Graeme Lynn - Manner of Action, The: MANNER OF ACTION, The, Understanding and Practicing The Alexander Technique, The Feldenkrais Method and the Hatha Yoga, as Methods of Somatic Learning

MANNER

OF ACTION, The

Understanding and Practicing

The Alexander Technique,

The Feldenkrais Method

and the Hatha Yoga, as

Methods of Somatic Learning

by

GRAEME LYNN

Copyright 2015

By Graeme Lynn

(Library or Congress CIP here)

ISBN 9780828325899 Paperback

ISBN 9780828325905 E-Book

Branden Books

PO Box 812094

Wellesley MA 02482

www.brandenbooks.com

to

Emrys and Jonah

Table of Contents

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. The Natural State 8

Chapter 2. The Infinite Network of Possibility 10

Chapter 3. Freedom from Reaction 13

Chapter 4. The Nature of Water 19

PART 2: SUMMARY VIEWS

Chapter 5. The Evolution of a Technique 24

Chapter 6. Essentials of the Work 34

Interlude: Relaxation

Interlude: The Fourteen Senses

Chapter 7. Structure, Function, Self-Organization & Use 44

Interlude: Yoga: Structure and Function

Chapter 8. Basic Coordination 50

Interlude: Motor Concepts and Percepts

Interlude: The Causes of Pain

Interlude: The Actural Dynamic

Interlude: The Hip Joints, The Movement of the Pelvis and Grounding

Interlude: More on Giving Directions

Chapter 9. Organizing Principles 69

Use

Attention

Intelligence

The Primary Control

Self-Contraction

Sensorimotor Unreliability

Interlude: Self-Correction

Intention

Holism

The Four Imaginary Centres

Interlude: The Frontal Line

Tensegrity

Habit, Learning & Freedom

PART 3: LESSONS

Chapter 10. A First Possible Lesson 85

Chapter 11. A Second (Impossible) Lesson 94

Chapter 12. Teaching Remarks 99

PART 4: MANIPULATIONS

Chapter 13. Evolutions 101

Positions of Mechanical Advantage

Elemental Movements

Applications

Interlude: Illustrations: Writing & Lifting

Interlude: Breathing

The Whispered Ah

Interlude: The Tarzan Breath

Hands on the Back of a Chair

Interlude: Patrick Macdonalds Approach to the Organization of Function

Interlude: An Alternative Approach

Chapter 14. Awareness Through Movement 116

Interlude: An Analysis of Movement

Interlude: Pain as Misinformation

Intelligence

Awareness

Release & Differentiation

Directed Movement

Interlude: Emergent Learning

Integration

Interlude: Table: ATM Strategies

Chapter 15. ATM Course: Intelligence in Action 139

Scans

Knee Circles

Arm Circles

Washrag

Pelvic Clock

Forward Bending

Cat & Cow

Ball of Air

Silly Walking

Twisting

Extending the Back

Back Roller

Opening the Legs

Crawling

Butt-Walking

Sitting Cross-legged

Serpentine Spine

Reaching with the Rib Cage

Bridging

Forward Roll

Sitting to Standing

Chapter 16. Hatha Yoga: A Somatic Approach 164

Interlude: Stretching Alignment & Symmetry

Interlude: Pain as Information

Interlude: General Instructions

Arc

Plough

Triangle

Reverse Triangle

Eagle

Twist

Cobbler

Cow

Gorilla

Handstand

Downward Dog

Lion

Forward Bend

Camel

Bridge

Head-knee pose

Candle

Corpse

PART 5: QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Isnt good posture really just a matter of holding oneself properly?

Is the Alexander Technique a remedy for arthritis?

Will the Alexander Technique make me look better?

Can elderly people benefit from these methods?

Can chiropractic and massage help a bad back?

What about physical exercise?

My physiotherapist tells me to strengthen my abdominal muscles to stabilize my back: is that correct?

Can the Technique improve my golf game?

Will I always have to work on myself?

Can the Technique be useful in the field of healthcare?

PART 6: EPILOGUE

Chapter 17. Individual Practice 215

Interlude: The Bodily Patterns of Anxiety, Effort, Protection & Collapse

Chapter 18. Freedom in Action 219

Recommended Reading

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. THE NATURAL STATE

I am describing your ordinary state. You are functioning as awareness, then intelligence, associated with mind, emotion and body. In the Hindu tradition, the structure is described in terms of sheaths, the more outer being the physical, then the dimensions of natural energy and the emotional aspects of the person, then mind-forms and the psychic life, then this intelligence that observes it and that should control it, and, deeper than that, the awareness itself. The body-mind is described from the periphery to the centre as a collection of sheaths, with awareness at the centre and the body and its field of activities at the periphery.

This is simply an educational model to help people understand just how they are functioning in ordinary terms.

Adi Da Samraj

Monk: How then do we attain freedom?

Master: From the first, we have never been in bondage,

and therefore there is no need to seek freedom.

Just use the ways of freedom, act in freedom

this is indeed incomparable.

per D. T. Suzuki

Apollo

We cannot know his mythic head

With eyes like ripening fruits,

And yet his torso, even now,

Is full suffused with brilliance like a lamp

In which his gaze, turned down to low,

Still gleams in all its power.

Otherwise the curving breast could not so dazzle us

Nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

To that dark centre wherefrom all of procreation flares.

Otherwise the stone would seem defaced

Beneath the live translucent cascade of the shoulders,

Would not glisten like a wild beasts fur,

Would not from all the borders of itself

Burst outwards like a star.

For here there is no place that is not seen.

I must transform my life.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Chapter 2. THE INFINITE NETWORK OF POSSIBILITY

IMAGINE you are walking down a country road at dusk and, looking in the distance and through the dimming light, you see a darkened figure approaching you on foot. The shadows of the evening deepening into night conceal the clothes and persons features from the eye. How is it then you know and can recognize a friend?

You know because your friend and each of us organize ourselves in movement in a personally unique manner. This characteristic patterning derives in part from our inheritance but in larger measure from our experiential learning and we are active as that patterning, generally unconsciously, in everything we do. What we inherit through our family of origin in physical terms remains a subject of research: organic strengths and weaknesses, bone structure and body type, facial features and so forth. The means whereby we learn and all of what we learn in terms of action patterns, movement and coordination are a more complex matter. In Ida Rolfs text, The Integration of Human Structures , she tells the story of a man who suffered severe injuries to a leg and his pelvis in the Second World War and who, though he lived and was otherwise healthy, consequently walked with a pronounced limp. After the war he married and had a son. Remarkably, before the boy had reached puberty he limped in the same way as his father.

This is not some weird and isolated aberration. We are each of us alike that child in many complicated ways.

The ability of the human nervous system to learn, through which we adapt and change, is immense and subtle. We do not learn merely through imitation as in that story. Our physical development altogether, while guided genetically, is in part an open-ended process of functional learning. Our bodily expression of emotional character and fundamental beliefs is largely a matter of learning.