I find a certain difficulty in striking that fine balance between what to say and what not to say when it comes to my lessons with Miss Goldie. I have tried to consider what her wishes were regarding the transmission of a teaching and how best to honour them.
She was among the most precious of teachers and, I feel, closest in her teaching to F.M. Alexander. To understand something of how she worked, one needed to take one’s place and serve the necessary and dutiful years of an apprenticeship. It has taken me quite a while to begin to understand what it was that she served to transmit. So here for the record, I offer a little recollection. And if her words at times appeared hauntingly austere, I always found them beckoning me to ask myself, “What am I doing and why am I doing it,” and to come ever deeper and closer to the memory of the central question, “Who am I?” or “I am whom?”
Walter Carrington once asked me during a lesson what I thought of the book Not to 'Do' (1). After some moments of reflection, I replied that I felt it would have been more beneficial had it not been written for some years, at least until such time as the lessons that Miss Goldie had offered had been more duly processed within the author. Writing too soon about one’s lessons can hinder this process. For Walter’s part, he concurred, but stated that he thought that the book offered some good views of Margaret Goldie. From my private exchanges with Miss Goldie, I have little doubt that she would have been opposed to its publication, as she would have been to any form of workshop being offered in connection with her name. In a similar vein, she did not wish to be photographed and refused the many students who requested to do so.
It can be difficult in this age of loss, confusion, and isolation, and yet pervasive noise, to recognise and accept for oneself a quiet innerness in the being of another that seeks no recognition. The essence of her teaching as I felt it could be summed up in one word: Stop. If I placed all of my lessons under her guidance into one lesson, then that one would evoke in me the following words: preparation, attention, quietness, watchfulness, exploring, waiting, listening, allowing, trusting, participation.
I end by quoting some of what she said to me over the years:
I no longer like using the words of Mr Alexander during a lesson, for those words have now become so misunderstood as to be meaningless.
Conferences about the Alexander Technique are just another way of avoiding the unknown.
It would be best if all the Alexander schools in the world closed down and all the Alexander teachers stopped teaching so that at least one may return to the source and discover what this work is about.
I find it easier to teach someone who has just walked in off the street rather than those who have been through school training. For with the latter I have to undo the training and start again and that is not easy.
Change begins at brain-thought level.
You young teachers talk and write a great deal about the Technique but you don’t really believe in it.
In teaching a lesson, never get caught trying to give value for money.
F.M. regretted that he had written a word about his technique, for what he had written had become so deeply misunderstood.
The Alexander Technique is not about doing.
Become an explorer. Explore the Primary Control.
Be very attentive and see what it is you are actually doing.
When you’re stuck, it’s best not to struggle. Just wait, quietly.
Allow for the back to do its work. Come to the back. Let all the good work you’ve done go on in your back.
It’s about giving and withholding consent.
It is just one thought away.
Now be quiet, be still, and allow for It, for the unknown. Not in your wildest dreams can you imagine what it will be like.
(1) Not to 'Do' by Fiona Robb, Canon Press 1999.
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