Personally Speaking: The Shaping of a TechniqueAn Interview with Ted McNamara

As part of the ongoing event entitled A Tribute to Patrick Macdonald in London which marks the centenary of his birth, Selma Gokcen interviews Ted McNamara about the traditions which shaped Mr Macdonald’s work.

 

In this centenary year of Patrick Macdonald’s birth, it is timely to re-examine his legacy in light of his unique contributions to the Alexander Technique. Would you speak about the fundamental underlying differences in his way of working?

 

In the book Personally Speaking: Walter Carrington on the F.M. Alexander Technique in discussion with Sean Carey, Mr Carrington offers his view that the personalities of those involved in the different traditions of teaching the Alexander Technique “made a significant impact on the way the Technique has been taught”. He goes on to say that Patrick Macdonald was interested in boxing, Wilfred Barlow in medicine, and that he himself was interested in the character and personality of Alexander. I can confirm from my own experience of working under these three men that there is truth in these observations.

 

Dr Barlow was second to none in clarifying what may be viewed as a medical aspect of the Technique, and his table work with a pupil in this regard was exemplary. I found Walter’s way of teaching profoundly psychotherapeutic in the proper sense of that word, as in that which pertains to the psychophysical organism.[1]

 

Would you clarify how Mr Macdonald’s early training as a boxer relates to his teaching?

 

If one understands boxing as a martial art, as it was taught to Mr Macdonald, then its influence on his work becomes apparent and helps to understand his teaching.

 

In my years with Mr Macdonald, I rarely heard him speak about boxing. On occasion he would refer to Muhammad Ali, who in his younger years had an excellent natural use, but no less would he refer to Fred Astaire or to the remarkable cricketer, Don Bradman. Sometimes he would fondly quote his old boxing teacher, Mr Merryweather: “I can teach you this but you are going to have to learn it yourself.” On one occasion, I heard Mr Macdonald discourage a young man who had sought his advice on taking up boxing as a career. Among the several solid reasons that he offered was that “Boxing is no longer what it was and has not been so for some time.”

 

How would the early traditions of boxing have formed the basis of Mr Macdonald’s approach?

 

It is a relatively short walk from Ashley Place, where F.M. Alexander taught for many years, to Westminster Abbey, and there, in the Western side of the Cloister, lie together the remains of John Broughton (1703-1789) and his wife, Elizabeth. John Broughton had been a pupil of James Figg (1695-1734), a boxer, fencer, and noted exponent of the quarterstaff. Together, these two men laid the foundations of what became known as English boxing. In their time, boxing was regarded as a martial art, no less than Judo and Aikido are today.

 

Many of Figg’s influences would have come from continental Europe. Two of the greatest historical centres of fencing had been in Italy and Spain. The Italian school, founded in 1415, was based in 16^th century Bologna.[2] The Spanish school, first documented in 1569, became known as “La Verdadera Destreza” (“The True Skill”) or simply, the “Spanish Circle”. Whereas the Italian approach was based on the idea that “the best defence is offence”, the Circle’s main teaching was that the best defence was to get out of the way of the attack, which required an understanding of movement. Its techniques were based on the philosophical and mathematical works of such notables as Aristotle and Euclid, and it seems to have been influenced by Jewish and Islamic mysticism, probably through contact with the Marranos and Moriscos.[3]

 

 

Some movements from fencing were incorporated into English boxing, such as the rotation of the spine, swaying, shifting weight, parrying and blocking, and opposition between hands and back. Familiar both to boxing and to many students of Alexander Technique is the lunge, which dates back to the late 16^th century in fencing, and which Mr Macdonald almost certainly encountered in his boxing training.[4]

 

Also woven into boxing were Savate and Bartitsu. Savate, a form of French foot fighting, was mixed with English boxing and became known as Boxe Française Savate, which translates roughly as “fencing with the feet and hands”. Bartitsu was a system of self-defence that was introduced to England at the end of the 19^th century by Edward Barton-Wright, a British engineer who had lived in Japan for some years. He drew heavily on the Shinden Fudo Ryu, Tenjin-Shinyo, Fusen, and Daito schools of classical jujitsu, and from Kododan judo, and combined these with combat techniques from English boxing. There were, of course, other influences, direct and indirect, on English boxing, not the least of which was archery, the art at which the medieval English bowmen excelled.

 

In your teaching you often demonstrate movements shown to you by Mr Macdonald, which could be said to relate to the martial arts and Tai Chi.

 

 

Yes, the defining qualities of Mr Macdonald’s teaching were those of a true martial artist. He had the ability to allow the placement of the principles of the Alexander Technique and to take them into dynamic motion – including walking, the lunge, a “swinger”, up onto the toes, position of mechanical advantage or “monkey”, and the squat.[5]

 

Mr Macdonald’s teaching of the rotation in the spine is a profoundly useful means of maintaining the teacher’s opposition to the pupil and setting up the dynamic oppositions within the pupil, and this is a prime example of a fundamental aspect of his teaching that has a correspondence in the martial arts. This rotation in the spine was the same movement that I was shown in Tai Chi and Ba Kua (as well as one form of Nordic walking and traditional set dance), and has a connection to the defensive movement in La Destreza known as “circle and tangent”. In this movement, as Mr Macdonald taught it, the rotation, directed at brain-thought level[6], commences at the bottom of the spine. As far as he is able, the teacher keeps his mind in the movement, and as he maintains his back back-and-up in opposition to the back of the pupil, his hands are moving in tangent to the rotation. Meanwhile, the teacher’s hands on the pupil’s head are also in complementary opposition, the front hand encouraging the head forward-and-up, the back hand giving the back-and-up direction: “Forward to release it, up to co-ordinate it.” An inexperienced eye may not be able to perceive this movement by watching films of him working, but when he was teaching it was going on all of the time.[7]

 

As in the martial arts, under Mr Macdonald’s teaching, initially one learned the movement externally – that is, as an outer form; in itself, this is not the movement. It takes many years to allow the movements to manifest from inside and ultimately to be informed by a movement that is not of the body.[8] With practice, the energies can manifest into the body through the spine, which in the Alexander Technique is facilitated by allowing the neck to be free. As with any discipline – martial arts, learning to play an instrument, acting – it was far from being a given that one could learn these vital movements, even in their outer form, let alone to impart the teaching to someone else. Mr Macdonald provided both the form and inner direction consistently, which might or might not in time be met by “It”. When this quality was present, Mr Macdonald would say unequivocally, “This is It.”[9]

 

Like a martial arts master – or any master – he brought stillness and movement together. He did not waste movement; he did not waste words. He was watchful. He demanded simply, and with the right kind of seriousness, that you knew “where up is, and what up is”.[10] His art was the Alexander Technique. Words are not the best way of communicating his teaching, and words have a tendency to get stuck in the ordinary mind, rather than being weighed and “placed upon the heart”, so that they can be helpful towards understanding.

 

 

Ted McNamara will offer a week-end workshop on May 7^th and 8^th as part of A Tribute to Patrick Macdonald.  For further information, please consult http://www.welltemperedmusician.com and click on Studio One.