24 June

My Alexander friends use a physiological fact not well known in wider society. Your head and neck 'lead' your body - what happens in your body is determined by what's happening in your head and neck. Head leads, body follows. A way to play with this is notice if you have any tension in your neck, and then see how the quality of your activity changes if you can ease or remove that tension. The effect is very profound, startling even, a wonderful ease and lightness. Where I and others part company with Alexander is in this fiddling with the actual tension in the neck. Your neck is the connection between your head and your body, you can't actually free your neck. You can free your head from your body though, by allowing your attention to be freely in the world around you. That will remove tension in the neck, because your attention isn't 'holding' your head to your body.