Habits as the cause of technical difficulty

Of course, stopping oneself from interference is not easy. Alexander said that, "We can throw away the habit of a lifetime in a few minutes if we use our brains.", to which Pedro de Alcantara adds, "The catch is that it takes a lifetime to learn to use our brains.". Alan, you mentioned in another thread that you Tai Chi teacher Sam Slutsky has a way of visualising movement without the habitual tensions, but that you couldn't describe it. He sounds like he has learned to use his brain. I hope to make it over to Montreal someday to take some classes with him. It's all interesting and there is always a new challenge! Don't we we want to throw away the habits of a lifetime though? Are most habits good? I think it's a matter of learn how to do something the with the right basics first, and only then allowing yourself to let go. Currently, I'm playing better than ever before when I don't think hard about it, but when I start "just playing" too much my technique slowly falls apart again. Next thing I know, my arm is pressing and my fingers are no longer moving. It's important to see what happens when I let go and just do it, but if letting go were too much of an end in itself, it would only be dragging me back to what I need to move on from. There are times when you don't want to interfere, but there are also no shortage of times when you have to give yourself urgent interventions. It's my thoughtful work that creates ongoing progress, not when I try not to think. I think it's all about the difference between whether you are truly practising or running through as a performance. They need totally different mindsets.

He said, "throw away a habit of a lifetime," not "habits." I for one would be only too happy to throw away my arm weight habit of a lifetime - and hopefully it will not take me the rest of my life to acquire the brain needed to do it! AFF

Don't we we want to throw away the habits of a lifetime though? Are most habits good? I think it's a matter of learn how to do something the with the right basics first, and only then allowing yourself to let go. Currently, I'm playing better than ever before when I don't think hard about it, but when I start "just playing" too much my technique slowly falls apart again. Next thing I know, my arm is pressing and my fingers are no longer moving. It's important to see what happens when I let go and just do it, but if letting go were too much of an end in itself, it would only be dragging me back to what I need to move on from. There are times when you don't want to interfere, but there are also no shortage of times when you have to give yourself urgent interventions. It's my thoughtful work that creates ongoing progress, not when I try not to think. I think it's all about the difference between whether you are truly practising or running through as a performance. They need totally different mindsets. I was just about to post a follow up to my previous post with themes similar to yours. I think we're both working with similar ideas, but I did not express myself fully in my previous post. I agree that we have to intervene sometimes - to wake up and refine the basic functions that are often seriously lacking or non-existent. However, I do wonder if we can ever achieve the most efficient movement with our intervention. Also, the concept of letting go requires some thought, too. I'll use something I have experienced to try to explain (though these things sometimes defy explanation): Let's say I want to lift my right arm to open a cupboard. I can do this in several ways: 1. A lot of the time I will not think about it at all - I fall into my habitual pattern of tension and achieve my task, but perhaps not in the most efficient way. To me, this is my old understanding of letting go, not interfering etc.. It's the same as just playing and having your technique fall apart - the habitual response to the stimulus of opening the cupboard (or playing the piano) is incredibly strong, reinforced over many years (playing the piano has the emotional attachment, too, which adds complications). I'd define this as unconscious interference. 2. I could monitor the movement, experiment and find a more efficient function for the task at hand. This to me is conscious interference (or intervention, if you prefer) - it is good because I'm improving function, but there is still an element of artificial control. This kind of thing can improve the intelligence of the body, but doing it all of the time would stop that intelligence from truly manifesting. 3. What I perceive now as letting go, or not interfering is different from the previous definition. I give myself the stimulus to do the movement (and possibly for several unrelated movements, to set up a choice), inhibit my habitual response, then give my consent for the movement to happen. When I succeed in this the movement does itself effortlessly - there is no blocking of intention due to habitual tensions or past conception of what the movement should be like. To me, when the Alexander Technique is taught well, this is the potential result (though I might add that learning Feldenkrais has helped clarify this for me). The movement and freedom that results is never what one expects. I have only ever achieved this rarely at the piano (though it is getting more frequent). This of course is due to years of training interference which is reinforced by the emotional attachment to playing the piano. I realise some of this sounds rather complex and not for everyone. What I have learned from the Alexander Technique is that the space between stimulus and response is perhaps the best opportunity for inhibit old habits and allowing something new to happen. Edit: Also, Alan, here's another hypothesis: the places with the largest potential range of movement (i.e. shoulder girdle, thumb, around the pelvis) are the ones that are likely to get held in place. Perhaps the large amount of potential movement is overwhelming?

I highly agree with you, NIck, especially that last observation... all very nicely couched! AFF

Don't we we want to throw away the habits of a lifetime though? Are most habits good? I think it's a matter of learn how to do something the with the right basics first, and only then allowing yourself to let go. Currently, I'm playing better than ever before when I don't think hard about it, but when I start "just playing" too much my technique slowly falls apart again. Next thing I know, my arm is pressing and my fingers are no longer moving. It's important to see what happens when I let go and just do it, but if letting go were too much of an end in itself, it would only be dragging me back to what I need to move on from. There are times when you don't want to interfere, but there are also no shortage of times when you have to give yourself urgent interventions. It's my thoughtful work that creates ongoing progress, not when I try not to think. I think it's all about the difference between whether you are truly practising or running through as a performance. They need totally different mindsets. I was just about to post a follow up to my previous post with themes similar to yours. I think we're both working with similar ideas, but I did not express myself fully in my previous post. I agree that we have to intervene sometimes - to wake up and refine the basic functions that are often seriously lacking or non-existent. However, I do wonder if we can ever achieve the most efficient movement with our intervention. Also, the concept of letting go requires some thought, too. I'll use something I have experienced to try to explain (though these things sometimes defy explanation): Let's say I want to lift my right arm to open a cupboard. I can do this in several ways: 1. A lot of the time I will not think about it at all - I fall into my habitual pattern of tension and achieve my task, but perhaps not in the most efficient way. To me, this is my old understanding of letting go, not interfering etc.. It's the same as just playing and having your technique fall apart - the habitual response to the stimulus of opening the cupboard (or playing the piano) is incredibly strong, reinforced over many years (playing the piano has the emotional attachment, too, which adds complications). I'd define this as unconscious interference. I think I see what you mean, but i'm not too sure about the idea of "interference". Perhaps this is largely a linguistic issue rather than a practical one, but to use that word suggests that the brain already know how to make a very good quality of movement, but that other factors are spoiling it. Personally, I would not refer to interference, but rather a state where the brain has yet to learn enough to instigate the basic fundamentals of a good movement. It's not a good conception being spoiled, but simply an inherently flawed conception. Anyway, definitely agreed with the overall spirit though.

I think I see what you mean, but i'm not too sure about the idea of "interference". Perhaps this is largely a linguistic issue rather than a practical one, but to use that word suggests that the brain already know how to make a very good quality of movement, but that other factors are spoiling it. Personally, I would not refer to interference, but rather a state where the brain has yet to learn enough to instigate the basic fundamentals of a good movement. It's not a good conception being spoiled, but simply an inherently flawed conception. Anyway, definitely agreed with the overall spirit though. I agree with you about the brain not yet learning the fundamentals of a good movement. Of course, a baby learns through kinaesthetic experimentation with movement (what Alan calls primordial learning). But I think that our previous experiences always inform that learning - which can be both very useful and also detrimental. I'm thinking of subtle, unrelated movements infecting the new movement - the classic Alexandrian example being that most individuals pull their head back and down into the neck when making any movement - it is seemingly unrelated, but interferes with the overall co-ordination of the movement. I think you are right, though - it mostly is a language issue - both Feldenkrais and Alexander coined terms to explain various concepts, and even then sometimes they are as clear as mud. I think this is due to the fact that these things always come from one individual - each of us has to learn them in our own way before they truly make sense.

I have been making some progress recently. I've had a couple of short sessions at the piano without any trouble, have experienced hyper awareness of everything once this week, and had a couple of jam sessions with my band when I was "in the zone" - aware of everyone else in the band, and able to modify my own parts on the fly rather than sticking to what I usually play. My troubles seem to stem from a compression of my head into my neck, and from a stubborn inwards pull of my shoulders towards each other. When I can inhibit these I am fine, as a side effect my hearing greatly improves, my musical conceptions are much clearer and I can sight read pretty well. About inhibition - the Alexander Technique operates around this principle, the idea of getting between a stimulus and one's habitual response and allowing something new to happen. As mentioned previously in this thread, I have been perceiving inhibition as not interfering and that has been useful. However, I have been finding the standard Alexandrian directions (let my neck be free, my head go forward and up and my back lengthen and widen) less than useful recently, because honestly I don't understand them - they're too vague. What I have been doing instead is giving myself directions for movement along the lines of: "I'm going to lift my arm pulling my head back and down". This seems to be doing the trick of keeping me present and allowing inhibition to become a feature of my life rather than an interesting theory.

I may be wrong completely, , but I don't like the second part of your command because it is negative, something that can only work as a temporary solution. I've read this topic at least twenty times (before I registered and after) and I'm wondering: 1) if the image of what you want with your movement is CLEAR ENOUGH in your head and 2) if you TRUST yourself (or your body) enough to carry out what you want without interfering. It seems to me that the secret to really solving everything you describe is not in a certain movement itself, but in the READINESS to make that movement WITHOUT INTERFERING IN ANY WAY. I hope this is clear enough because words are just... you know... words (= limited). I'm just trying to say that as soon as you have control over your "head pulling back and down", your knee or your little toe or your buttock muscles may start acting up because that's what happens when you don't practise real detachment (letting it happen). On the other hand, superfluous negative movements tend to disappear with time, especially if there is a positive gratifying result of your positive concentration on a positive movement. In piano playing, that positive gratifying result may be a very beautiful sound, for example, with one of Alan's or Andrew's magical movements. The main factor that keeps us from achieving the right state of mind is emotional involvement of the wrong kind: anxious, worried thoughts, exciting thoughts that are not related so much with what we are doing at the moment, but more with ourselves, with past or future succes and/or failure, etc. We should really leave ourselves alone in the process and let nature take over. That's basically what Rachmaninov is doing at his dacha in his garden chair in my signature. It takes a lot of courage, I agree, but it's worth trying such an approach, if necessary under the supervision of someone who knows the ropes... P.S.: One last thought: during performance, we get what we practised for, so if we practise as poor helpless students every day (conditioning), then we will eventually feel, look, and sound like poor helpless students during performance. If we, instead, practise like a maestro or like a prodigy (concentrating on the right stuff positively and leaving unnecessary, negative, distracting stuff alone), we will eventually feel, look, and sound like a maestro or like a prodigy. This is our own decision and we have to make it right now. Paul

I've read this topic at least twenty times (before I registered and after) and I'm wondering: 1) if the image of what you want with your movement is CLEAR ENOUGH in your head and 2) if you TRUST yourself (or your body) enough to carry out what you want without interfering. You are of course spot on with your line of questioning. My answer to both questions at the moment would be 'no' at the moment. Years of practising, as you say, like a poor, helpless student, with no attention paid to what I was doing took me a long way away from anything resembling 'natural'. A combination of Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method has put me much closer to naturalness, but there is still more work to be done. It's interesting that you see my inhibitory command (i.e. not to do something) as negative. I've never seen it that way, since we're all consenting to and inhibiting responses all the time (most of which we're unaware of). My reason for including the command is to teach myself that it is possible to do a particular movement without interfering. Keep in mind that I maintain awareness of my whole self when I do this, so I am not focusing on one area at the expense of another. I agree with what you say about trust and letting it happen. Before I can do that, however, I need to weaken the hold of my habits of interference and prove to myself that it is possible.

I've read this topic at least twenty times (before I registered and after) and I'm wondering: 1) if the image of what you want with your movement is CLEAR ENOUGH in your head and 2) if you TRUST yourself (or your body) enough to carry out what you want without interfering. You are of course spot on with your line of questioning. My answer to both questions at the moment would be 'no' at the moment. Years of practising, as you say, like a poor, helpless student, with no attention paid to what I was doing took me a long way away from anything resembling 'natural'. A combination of Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method has put me much closer to naturalness, but there is still more work to be done. It's interesting that you see my inhibitory command (i.e. not to do something) as negative. I've never seen it that way, since we're all consenting to and inhibiting responses all the time (most of which we're unaware of). My reason for including the command is to teach myself that it is possible to do a particular movement without interfering. Keep in mind that I maintain awareness of my whole self when I do this, so I am not focusing on one area at the expense of another. I agree with what you say about trust and letting it happen. Before I can do that, however, I need to weaken the hold of my habits of interference and prove to myself that it is possible. A few thoughts here- that I think might make sense of a seeming disagreement, that may not necessarily be at odds. Firstly, an inhibition IS negative. There's no other way to look at the term. It means- don't do x. The brain does not work well with this pattern- as it cannot be process negatives. HOWEVER- my suspicion is that Alexander Technique trains an internal POSITIVE intention. Even if it's referred to by a negative label, I assume that the teacher gets the student to "inhibit" by going through positive intentions. Although I personally don't like the label at all, I suspect that it only gets used in a bigger context that can trigger something positive- rather than the negative it seems to be. This is the only way I can personally make sense of something that does seem rather odd, as a word selection. After reading that post, I tried noticing the neck thing in various activities. However, I didn't think- don't do that. I imagined my neck extending (which is a positive) and I believe I noticed benefits as a result. I think intending the opposite is usually way more effective than trying to will something not to happen. These same issues are at the heart of the things I spoke about in the thread about my recent blog post. Internally a pianist usually notices the harm of give due to relaxation and tries not to let it happen. This is a negative- that leads to bracing. When you simply try to move in the exact opposite direction to collapse, you have a positive that can altogether eradicate it (rather than merely reduce it via huge efforts). Positive intentions are way easier than intent not to do something. Perhaps there may be dangers of cocontractions in some cases (if this were the only approach that were ever used), but I find the simplest way to avoid what you don't want is usually to intend the opposite. Attempting to generally avoid something without a positive idea for replacement can trigger all kinds of counterproductive efforts. For me this, this is at the heart of most stiffness. I don't like negatives, but I strongly doubt that Alexander Technique is truly about them (even if they use what is an altogether negative label for the process).