The Problem of Unreliable Kinaesthesia
Why you keep getting in your own way — and why you can’t help doing it.

The Alexander Technique works with your idea of movement.

That sense of movement is called kinaesthesia. Through your kinaesthetic sense, you know your body’s exact position in space and you know how it is changing as you move.

Well… you would know if your kinaesthesia were reliable. Very few people have a reliable kinaesthetic sense. Unless you are one of those very few, you don’t register your movement very accurately. What you are doing is subtly different from what you think you are doing.

It gets better: you don’t even realise that you don’t know.
A faulty kinaesthetic sense is so convincing that you will often believe what it tells you even when the evidence of your own eyes shows otherwise.

Why is it so difficult to disbelieve your kinaesthetic sense? Answer: your experience seems to prove you are right to believe it. An unreliable kinaesthesia is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

An unreliable kinaesthesia is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let me give you an example.

Imagine that, as you sit down, you feel yourself beginning to fall back. What do you do to save yourself? I’ll tell you: you pull your head back, poke your neck forwards, arch your back and stiffen your knees. (I’ve seen it happen thousands of times). All that throws you off balance backwards.

So your reaction to save yourself when you feel you are falling backwards is to throw yourself back! Honest.

That’s what the outside observer sees, but what do you see? Well, of course you felt yourself falling and reacted to catch yourself. Since you knew all along that you were off balance, the fact that you had to catch yourself proves you were right. That’s what you see.

As I said, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You only ended up off balance because you believed you were off balance. If you hadn’t believed you were off balance, you wouldn’t have been — because you would never have done the thing that threw you.

What would happen if you did that near a precipice? …

No wonder so many people are afraid of heights!

Debauched kinaesthesia

“Unreliable” is simply not a strong enough word. That’s why F Matthias Alexander called it debauched kinaesthesia.

How it begins

The process is usually so slow and gradual you don’t notice it happening. It’s the rule rather than the exception: very few people escape.

The average five-year-old is alert and full of life. The average fifteen-year-old is a permanent slouch. How many parents have not had to nag their teen-age children to “stand up straight”?

Sorry, parents, I’ve news for you. Telling your children to “stand straight” is just about the worst possible reaction. The nagging parent usually assumes their child is being lazy and letting itself droop. Naturally. That’s the message you got from your own parents and teachers and that’s the message you give to your children. But it isn’t so. The real culprit is a deteriorating kinaesthesia.

Your bad posture is the end result of muscle tension pulling your head, neck, chest and shoulders down. It’s the physical effect of that unreliable kinaesthesia which persuades you to stiffen and strain every time you move: every time you stand up, sit down, turn your head, take a step or lift a finger.

It isn’t just your children: it happens to nearly everyone.

How it goes on

You are dragged down as part of everything you do.

The pulling down feels like a necessary part of your movement — so essential that, if you are not allowed to do it, you can’t perform the movement. The result? If you so much as breathe, you tighten and pull down. (And, since it feels like a normal part of the movement, you don’t even notice it happening).

A small defect in the kinaesthetic sense always grows into a larger one — it never rights itself. For it to right itself, you would have to allow yourself to move as you used to. Since you now firmly believe that way of moving can’t work, it would mean choosing to move in a way that you know to be wrong.

How can you choose to move in a way that you know to be wrong? Certainly, not without someone there to lead you through the new way of doing. You need someone to persuade you not to react to the belief that you are doing it wrong. That person had better be very, very, very patient.

And they had better know what they are doing. Inside out.

Conclusion

Let me re-state the conclusion as simply as I can.

Since the right way to move seems wrong, you need to choose to allow your movement to be fundamentally wrong. (Unless you do, you can never again move freely and easily).

You don’t know how to allow your movement to be so totally wrong. You need subtle, patient, expert help. When, with that help, you finally let the wrong thing happen anyway, you discover that it wasn’t wrong at all.

Without that help you will never let it work, and the problem can only get worse.

How do you start moving badly in the first place?

In many seemingly innocuous ways. To name a few:–

The pain from an injury naturally makes you move differently. If this continues, you become used to the different movement and it comes to feel normal. When the injury has healed, the new movement pattern remains, because, having gotten used to it, it now feels right. The old, right, movement now feels wrong.
You learn a new skill. The teacher’s way of moving is copied because both teacher and pupil believe that the teacher’s way is right. After all, the teacher can do it. However, no-one is perfect. Whatever small defects there are in the teacher’s performance are passed on to the pupil, who diligently copies them. In this way, small defects get magnified. More serious defects can create major problems for the pupil. The teacher could be anyone: (school teacher, parent, sibling, friend).
Stress. Every time anything happens to startle you (a door slamming, somebody shouting, brakes screeching, telephone ringing) you stiffen and “pull down”. This is a perfectly natural reflex. If it takes a while to return to normal, for that while, you move stiffly. The more often it happens, the more you get used to it. The new way of moving comes to feel “you” and the old way feels wrong.

Next Step

You really should read this article next. It will give you a much-needed example of how debauched kinaesthesia works in practice.

Reading this example will help you make sense of what’s happening to you, even if your problem is not scoliosis: How the Alexander Technique Makes Sense of Idiopathic Scoliosis.

If you came here by following the link from the posture article, this is your link back: Posture that works.

The other articles in this category are here:‒

The Alexander Technique without unnecessary jargon

Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley

If you want to get the best kind of help, come to me for an introductory lesson in Liverpool.

If you’re too far away, then the next best thing is to get personal lessons and advice from me online at Repoise.com, my on-line school. (Both far-away and local pupils use Repoise).

In more detail:–

If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)

There’s nothing better than individual lessons. My practice is at 37 Hope Street, Liverpool L1. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to book an initial consultation and first lesson. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).
If you’re short of funds, you can still have first class training from me — though it will require a little more work on your part.

The thing to do is have an individual, in-person lesson just once a month. That will entitle you to also get regular on-line lessons from me through Repoise. That way, you have the best of both worlds: in-person lessons and very regular, even daily, on-line Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley from me. That’s a real bargain because Repoise costs the equivalent of three lessons a year to everyone else.

Ring me on 0151 708 6172 if you want to arrange this.
I occasionally run group lessons. If you’re interested in these, go here for details.

If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool

There’s still nothing better than individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
I suggest you also get direct day-to-day guidance from me by joining Repoise.
If you’re having plain Alexander Technique lessons from someone else, you still need to discover the Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique. You’ll get a lot more out of your lessons when you do.