All about direction: what do Google Maps and Alexander Technique have in common?

When I was teaching the first year Music students at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama last week and asked them what they already knew about Alexander Technique, one of them said ‘direction’. Now, ‘direction’ is a technical term in Alexander Technique, but it turned out my student wasn’t talking about the technical meaning; she meant quite literally that Alexander Technique gives a person a direction of travel. We discussed this in class, and started comparing the Alexander Technique to Google Maps.

Alexander Technique and direction of travel

So is Google Maps a useful analogy? Is the Alexander Technique a kind of psycho-physical equivalent of mapping software? Let’s investigate.

Google Maps and the direction of travel

In order to think about this properly, we need to think in practical terms about how Google Maps works. To take a simple example, if I’m at College and I want to find my way back to Cardiff Central railway station, I would type it into the search bar: it is my destination of choice. Google Maps then takes the information of where I am and where I want to go, combines it with more information about how I’m travelling, the traffic conditions and road closures, and then gives me typically three different routes to choose from. One of these routes will be direct, and at least one will be longer but more scenic. I get to choose my route according to the quality of the route I want to take – fast, or scenic. Once I’ve chosen my preferred route, all I have to do is to follow the indicated path, and I know that I’ll successfully find the station in time to catch my train home.

Alexander Technique and direction of travel

So how does Alexander Technique match up against this? The section of FM Alexander’s books that most neatly speaks to this idea of finding a direction or route is this piece from his chapter Evolution of a Technique:

In the work that followed I came to see that to get a direction of my use which would ensure this satisfactory reaction, I must cease to rely upon the feeling associated with my instinctive direction, and in its place employ my reasoning processes, in order

(1) to analyse the conditions of use present;

(2) to select (reason out) the means whereby a more satisfactory use could be brought about;

(3) to project consciously the directions required for putting these means into effect.[1]

Well, in order to, for example, raise my recorder to my lips, I need to have a destination in mind; for today, let’s say my destination is raising the instrument as efficiently as I can. Having chosen my destination, I then need to be my own route creator, instead of relying on Google’s algorithms! But I’ll be doing something similar: taking my starting place and my destination into consideration, along with other relevant information like joints, muscles, size of recorder, and so on. I can then construct a route or three that will get me and my recorder to where I want them to be.

Now, I can think of at least three ways I could get my recorder to my mouth. But part of my goal wasn’t just locational, but qualitative; I wanted to get it to my mouth efficiently. So I can now choose the route (process) that best fulfils that qualitative criterion.

And having chosen my route, all I need to do is to follow it as accurately as I can.

As a starting place for understanding how the Alexander Technique works, it’s not a bad analogy! So where do you want to go today, and what routes will you choose from to get there?

[1] Alexander, F.M., The Use of the Self, London, Orion, 2001, p.39.

(And yes, I did mention Google Maps in a recent post – this one – but for a very different reason)

Image courtesy of anankkml at FreeDigitalPhotos.net