Eliminating habitual interference with the primary control, and thereby recovering the level of functioning inherent in our design, is what the Alexander Technique is for. Can you get there on your own? Possibly. Alexander, after all, taught himself - though I hasten to add, it took him months and months of single-minded effort. Moreover, our very adaptability can be a serious impediment. When you've pulled yourself off balance for long enough, your "sensory appreciation" adapts to that state of use, and it feels "right."

On top of that the right thing can't be done at all - not in the way we're used to thinking about 'doing.' It's 'doing' that pulls us off balance in the first place, by over-contracting muscles and interfering with the primary control. Balance is reflex-driven. We're as likely to succeed at directly controlling our postural musculature as the fabled centipede was in controlling the sequence of his leg movements.

What can be learned is control over those myriad reactions to living which can put us wrong. And this control rests on a skill in which we haven't gotten much rehearsal time: the reflective pause. Don't confuse this skill with merely counting to ten through gritted teeth; I'm talking about a far more profound and subtle level of control. A bit of neurophysiology will make this clearer.

I'd like you all to turn one palm up and gently raise it toward the shoulder. Now, let it drop again. In very simple terms, the nerves controlling the muscle in your upper arm (your biceps) just received two distinct classes of message. The first excited the membrane of each nerve such that it "sparked" onto its assigned muscle cells, causing them to contract, shortening the muscle and drawing the lower arm up. When you let it drop again, your motor system didn't just stop sending the excitatory message, it sent an inhibitory message which altered the neural membrane electrochemically, making it impossible for it to "spark" onto the muscle cells. It's by using these seperate signals that the nerve's state of readiness can be maintained, with the membrane poised on the brink of "sparking."

Simple enough? Ah! But there's a catch! For many of you, even before you lifted your arm, there was a higher than necessary amount of doing, of excitation, reaching the muscle. And when you let your arm drop, you didn't release as much as you could have. Depending on your overall balance, a lot of you are probably doing a lot, even as you sit.

In a moment I'd like to show some of you what I mean. You might find it a bit difficult at first to really let me lift your arm for you without your help. We're so over-schooled in doing that at first you'll find yourself jumping right in and helping. Deliberately staying out of the way, that is, consciously controlling the inhibitory side of our neural signalling is what is rehearsed in an Alexander lesson.

From out there in the audience a lesson will look like relearning how to sit and stand "correctly." It ain't. I'm not interested in teaching any of you to do that, or anything else, in "the right way." Rather, this "chair-work" provides the opportunity to confront and gradually "edit," any interference with your primary control. My hands will be supporting and guiding you, and - to some degree - preventing, at the neural level, those interferences from coming into play.

There'll be something else going on which those of you watching won't be aware of. Not only will my hands be limiting habitual busyness, something of my own psychophysical state will come through my hands, giving my pupil the experience of your primary control reemerging. The electrochemical quiet that comes from balance can be transmitted through touch.

For membership in the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, a training course of 1,600 hours over a three-year period must first be completed. Now that's considerably more time than needed to merely learn a parlor trick - how to flip someone up out of a chair. For the real work of training, those three years are barely enough time. Our training is less a matter of learning to "do" than of being helped, through our teachers' hands, to "un-do." Our teachers, in turn, had been helped by their teachers, and so on back, in an unbroken line, to F.M. Alexander, himself.