to your best or worst advantage in every other life situation—especially at those times when you might be trying hard to get some result or trying too hard to make it right or excellent. Of course, Alexander called this excessive striving "end-gaining," and he often attributed it to "undue self-determination" and "trying too hard to be right."[10] Here is one of Alexander\'s most comprehensive statements on the matter:

 

. . . a change in the nature of human reaction is essential if mankind is not to remain saddled with frustrating static and obsolete beliefs, ideas, conceptions, and relative values which have long since outlived their usefulness . . . This should not surprise anyone who remembers that in most fields of activity man\'s craze is for speed and for the short view, because he has become possessed by the non-stop attitude and outlook: he is a confirmed end-gainer, without respect to the nature of the means whereby he attempts to gain his desired end even when he wishes to employ new means whereby he could change his habits of thought and action.[11]

 

Through chair work you can also find out a lot about how you behave under stress, frustration, or too much stimulation, or about how other feelings might influence your thinking and your ways of doing things—because reacting to the prospect of getting up and sitting down also sets off the same basic kind of thinking and responding in relation to gravity as does your reacting to the prospect of anything else happening to you—whether it is something in the immediate or the more distant future.

 

So it doesn\'t really matter whether it is the action of getting up from a chair, planning out how you will get to know someone, or addressing the United Nations General Assembly—the same fundamental use of yourself in relation to gravity needs to be involved in everything you do so that you can remain whole while you do it. This is why Alexander called what he was attempting to help people achieve through the Technique "improving their reaction to the stimulus of living."[12] "Chair work," then, is the format that he devised for helping us understand and foster that improvement from moment to moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It takes a lot of practice to develop enough skill at inhibiting to be very successful with it in everyday living, and this skill also grows hand in hand with the growth of your skill in directing your head-torso-limb relationship that allows the best working of your supportive function in relation to gravity\'s constant pull. [13] The better you are at inhibiting your automatic ways of responding, the more it is possible for you to maintain your overall integrating direction. And vice versa: the better you are at maintaining your integrating direction, the easier it is for you to deal with more and more powerful stimuli to react and respond through inhibiting.

 

 

PRACTICE I

 

Since Alexander had no-one who could help him improve his feeling ("sensory appreciation") of how he used himself, he devised a way of practicing in front of a set of three mirrors to make this improvement on his own and to most accurately develop his powers of inhibiting and directing. I think everyone studying the Technique can benefit by working along the same lines—particularly if you have a skilled teacher’s hands to verify that you are on the "right track."[14] In fact, I would even go so far as to say that, until you have this procedure fully "under your belt" you probably do not yet have a fundamental grasp of the Technique. Following are some suggestions for using Alexander\'s procedure that he describes in detail in The Use of the Self.[15]

 

To begin, choose an action that you would like to see if you can do in a better way than you regularly do it when you need to do it quickly or automatically. Select something fairly short and simple that doesn\'t always have to be done suddenly—like singing a note or phrase from a song, speaking a line of a poem, picking up a pen to sign your name, raising your arm to wave hello, taking a single step, etc. Then deliberately set aside a lot more time for building up to doing the action than you would usually give yourself—maybe as much as five or ten minutes—even though you might actually need only a few seconds when the moment to act finally comes. In other words, give yourself time to wait, even though you have definitely decided on what it is that you are going to do.

 

Do not go right ahead and do the action. Wait.

 

While you are waiting, use that extra time to make sure that you have your integrating of your neck-head-torso-limb relationship going as well as possible in the amount of time you have allowed. (I am assuming here again that, to a certain extent, you already understand how to give your primary directions so that they have the best influence on your primary control.)  Once you feel you are fairly well in command of your integrating and you are able to go on sustaining it while you are continuing to wait and continuing to delay any responding, decide, but only decide, that you will do the action you initially chose that you would do—not immediately, but in a few more minutes. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!

 

Try to notice if just making that decision itself to perform an action causes you to start to change anything at all in your overall integrating. Often it will. And if it does—especially if it does—just go on postponing the action so that you can return to reinforcing your integrating and going up as your main activity.

 

When you finally come to the stage that your deciding to act does not distract you from your integrating and going up, then you might be ready to go on to the moment of finally doing the action. So continue with your directing in order to lead into doing the action.

 

But then—just a second or so before you are going to do the action—wait again. Don\'t do the action after all!

 

Instead, decide again what you will do, just as if you were choosing all over again from the start. But this time give yourself several other possible choices in addition to your original one. (Alexander called this activity "making a fresh decision"—this redeciding at what he realized is our most "critical moment"[16] just before we turn thinking or conceiving into doing.)

 

Then, as before, in this new, "fresh" decision making, keep your overall integrating and going up directitng as your main priority while you make your new choice of action from these next four options. Choose either to:

 

1. go on, after all, and do your original choice of action, or

2. do another fairly different action, or

3. do yet another action than either of the first two, or

4. just continue going on with your basic integrating, directing and going up.

 

This way, whichever choice you make can have the best chance to be filled with your fullest integrating and going up. So, no matter what you finally do, your integrating still remains your main activity; and the choices of any specific action remain more secondary right on through finally doing one of them. And if one of your choices is something that stirs up a lot of enthusiasm or excitement in you—for instance, like music making or poetry recitation often can—this temporary setting aside of your goal is rather like placing it on an imaginary shelf just off to one side of you where it can still "shimmer" with its fullest inspiration and intensity until you are ready to approach accomplishing it with your fullest going up and lengthening and widening.

 

This extended delaying also helps more and more to deflect any power that your inspiration or excitement might have over you that could actually stand in the way of your doing the action most completely and wonderfully, especially if it is a deeply ingrained action that you have learned to do subconsciously—like speaking, singing, 

or walking.

 

In a way, you could say that this fresh decision-making procedure actually equalizes your choices so that you can bring the same power of integrating to all of them. Even your fourth option—just waiting and directing—can contain the same energy as the excitement of singing a note from a beautiful song. So when you work this way for a while, it obviously can empower your directing energy as much as it can improve your inhibiting ability.

 

You may benefit very much from going through this entire procedure several times before you finally let yourself go ahead to accomplish the action that you ultimately choose to do—especially if it\'s a task that you usually tend to rush through in a way that gets you stiff or tired or that gets you frustrated because it often turns out less successful or rewarding than you hope it will be.

 

It should be clear by now that the time just before you act is the most crucial—the "critical moment"—even though it may ultimately mean leaving only a split second more time than you usually take between your deciding and your acting. And when you have fully left out all the unnecessary extra preparing that you might be engaging in out of habit to be sure you will be right, it can often seem like the action just "does itself," without much, if any, sense of effort at all. The Alexander jargon for this approach is "non-doing," as distinguished from "doing," which usually carries with it some quality of an "end-gaining," excessive, and unnecessary effort. This approach, of course, is diametrically opposite to what most people do when they follow the old adage "If at first you don\'t succeed, try and try again!"

 

 

PRACTICE II

 

Another way of developing your skill at inhibiting in daily life is to choose some fairly simple action that you usually do many times a day—like  reaching to open a door, lifting a foot to go up a stair, moving to answer a phone—and see if you can remember throughout the day, each time it comes up, to pause a moment for giving some attention to your freeing and your going up and integrating before you go ahead and do the action. Sometimes you might want, and need, to take longer than just a moment, especially if the action is very demanding "physically" or "emotionally"  (for instance, if you have to lift something very heavy or if you have to talk with somebody you usually find difficult) so that you can give your going up and integrating their fullest chance to enhance the activity. Then, at the end of the day, reflect back and try to remember how successful you were at remembering to pause and direct more at these critical moments. If you like, even keep track of the number of times that you remembered—and forgot.

 

 

THE BROADER VIEW

 

Another aspect of ourselves that inhibiting can reveal to us is the fact that we are actually doing a lot of our preparatory thinking, choosing, and deciding "subconsciously" in a way that we have never really been aware of before very much, if at all. Much of our responding usually starts so soon after our thinking and deciding because we are also guessing ("preconceiving") so much ahead about what we might need to be prepared for (again, "end-gaining") that we get taken away from our awareness of what\'s happening now in our going up and integrating. We are often trying so hard to be sure that we will be prepared in just the right way when the moment comes to act that we actually set ourselves up to be "wrong" when that moment actually arrives. Then, if something different from what we were expecting happens, we often have to take extra time to dismantle the "wrong" before we can find our way through to the "right" or more appropriate response—for now.

 

 

 

Alexander wrote of the Technique as a way of bridging "the gap between the \'subconscious\' and the conscious . . . by means of a knowledge gained through practical experience, which will enable man to inhibit his impulsive \'subconscious\' reaction to a given stimulus, and to hold it inhibited while initiating a conscious direction, guidance, and control of the use of himself that was previously unfamiliar."[17]  These impulsive, subconscious reactions also contain a whole realm of hidden material about our personality, character, attitude toward life, etc. that we may never have believed we could have any choice about.

 

It\'s important to remember here that "subconscious" in Alexander’s terminology is different from the adjective "unconscious" and different from the term "the unconscious" as it is used in psychoanalysis, for example, to refer to the source of material that occurs in our dreaming. In the Alexander Technique, "subconscious activity" refers to anything that we are doing or thinking while we are awake that we could be conscious of but often aren\'t—until, for instance, it\'s pointed out to us in an Alexander lesson or until we notice it for ourselves when the teacher is helping us to stay aware of our lengthening and widening and we catch ourselves thinking about preparing for an action and beginning to interfere with our overall integrating. Much of the time in the early stages of lessons we don\'t realize that we\'ve been affected by this subconscious interference until the action is completed and we see, upon reflection, that it didn\'t happen in the most integrated way it could have. We are then experiencing the difference between what Alexander called "conscious guidance and control" and "subconscious guidance and control."[18]

 

Eventually, inhibiting can also expose the true nature of our motives for doing whatever we do or for thinking whatever we think ("fixed prejudices," "beliefs," and "preconceived ideas," which, according to Alexander, are some of our main subconscious guiding influences.[19]) Sometimes we may think we are going to do something for a certain reason, or we may believe that we are responding in a certain way that we have deliberately decided upon or chosen; but often, when we inhibit and take this extra bit of time between deciding and doing, we may discover that there are actually other, more subconscious reasons behind our thinking or responding in that particular way that can make the quality of the outcome seem to betray whatever we believed our best, conscious intentions were. For instance, when a person seems to be doing something very kind and is trying to be very gentle or positive about doing it, yet there still seems to be a forceful or controlling quality underlying it that produces the opposite effect. The outcome does not really ring true as the gentle, caring thing the person seemed at first to consciously intend, even if they felt their heart was in the right place when they decided to act. It very likely involved a degree of what Alexander called "undue self-determination" that so often results in end-gaining.

 

So you can see that inhibiting in the Technique can even provide us with the chance for a unique kind of "self-psychoanalysis" if we choose to allow it to do so and if we make the fullest use of this chance it gives us to look into our innermost motives for acting and responding. Regular psychoanalysis and psychotherapy often help us understand the reasons from the past that lay behind our behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs. But these approaches do not seem to offer such a practical way of working on unraveling and changing how those motives actually operate in this real-life moment-to-moment region between deciding and doing that usually stays hidden and unaddressed in the "gap between the subconscious and the conscious" that Alexander claims has been created by categorizing human beings as having a separate "mind," "body," and "spirit."20]

 

 

The extra time that inhibiting provides gives us the opportunity to look at ourselves and our lives from a much broader perspective than I think most of us usually do. Alexander called upon on us to try to "cease our muddled examination of the details just in front of us, and try to see our problems in the broad terms of one who can stand back and see life moving through the centuries."[21]  This larger view can also reveal how aspects of tradition, convention, archetype, and myth may be subconsciously guiding our thinking, imagining, and doing in ways that prevent us from progressing toward a more humane and civilized way of being in the world.

 

As Thomas Moore says in Care of the Soul, "although life seems to be a matter of literal causes and effects, in fact we are living out deep stories, often unconsciously" . . . and . . . "We are condemned to live out what we cannot imagine. We can be caught in myth, not knowing that we are acting as a character in a drama. [If] we become familiar with the characters and themes that that are central to our myths, we can be free from their compulsions and the blindness that comes upon us when we are caught up in them."[22] Inhibiting allows us the possibility of finding that split-second where those characters and themes might actually start to play themselves out in everyday life so that we can see past our "blindness" to them and take a more active role in managing our own destinies.

 

 

Perhaps the most challenging place to bring in inhibiting is in speaking and conversation—especially when you are talking about something that is exciting or difficult or talking with people who are competitive, controlling, or argumentative in the way they converse. However, even remembering for a split second, before each phrase you speak, to free yourself from the temptation to take a quick breath and rush on into your words can make a remarkable difference, not only in your own quality of communication, but also in your listeners\' willingness to respect what you have to say.[25]

 

 

"STOPPING" vs. "PAUSING" OR "DELAYING"

 

In the original approaches to teaching the Technique you would usually be asked to think of inhibiting as "stopping," rather than as "pausing" or "delaying." Also, along with "stopping," you would be asked to say "No" [26] with regard to any habitual tension you may be about to make or any habitual thinking you are starting to do—whether this is because of any preconceived ideas you might tend to have from what happened in this kind of situation in the past or because of what you are guessing (consciously or subconsciously) might be about to happen that would take some special preparing to address. In other words, you would stop and say "No" (in your imagination, rather than out loud) right when you would start thinking that you know what the future holds—whether it is during a lesson in the moment before an Alexander teacher seems to be going to stand you up from sitting or when you are predicting and planning for the more distant future. But I find that the word "stop" can sometimes tempt pupils to stiffen and hold, and I think that the words "pause" or “delay” can often work better. However, this description of inhibiting by John Hunter gives a good reason for using the word "stop":

 

What Erika [Whittaker, first-generation Alexander teacher] would emphasize about inhibition is that a stop is not a pause: they are quite different. A pause implies that one is going to do the thing, but not yet. A stop has no such implication. We are free to do something else. If you press the pause button on a cassette player, the motor is still engaged; as soon as you release the button the machine can only continue in the same direction it was going. If you press the stop button, other options become available. That moment of really becoming aware of options, which I call discovering the moment of choice, is one that Alexander went to some length to try and explain. . . .[27]

 

On the other hand, if your "stopping" involves completely giving up the motivation or inspiration for doing something that you want with all your heart to do superbly (like music making), I don\'t think that you should shut off that motivation and inspiration completely, which is what Erika Whittaker\'s example of  "stop" rather implies. Certainly, there must have been an element of this performance excitement in Alexander\'s own exercise (described above) for developing his powers of inhibiting and directing his primary control, particularly if the "certain sentence"[28] he had chosen to speak in the inhibiting exercise was from a Shakespeare play or dramatic reading. It\'s interesting, in this regard, that quite early on in the chapter about his discovery in The Use of the Self he makes a clear distinction between "reciting" and "ordinary speaking."[29] I had always assumed that the "certain sentence" he chose was from a Shakespeare play since his main reason for working out a solution to his vocal problems was so that he could resume his promising career as a recitalist, but more recently I realized that this may not have been the case. On one hand, it is easy to think that he chose a line from Shakespeare (e.g., "This above all: to thine own self be true . . .") for this exercise in order to work on reducing the power that the excitement of reciting instilled in him. But on the other hand, I could see that he may have chosen instead a "certain sentence" from "ordinary speaking" (e.g., "What a rainy day it is!") just so that he would not have to contend with the extra energy of aesthetic excitement that would occur as he thought of reciting lines from a play or dramatic reading. In the case of choosing a sentence from ordinary speech, it would be much easier for it to remain pretty much on an equal level of stimulus with the other two options he gave himself—inhibiting and continuing to project his orders or raising his hand—that is, as far as their tendency not to stimulate so much end-gaining energy goes. However, in the case of reciting, I could see that the aesthetic excitement in merely thinking of reciting a "certain sentence" of a play could affect his entire use of himself in a very vibrant way if he kept it contined in his imagination and didn\'t allow it to burst forth instantly into sound. In this case, merely "continuing to project the directions for maintaining the new use" or going on to "lift [his] hand instead"[30] could possibly have been informed with a much-heightened direction of his primary control as well. I wish we knew what his certain sentence was!

 

 

NATURE OR NURTURE?

 

I have sometimes heard it said, "The Alexander Technique won\'t change who you are. If you\'re a burglar, it will only help you to become a better burglar." These words were often attributed to Alexander himself, but I have never been able to accept that he actually said such a thing, or even implied it. In fact, much to the contrary, in his first book Man\'s Supreme Inheritance he devotes several pages to discussing the "thief" and what might be possible in terms of the thief being able to change his ways if "the psychophysical conditions which influence him in the direction of crime" are dealt with more fully than most programs of reform have the skills to employ with regard to a fuller "psycho-physical re-education." [31] So I tend to think that those who believe that the Technique does not have the capacity to "change who you are"—essentially your habits in living—are those who have no interest in applying it to becoming better people. These thoughts also remind me that Walter Carrington once quoted to me, "A man convinced against his will is of the same conviction still!" and I suppose that attitude could be seen behind much of the tendency for people to cling to their habits of thinking and behaving—what they would consider to be their "personality." For it seems that unless some people can be presented with a desirable—and necessary—alternative to "who they are," they probably see no need to consider other possibilities of thinking and behaving that would make the world a better place. Of course, there is nothing in the teaching of the Technique itself that would guarantee that a person would always use inhibiting and directing in order to choose to pursue a "good" end for both self and society. One could just as readily choose a self-centered or destructive course of action and maybe use some of the skills learned through lessons to carry it out more effectively (pick the lock on a door, crawl through a window, etc.). But "constructive conscious control of the individual"—to use Alexander’s own term for his work from the title of his second book—surely carries with it positive social implications as well. It seems to follow that if we experience a greater well-being and effectiveness in living as a consequence of having Alexander lessons, we usually become increasingly loath to have that well-being and effectiveness diminished by life\'s circumstances or by other people\'s negative actions. And it seems to follow further that one could more easily imagine and allow for others having that same need for an improved well-being and effectiveness. In the final analysis, one\'s broad perspective in living is surely based either on a concern that the world and life in it continue in as constructive a way as possible, or else it is based on an attitude that cares not if the world and people in it live abominable lives or perish. At the very least, it seems the world could be a much better place if we would simply "do not unto others as we would have them not do unto us." Certainly, Alexander\'s writings contain a strong exhortation for us to move beyond the instinctive, animal plane of existence, to a more and more civilized one. Early in Man\'s Supreme Inheritance he claimed:

It is my earnest belief that the intelligent recognition of the principles essential to guidance by conscious control is essential to the full mental and physical development of the human race. Due consideration will convince even the skeptical that if mankind is to evolve to the higher stages of physical and mental perfection, he must be guided by these principles. They alone will bring men and women of today to the highest state of well-being, enabling them to grapple effectively with the problems of the day in the world of thought and action, gradually widening the dividing line which separates civilized mankind from the animal kingdom. [32]

But what does it really mean, for that matter, when we classify someone as a "thief," "burglar,"or any other of the many labels we so readily attach to others? The way many people use the word "burglar" it seems as if they regard all people who steal repeatedly or habitually to be genetically programmed to do so and that it would be impossible for them to change this programming even if the people in question wanted to and even if they were given the psychophysical means-whereby to work on making the change. Alexander did appear to allow for several possibilities, though, when he wrote that "a man may, as we say, [be] born a thief" and may be "cursed with the subconscious abnormal craving or habit which makes a man a thief by nature," or "[on] the other hand, he may be quite normal at birth, but in early life he may drift into simple and apparently harmless little ways which through carelessness and lack of sound training, develop very slowly and remain unobserved" either by himself or others.[33] I suppose, too, that there can be a substantial difference between the thief who steals regularly and habitually and someone who chooses only once, out of desperation, to break into a wealthy person\'s house to take some valuables in order to buy food for her starving family because she cannot find a job that will allow her to provide for them as she had been able to up to that point. Surely, there could be many other variations on the burglary theme that would allow it to be viewed and addressed differently depending upon all sorts of other factors.

In this regard, recent research done by Claire Nee, at the International Center for Forensic Psychology at the University of Portsmouth in England, seems to indicate that burglars can become "ex-burglars." In order to study the psychological nature of criminals, Nee was able to locate "ex-offenders" who she was convinced had "truly ended their criminal careers and would not be tempted back into it" when she involved them in her simulated burglary experiment to explore what happens in burglars leading up to and during a theft. Ultimately, she writes that by "better understanding the decision-making sequence of a crime (which often starts days before and at a distance from it), we can address this in rehabilitation by helping the offender to become more conscious of these decisions at an early stage (when it is easier to abandon the idea)." [34]

 

 

CONCLUSION