Concepts:

Habit - Choice - Change

We all do what we know and are familiar with, often with thoughts and preconceived ideas we don't even know we even have. As you become clear about your movement /thinking habits, you will discover how to guide yourself to a better balance and ease. You will be able to make new choices while responding to a stimulus. In this way your unique mechanism will change and support you in the best way possible, whatever activity you choose to do.

Noticing - Inhibiting - Ease

Paying attention and noticing how you want to respond to a stimulus (even a thought), then waiting and inhibiting your familiar response before you do the action, will lead you to a new, easier, and more balanced way of moving and being.

Direction (Double meaning)

By integrating your thoughts with your actions, you will learn how to both direct, meaning to instruct yourself, and to find a direction and flow of movement throughout your three-dimensional body. This is your body rebounding from the pull of gravity and it gives you a sense of lightness, ease, and fluidity.

End-gaining

One is end-gaining when he or she values the outcome of an action over the processs of executing the action. In other words, one emphasizes the end above the means.

Primary Control - Head, Neck, Back Relationship

Alexander found that how the head balances on the top of the spine is primary to having better use. By releasing the neck and the downward pressure of the head on the spine, we can trigger the natural rebound from gravity throughout the entire structure. We often put pressure on ourselves by developing poor postural habits that allow us to collapse, dropping the weight of the head on the neck, down the spine and through the whole body. By releasing the downward pressure at the top of the structure the body is allowed to lengthen and widen.

Allowing

Our system has an innate sense of balance and ease. It is our job to get out of the way and allow our organism to function in this way. We can learn to trust that our body/mind will work for us in the best way possible.