Why using Tube Principle directions is better for your posture

Better? Better than what?

Better than the classical directions that we’ve been using ever since Frederick Matthias Alexander developed the Alexander Technique over a hundred years ago.

So what are the classical directions?

The classical Alexander Technique directions are: “Allow your neck to be free in order to allow your head to go forward and up in order to allow your back to lengthen and widen”. (And they’re very good directions, let me add).

The problem with the classical directions

The problem with the classical directions is twofold:–

1. They’re not specific enough
2. Parts of them are just plain wrong

1. They’re not specific enough

It’s not good enough to just have a vague idea of what you want to happen. The clearer and more specific your intention is, the better your results will be. Now we have a better tool to get that clarity.

2. Parts of them are just plain wrong

It’s just plain wrong to intend every part of your back to widen. Some parts of your back are already stretched out too wide. (I didn’t realise that until I started to explore the Tube Principle).

To widen them further will just exacerbate the problem. The clearest example of this is the small of your back. The small of most people’s back is splayed out too wide. This splaying out makes you pull your back into a leaning-backwards position, so that the small of your back is hollowed. That’s why it’s called ‘the small of your back’.

As a result, if you’re giving the classical directions, even while other aspects of your posture are improving, the small of your back is getting smaller. Whatever improvements you’ve gained from your Alexander work, this wrong direction prevents you from making the progress you could have been making.

So how do we work out new, improved Alexander directions? We use the Tube Principle.

The Tube Principle

Simply, the Tube Principle helps you see your three-dimensionality.

Unlike the two-dimensional “allow your back to lengthen and widen”, the Tube Principle starts by visualising your body as a tube. Your muscles run around that tube, sometimes stabilising it, sometimes pulling it around.

Once you have the tube image to work with, you begin to discover that bends in that tube are always accompanied by two things:–

1. A splaying out of the width of the tube on the side that you’re bending towards
2. A narrowing, of the tube on the side you’re bending away from

Experience shows that, if you tackle this splaying out and narrowing, the bends in the tube straighten themselves out. You don’t have to do anything to help them.

Once you have the tube image, the next step is to examine your body, and discover where you’re bending it out of shape. When you’ve worked that out, you will then be able to use the Tube Principle to prescribe appropriate directions for yourself.

Tube Principle directions

Different people pull themselves into all kinds of different shapes, so no person’s directions will exactly fit the next person, any more than their clothes will exactly fit the next person. However, also like designing clothes, there are general patterns that you can start off with.

These patterns naturally divide your torso (that’s all your body except your arms and legs) into five levels. These five levels are: head, neck, chest, mid-back and hips.

Once you’ve discovered where each level starts and finishes, you know what to ask it to do. (That asking is called “directing” and the thing you ask it to do is a “direction”).

As you get more practised and more confident, you can add detail to your directions for each level. Until then, it’s best to stick to simply allowing the narrowed bend-away-from side to soften and widen while also allowing the splayed-out bend-towards side to narrow and concentrate.

Take your time to clearly understand what I just said.

Once you do really understand it, you’ll see how very simple it is. Seeing it’s simplicity you will be able to apply it to your own posture. Then you can get started and discover how amazingly well it works.

In what way is the Tube Principle better?

• It doesn’t ask any part of your body to change in unhelpful ways
• It gives you a template for developing more helpful directions to use instead
• It doesn’t try to be “one size fits all”
• When you get confused, it gives you a means to discover whether you’re on the right track — and what to change if you’re not

Proof of the pudding

When I first discovered the Tube Principle, I had no idea how useful it was going to be. As I started to apply it, both in my teaching and on myself, I was astonished at how universally accurate and powerful it was. Now that I’m using it in all my work, my pupils are improving in ways that my previous experience had led me to believe impossible.

Well maybe not impossible, but my previous experience was that these changes required a lot more time and a lot more lessons than they now do. Because real change takes a lot of work, most pupils just gather the low-hanging fruit, the quick results, and leave the rest.

Who can blame them for that? As the recent medical study published in the British Medical Journal proves, you can get some pretty amazing results just from that low-hanging fruit alone.

Now that the Tube Principle removes obstacles that were an artefact of the only-partially-correct classical directions, Alexander pupils can begin to move forwards and change previously fixed, seemingly unchangeable aspects of their posture and movement.

For example, just last night I gave a lesson to a pupil who has just re-started lessons after a gap of several years. He first came with a very bad stoop. His many lessons helped a lot but he still had a considerable stoop. After each of his last two lessons, his stoop is beginning to straighten out with amazing speed. (If Steve is reading this now, he’ll know I’m talking about him — even though I’ve changed his name and he isn’t really called ‘Steve’).

So how can you use this information to help yourself?

Next step

First, read my last week’s article: “Free your neck: a powerful way to lose your slump”

Then, using the simplified version at the end of that article, start applying it.

Later, when you’re better and more confident at it, you’ll be able to add further levels of the body-tube to your practice.

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The Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique
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Philip Pawley

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