In my early years with Mr Macdonald, he would often say, “Take yourself up, and then you might be able to take others up.” For some time I misunderstood what he meant by “take yourself up”, and so spent several years pushing, trying to “do” the up. Frequently he would mention, directly or indirectly, something of another, much finer quality that he referred to as “It”. “Let It do it.” “Get out of It’s way.” “Allow for It.” On rare occasion he would indicate an emanation coming down from above.
Miss Goldie had her own way of communicating the very same thing. As our months and years of lessons passed by, I began to pay attention to something she would often say after she took me from the chair into a standing placement: “You’re not up yet; go on.” I became more and more interested in what she meant. Keeping this question in my awareness, I noticed that as I came toward standing there was a tendency, mental and physical, to settle downwards. This was, at first, an almost imperceptible movement towards a familiar place, although that place can seem new.
She repeated this gentle, consistent refrain, “You’re not up yet, my dear”, without explanation, affording me the opportunity to explore for myself what it might mean. Because she possessed a fine sense of how to help her pupil into making his own discoveries, she avoided using any words that had been corrupted by limited understanding, or those with which one may have developed an association, including the words of F.M. Alexander. She would often say as I was ascending: “Let the back do the work, let the head lead, don’t push with the legs; keep directing the knees away, maintain a direction through the knees even when they are coming back in space; up off the hips but don’t pull up the spine; let all that good work go on in your back.”
As Miss Goldie frequently stated, when accurately transmitted and sensitively received, the Alexander Technique is “building pathways in the body along which in time something may travel”. Gradually I began to see that preparing the way for It by harmonizing the body, mind, and emotions was the purpose of the work. Being receptive to the Other was in my view what all my lessons with Margaret Goldie, Patrick Macdonald, and Walter Carrington were about. All is preparation to allow It to come.
With the consistent support of Mr Macdonald’s emphasis on the back (among his other gifts) and through patient, quiet exploration and observation under the guidance of Miss Goldie, I began to sense a profoundly subtle vibration just above and slightly towards the back of the crown of the head. There is an analogue of this in the Hopi tradition. The American novelist and anthropologist Frank Waters wrote in Pumpkin Seed Point: Being Within the Hopi:
There is a Hopi myth that long, long ago the world was coming to an end. Those that wished to hear were informed that they should prepare for this by keeping open the kopavi at the crown of the head. By keeping open this “door way” to the creator they would receive guidance.
With a more upright use of the psycho-physical organism, the crown of the head does begin to open. With this we become increasingly responsible to ably meet the call from above. The Work is not for the foolish or for those who seek personal gratification. Dr Bill Barlow related that Alexander once said to him, “If there is a crack-pot within 50 miles he will find his way to me.” There are dangers for the individual, but the Work protects itself.
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