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On Belief Systems and Learning

A debate from the Alextech e-mail discussion group on the validity
of the premises of the Alexander Technique

Part 2

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All contributions are copyright by their authors. Note that the e-mail addresses of the participants were valid at the time of the debate but may not be valid any longer.


Section Two
— the initial responses to David's invitation

  1.  Peter Ruhrberg— epistomology, sensory appreciation — 19 June/98
  2.  Kay Hooper — re: epistomology et al. — 20 June/98
  3.  Nancy Lebovitz — re: epistomology et al. — 20 June/98
  4.  Franklin Serrano — please go on — 20 June/98
  5.  John Coffin — re: Feelings — June 21/98
  6.  David Gorman — re: Epistomology et al. — June 22/98
  7.  David Langstroth — To David Gorman — June 22/98
  8.  David Gorman — re: To David Gorman — June 22/98
  9.  John Coffin — re: epistomology et al — June 22/98
 10.  Peter Ruhrberg — re: To David Gorman — June 23/98
 11.  Patrick Snook — re: epistomology et al — June 23/98
 12.  Ian Kleiman — re: re: epistomology et al — June 23/98
 13.  Peter Ruhrberg — To Patrick Snook, FMA quote belief? — June 23/98
 14.  Peter Ruhrberg — epistomology, sensory appreciation — June 23/98


Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 19:40:38 +0200
From: Peter Ruhrberg pruhrberg.at@cityweb.de
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: epistomology, sensory appreciation

Hello David,

May I thank you for your well-thought contribution. I would like to complement it with another quote from Mr Alexander -- one of my favourites -- in which I think he gets closest to what you wrote in the following passage:

I could go on and on with many more examples of the actual feelings (read interpretations) people have and how a teacher who has seen through them can help a pupil re-interpret them to understand better how things work. That is, to show how the exact same feeling was not at all ‘unreliable’ (as in not-to-be-paid-attention-to), but rather carried essential information for understanding what is

going on. IT IS THE INTERPRETATION THAT IS UNRELIABLE, NOT THE FEELING. Our wonderful millions-of-years-evolved systems having been sending us these important messages all our lives; most of the time we’ve just been wanting to shoot the messenger and get to a better feeling that we like. Instead, what we need is to GET THE MESSAGE--because all too often we are having the experience but completely missing the meaning. And this goes not just for all our pre-Alexander experiences, but all of the Alexander experiences too if we have not come to a reliable appreciation of what we are actually feeling. By the way, this understanding radically changes the process (or form) of the work, since it no longer so necessary to ‘give’ new experiences to the pupil so that they have a contrast or a sense of ‘better use’, when we can help someone make sense of the experiences they are already having--every day.

Looked at this way, it is possible to go further than Alexander’s phrase of "unreliable SENSORY appreciation" and recognize that what it is really that we are caught in is an "unreliable REALITY appreciation". In other words, the way we see things is a delusion. Our constructs, or belief systems are faulty, not our bodies. Faulty is not even the best word here at all. INACCURATE is a much better word. The real learning involved is in coming to new understandings, so that we don’t end up ‘solving’ our problems, we end up in living in a whole new reality.

Now, let’s see what FM wrote and take our time to analyze it. It maybe a bit challenging, but I think it’s worth both time and effort. I’ve structured it into paragraphs and left some things out on purpose; if you want to read it in full beauty, it appears on p. 20 of CCC 1946 (the emphases are Alexander’s, my comments are in square brackets).

"... if ... all so-called mental processes are mainly the result of sensory experiences ..., it will be obvious that in our conception of how to employ the different parts of the mechanism in the acts of everyday life WE ARE INFLUENCED CHIEFLY BY SENSORY PROCESSES (feeling). ... in every case, the nature of our response, WHETHER IT IT BE AN ACTUAL MOVEMENT, AN EMOTION OR AN OPINION, will depend upon the associated activity of the processes concerned with conception [oops! Did someone expect this?] and with the sensory and other mechanisms [I wonder what these might be?] responsible for the "feeling" which we experience. [Note the quotation marks.] This associated activity is referred to throughout my work as SENSORY APPRECIATION."

I think this is a brilliant definition anyway, but the reason why I put it onto the forum is to ask: do you think -- as I do -- that it could be that by the phrase "and other mechanisms" FM just tried to put into words the concept of "belief structure" that you mentioned and which wasn’t known at FM’s time?

Let me see your comments. And thank you again, David --

Peter Ruhrberg


Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 18:00:30 -0500 (CDT)
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
From: fhooper@postoffice.ptd.net (Fred Hooper)
Subject: re: epistomology et al.

Hello, David,

Thanks for putting so much time and effort into your response. It is always interesting to me that the most thoughtful posts are in response to what we consider to be most basic to the technique, like "forward and up" and Primary What-ever-you-want-to-call-it.

David Gorman wrote:
"The biggest of these centres around the idea that people have unconscious habits like pulling their heads back that they do not know that they are doing. But before I just leap into this, I am aware that I am treading on thin ground as to how all this might be received. I have babbled on long enough for this posting and would rather sound out the waters before proceeding. I would be very happy to go on if there seems to be true interest in looking at what we do and whether, in fact, our deeply held Alexander way of seeing things is true. I hope you will forgive my reticence to just carry on, but I have had some unfortunate experiences with people who did not like to have their beliefs challenged and I do not wish to repeat them."

I, for one, would be very interested in this topic.

Be well,
Kay S. Hooper


Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 20:11:08 -0400
To: 100653.2057 at compuserve.com, alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu

From: Nancy Lebovitz nancyl@universe.digex.net
Subject: re: epistomology et al.

I’d definitely like to see whatever more you’d like to say.

Nancy Lebovitz


Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 23:39:54 -0300
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
From: Franklin Serrano franklin.s@openlink.com.br
Subject: please go on

Dear Mr Gorman

I am just a student not a teacher and am fascinated by this discussion. Please continue . I have read a few of your articles and I think that from my very precarious knowledge of the technique that you are the at teacher I know who is closer to Alexander’s attitude of moving our understanding "forward and up". Please don’t be inhibited (ouch ! that was an awful pun..)

yours sincerely
franklin


Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 14:10:55 EDT
From: JohnC10303@aol.com
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: "Feeelings"

Hello list: and David

I think the point you may be missing is this: however reliable our senses may be (and they are pretty damn reliable for us to bumble through life as well as we do) NO ONE has "sensory experience" free of "appreciation." It is a reminder of FM’s exhausting thouroughness that he used the term "sensory appreciation" so constitantly. I think that the term ‘sensory appreciation’ has the added advantage of including the matter of anticipation; e.g. not being able to rise from the chair untill the expected level of tension is reached.

There seems to be something circular about stating that "There is nothing at all unreliable about the senses -- We just don’t know what they tell us." I also have trouble conceiving how the pupil’s senses can be "ACCURATELY describing the change that took place." if the pupil has no conscious register of where the movement began or ended.

It is a wonderful point that our sensorium is commited to registering CHANGE rather than steady states. Those ‘sensory deprivation’ flotation tanks from the 70’s illustrate the point: with tactile input and ‘relational’ muscular activity brought to a minimum, the subject’s sensory experience is taken way out of normal bounds.

I am disturbed by this passage also:
"the reason they got out of the chair so easily was NOT because they were now inhibiting or directing or lengthening or that their necks were free. They got out of the chair so easily because that is SIMPLY WHAT HAPPENS when a human is not interfering by getting in their own way and trying to do it. "

‘Not interfering by getting in their own way and trying to "do" it.’ and ‘àinhibiting or directing or lengthening or that their necks were free’ are the SAME THING, although the second is an example of Alexander jargon run amok.

One great advantage we have when we teach is that however strange or wrong the pupil’s new experiences are; the new experience is brought about by the improved functioning of primary control. There is an element of ‘rightness’ in the new experience (freedom, lightness, comfort etc.) which goes a long way to relieving the fear that the ‘strange,’ ‘off balance’ aspects may bring up.

On your reply to David Langstroth: of course we don’t want to invest FM’s books with liturgical authority, they are rich in errors and flaws. In refusing to make Alexander a guru or ‘exalted master’ we are adhereing to his own wishes. Let’s not turn around and put someone else in that place either. The work of great teachers like Barstow and Macdonald is diminished when we become cultish ‘disciples’ instead of students.

John Coffin


Date: June 22, 1998, 4:09 PM
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
From: David Gorman 100653.2057@compuserve.com
Subject: re: Epistomology et al.

Thanks for everyone who responded encouraging me to go on. I’m at work on it at the moment and will post in a day or so, when it seems that what I’ve written is clear (at least to me).

One quick response to John C who wrote:
"I think the point you may be missing is this: however reliable our senses may be (and they are pretty damn reliable for us to bumble through life as well as we do) NO ONE has "sensory experience" free of "appreciation." ... There seems to be something circular about stating that There is nothing at all unreliable about the senses-We just dont know what they tell us.’"

This is precisely the point that I was making. That once we realize that it is the appreciation which is unreliable, we are in different positon than if we think that the senses are unreliable. Then the issue is to understand what they really are telling us, rather than ignore them because they might lead us astray...

Since John invokes Alexander mentioning sensory appreciation, I’ll respond in kind from Alexander’s Constructive Conscious Control, preface xxiv, [Capitalization is mine not Alexander’s]:
"Certain it is that without the functioning of the human sensorium this registration would not be possible, and hence it will be seen how all essential it is that the human sensorium should function as a reliable register in order to minimize the effect of SENSORY ILLUSION IN THE FORMING AND ASSESSING THE VALIDITY OF THE BELIEFS UPON WHICH OUR JUDGMENT OF REALITY DEPENDS."

It is this forming and assessing the validity of the beliefs upon which our judgement of reality depends that I am going to write about. Stay tuned...

best,
David


Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 11:54:27 +0100
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
From: David Langstroth david@alexandertec.u-net.com
Subject: To David Gorman

Dear David,

Allow me to add my encouragement to those who have asked you to write on and expand your ideas. I welcome an enthusiastic contribution from all quarters.

I understand your sensitivity to having your beliefs challenged but this is what we must all expect when we choose to publicly air our thoughts. Without having fully heard you out I cannot promise that I will not challenge your ideas. However, let me assure you that I deplore personal attacks, insinuation, or character assassination of any form equally as much as I deplore sycophancy or guru worship.

I would like to think that a forum such as this can be a venue for the reasoned and robust debate of ideas.

with respect,
David Langstroth


Date: June 22, 1998, 4:09 PM
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
From: David Gorman 100653.2057@compuserve.com
Subject: re: To David Gorman

David Langstroth wrote:
"Dear David, Allow me to add my encouragement to those who have asked you to write on and expand your ideas. I welcome an enthusiastic contribution from all quarters. I understand your sensitivity to having your beliefs challenged but this is what we must all expect when we choose to publicly air our thoughts."

Thanks for your encouragement.

I feel I must add that my reticence was not to having MY beliefs challenged--I love that. That is how I grow..

It was from my experiences of how people have reacted when THEIR beliefs were challenged... However, enough of this. I do not wish to seem coy in promising my reply and then not delivering, so... back to writing,

until then,
David


Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 18:55:23 EDT
From: JohnC10303@aol.com
To: 100653.2057@compuserve.com, alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: epistomology et al

Hello list: and David

Yes, we are saying the same thing, at least sort of. I too, am opposed to the relentless 'sensory nihilism' of teachers who hammer into their students the idea that they are not supposed to 'feel' anything. How are they supposed to do that? A novocaine drip into their muscles?

Pulling the quote from my head, in Use of the Self ch.1: "Surely if feeling could become unreliable it should be possible to make it reliable again." (Or something very like that) Certainly in the process of learning the Technique, we come more and more to 'feel upright and balanced' when we actually ARE.

On the philosophical front I try to put it like this: "Certainly we are always capable of misinterpreting experience, jumping to conclusions, clinging to prejudices etc. etc. But we CAN improve, especially in the nuts and bolts of our daily 'psycho-physical' conduct. Indeed we can expect to reach a point where our sense of ouselves in action can be described as 'accurate.' Certainly accurate enough for real life."

John Coffin


Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 02:28:41 +0200
From: Peter Ruhrberg pruhrberg.at@cityweb.de
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: To David Gorman

Hello David,

"I feel I must add that my reticence was not to having MY beliefs challenged--I love that. That is how I grow.. It was from my experiences of how people have reacted when THEIR beliefs were challenged... However, enough of this. I do not wish to seem coy in promising my reply and then not delivering, so... back to writing"

I'm glad to hear that you decide to go on to share your contributions with the rest of us. Whatever people do in response to what you say is (to borrow David Langstroth's phrase) their own business and reflects -- and often reveals -- more about them as it does about you. It is the old phenomenon of what is known in philospohy and rhetorics as "argumentum ad hominem", of attacking the person instead dealing with the ideas. It has a long, unfortunate history and some people still haven't learned the lesson from it.

(I, for instance, see that the majority of my pupils don't agree with me on almost everything right away. But it doesn't stop me from saying what I believe is true and what I know is helpful, because it was helpful not only to me, but without exception to all people who tried it out consistently. If in any particular instance I am really dead wrong, one thing I can be sure of is that they will tell me during the course of their fllowing experiments, and in this way I can learn from them. There is nothing I can lose in teaching.)

On the other hand, as you will perhaps know, the manner of other people's response doesn't make the thing that you said more or less "true". That is to say other people may react in whatever way they want to -- they might be right or wrong in their opinion, as you might be in yours.

The point here is: I think that the majority of the thoughts someone expresses should be at least reasonable and make sense, and that the arguments should be compelling enough for the readers to reconsider his/her opinion. (Just open any page of any book of Mr Alexander and see how brilliantly and beautifully he accomplishes this task almost every time!)

Now just think of an assessment, argument or opinion which it mistaken or inconsistent. We all have seen them, we all have made them. It is not only unavoidable, it is necessary for learning. In fact, I'm glad to see the most successful people in the world say that mistakes and errors are the best thing that can happen to us. The process our greatest achievers went through (including FM Alexander, see "Evolution of a Technique") were filled with mistakes. They used their mistakes to learn from, then continued to make more mistakes to learn from them even more, and so on.

But even if an agument turns out to be false, if it was presented in such a way that 1) the procedure by which the argument was made and 2) the ways in which the decisions were reached are clear enough, then we all can see where the error came from, and we then can let that knowledge help us in improving our skills in thinking and reasoning if it comes to assess other beliefs, including our own.

If a teacher really does his/her job, it doesn't matter whether s/he is right or wrong in a specific assessment. We all are, we all will.

Cheerfully
Peter


Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 09:41:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Patrick Snook patrick.snook@yale.edu
To: David Gorman 100653.2057@compuserve.com, alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: re: epistomology et al

In this matter of sensory appreciation: Macdonald's book mentions his "trick" for pointing out to a pupil two ways of feeling. He would touch the pupil's shoulder, without warning, and then ask if he felt it, and then ask if he tried to feel it. It seems to me that whenever the business of "feeling" comes into discussion of the AT, the second kind of feeling illustrated in Macdonald's example takes precedence. In reality, that kind of feeling is a kind of groping, or grasping, and surely interferes with the real business of feeling, which is more like the noticing or sensing of the first kind (in Macdonald's example, again). If I understand it correctly (and please, someone, straighten me on this matter if I've twisted away from the truth), "feeling" takes time to register, and the trick is not to interfere with the mechanisms (neural, nervous, whatever) that communicate the feeling to the conscious mind.

This supports David Gorman's assertion--although he didn't use quite these words--that the mechanism of feeling works just fine, so long as we allow it to do what it does, so we can "appreciate" (gain in value, and understand) what the sense tells us, and prevent interference (by groping, or grasping at feelings . . . in effect, guessing). Although I have just referred to feeling, this surely applies to all the senses (if we take as axiomatic that the part always affects the whole).

Patrick Snook


Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 11:16:20
To: 100653.2057@compuserve.com, alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
From: Ian Kleiman ikleiman@kleiman.com
Subject: re: re: epistomology et al

At 09:41 AM 6/23/98 -0400, Patrick Snook wrote:
"In this matter of sensory appreciation: Macdonald's book mentions his "trick" for pointing out to a pupil two ways of feeling. He would touch the pupil's shoulder, without warning, and then ask if he felt it, and then ask if he tried to feel it. It seems to me that whenever the business of "feeling" comes into discussion of the AT, the second kind of feeling illustrated in Macdonald's example takes precedence. In reality, that kind of feeling is a kind of groping, or grasping, and surely interferes with the real business of feeling, which is more like the noticing or sensing of the first kind (in Macdonald's example, again)."

Indeed. In basic buddhist psychology, this is called "greed" or "grasping" and it is identified as a "mental impulse". There is also the opposite kind of reaction of trying to not have a feeling, to push it away...this is called "fear" or "aversion" by the buddhists. Both of them tend to obscure and/or suppress the original feeling/sensation.

So, in that model, there is the message that enters the senses, followed by the feeling/perception (which will always arise)...which stimulates the reaction (fear or aversion). Minfulness (inhibition?) observes the reactive mind creating the reaction impules, but decides not to act out the impulse, but to watch it run its course until the mind can see the original feeling more clearly which then becomes a changing field of perception/feeling over time.

I find it amazing how AT has helped me to understand this, and then going back to review the satipathan sutra, how these observations are so similar.

Ian


Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 19:44:39 +0200
From: Peter Ruhrberg pruhrberg.at@cityweb.de
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: To_Patrick_Snook,_FMA_quote_belief?

Hello Patrick,

I have found three references, the first of which is FMA verbatim, and the third is more of an interpretation.

1. Do you know what we have found that belief is? A certain standard of muscle tension. That is all. (The Bedford Lecture, in "Articles and Lectures", p.174)

2. I remember one morning his coming briskly into our classroom, looking very pleased wirh himself, and saying, 'Belief is a matter of customary muscle tension.'

‘F.M.,' I said, 'don't you mean that belief about what you can do with the body is a matter of customary muscle tension?' The discussion was on. He kept talking while he worked. Finally at the end of the morning's work F.M. said, 'Yes, belief about what you can do with the body is a matter of customary muscle tension.' (Lulie Westfeldt, F. Matthias Alexander, The Man and his Work, Mouritz 1998, p.68, see there for further details of her assessment.)

3. Was FM' s aphorism that belief is a matter of muscle tension simply designed to shock people, or was there a more serious element behind it? He was perfectly serious about it, because he equated belief with fixation. In his experience a rigidity of mind corresponded to a rigidity of body. (Walter Carrington on the Alexander Technique in discussion with Sean Carey, 1986, p.45f)


Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 20:30:59 +0200
From: Peter Ruhrberg pruhrberg.at@cityweb.de
To: alextech@pop.life.uiuc.edu
Subject: epistomology, sensory appreciation

Dear all,

May I just throw into the discussion how FM describes his own view about "sensory appreciation" with regard to what we call "feeling" or "feeling sense":

"Sensory appreciation, from our point of view, has a much wider significance than is generally attributed to it. But ..., TAKEN EVEN IN THE MOST LIMITED SENSE, it includes all sensory experiences which are conveyed through the channels of sight, hearing, touch, feeling, equilibrium, movement, etc., and which are responsible for psycho-physical action and reaction throughout the organism.

"If we raise an arm, move a leg, or if we make any other movements of the body or limbs, we are guided chiefly by our sensory appreciation or, AS MOST PEOPLE WOULD PUT IT, by our sense of feeling." (CCC 1923 p.34 / 1946 p.20, emphasis mine)

---------------

You will see sometimes FM in his writings substituting "feeling" for "sensory appreciation" and sometimes putting them closely together. For instance, on p.15 of CCC 1946 you will find three times the combination "feeling (sensory appreciation)".

But remember every time you come across one of these "feeling" substitutions that, even if you include "all sensory experiences which are conveyed through the channels of sight, hearing, touch, feeling, equilibrium, movement, etc.", you would enjoy FM's concept of "sensory appreciation" in its most limited sense.

I also think that FM in the second paragraph bows to common usage when he says that MOST PEOPLE would use the phrase "sense of feeling", but that FM doesn't want to simply equate "sense of feeling" and "sensory appreciation."

Besides, I have also some serious doubt if it is possible in a physiological sense to guide oneself by "feeling" at all, and there are some really exciting passages in FM's writings which certainly question at least some of our beliefs about this issue.

Peter Ruhrberg


Continued in PART 3...

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