Dr Dimon, I was under the impression that you were trained as an Alexander Teacher. Why are you now teaching Neurodynamics and not Alexander Technique? – Jane
Dear Jane,
Alexander made a brilliant discovery about how our psychophysical system works in action, and how to raise the use of it to a conscious level. It is a discipline of the highest order, with vast ramifications for personal development, for health, and for education. When Alexander set out to teach his work to others, he thought he could use his hands to convey this knowledge and, by teaching the basic principles known today as the Alexander Technique, his students could then apply these principles to their own activity as well as teach others. But students who learn in this way never understand the subject adequately because they become reliant on hands-on work, focus too much on becoming teachers, and never do the actual work of understanding themselves, which is like a martial art and requires intensive self-study. Alexander had gone very deeply into the subject of how the primary control worked, but he didn’t fully appreciate the depth of his own experience and therefore believed that, simply by giving his students the experience of the primary control, they could understand what he had understood and become competent teachers. Students all over the world now enter training programs and become teachers, but without understanding how the primary control works, how it works in action subconsciously, and how to become more conscious in action, all of which are the heart of Alexander’s insight about use and about mind and body.
Teachers of Alexander’s work also tend to believe that, because Alexander’s work is important to health and education, they have only to teach the principles of the Alexander Technique in order to bring these ideas to the world. But the ideas haven’t been adequately communicated to the world because Alexander teachers as a profession haven’t articulated clearly enough what Alexander’s work is about, with the result that Alexander’s original discoveries are still virtually unknown in almost all the key fields to which they apply: physiology, medicine, neuroscience, education. Alexander, who was himself unable to articulate clearly how the primary control worked, relied instead on hands-on skills as a means of passing knowledge of the primary control to others. But the primary control is based on real scientific knowledge, and this knowledge has not been developed or taught in Alexander training courses, where we have detailed procedures for learning to use our hands but virtually no curriculum based on the theory. Many teachers today do not understand how the primary control works, or even believe it exists; they think that, because they work with someone’s use, they are dealing with the primary control; but they often cannot restore it as a system when it works wrong, and do not even know what this means.
My goal in starting an institute is to teach the full range and depth of insights relating to Alexander‘s work–both at the experiential level, where people can study themselves in depth, and at the theoretical and academic level, where students can explore the subject and apply what they learn in professional settings. This means doing more than just mastering principles and hands-on techniques but focusing on the key discoveries underlying Alexander’s work–how the primary control works; the physiology and neuroscience underlying how the system works in action; and the neuroscience and psychology underlying how this system works at a behavioral level and how to become more conscious in action. To accomplish this, we focus primarily for the first year not on learning to teach but on experiential learning, because no one can really teach this work who has no real understanding in oneself. We also study various subjects based on a fully-articulated curriculum equal to at least a master’s degree. Finally, we apply these insights to child development, learning and performance, health, and mindfulness study, as the basis for assisting students to develop a focused and fully-developed professional interest.
A body of work–if it has real value–should be both experiential and theoretical, not just a modality based on practical principles and hands-on work. At the Dimon Institute, we learn the full range of ideas pertaining to Alexander’s work, and also make connections to other fields (such as education and health) so that we can learn to apply the ideas in professional settings. To this end, we are offering courses to people who are dedicated to intensive self-study and also who have an intellectual interest in this new field.
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