This audio guide is about ‘stopping’, also called ‘pausing’, ‘inhibition’, or ‘the positive no’.
Stopping is the first basic principle of AT. It is a practical skill you will learn from any AT teacher during your AT lessons.
In short, stopping helps you create a pause between a stimulus and your response to that stimulus, so that you can choose your reaction more consciously. You stop to give yourself time and space to prevent engaging in an unwanted habit, such as tensing your neck and shoulders.
At first, ‘stopping’ can be strange: Here you are in your Alexander Technique (AT) lesson expecting your teacher to tell you what you need to do differently to fix your problem, but then you hear that you don’t need to do anything at all! Instead, you’re asked to stop, which means to think differently, in order to prevent interference and let go of unwanted habits.
Unconsciously holding excess tension in your body interferes with your body’s coordination. You can compare it to trying to drive your car with the handbrake still on. The skill of stopping will help you release the handbrake from your body, so that you can move and breathe with ease and flow.
So, instead of asking yourself “What should I do about this?”, you start to ask yourself, “What can I stop doing that I don’t need to do?”, “What can I release?”, and “Where can I do less?”
Over the years, I have come to see that there are three slightly different aspects to the skill of stopping.To clarify them, let’s discuss all three, and let’s call the first one Stopping 1.
Stopping 1 is the definition I just gave you at the beginning. It means that you briefly stop before starting your next activity or in the middle of your activity. You temporarily give up your goal, decide to do nothing, release stress, become calm, and tune into a feeling of inner peace before going into action. In this way, you create a moment of space so that you can give yourself the freedom to choose how you want to perform the activity you’re about to do or how you want to continue the activity you’re already engaging in.
Imagine you’re standing at a crossroads in your brain. If you turn right, you turn into the street of your unhelpful habit. For instance, suppose you habitually crane your neck forward when working at your computer. If you start to work immediately like you always do, you will automatically enter the highway of this unhelpful habit. But by stopping a moment before starting, you can decide to rewire your brain and turn left, into the street of your new, more conscious healthier habit.
You have a chance to let go of excess tension in your neck, and prevent working with your neck jutted forward. Obviously you can also decide to briefly stop working in the middle of your computer work, reset yourself, start over and continue with a clean slate.
Basically, briefly pausing before you do something gives you freedom of choice, because when you pause, you allow yourself time to become more aware of yourself. This way, you will not only have an opportunity to choose how you want do something but you also give yourself a chance to think about how to respond to your own thoughts and emotions or tune in to your needs before responding to a request from someone. In this way, stopping can help you prevent doing something you actually don’t want to do and can help you avoid responding too quickly and habitually.
Next, let’s talk about Stopping 2. This is about choosing your focus, choosing the kind of attention that is most appropriate for your activity. Maybe you notice you’re completely zoomed into your computer screen? During the stopping phase, you can decide to expand your attention and choose/opt for all-inclusive awareness. All inclusive awareness means that your attention is wide and includes you, your activity ánd the space around you. It feels wonderfully effortless and helps with posture, movement and releasing stress.
Next, let’s continue with Stopping 3. This means that you stay soft, easy and connected during your activity. In the Alexander Technique we call this non-doing.
Let’s come back to the example of the computer. With the skill of stopping 1 you stop so that you prevent unwanted habits before starting to work, or you stop a moment in the middle of your work.
With stopping 2 you expand your focus and avoid being aware of just the computer screen and nothing else the.
And finally with the help of stopping 3, you’re able to release any tension that may have returned while working at your computer so that you keep a gentle sense of balance, softness, and expansion.
Let me give you another example to further clarify the three aspects/qualities of stopping: imagine you’re about to drive a car.
Stopping 1 helps you to pause before you drive away, so that you can choose to start your journey without unnecessary interference like tensing your eyes, neck and shoulders.
Next, “Stopping 2” will help you expand your focus and tune into all-inclusive awareness. This will help you be aware of your body while also being aware of the space around you, allowing you to safely drive away.
Once you’re driving, the skill of “Stopping 3” will help you keep releasing any tension that may have returned in order to keep yourself flexible, soft, and well-coordinated while driving, giving you a wonderful sense of being while you are doing.
F.M. Alexander, the founder of the Alexander Technique, called stopping ‘inhibition’. Inhibition is a term that’s also used in neurology: it simply refers to neurons that are not firing.
Suppose you’re lifting your arm: many neurons will get the message to fire, passing on the appropriate electric signals from the brain andthus activating certain muscles. In neurology, this is called excitation.
But at the same time, other neurons will get the message not to fire so that these muscles will not be interfering; this is called inhibition.
So, normal healthy movement simultaneously requires neurons to fire, while others don’t. This creates an essential balance in your nervous system because if all neurons in your body were to fire at the same time, you wouldn’t be able to lift your arm normally and Instead you would lie on the ground in a spasm.
An essential part of the skill of stopping is temporarily giving up your goal. Think of a cat waiting until the right moment before pouncing on its prey.Or a football player waiting a split second before kicking the ball into the top right corner of the goal. Or think of an athlete or musician preparing for their big moment.
In an Alexander Technique lesson, you practice stopping and giving up your goal in various daily life activities.
For example, before sitting down, you stop a moment and give up the goal of sitting down.
Before walking away, you stop, and briefly give up your goal of walking.
In this way, you shift from a result-oriented attitude to a process-oriented attitude. The effect is that you’ll be less focused on getting things right and doing your best. It sounds counterintuitive, but trying too hard usually leads to working too hard and creating too much muscular effort. Instead, you return to a state of being 100% calm and neutral, enabling you to start with a clean slate and prevent activating the usual habitual neurological pathways in your brain.
Once you get the hang of it, you start to practice stopping with more difficult stimuli/triggers like your computer, your phone, your gym exercises, or playing a musical instrument. You start to practise stopping on your own in your daily life. You will give yourself lots of micro-holidays every day so that you’ll start doing your daily life activities with greater calm and ease as well as improved coordination.
The great thing about practicing stopping is that it feels so good. It gives you a wonderful feeling of peacefulness, timelessness, and space.
A feeling of, “I don’t need to go anywhere; I am in exactly the right place and time, in this present moment.”
