Instead, let's look at a hypothetical case. Let's say you teach piano. At the beginning of term you start two children in level one. Neither has had any previous instruction, nor is startlingly gifted. Eight weeks into the term, one is far ahead of the other, though the slower one seems motivated, seems to enjoy the lessons, and practices regularly. How do you account, then, for the slower one's lack of progress?

Let's look at all the things that he has learned from the lessons: He's learned to poke his tongue out of the corner of his mouth; he's learned to hold his breath when he gets to that tricky passage; he's learned to raise his shoulders and stiffen his arms while scrunching down and tracing the notes with the tip of his nose - when he's not looking for his hands. And while you're pointing any of these things out to him, he's learned to jiggle his legs. Now that little guy never intended to add all these less than graceful notes; he's not even aware of them until you point them out (again and again).

Those graceless notes he's adding (as well as his lack of awareness that he's adding them) are symptons of his overall use of himself. The specific interferences to his musical progress you'd like so much to free him from derive from a global pattern of interference in how he's using himself. This interference starts in his neck.

Alexander called the relationship of the head to the spine "the primary control." Decades before neural science got there, Alexander discovered in the laboratory of himself that this primary relationship was the keystone to the inherent postural set, and thus to the use of the self as a whole (again, not mind and/or body, but simply 'the self'). Interfere with this primary control and you cannot use your self to your inherent potential.

What does this interference look like? The head is pulled back and down with respect to the neck. The way the skeleton's shaped, the skull would fall forward and land in your lap if it weren't for muscle action. But too much action and the head's pulled off balance. Then, instead of the head working as a counterweight, literally stretching the postural musculature up, it becomes - disastrously - a compressive weight, working havoc on the spine, and thus on the respiratory system, the digestive system, etc. More to the point today, the functioning of the nervous system is drastically impeded. Both descending directives from the brain, and ascending "field reports" from the ears and the fingertips have to fight their way through a field of static consequent on being off balance.

Eliminate that static, and the messages get through. The motor cortex, along with the inestimable assistance of the cerebellum, can turn any physically normal child into a technically competent musican, what Frank Wilson calls a "small muscle athlete." In his wonderful book "Tone Deaf and All Thumbs," he gives this example of small muscle athletics: