How Many Things Can You Think?
How Many Things Can You Think?
What Exactly Does 'Simple, Quiet, and Additive' Mean?
In my previous post, Guiding Thoughts, I outlined FM Alexander’s way to organise your thinking and build a more upright sense of poise. It’s a fairly generic - but important - way to organise your thoughts. The short short version of it is
Let the neck be free
So that the head is forward and up
So that the back is lengthening and widening
So that the knees are forward and away.**
Colloquially, these are called Directions and these directions are most easily understood from the perspective of a theatre director.
When a good theatre director is working with a cast, they cannot perform all of the parts for the actors themselves - that’s a macabre form of micromanagement. Instead, the director will sit down with the actors, explain what should happen, and then see if the actors can pull off the instructions. The mark of a brilliant director is the ability to get a usable performance out of a mediocre cast.
When it comes to improving our coordination, the director is our ability to organise thoughts and the actors are our anatomical bits and bobs.
This brings me to this week’s question…
Can you think those 4 thoughts at the same time?
The answer…as far as I’ve been able to work out for myself… is NO. It’s why I stress that these directions should be simple, quiet, and additive***.
Learning these kinds of directions are tricky enough, but what happens when we need to do something more complicated like write a blog post or run? As the complexity of our tasks increases, it becomes imperative that we take our time and at a minimum successfully monitor the freedom of the neck. Ideally, when I practice typing or playing the saxophone I will take a moment to stop, take stock of the tensions I’m holding, and think my directions before I begin my task. Only once I have improved my coordination will I attempt to add the task of typing or playing. I do this because I can only think two thoughts at a time.
I will enumerate some examples to better demonstrate my meaning.****
“STOP”
{“STOP”} and {“Let the neck be free”}
{“Let the head go forward and up”} and {maintain all prior directions}
{“Let the back lengthen and widen”} and {maintain all prior directions}
{“Let the right shoulder go away to the right”} and {maintain prior directions}
…
{“Inhale without arching the spine”} and {maintain prior directions}
As you can see, I’m describing a fairly slow way of working. That said, I have found the thought “maintain all prior directions” is the most useful for me.
If I attempt to think more thoughts simultaneously like:
{“STOP”} and {“Let the neck be free”} and {“let the head go forward and up”}.
Shit falls apart immediately.
I personally believe that when most people are “multitasking”, they are able to think two thoughts simultaneously at best.
Why Do I Write All of This?
When you are practicing anything, it’s best to have a reasonable expectation on what you should expect to learn in a given moment. Please start with just one thought. See what happens. And see if you can add a second. You may try to add a third, but if and when things fall apart, don’t despair!
You don’t need to think three things at once.
Ever.
That’s it for this week! It’s a short one, but hopefully it’s clarifying. Let me know if you have any success trying this experiment out!
** There are more directions than these. Shoulders apart. Pull at the elbows. Open wrist. Thumb away from pinkie. Open ankle. Open jaw. And much much more!
***easier said than done!
**** I’m using some bastardized set theory notation to express my meaning. Anything in quotes “X” can be considered one object. A collection of directions can then be called a set. So an Alexander Technique set of directions could be : {“STOP”, ”Let the neck be free”, “Let the head go forward and up”, “Let the back lengthen and widen”, “Let the knees go forward and away from the hips”, “Let the shoulders go apart”, “Let the pull at the elbow“, “Let the jaw drop“}. The nice thing with set theory is that the notation explicitly tells you that “the back lengthening and widening” is a singular thought rather than “the back lengthening” and “the back widening” sequentially.