A CRUCIAL DISTINCTION:
MANNER AND CONDITIONS OF USE

Joe Armstrong
June 2001
Boston

Published in AmSAT News, Summer 2003

A MISSING LINK

In recent writing on voluntary self-regulation and unity in the Alexander profession, much of the discussion about what constitutes adequate teaching and teacher training seems to be missing a key factor that Alexander and most of the teachers he trained considered an integral part of both activities. I'm referring to the distinction traditionally made between the expressions "manner of use" and "conditions of use."

Manner of use pertains, of course, to how we do things - respond, behave, direct our neck-head-torso-limb relationship, etc. - whether we do them consciously or subconsciously. Conditions of use pertains mainly to the quality of muscle tonus (anywhere from extreme tightness to extreme flaccidity) that exists in us regardless of how good or how poor our manner of use might be at any given moment, and regardless of whether the qualities of tonus are long-standing or more recently built up. In either case, conditions of use usually can't be immediately altered at will, as most aspects of manner of use can, through inhibiting and directing.

Complete Alexander teaching and teacher training attempts to deal with both manner and conditions of use, perhaps emphasizing one more than the other at times, but never one to the exclusion of the other - because they are so closely interrelated and interdependent. For instance, skilled traditional "chair work" (like "application work") seems to focus mainly on students' manner of use, but their conditions can be greatly influenced if the chair work is prolonged for more than a few moments. Likewise, traditional "table work" seems to focus on improving students' conditions, but their manner of use can be significantly addressed then too if their attention to inhibiting and directing is sufficiently engaged - particularly with regard to speaking and listening during conversation.

The absence of the concepts of manner and conditions of use in recent writing on self-regulation and unity seems to reflect the growing lack of understanding of them that's been especially noticeable in the U.S. among newer teachers, trainees, and students I've met who've trained and studied here. Many of them speak as if the Alexander Technique is only about teaching an improved manner of use, which they usually signify just by the single word "use." When I bring up conditions of use, most of them say they've never heard the expression and don't have any idea of what it might mean. But both terms were commonplace during my own training (1969-1972) and continued to be a staple in most discussion of the Technique I've had not only with first-generation teachers I've known well, such as Walter and Dilys Carrington, Peggy Williams, Elizabeth Walker, Frank Pierce Jones, and Kitty Wielopolska, and also with most second generation colleagues from my training years and before.

BACKGROUND IN ALEXANDER LITERATURE

Alexander himself, as with other terms he used, seems to be in the process of clarifying the meanings of these two expressions over the course of his writings. For example, he appears to employ the terms "use" and "conditions of use" almost interchangeably in the following segment from Chapter I of The Use of the Self (1985 Gollancz edition, p. 39):

In the work that followed I came to see that to get a direction of my use which would ensure this satisfactory reaction, I must cease to rely upon the feeling associated with my instinctive direction, and in its place employing reasoning processes, in order

(1) to analyse the conditions of use present;

(2) to select (reason out) the means whereby a more satisfactory use could be brought about;

(3) to project consciously the directions required for putting these means into effect. (Underlines added.)

He doesn't bring in the expression "manner of use" until Chapter III, "The Golfer Who Cannot Keep his Eyes on the Ball" (p. 57):

Of course, the chapters on golf and stuttering are primarily concerned (as are the first two chapters) with manner of use because Alexander is mainly focusing on how the particular actions are performed in each case.

Even so, by page 80 of Chapter IV, "The Stutterer," he is using the two expressions side by side in distinction from each other:

Change the manner of use and you change the conditions throughout the organism; the old reaction associated with the old manner of use and the old conditions cannot therefore take place, for the means are no longer there. (Underlines added.)

But by 1941, in Chapter II of The Universal Constant in Living, "The Constant Influence of Manner of Use in Relation to Diagnosis" (2000 Mouritz edition, pp. 16-22), he makes the differentiation between the terms clearest when he describes the result of a course of lessons he gave to "Mr. B," an osteo-arthritic patient of Dr. Caldwell of Westmorland:

Such a change could not have been brought about without the inhibition of his habitual manner of use, for this was associated with misdirection and the high degree of muscle tension throughout the organism, and was indirectly responsible for much of the overaction of the muscle groups resulting in the spasm. The change made in his use through the inhibition of this misdirection brought about many changes in conditions, including a lowering of the standard of muscle tension throughout the organism generally, and, with it, a reduction of the undue tension involved in the spasm. (Underlines added.)

What Alexander was doing here with his hands while working on this student was definitely more than just helping him to inhibit the misdirection of his manner of use and instructing him in how to maintain an improved direction of his neck-head-torso-limb relationship "in reaction to the stimulus of living" (UCL, p. XXVII). He was clearly, at the same time, using his hands to alter Mr. B's conditions of use - "a lowering of the standard of muscle tension throughout the organism generally" - by gradually redistributing the more or less chronic tightnesses involved in both the specific spasm and in Mr. B's overall musculature. If the film of Alexander working on people is an example of what he did with most of his students and trainees - and I take it that it is - it's easy to see that he's using his hands constantly to build up or add to the reorganization of the overall conditions of both people he is shown working on. As I recall, he isn't speaking to them at all; but presumably, by then, those particular people (one of whom is Margaret Goldie, a long-time teacher) had enough verbal instruction in inhibiting and in directing their manner of use not to need much more than work on their conditions of use.

I think the best example of change in a person's conditions of use to be found in the Alexander literature is Lulie Westfeldt's dramatic description of what happened to her:

The high point in the training course for me was the change in my own individual condition . . . . I remember a cold spring morning in my rooms on Cromwell Road. My breakfast tray had just come up, and I was in my dressing gown and bedroom slippers, walking across the room to the table where the tray had been placed. Suddenly I felt a very strange sensation, not pleasant or unpleasant, but overwhelmingly strange. For a moment I did not know what had happened. Then I realized that my right heel was touching the floor. It was no longer up in the air but flat on the floor like the left one. It had not touched the floor for upwards of twenty years; shortly after the operation [at age 13] that had immobilized the right ankle, my right heel had drawn up and been unable to touch the floor. The sensation became more and more delightful. Almost at once, my balance became much more secure. (F. Matthias Alexander: The Man and His Work, 1998 Mouritz edition, pp. 86- 87.)

Her drawn-up heel was not something that she'd merely been subconsciously doing as part of her habitual manner of use which she then simply realized she could stop at that particular instant. It was clearly a long-established condition of chronic tightness over which she had no direct control - resulting, as she said, from surgery on her ankle in her youth. And the release of it was obviously the outcome of the gradual build-up of the year's nearly daily work from Alexander's skilled hands in conjunction with her own conscious work on her manner of use in everyday life.

TRADITIONAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF CONDITIONS OF USE

When I was training, the expression "conditions of use" (usually shortened to "conditions") was used by our teachers mainly for discussing a trainee's particular level of development - though not usually in his or her presence, presumably because the trainee might be tempted to try to change the conditions directly by endgaining. You might hear a teacher say, "Oh, she has very poor conditions; but she does understand how to inhibit and direct fairly well." Or the converse was also heard: "His conditions have improved, even though he still can't seem to inhibit very well." But it was generally conceded by all the teachers there that good conditions of use were both a major goal and a necessity for everyone training, no matter how "normal" they seemed on entering the course. As training progressed, it became ever clearer that without good conditions of use, an improved manner of use alone wouldn't be sufficient for managing a full teaching load - that is, the kind of teaching that includes working toward improving both a student's manner of use and his or her conditions of use with the view of achieving an "integrated (normal) working of the postural mechanisms," which Alexander described as a main purpose of employing inhibition and a conscious direction of the primary control (UCL, pp. 107-110).

Of course, a main feature of conditions of use - maybe even more so than with the tensions and collapsings we make in our habitual manner of use - is that we don't usually feel our poor conditions of use in the early stages of learning and training in the Technique because of our faulty sensory appreciation. Many of our tightnesses and flaccidities have often existed in us for so long that, if perceived at all, they "feel right and natural," to use Alexander's oft-repeated phrase. Sometimes they can also harbor elements of strong emotion and attitude; and we usually don't even begin to understand how deeply-seated these conditions have been until they actually begin to change. Until then, it's easy to have the idea that no particular improvement needs to happen other than in our manner of use. Accordingly, it's unlikely that, as teachers, we can assess what changes in conditions need to happen in our students or understand how to direct them with our hands toward those changes unless we've experienced enough improvement in our own conditions of use to know what we're working for in the students. Being able to introduce people to the concepts of the Technique is one thing; but knowing what is required for taking them to an "integrated (normal) working of the postural mechanisms" is quite another. It's worth quoting here what Alexander writes about "conditions" in Chapter V of The Use of the Self ("Diagnosis and Medical Training," p. 82):

When [man's] sensory appreciation is untrustworthy, it is possible for him to become so familiar with seriously harmful conditions of misuse of himself that these malconditions will feel right and comfortable.

My teaching experience has shewn me that the worse these conditions are in a pupil and the longer they have been in existence, the more familiar and right they feel to him and the harder it is to teach him how to overcome them, no matter how much he may wish to do so. In other words, his ability to learn a new and more satisfactory use of himself is, as a rule, in inverse ratio to the degree of misuse present in his organism and the duration of these harmful conditions.

This point must be understood and taken into practical consideration by anyone forming a plan of procedure for improving the use and functioning of the mechanisms throughout the organism as a means of eradicating defects, peculiarities and bad habits. (Underlines added.)

SHORT-TERM CONDITIONS OF USE

Then there is also the aspect of conditions of use you might call "short-term tightnesses," which can result from the more recent stress of demanding activity, injury, or illness. For instance, I have students who are string players in the Boston Symphony Orchestra who have had Alexander lessons for many years. They've worked long and hard at applying the principles of the Technique to improving their manner of use, particularly while performing, and have succeed in doing so very well; but the very heavy demand of their concert schedule can sometimes cause tightnesses to build up that they can't always quickly reorganize back into lengthening and widening. And although they've also learned how to work on themselves in order to do this reorganizing themselves, they still find that having work from me - I don't really consider it giving them "lessons" anymore - often helps change their conditions so that they can more quickly get back on track with their manner of use if they're very busy and have an important engagement coming up that they need to be in top form for.

Another example showing the effect of the Technique on short-term conditions of use is a woman with a diagnosis of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis with whom I worked over quite a few years - including when she was herself doing Alexander teacher training, and for some time after that. The most striking thing about her early lessons was the condition of weakness and limpness I would find in her musculature during the times she valiantly came to a lesson in the midst of a flare-up of the illness. Her walking was slow and heavy then, her balance uncertain, and her usual bright demeaner considerably dampened. But after an hour of work - predominantly table work - a lively tonus would return to her supportive musculature, and by the time she left, it was as if she was fully functioning again. Eventually her symptoms were reduced so much that her doctors began to think that maybe she hadn't had MS after all; and they dismissed her attempts to explain that she had been studying the Technique so intensively over the years - with, I should add, a diligence and determination that can only be marveled at.

A third example of changing short-term conditions is that of a musician who had taken a regular course of lessons me and was especially successful in applying the principles of the Technique to her instrument. A few years after she had stopped having lessons, she called me one day to say she had just been dismissed by her doctor after a long recovery from a serious hit-and-run car accident as a pedestrian, in which several ribs and both shoulder blades had been broken. On being released by her doctor, she felt nowhere near being able to resume playing her instrument comfortably again, and, instead of the normally prescribed physical therapy, she persuaded him to allow her to take Alexander lessons instead to see if they would better help her get back on track for an important recital she had coming up. When she arrived for her lesson, she was extremely rigid in nearly every joint, and it was very hard for her to move with ease in any direction. But in just that one lesson, we were able to reorganize many of those tightnesses into enough lengthening and widening for her to be in a near-normal state again by the time she left. And I feel sure that this striking change in her conditions happened so quickly because she had already learned how to inhibit and direct well enough to collaborate with the reorganizing that I was working on with my hands. I think we were both amazed by the results, particularly considering how bad her conditions were when she arrived that day.

It's also important to say that, in the last two examples, I don't believe that I could have helped these students improve so quickly and effectively if I had only been using my hands to instruct them in improving their manner of use. I feel that my training to address both manner and conditions of use was the definitely the determining factor in each case.

SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

In teaching, I often illustrate for students the difference between manner of use and conditions of use by recounting to them two major experiences of my own. One happened to me after I'd had lessons for two summers, and the other came midway through my teacher training. The first, I've described in detail in my article "Reconsidering 'Forward and Up'" (Statnews, January, 2001), where I tell about discovering during U.S. Army Basic Training how to maintain my primary directions while having to do the "low-crawl," which is a way of propelling yourself along the ground on your stomach with your elbows and your knees. I found low-crawling impossibly difficult and exhausting at first, but I soon discovered that if I practiced it very slowly I could let my neck-head-torso-limb integration govern my manner of use in the whole action, instead of making the excessive tensions in my neck and torso that I automatically made when we were ordered to do it very fast. Eventually I could low-crawl fast enough this way to pass the final P.T. test easily - much to my great amazement, since I'd never been very good at activities that require a lot of athletic strength in arms and legs as the low crawl seemed to at first. But it was definitely an issue of how I was using myself from moment to moment: my manner of use.

My experience of a change in my conditions of use was even more astonishing to me, because it came so unexpectedly, and because it ultimately proved to be connected to a very strong irrational fear of certain kinds of birds - especially chickens, pigeons, and birds of prey - that I'd had since adolescence. At the time of my training, however, the phobia didn't particularly seem to be standing in my way; so instead of trying to address it through psychoanalysis or psychiatry, I just decided to leave it be.

But then, one day during training class, I was standing quietly, directing, without anyone working on me, and I suddenly felt a deep release in my chest behind my breastbone - much as Lulie Westfeldt did when she felt her heel suddenly touch the floor after so many years of its being chronically raised up. But this tightness in my chest hadn't been something that I had any feeling of at all - because, as I later discovered, it been lodged there for at least fifteen years.

Of course, with this release of tightness in my chest came a greater freedom in my breathing and a subtle sense of improved well-being; but I didn't experience any emotional catharsis along with it as others sometimes did with such unexpected changes. Meanwhile, over the next few days, I was able to go on incorporating this greater chest freedom into the general lengthening and widening of my overall manner of use, both in class and on my own at home, and it seemed like the change was well on its way to becoming permanent.

That weekend, however, I decided to go to a local park to sit in the sun and read. And while I was sitting there, two pigeons suddenly flew down under my bench to peck at some crumbs scattered near my feet. Normally I'd have immediately become uncomfortable and gotten up to find another place to sit; but this time I didn't panic at all. In fact, I found I could stay there watching the birds and even begin to appreciate their movements and markings. After a while, though, I began to notice I was subtly starting to tense my chest in a way that was obviously a precursor to the old tightness that had been so chronically lodged under my breastbone. Luckily, I caught the tensing response soon enough to inhibit and redirect it back into the improved lengthening and widening that I'd been able to incorporate into my general manner of use over the previous days, and I could go on sitting there watching the birds without much bother.

From that day on, the phobia's power over me grew less and less; and I soon found out that the chest tightness hadn't harbored just that particular fear of birds, but also many other fears, surely setting me up all the more for the difficult condition Alexander called "unduly excited fear reflexes." For instance, I noticed that I would start to make the same contraction pattern in my chest when I was approaching a stranger alone at night on a dark street, or when I was walking out on stage to play a concert that I was nervous about. (Much later, I did uncover what would be called the "psychological" source of the specific bird phobia, but I seriously doubt that this knowledge alone could have brought the release in my chest or yielded as much improvement in my ability to manage the larger, more general complex of fear responses that the tightness was at the root of.)

TEACHING AND TRAINING

As the Alexander Technique becomes more widespread and as attempts to teach it in groups become common in certain quarters, both for introductory demonstrations and for extended instruction, we seem to get further and further away from appreciating the full potential of the Technique to alter a person's conditions of use. And this is mainly because there simply is not enough time in such group work, even for a very skilled teacher, to deal with more than instruction in an improved manner of use. Working extensively enough on a person's conditions of use to bring about the kind of deep and lasting changes Alexander describes in his books takes close individual attention over an extended period of time, not just an intermittent putting-on of hands for a few minutes over an hour or two of instruction in manner of use. This duration-of-contact factor is also, of course, one of the main reasons for giving individual lessons, as well as a primary reason for having a fairly small teacher to trainee ratio in a training course. Even a five-to-one ratio can be stretching it, depending on the experience and skill of the teacher(s).

This is not necessarily to say that there's anything wrong with primarily teaching people an improved manner of use - particularly if the students are informed that this is only what is being offered. For instance, cellist and Alexander teacher Vivien Mackie, who specializes in group-work with musicians, teaches manner of use beautifully in her classes; but she also makes it clear to those who attend that they should have extensive private work on both their conditions and manner of use in order to experience the full benefit of the Technique and to best incorporate the insights about manner of use that she communicates to them so powerfully while they're performing. (I've assisted Vivien a number of times in these classes, working in the background on the conditions of use of the participants - mainly through traditional chair work, with very little chance for verbal interaction - as they watch her address the manner of use of the person performing; and that has proved quite effective for many, especially those who have already had regular private lessons.)

THE AMERICAN DILEMMA

With these distinctions in mind, it's clear that several first-generation American teachers chose to focus almost exclusively on manner of use for purposes of group teaching or for the sake of giving a more educational impression of the Technique to academia. If they had only been clearer with their students that they were doing so, it might be easier for us in the U.S. today to examine teaching and training differences more objectively so that we could present a concise national standard to the public and authorities. What was seen by many as teaching innovation was really only a shift away from the total Technique to a part (or parts) of it.

This wrong assumption about what these senior teachers were doing has often falsely pitted "advancement" against "convention," so that the real crux of the differences in approach has been missed by many, and the difference is frequently explained away merely as a matter of "individual styles." But the understanding of the distinction between conditions of use and manner of use, and the skill for bringing these two aspects toward an integrated (normal) working of the postural mechanisms in students, are actually the main factors that distinguish the fully trained teacher from the partially trained, the experienced from the inexperienced, and particularly the inexperienced from the fake - whether they're doing traditional table and chair work or application work.

One misleading feature of the power of the Technique is that sometimes the changes in manner of use experienced by students in just a few lessons or classes can be so astonishing that it's very easy for them to get the impression that there's not much more to gain from studying it than improvement in manner of use. And even a very lengthy exposure to the Technique might not reveal its full potential - especially if people have come to it with a limited goal in mind, like improving the quality of their movement and poise as a dancer or actor. For example, before I did my teacher training I had lessons for four years (nearly daily for two summers with Joan Murray, and additional lessons with Joan, Walter Carrington, Frank Jones, and Rika Cohen), and these first lessons had such a profound effect on my life and on my work as a musician that I even thought I might be able to complete the training in less time than others. But those early changes were actually very minor in comparison to the ones brought about in both my manner and conditions of use by the daily, three-hour, individual work in class over the full three years of training. I needed every moment of work in class I could get for those deeper changes to happen; and I don't believe they could have occurred if I had been holding down a regular job and/or had only been training on weekends. They required the steady, unimpeded, nearly daily continuity. (That fact was further validated for me in working with my own trainees during the ten years I ran a training course.)

IMPLICATIONS FOR UNITY AND SELF-REGULATION

I think the lack of understanding that conditions of use are a central element in the teaching of the Technique is also a big reason why some people feel that training can be effectively done in less than the standard, full-time, three-year period, or that it can be done on a series of intensive weekends. If an improved manner of use were all there was to teach and learn, maybe a shorter or a weekend training could be enough. It would, of course, still be much better for people to do the full training so that even if they chose to confine themselves to teaching manner of use they could be as effective at it as possible. (This view is reinforced in the recently published collection of some of the first-generation teachers' views, Taking Time: Six Interviews with First Generation Teachers of the Alexander Technique on Alexander Teacher Training, Novis, Aarhus, Denmark, 2000.)

To resolve the dilemma that we - in many ways unwittingly - seem to be in because of these oversights and misunderstandings, maybe we should have different classifications of Alexander training, just as there are different classifications in the broad spectrum of medical training: specialists, general practitioners, nurse practitioners, regular nurses, paramedics, nurses' aides, etc. Nurses' aides do their part in helping people toward recovery and good health and sometimes may even save people's lives, as surgeons, general practitioners, and nurses, each in their own way, also may; but not many patients would allow a nurses' aide to perform, say, brain surgery, on them.

Likewise, there are many thoughtful and well-meaning people at all levels of Alexander experience who can and do successfully communicate various aspects of the Technique to others. But no matter how effectively a particular person might be able to convey a limited orientation to others, surely the public deserves a clear distinction to be made similarly in our field between such partial versions and the work being offered by those teachers who have the skill to impart the complete Technique as Alexander presented it in his writings and as it has been perpetuated by the majority of teachers he trained. This categorizing of teaching would undoubtedly be hard to develop and carry out, and it could also ultimately be seen by some as a form of discrimination. However, in the long run, it might be the only honest and effective path toward professional unity and voluntary self-regulation here in the U.S., where such diverse orientations to teaching and training have been established - in contrast to most other countries, where the original training standards, laid down in the 1930's by Alexander himself when he formalized the profession, have generally been the norm. I hope these observations and comments will be helpful to everyone concerned with the future of the Technique in America.