I had discussion with an AT teacher in Facebook, and I like to share here.
We should study more about the alignment of bones (the relation between compression or the compressed members). How we align bones and whole body is an important question we ask.
An AT teacher said “pupils should stack their bones properly for all to work easily.This belief inevitably leads to increasing compression forces as the student will try to feel the stacking of the bones”.
I don’t think this doesn’t inevitably lead to unwanted condition. Well, this idea (stack bones properly) may lead to unwanted condition. The problem may be their way to accomplish it, and there is still room to say that the idea itself is valuable. We should also look into how they try to do it. We should not give up considering the idea of stacking bones properly just because some(or many?) people don’t go well with this.
It is true that our body is not just stacking bones. At the same time we cannot deny there is a feature of stacking bones in our body. This feature directly affects the degree of muscle tension (and ligament tension), and we can control this feature. By controlling it adequately we can get rid of some health problems and performance problems. Why don’t we study here? I just don’t want AT teachers to throw away the idea of “stacking bones” and go for “tensegrity”.
An AT teacher said “the student will try to feel the stacking of the bones (which I don’t think is even possible)”.
What if this is possible? I have an idea, and it seems to make this possible. I am keep working this idea in lesson and it goes well so far. I explained this in the online article (URL below).
http://www.alexlesson.com/?p=1409
I use not the concept of tensegrity but mostly kinesiology and cognitive science in my idea, and I think I can explain a lot of features relating to our body use and the Alexander Technique with this hypothesis.
We have directions like “head forward and up”. What is this direction for? I think that we are trying to change the alignment of axial bones (including the spine) through changing the head position and angle by this direction. I think that we have already worked for the bone alignment.
This direction in the AT is a way to alter the bone alignment (i.e., stacking bones), and it has advantage. Since we know the advantage in AT way, why don’t we go further in this direction? There are some more concepts and features we can apply in the field of the bone alignment.
Of course “tension” is still important factor that we should study, but I think that there is gold in line with the bone alignment. People have already get the common image of “stacking bones” (as an AT teacher said), and we just leave it as it is and suggest new way to accomplish it. That’s easier and simpler for them to understand and to apply.
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