Part III

This is the third of three installments of a conversation
between Joyce Stenstrom and Marian Goldberg. Joyce Stenstrom was
formerly the Ergonomist for the Mayo Clinic and now works as an
independent consultant. She has been an Alexander Technique student of
Carol and Brian McCullough and has been taking private lessons
since 1996. Marian Goldberg is an Alexander Technique teacher and
is the Director of the Alexander Technique Center of Washington,
D.C. Teacher Training Program.

The conversation focuses on how
ergonomics relates to the Alexander Technique as a field of study and as a profession.



September 14, 1997

Marian: So marketing to a specific
profession or professions is questionable.

Joyce: Yes. I think it has inherent
difficulties.

Marian: I suppose you have to think about if other
services have marketed themselves to the medical profession and
how has that worked or didn't work? For instance, occupational and
physical therapists—they generally work as adjuncts to doctors.
Of course, they are therapists, not teachers. But I could classify
both therapists and teachers as “services.” How did physical
therapists and occupational therapists establish themselves with
doctors? I believe PT and OT are fairly young professions.

Joyce: My guess is that it wasn't marketing efforts. My
guess is that it was circumstantial. I believe that physical
therapy and occupational therapy both developed during World War
II. There was this critical and obvious need for services that
physicians were not trained to provide. Over time, it just became
mainstream.

Marian: Since they are therapists, that would make their
work more of a natural complement to M.D.s. And they are looking
at things from the same kind of perspective, looking at the
organism primarily as “parts.” Although I understand OT takes a
more integrated view, it's still a very different perspective.

Joyce: Yes, it's the paradigm of recent medicine. The
Alexander Technique doesn't really fit the paradigm of medical
therapies today. The constant focus on the entire body is what has
impressed me most about the technique, as I've experienced it
through my own lessons.

Even though the Alexander Technique is a different paradigm, I
believe that good professionals in health care would be open to
techniques that show results. Good professionals—in any
profession—are aware of the limitations of their own professions.
If there is something out there that provides relief to suffering,
then the responsible professional is going to want to know more
about it.

Marian: How would you present the “different” kind of
education that the Alexander Technique is concerned with to health
professionals and ergonomists?

Joyce: Well, that's a problem. Because the technique is
about this other avenue of kinesthetic education. It's so unlike
other ways of learning that we can't even imagine how it
works.

Marian: Again, we're going back to
the personal experience aspect.

Joyce: Yes. I think the Alexander Technique is just
extremely difficult to communicate through the written word. I
have enjoyed reading a number of books about the technique, but I
didn't understand anything until I actually had lessons. It seems
to me that even people who are truly gifted verbal communicators
have written that even they can't explain the technique very well.
People just have to experience it.

Marian: However, then there's a problem with people who
think they can explain and teach the technique verbally. There's
even a book out called “Teach Yourself the Alexander
Technique.”

More than most “personal services,” the technique needs to be
known about one on one. Going back to the idea of allaying
people's fears: people who have directly experienced the technique
can allay others’ fears about it and dispel misconceptions.

Joyce: Yes. And to talk about the technique is like
discussing a painting without ever seeing the painting itself or
discussing a symphony without having heard it.

You can imagine what a doctor would feel like if he/she had
been treating a patient and seen that patient through different
therapies and then sees the patient improve through Alexander
lessons. Now that's a possible open door.

Marian: That's true. However, my experience has been
that doctors often just express confusion when that happens. I've
had so many students go to doctors after or while they were
experiencing improvement. I had one student, a woman who was in
her fifties and quite short, about 4'10 or so. When she went to
her doctor for her annual physical, she measured an inch taller
than she had in previous years. The doctor and nurse were very
surprised. My student told the doctor and nurse that she had been
doing this method called the Alexander Technique and she said to
me, “They just looked at me like I was crazy.” And yet it was
their own measurements that showed a real difference. Or, for
instance, I have a young teenager with a rather severe scoliosis
coming for lessons. She's in a real growth sprurt right now and I
believe scoliosis is expected to worsen under these conditions.
Well, according to her orthopedist, her scoliosis has improved a
degree instead. Her mother told me that the orthopedist had said
that he hadn't seen that kind of improvement before. But still,
there's no real expression of interest or follow-up on why this
may have happened.

Joyce: What I've noticed about physicians is that they
tend to give more credibility to other physicians. So it anyone is
going to reach physicians, it will most likely be through another
physician!

Marian: Which brings us back to the question, how are
they going to know about it? What is their knowledge going to be
based on?

Joyce: The Alexander Technique is difficult to grasp. I
can see why it would be very helpful to have these statements in
the marketing package but I would not ever think that a marketing
package would just work on its own. For instance, if I were an
Alexander teacher and wanted to reach out to the medical
community, I would probably go visit physicians and therapists one
at a time to understand their personal perpectives.

An important thing to know when communicating with other
professions is what terms are in favor and what terms are out of
favor. For example, “RSI” [Repetitive Strain Injury] is
losing favor with professionals both in medicine and ergonomics.
This term suggests a singular cause and effect relationship that
has not been proven. Repetitive Strain Injury also suggests
something that is done to you. The Alexander Technique's
terminology opens the door to the idea of personal choices. Of all
the medical and professional literature I've read, I believe that
F.M. Alexander developed the most helpful terminology. It's
neutral; it doesn't prematurely bias or limit our thinking, and it
doesn't intimate things that we don't really know. Your teminology
opens the doors to clear thinking. I believe Alexander teachers
should stick with this terminology and teach the rest of us.

In an attempt to communicate with other professionals, it's
tempting to use the words you think they're using but you may not
know which terms are becoming out of favor with the people who are
most informed and closest to the issues.

Marian: I think that it can be difficult for teachers
because we are are teaching something that is completely new to
people; as you said, it's a whole different paradigm. Therefore,
it's hard to explain and it seems easier to appeal to people by
narrowing it down or by trying to make it fit into something
that's easier to understand or that's popular at the moment. But
of course that's when you lose it and that's when people can
become disenchanted with it because their idea of the technique
ends up not being that much different from other methods or
techniques.

Joyce: There's something in Chinese literature that says
that for a catalyst to cause a reaction and come out unscathed,
the catalyst has to be pure. If the catalyst is impure, it will
cause a reaction but will also be eaten up by the reaction.

Marian: Yes, that's it.

Joyce: In diluting it to become popular, doing things
that make it easier in the short term, I think you get eaten up.
It's time to understand and appreciate the importance of
purity—the high ideals of the Alexander Technique. And there's no
reason to be shy about how well the technique works.

Marian: Well, it's interesting, if you look at the
NASTAT [AmSAT] News or Direction and see how people
are trying to publicize the technique or even how as teachers
we're discussing the technique and saying what the technique is.
For instance, some people want to downplay the technique, saying
Alexander was just doing this or that and now we can expand it or
combine it or refine it and we can make it more appealing to more
people. One person even said something about how the technique is
in danger of “involuting into a quaint Edwardian mind-body
method.” There seems to be a notion of expanding the technique or
even supposedly superceding it when you're actually just imposing
artificial limitations on it.

Joyce: To me, nature is the only guide. If you're going
deeper and deeper into trying to understand what Alexander was
doing, you can, in a certain sense, expand it. I believe that Joan
Murray, for one, has done this. But that happens naturally and
honestly and organically. It's not a business decision.

Of course, you don't want other people to define your
profession. I've seen what that's like in ergonomics and it's very
annoying. But on the other hand, being misunderstood a little bit
by others is not as big a problem as not being true to one's self.
That could come from growing too fast to meet popular demand that
you're not ready for. All services are difficult to describe in
marketing, and your service is particularly difficult to describe.
There's another book called Inevitable Illusions. It's
written by people in the field of cognitive psychology and it's
about the way people think and make decisions. It explains how
it's a mistake to assume that you can develop a plan based on what
we would think would be the rational decision-making behavior of
potential customers. For instance, when most of us think about how
we got into the Alexander Technique, getting literature describing
how great the technique is probably wasn't the key. I'm deluged
with literature! I became interested in the technique through
meeting a couple of people who I immediately respected for other
things they were saying and suddenly they said, “You've got to
know about this technique!” Then it's nice to have the
information—the business aspect that made it possible for me to
get names of people. But I'm not sure that I would have gone out
of my way to seek an Alexander instructor if I had not heard
personal testimonies.

I mentioned earlier that there are two marketing problems. The
first, of course, is that the marketing plan just doesn't work.
But the second problem is that the plan works very well but the
service isn't ready to meet the demand. I'll recommend another
book, The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge. This book
discusses system paradigms and it mentions a common problem of
systems is sudden popularity and rapid growth at the expense of
quality. There's also the soul searching that has to go on, “can
we be popular and pure?” I would caution not to dilute your
message at all because you've got a great message and we're
entering an era where the stakes are too high not to be absolutely
honest.

There's also the premise that you want to appeal to the mass
audience. That should be challenged. It shouldn't be assumed that
growth is automatically wonderful. We've really bought into
that.

Marian: Fast growth particularly. That hasn't worked too
well for a number of methods over the years. And of course, mass
appeal often means appealing to the lowest common denominators.
But we haven't seen much real debate on this and other issues in
NASTAT [AmSAT].

Joyce: The July/August issue of the
Harvard Business Review [1997] is devoted entirely
to the subject of fair processes and how organizations are
grappling with making decisions through healthy debate. It's
fascinating to look at how organizations coped in different ways.
Some organizations really tried to stop debate, thinking that they
wouldn't be able to make good decisions with controversy. Whereas
organizations that engaged in active, open debate produced the
highest quality decisions, according to the authors. One article
that is particularly interesting is “How Management Teams Can Have
a Good Fight.” It's excellent. The authors studied eight
organizations that were really struggling with significant issues
and the key players had significantly different opinions about how
to address the issues. Four were able to debate the issues really
well and four couldn't do it at all. The authors came up with six
critical success factors for making decisions. The first one was,
focus on the facts. Keep going back to them. Another was to
entertain alternative hypotheses. Just imagine many different
possibilities and scenarios. Even invent ones that are wacky just
to open the playing field and get people to think. Another one was
to balance the power structure so that one group does not dominate
the process. But if people feel it was a fair process, they'll
accept other things. Another critical element was the use of
humor. This was present in organizations that thrived and absent
in the ones that did not.

All organizations and companies go through these passages of
conflict. And the way you do this will have a lot to do with how
well you survive. I know that during the early years of the Mayo
Clinic, lively debate was encouraged. The Harvard Business
Review makes the point that the absence of debate is not
harmony: It is apathy. You could have this feeling that everything
is harmonious, but really it is just domination by some and apathy
by others.

Marian: It can be a real problem when parties in the
decision-making process do not allow those they disagree with to
make information or their opinions known. What about parties in
the decision-making process dealing with controversy through
personalization, e.g., using psychotherapy or spiritual sounding
type techniques and language to (mis)characterize those they
disagree with?

Joyce: I think that's covered in the number one point in
the Harvard Business Review article: Stick to the
facts. A fair process won't degenerate into personalization of
this sort.

Marian: It sounds like it could be
beneficial for NASTAT and others to take a good long look at this
article.

Joyce: I think these are things worth
thinking about.

I think that the Peter Senge book, The Fifth Discipline,
could be helpful to any organization. The book talks about “The
Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.” There are about
nine “System Archetypes.” The system may be a natural system or an
organizational structure. Each of these archetypes describe a
particular system characteristic.The value of using system
archetypes is that they make it possible to think through the
implications of actions before you proceed. For example, rapid
growth has some predictable side effects. It's fascinating to be
able to map these things out before they really happen. The people
who can see down the road a little a bit, who can envision what
the natural outcome of systems would be have a real
advantage.

It's easy just to think, “oh wouldn't it be nice if we were
well accepted in the medical profession and everybody would be
prescribing our services and the insurance industry would be
prescribing our services,” etc.

Marian: Well, if you don't have that knowledge, it's
hard to know what the effects would be. If we just say, “oh, well
let's grow”: That always sounds good.

What are some of the differences you see
between the two professions/disciplines?

Joyce: What fascinates me about ergonomics is its
breadth. What fascinates me about the Alexander Technique is its
depth. The two professions also seem to have focused on different
professions or disciplines. It seems to me that the Alexander
Technique has focused more on the performing arts community and
that Ergonomics has focused on just about everything but the
performing arts. Come to think of it, that may be why our paths
have not crossed before.

Marian: What do you think of the main focus being on
appealing to or dealing with certain fields and not others, such
as the with the technique and the performing arts or with
ergonomics focusing more on other work settings?

Joyce: When a profession focuses on a narrow spectrum of
work the profession may be unduly stereotyped. But when the
profession is as broad as ergonomics, there is a tendency to have
each person in the profession focus on smaller aspects. The
profession becomes narrow individual by individual. In either
case, segments of the population may not benefit by knowledge
gained from the focus on other segments. The crossover of
knowledge can be very helpful. For instance, things that Alexander
teachers have learned through working with people in the
performing arts could be very helpful to people working with
computers.

Marian: Consistently focusing on appealing to particular
groups of people or professions and not others: Can that affect
how we define ourselves or how others define our disciplines
(Ergonomics and the Alexander Technique)?

Joyce: Yes. For example, Ergonomics is now associated
with medical disorders. But that's really not what the profession
is about in its entirety. The profession is about fitting the
environment to meet the needs of the worker. Injuries are just one
aspect of it. But now many people think that that's all ergonomics
is about.

Marian: Rather like the Alexander
Technique supposedly being a posture improvement
method.

Joyce: Right. Or the Alexander
Technique is what people with physical problems turn to when
everything else has failed. To me, the great things about
ergonomics and the Alexander Technique are what they can
contribute in the long run to general health. In the case of
Ergonomics, a company can be made better through an understanding
of the interface between the work force and their environment.
That understanding is important for all sorts of reasons, not just
injury reduction. For instance, patients would clearly be better
served if the health care environment were designed with the
capabilities and limitations of health care workers in mind. And
there's just so much more to Alexander than using it as a last
resort for people with chronic pain and injuries. I have
personally benefitted so much from Alexander lessons, and I didn't
go in with any aches and pains. I think that [John]
Dewey's comments about extending inhibition to mental as well as
physical functioning are fascinating. It brings you back to
Alexander's belief that mental and physical functioning can't be
separated.

In this country, we are beginning to define health as being
much more than the absence of disease. I think that there is a
momentum building for people asking more fundamental questions. So
don't come in now with the Alexander Technique by playing to our
old thought patterns of the last several decades. Maybe the
Alexander Technique is what the country is getting ready for.

Marian: Acting as a catalyst rather
than just trying to fit in and be popular.

Joyce: Yes. I suspect that some people in the medical
field wouldn't mind trading places with you, for the opportunity
to have more time with the people they are serving and not to be
part of the current medical/insurance conundrum. This is not a fun
time for many people in mainstream medicine; it's a very tough
time.

Marian: What are some of the things
you offer people for work related injuries?

Joyce: To begin to accomodate the
staff at Mayo, I wanted to develop something that could quickly
bring people through so that we didn't have to guess about what
kind of accomodations would best suit them. Since a huge segment
of the staff work with computers, I focus a lot of attention on
the computer work environment. This has led to what is probably
the most unique aspect of the program at Mayo: the Discovery Room.
Basically it's a place where people can come and try things out
for themselves relative to the computer environment. People have
the opportunity to test out different chairs, test out different
configurations: heights, depths, slants and angles. We go through
a particular protocol to help people feel these changes for
themselves. The room has a specially built desk which lets the
employees immediately experience the effects of incrementally
changing the height and angle of the monitor, the tilt of the
chair, etc—rather like the incremental differences as the
optometrist shows you comparative lenses during an eye exam. The
Discovery Room lets people experience the effects of many changes
one at a time and in combination.

What the room has done for me and the people who work with me
is it allows us to see hundreds of people and get some feeling
about what the different issues are, just a gut feeling of the
essential problem. Sometimes posture is the overriding issue; other
times it's keying technique; other times it's the heights of work
station components, etc. We have various keyboards and input
devices to try. But often we don't need to because so much can be
improved by just making some basic changes to the heights and
angles of the equipment.

Marian: So you're making the
environment more mechanically advantageous?

Joyce: Right. Getting out of nature's way so that nature
has the opportunity to do what it can. As we've observed more and
more people I have a deeper appreciation for what people can't
do on their own. If one doesn't have a reliable kinesthetic
sense (and most of us have lost it somewhere along the way) then
one can only go so far with equipment changes. The equipment
changes can set the stage, so that the equipment won't get in the
way of better things happening. But I can certainly see the need
for something beyond these kinds of engineering changes.

Marian: Even though you put people in the most
mechanically advantageous environment they're unable to take
advantage of it.

Joyce: Some people seem to be able to
take advantage of these engineering changes immediately and others
are obviously in need of more help. They've gotten so contorted.
What we do seems to help people with basic things such as being
able not to do extremely awkward movements. For instance, in a bad
work station, their feet may reach the floor, or
they can type comfortably or they can gaze
comfortably at the monitor but they generally can't do all of
these things at once. Whereas in a good work station you can do
all of these things without compromising any other desirable
feature. This makes it possible to have good posture. And with
some people, establishing a good work station seems to improve
their posture immediately. But for others the possibility is still
not enough. There are people who sit in the chair like a sack of
potatoes; they have no inner support. No matter how you adjust the
chair, you can't give them that support.

One of the nice things about the Discovery Room is that it has
given me the opportunity to understand not only what equipment can
do but what it can not do. I think I have a better idea of
how equipment fits into the whole scheme of things.

A lot of people can feel better with a better chair, a better
set-up—a situation that doesn't force them into really awkward
postures. A big leap for me personally is adding what I've learned
from the Alexander lessons to my understanding of equipment. I sit
entirely differently than before I had Alexander lessons; I move
entirely differently. The Alexander Technique has taken things to
another level.

Marian: Has it affected what you see as ergonomically
helpful or efficient? Or is your perception of what is ergonomic
pretty much the same and you've added the Alexander Technique as
another factor to consider?

Joyce: The technique has affected how I see
things. For example, leaning one's weight on a back rest: This
makes sense mechanically and may be fine once in a while but
having had Alexander lessons, I am now more fully aware that the
body's internal structure can provide the support one needs. I
think the body can do very well upright.

Marian: Would you say that learning the paradigm of the
technique and applying it to ergonomics has changed your
perception of ergonomics?

Joyce: Yes, it definitely has. It has made me reconsider
chair design. I was already having doubts about certain premises
of chair design before having Alexander lessons but the lessons
have made me question cushioning and backward leaning and other
things that are mainstream thinking.

Right now is a critical time because there's so much attention
being given to the office environment. Furniture companies are
making decisions about designs that we may have to live with for a
very long time. Once designs for office equipment are established,
entire factories are built around these design concepts. Consumers
accept the concepts and then it takes a long time, if ever, to
undo fundamental design errors. If ever the ideas of the Alexander
Technique could be introduced into furniture design, now is the
time. This is a particular window of opportunity.

Marian: So it's the combination of timeliness and
positive personal experiences with the Technique that is at the
core of what will determine its long-term impact and probably also
its popularity.

Joyce: Yes. You can strategize and market and plan and
all those things, but when it comes right down to it, all you can
really do is be ready for opportunities. And I think opportunities
are coming. For instance, there are the changing demographics of
the work force: The work force is aging. The Scandinavian
countries have been looking at ergonomics for longer than we have
in this country and they're thinking a lot about the aging work
force. I would guess that that's going to be the main theme of
ergonomics in the coming decades. It is probably going to be a
much bigger topic than the so-called RSI hand disorders.

Marian: That's an interesting point. And you can't
exactly call aging a “syndrome.” Unlike RSI, it's not a syndrome
that's going to be reclassified.

Joyce: Right. For me, the aging work force is the most
relevant issue for ergonomics. It's a more relevant issue than the
current focus on musculo-skeletal disorders. It's “will the last
twenty years of our lives be healthy and productive?” The way we
work, and at a more basic level, the way we sit, stand, and walk
while we work will have a profound effect on the way we age.

Marian: That's an interesting and more general focus
that perhaps the Alexander Technique community hasn't considered
as much as we could. Yet Alexander himself obviously focused on
the wider impact and usefulness of the technique. Musculo-skeletal
disorders are a possible part of the aging process but they're
certainly not the whole picture. Aging is obviously a major life
process, and it is the technique in its wholistic encompassing
sense (which Alexander emphasized) that can enhance this major
life process. It's not just the musculo-skeletal aspect.

Joyce: My personal feeling is that the Alexander
Technique is going to add a quality of life to my own aging. I'm
44 so I'm not eminently worried about it but I think all of us in
the baby boom generation have got to be concerned about it.

Marian: What do you think is the common ground for
cooperation between Alexander Technique teachers and
ergonomists?

Joyce: I think if you were to take
popular ergonomics and some of the popular notions of Alexander,
it would just be confusing. I don't think there would be any
common ground there. But if we were to take the best of
Alexander and the best of ergonomics, that could be a
different story. Most things that have really surged in terms of
our understanding some phenomenon have happened when a couple of
professions intersect. One person or a few people become
knowledgable of two professions. There's something about this that
seems to be catalytic in and of itself. So I think that what
ergonomics has that may be useful to Alexander is our 50 years of
focusing on many professions and our systems thinking. Also, how
to measure physiological and behavioral phenomenon and how to run
experiments (which rightly or wrongly is the currency of knowledge
today). What Alexander has that ergonomics could use is this
unique educational technique which has worked for 100 years.
People are increasingly realizing that traditional education
methods for behavioral changes don't work. So you'd be catching us
at a good time, when we would say yes, we would agree with you.

Of course, it could be really scary if the technique really
caught on before there were the resources in place to meet the
demand with quality. I think the technique could grow like
wildfire but then burn out. I think that things that go really hot
can also go really cold.

Marian: I think that's very true. That happened with
another method. Back in the late 1800s, Alexander was teaching and
studying the Delsarte System. It was a rather esoteric mind-body
method. One of its practitioners, Steele MacKaye, apparently
became such a good exponent of it that he acted as a catalyst for
the method suddenly becoming extremely popular. Everything was
“Delsarte;” there were even all sorts of “Delsarte” products being
sold in mail order catalogs. Many people were claiming to teach it
who had little or no training in it or understanding of it. (Which
reminds me, a trainee on my course knows someone who has read a
couple of books on the Alexander Technique and based on that is
now “teaching” it. And there are people who've written books on
the technique after having a few lessons.) I think the “Greek
statue posing” that became very popular was a very bastardized
version of Delsarte. So Delsarte was really the thing to do. Of
course, a lot of it wasn't really Delsarte, just as a lot of
popular ergonomics isn't actually ergonomics or a lot of popular
Alexander isn't really Alexander. Delsarte was used a lot by the
performing arts, but it was also recommended and used by all sorts
of professions and disciplines. It was sort of a self-improvement,
inner self realization through organic self-expression mind-body
method, albeit all put in nineteenth century terms and language.
We obviously have our own trendy terms today (I just used some of
them in the preceding sentence) and most people today would
probably consider Delsarte terminology and imagery rather quaint.
Anyway, people capitalized on MacKaye's popularity and they
basically co-opted and exploited the Delsarte System. After being
extremely popular for a few years, the whole thing crashed: the
method was completely discredited. And no one was interested in
the real Delsarte system after that except for a few faithful
practitioners. One of these practitioners, Genevieve Stebbins, was
still practicing the system a number of years later. Two of the
people who started modern dance in the U.S.(Ted Shawn and, I
believe, Ruth St. Denis) studied with her. These people started
practicing the system (or at least part of it) and it ended up
forming much of the roots of American modern dance.

Joyce: You're kidding! What a wild
story!

Marian: It is a wild story. I think very few people
today have ever heard of the Delsarte System.

Joyce: Well, I guess you just can't beat out a flame
though. If there is something real and good about a method,
probably someone is going to carry the torch through difficult
times.

Marian: I don't know if anyone does that with the
Delsarte System today. If you read about it, it does sound
“nineteenth century” and very esoteric and complex. Although if
you really think about it, much of it really isn't different from
some of the new age type of terminiology and imagery methods that
are currently popular. It's also interesting that Alexander used
this technique, but then must have decided that
imagery/visualization and metaphors weren't helpful for what he
had developed and was trying to convey because he didn't
incorporate them into the technique. [See also F.M.
Alexander, The Universal Constant in Living Chapter 8, "An
Osteopath's Idea of a New Technique."]

Joyce: So Alexander worked with the
Delsarte System too?

Marian: He did work with it or a version of it for a few
years early on. There are some very interesting things in the
system and it's possible that it helped to stimulate some of his
ideas. I believe he was studying a number of different methods at
that point. This is very early on, before he had really fully
developed his technique. Apparently, he was looking at different
methods that were around at that time.

Joyce: I didn't know that he had been
looking at different methods and treatments.

Marian: I think he probably did as much as he was able
to, given that he was in Australia in the late 1800s. Apparently
he did a lot of reading. There were major voice textbooks
available. And he also read William James, which apparently did
have a very big impact on his thinking. And Delsarte, in its own
way, took a holistic mind/body approach, which could have easily
accounted for Alexander's particular interest in it. And some
things about Delsarte apparently worked. Some people seemed to get
a lot out of it.

Joyce: Carol and Brian McCullough just went to visit the
Murrays. Carol says she was just blown away by Joan's teaching. It
was almost as if Joan had gotten a lot better since the last time
she had worked with Carol.

Marian: Well, I think Joan is constantly learning and
having new insights and this comes through in her teaching. But I
think that's why wonderful teachers are wonderful.

Joyce: I find it fascinating to think that one's skills
and knowledge can constantly grow even after a person has
practiced for many years. Did Alexander get quite a bit better
over the years?

Marian: Yes. He was obviously grappling with certain
problems, such as the problem of verbal instructions and
directions. He wrote about this. In fact, he originally tried to
teach the technique through verbal instructions alone. He
obviously looked for better ways to teach it. I'm sure his own use
must have continually improved, which would have directly impacted
his hands-on work. And doing hands-on work probably helped him to
improve his own use, as hands-on work provides the teacher with a
constant source of feedback for what the teacher is doing with him
or herself. According to people who worked with Alexander, his
hands-on work did improve and change; apparently he was doing his
best work in the last years of his life. His understanding of
coordination and people's habits must have also continually
improved through his work and observations.

Joyce: So it's rather like a fine
art—getting better and better.

Marian: Well, that's actually how he described it early
on, when he was having an argument with a doctor who had tried to
lift some of his work. This doctor was justifying himself by
saying that Alexander didn't have the training to be doing what he
was doing. And Alexander's point was that doctors didn't have the
training to be doing what Alexander was doing. Alexander said that
teaching his technique required, among other things, “the eye of
the artist.”

How did you first hear about the Alexander Technique?

Joyce: Two years ago I was attending the annual meeting
of the Human Factors Society. I went to a particularly good
seminar on survey design. At the luncheon that followed I went up
to one of the presenters and complimented her on the presentation.
She asked me what my background was in ergonomics and I said
engineering. She winced and said, “Oh, you're one of those
people who think that problems can be designed away.” I was rather
taken aback by her remark, but I was curious to know what was
behind her comment. I ended up having lunch with her. It turned
out that she had earned her Ph.D. in piano pedagogy and was now
studying ergonomics. She said that, in her opinion, ergonomists
were too quick to jump to a design solution to problems because
our profession was too lopsided with engineers. She said that we
had neglected other strategies, namely technique. She asked me if
I had ever heard of the Alexander Technique. I said that I hadn't,
which obviously just reaffirmed her belief that I, along with
others in my profession, were really missing out on something. We
went on to discuss what the Alexander Technique was. As much as I
could grasp what it was, I was very taken aback, almost in the
same way as I was taken aback when I first heard of the Human
Factors Profession. A light bulb went on. I thought, “Well, of
course! Did we blow it by jumping immediately to design techniques
and neglecting technique itself?” I felt there was some element of
truth in what she had said that I couldn 't neglect. So I bought a
number of books on the Alexander Technique and read them, but I
didn't really “get it” from the books.

Several months later we had a house guest who is a very gifted
scholar and also a musician. She casually mentioned that the
Alexander Technique changed her life. At this point I had heard
two very bright people who didn't seem the type to be given to
exaggeration say remarkable things about the Alexander Technique.
I felt that I would travel almost anywhere to test it out for
myself. I didn't have any aches or pains but I felt a tremendous
responsibility in my role as the ergonomist for 20,000 people at
Mayo and that I couldn't hear rave reviews about something and
just neglect it. So I looked in the back of one of the books I had
put away and wrote for a list of teachers. I couldn't believe how
lucky I was—that I wouldn't have to travel at all—but that a
teacher [Carol Porter McCullough] was right here in
Rochester.

Marian: What has your experience of lessons been
like?

Joyce: I'll say what the first lesson was like. After
standing up and sitting down in a chair and going into something
called “monkey” and being asked just to give a thought of a
movement but not actually move, all I could think about was, “How
will I ever explain this to anybody?” Now, I've had lessons
for almost a year. I've had the opportunity to have lessons from
four different people [Carol Porter McCullough, Brian
McCullough, Joan Murray, Rose Bronec]. I have a wonderful
feeling when I walk. I feel like a giant when I drive home from a
lesson in the car. I breathe better. I read voraciously on the
subject. My husband takes lessons. And I recommend it to friends.
So, I'm totally intrigued by the technique and I feel great even
though I didn't feel bad going into it.

Marian: It sounds as though you've had a wonderful
experience.

Joyce: I have. And I feel very fortunate to have found
my wonderful teachers.

© 1997 Marian Goldberg, Joyce Stenstrom

 

(1) The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge explains
the systems approach:

“From a very early age,
we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently
makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous
price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinisic
sense of connection to a larger whole.When we then try to ‘see the big picture,’ we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and organize all the
pieces. But, as physicist David Bohm says, the task is futile—similar to trying
to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to see a true reflection. Thus,
after a while we give up trying to see the whole altogether.”

“The
practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple concept called
‘feedback,’ that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract (balance) each other.
It builds learning to recognize types of ‘structures’ that appear over and over
again…eventually, systems thinking forms a rich language for describing a vast
array of interrelationships and patterns of change. Ultimately, it simplifies
life by helping us see the deeper patterns lying behind the events and the details.”

“Learning
any new language is difficult at first. But as you start to master the basics,
it gets easier. Research with young children has shown that many learn systems
thinking remarkably quickly.”

The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice
of the Learning Organization Peter M. Senge. Currency Doubleday. New York,
New York. 1990

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"It's fascinating to be able to map these things out before they really happen. The people who can see down the road a little a bit, who can envision what the natural outcome of systems would be have a real
advantage."  Joyce Stenstom