How do you work out what the new directions are?

In my last post, I showed you that the classical formula for the basic Alexander directions is flawed. Not badly flawed but flawed nonetheless. The Tube Principle points you to new, better directions. How are you to work out what those better directions are are?

Here’s how, it’s a three-step process:—

1. Find the bends in the body tube
2. For each bend, make a note whether it bends forwards or backwards
3. Apply the Tube Principle rule

1. Find the bends in the body tube

The bends in the body tube do vary from person to person and so you do need to examine what is actually happening for you personally. The best way to do that is to move your hand up your spine noticing where it hollows and where it sticks out. Done with care, feeling the bumps and hollows is pretty objective, whereas trying to see them in the mirror — or worse still, sense them — will give you very subjective and unreliable results.

2. For each bend, make a note whether it bends forwards or backwards

That’s easily done:-
A bump shows you that, at that point, your body bends forwards.
A hollow shows you the places where your body bends backwards.

Write down what you found out.

Why? Because if you begin to doubt yourself. (Trust me, you will begin to doubt yourself).
…when you begin to doubt yourself, you can just go back to what you wrote down. Only if you’re convinced you made a mistake, will you need to use your hand to check again.

If you don’t write it down, you’ll probably end up mis-remembering what you found out with your hand. So write it down.

Now you have the facts to hand, you can…

3. Apply the Tube Principle rule

The Tube Principle tells you that every bend has a bend-away-from (a convex, bump) side and a bend-towards (a concave, hollowed) side. Where there’s a bump in the back, there’s a hollow in front. Where there’s a hollow in the back, there’s a bump in front. However, because your body is not, in fact anything like a perfect cylindrical tube, it’s often not easy to tell by the shape of your front. That’s why I told you to use the mid-line of your back to work out what’s what.

The Tube Principle also tells you that, front or back, the bend-away side is pulled together, like the bit of your sweater that’s in your hand when you grab hold of it and gather the sides together. And that the bend-towards side is stretched out sideways.

So where, applying the Tube Principle, you intend or direct a bunched-up, bend-away point in your back to widen out, you also allow the sides of your body-tube to ease forwards. To complete the direction, you allow the front of your body to un-over-stretch (to coin a word). You have enough slack to allow your front to narrow or concentrate. Taken together, all this pushes your body into a straighter place without your doing anything to make it happen.

(Yes I know you’re focussing your intention, you’re directing, but you’re not doing it. You’re only freeing it up: allowing something to happen that, previously you were not allowing).

Where the bend is the other way, exactly the same principle applies in reverse.

Where the bunched-up, bend-away point is in your front, you direct your front to widen out and the sides of your body-tube to ease backwards. Completing the direction, you allow the back of your body to un-over-stretch, to narrow or concentrate. Once again, all this pushes your body into a straighter place without your doing anything to make it happen.

Summary and what’s next

I’ve just shown you how to direct each bend in your body tube. How do you put it all together into a sequence? That will be the subject of Friday’s post.

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Next: Article in Oprah Magazine: “A Dramatic Cure for Back Pain”