A Teaching Embodied in a Relationship

The Primacy of a Right Brain to Right Teacher / Student Relationship in the Successful Practice of the  Alexander Technique.

This presentation is based on the research of two world-recognised neuroscientists, psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist¹ and neuropsychologist Alan Schore. Their research provides solid evidence in understanding the different functions of the right and left hemisphere of the brain.  The right hemisphere being more wholistic and emotionally attuned to others, the left hemisphere, more analytical and goal orientated.  For a human being to have optimal functioning we need both. 

However, both McGilchrist and Schore emphasise the primacy of the right hemisphere in human relationships.  The title of one of Schore’s books, Right Brain to Right Brain Psychotherapy, supporting the premise that this is the essential mode that is operating in successful psychotherapy.  As many experienced psychotherapists emphasize, it is the caring quality and emotional attunement of the therapeutic relationship which heals.

This research has considerable relevance to the successful teaching of the Alexander Technique. In its original form, as developed by FM Alexander, lessons are a hands-on, one on one, person to person relationship, where cultivating trust is an essential aspect of the process when taking a pupil/student out of their habitual (harmful) manner of use and into new, previously unknown experiences and a way of being.

However, there is more to psychotherapy, and more to the Alexander Technique than just providing empathy.  It is also a matter of providing a safe, supportive (learning) holding environment, or containment, as it is called in psychotherapy, so that the client/student does not just fall apart.

Like psychotherapy, teaching the Alexander Technique requires well developed skills of emotional attunement to read the reciprocal feedback from student -to- teacher- to student during lessons, to build this trust. Historically, we read that Alexander offered such trust and ‘containment’ in teaching individual lessons. 

In short, Alexander Technique is not just a “technique” that relies on acquiring knowledge alone, it is a teaching embodied in a learning relationship. The Alexander teacher offers experiential (hands-on) work to demonstrate how-to apply FM Alexander’s founding principles in daily life. Principles that make way for on-going psychophysical, emotional and behavioural change for health and well-Being.

This requires leadership on the part of the teacher as well as empathy. These twin qualities can be aptly described in the words of Zen Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax,  

“A strong back and a soft front”                                                           

This statement aptly describes the new experience that a successful (course) of Alexander lessons bring about in a pupil/student which, can only come about if the teacher also has a strong back and soft front.

The theory of this relational approach can be discussed with Geoff in Q&A’s.

References.

1. Iain McGilchrist, Consultant Psychiatrist. The Master and his Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Published in 2009, UK and, The Matter With Things – Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World Published in 2024, U.K.