In The Moment

Issue 70, Summer 2023/2024
Regular Newsletter of the Australian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique AUSTAT Inc.

Click on article name to jump to article:

ARTICLES

• From the Editor
• From the Chair
• AUSTAT Conference 2024 Report
• Remembering Vivien Mackie (1931-2023)
• Vivien Mackie's passing
• Alexander Technique on the Air Waves and Book Shelves
• Book Review: Irene Tasker: Her Life and Work with the Alexander Technique
• Book Review: We Are Electric
• The Alexanders – From Wiltshire to Wynyard Part 5

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• John Nicholls Australian Visit 2024
• Teaching the Hypermobile Student

AUSTAT Conference 2024 Report

By Michael Shellshear

I was presenting at the Linen Room: a place where nuns and stolen generations women were put to work for no pay. I hoped I could transcend that vibe. The room was noisy and chaotic; a difficult space to control.

A moment or two before presenting I was asked to work with a wonderful woman who had travelled from Queensland after reading The Use of the Self. Never had a lesson. What an amazing thing to do. Read the book and travel to find out what this Alexander Technique is all about! Yarmila walked in the footsteps of so many people who had read FM Alexander’s works and just had to satisfy their curiosity. They had to discover the potential of his words. Marj Barstow read MSI and travelled to England to learn with FM. That story had been part of my Alexander folklore, and here about 90 years later was the folklore playing out again. I remembered a guy who came to see me in Newcastle twenty-five or thirty years ago. He had read The Use of the Self over and over for many years. I don’t mean to be harsh but his interpretation of Alexander’s work gave credence to the saying that you can’t learn Alexander Technique from a book.

Back to Melbourne. Previously, my task was going to be to provide an activity for those few who weren’t interested in marketing the Technique. My plan was to present on giving a first lesson; now I was going to be given the opportunity to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. To give someone a first lesson under these circumstances is quite a responsibility. To do so in front of an audience in a noisy room is an additional challenge.

After many years of teaching Alexander Technique, there are many strategies, activities and approaches that I have at hand to offer to a student. Perhaps my most important learning over my years of teaching is to not try for everything in a lesson. I’ve learned that each lesson is a step on the journey. I will aim for one or two steps, and no more. I think that I was able to demonstrate some knowledge and skill to those watching.

I have been very lucky to have had some great teachers in my life. I learned many years ago from my mentor, William Brenner, that the quality of your communication is the response that it evokes. My student’s response was genuine and congruent. It took a while but she discovered a little something about her movement and about a gentle request that she could make for a dash of improvement.

The response from my audience was engaged and interested. I think that there was some learning available for them. There were some good questions that I was happy to consider and on which I could provide a perspective. Personally, I learnt that my best presentations are ones where I allow myself to teach from my process, rather than trying to be something. I truly think that the most valuable offering I have is my process; that I struggle every day to bring greater clarity to Alexander’s discoveries within my self. That there isn’t a place where I can’t improve or discover something by applying constructive consciousness.

The rest of my conference experience was great respect and quiet gratitude to be amongst so many of my colleagues, and to witness the ongoing evolution of their own understanding and implementation of Alexander’s discoveries.

If you haven’t ever been to an AUSTAT conference, there are many benefits. It’s instructive to see how others teach. You can learn a lot. It’s challenging but often rewarding to participate in a class; to give over for a few moments to a colleague, a mentor, a teacher, and to be taken on a learning journey through their sensorium and through their interpretation of the work. The greatest benefit from my point of view is to work to understand our professional community; to consider the challenges that we all face and to plan for solutions, new ideas and new directions for presenting the Alexander work that has so impressed us.

Sharing a meal, a glass of wine and our stories also presents a unique opportunity to cement friendships with people who share our Alexander vision.

Remembering Vivien Mackie (1931-2023)

By Annie Robinson

Vivien Mackie died on Wednesday, 1^st November, at the age of 92, in Glasgow where she had been living for a number of years.

Vivien was a brilliant cellist and a courageous and innovative pioneer of the application of the Alexander Technique to teaching and playing music. She documented her own journey of discovery, first with her three years of lessons with the great cellist and educator Pablo Casals when she was a young cellist, and later through her experience of the Alexander Technique and the similarities she saw in what she had learned with Casals, in her book Just Play Naturally. Vivien often said that through the lessons she had with Casals, her brain was completely rewired. Her experience of three years of lessons with Casals, when most cellists were lucky to have one or two lessons, was something that was ever-present for her. For example, Vivien spoke of the brain that we have at the tip of every finger, each with its direct line back to the main brain. She taught and understood music as a fundamentally organising force, in the way that “the cat is organised by the mouse”. What is required is attention, readiness, poise — qualities that we learn and cultivate through the Alexander Technique.

The first time I met Vivien, in 1988, I was a young singer, struggling with many aspects of my voice after years of vocal training had left me confused, tense, and “end-gaining”. In a workshop setting, Vivien was able to show me, with her wonderful hands, how much work I was making for myself in the act of singing, and how I could do less, with great and immediate effect. I didn’t know anything about the Alexander Technique at the time, but was aware that I had encountered something new, profound and life-changing in Vivien’s work. I knew I had to pursue the Alexander Technique and become a teacher, despite being a penniless music student at the time.

I joined the Trinity College Alexander School in Melbourne (1990-1992). This course was specifically for trained musicians. Our training was a rich, challenging time for me and my fellow students, giving us all the chance to observe and experience huge changes in our playing and our understanding of how to inhibit and direct in the face of a big stimulus - the complex skill of making music. Of course, we worked with the traditional Alexander teacher training skills every day: chair work, table work, studying Alexander's writing, reading aloud, studying anatomy - and we also worked with music every day. This created in me a curiosity abut and a love of teaching - teaching Alexander Technique and teaching singing, and the joy of combining the two - which has endured for more than thirty years. 

Vivien decided to run an Alexander training course for musicians because of everything she had learned with Casals, and later with Walter Carrington, and all the work she had done after her training, working with her own playing and with many other musicians to apply the work. Vivien didn’t believe that the best way to learn and apply the Alexander Technique was to improve your conditions of use in isolation (i.e. on a training course, having given up your instrument) and then to return to a high level of skilled activity such as playing an instrument or singing and automatically be able to take your improved conditions into that act. She knew that you could use the stimulus of playing your instrument (or singing) positively, but the help of the skilled hands of the Alexander teacher, and their words, were vitally important.

Vivien’s training course and her methods were questioned, criticised and sometimes condemned, and deliberate attempts were made to derail the Trinity College course. She was accused of not teaching hands-on work, which could not be further from the truth. These attacks caused Vivien (and all of the graduates of Trinity Alexander School) a lot of heartache and some anger. The effects of the lies told about the training school—particularly the one that we had no hands-on training—followed me and my husband across Australia, where, when we arrived in Perth, we were ostracized because we were not considered “proper” teachers. I wish it could have been otherwise. Yes, Vivien’s passion for the Alexander Technique, for helping people to become the best musicians they could be, her total commitment to excellence in playing and teaching, could make her seem brusque, even harsh sometimes. To me, all that she did and said was done with love and uncompromising integrity.  Having Vivien as my director and mentor was to have received the gift of truly great teaching.

In her later life Vivien was devastated by the loss of her hearing, which ultimately meant she had to stop playing her cello. She took great joy in her garden, sending me photos of her camellias and roses, and continued to teach until only a few months ago. Vivien wrote me an email last year describing a lesson she had just given a young cellist in Glasgow, and how the lesson had made her feel alive and vital, still able to communicate and enjoy the work. How the Alexander technique continued to be a powerful and beneficial organising force in her life as well as in her students.

Vivien travelled widely, visiting us a number of times in Perth, running music workshops and teaching Alexander Technique to dedicated pupils. We also visited her in London and later in Scotland.

I had an email from Vivien in the week before she died, sounding cheerful, looking forward to getting a new TV and going out for coffee with friends. She had been living on her own in her flat in Glasgow since the departure of her live-in carer Alessandra who had been obliged to return to Italy because of the COVID lockdowns. Life was becoming difficult, but with the help of neighbors and friends she was managing the day-to-day challenges of aging.

Her friend and colleague Barbara Harrington wrote to me after Vivien died saying: “Vivien died on Wednesday quite suddenly in hospital. I was with her the day before, and she said she was ready to go. She was tired and looking for peace. She was so gracious about it all – I hope I can be so gracious when my turn comes.”

Vivien played a huge role in my life, and her work continues in my teaching.  I feel I still have so much to talk with her about — she was endlessly curious, excited by life, always ready to explore and reflect. She was delighted by simple things. It will take me some time to come to terms with the loss of her friendship and mentorship, as I celebrate meeting and knowing her these last thirty-five years.

Annie Robinson, Perth Western Australia, December 2023

Vivien Mackie’s passing

Jane Refshauge

I was very saddened to hear the news of Vivien Mackie’s passing. I first met Vivien in 1985, when I was invited by Erika Whittaker to an afternoon tea for Alexander Technique teachers in Melbourne to meet Vivien. During the conversation I mentioned that I was interested in training as an Alexander Technique teacher but I wasn’t sure what school I’d choose. I had heard of the school proposed for Melbourne, to be co-directed by John and Carolyn Nicholls, I’d also made enquiries with AmSAT in New York City, where I’d been living on and off for 6 years, and where I’d been “the body” for student teacher trainee Eva Karczag during her final year of student clinic. I mentioned to Vivien that I was thinking of starting here in Australia, but if I didn’t like it I’d transfer to AmSAT. Vivien was horrified at this plan and made it clear to me that Alexander Technique training schools relied on a student retention in order to be viable. 

As it turned out, once I’d started my training at MATTS in Melbourne I was so satisfied that I stayed and completed my training in 1989. Vivien invited me to teach on her Trinity College AT Training school in 1991, and we continued a professional and then personal relationship since that time. Vivien was fascinated how I worked with her trainees with legs. As I’d started ballet at a very early age (as a prescription for rotated ankles), I was aware how it is possible not only to pull one’s head back and down but to pull one’s head down from one’s legs. She called me “the leg person” from then on.  I was fascinated with how Vivien assessed a student’s progress through breath. She had a seemingly magical way of perceiving a trainee student’s use and direction through listening to their breathing. As a ballet dancer who’d been taught to “tuck your diaphragm back and up” since early childhood, this was not a capacity I’d developed.

Vivien returned to the UK once the Trinity College training school had finished. She invited me to stay at her apartment in Earl’s Court in London numerous times when I attended Walter Carrington’s Teacher Refresher Course in Holland Park. She was a welcoming and generous host, and her ground floor apartment had a beautiful garden;a rare commodity in London.

Vivien was a remarkable correspondent and often sent Christmas cards and written notes to let me know her itinerary and dates of arrival and departure. Whenever she visited Melbourne to teach workshops at David Moore’s School of FM Alexander Studies (SOFMAS) she would call me and we’d arrange to have lunch or dinner. I’d drive her to and from wherever she was staying. In later years this was often to her daughter-in-law’s home in Bundoora where she so enjoyed the time spent with her two grand-daughters. During our drives we discussed many things: music, theatre, the Alexander Technique, the difference between private teaching and training teachers, child development, children, marital tensions, being a single mother, grief and loss, dance, living with chronic illness, sailing boats and other topics.

I attended many workshops with Vivien at David’s school. We shared a number of private students who were professional musicians, who worked with her when she was in Melbourne. When I let one of these student’s know of Vivien’s passing she replied with this memory:   

I remember in one of my lessons with Vivien she had me drawing the melody I was playing (Brahms) on the wall in large, sweeping strokes. It was very helpful with being more expressive in the melody with my bow movements… It feels like the end of an era with Vivien gone. 

Over time, Vivien suffered from loss of hearing and I suffered from electromagnetic sensitivities. We developed an extensive knowledge of the best café and restaurant tables in Melbourne with the least exposure to sound or mobile phones, so that she could hear and I could avoid getting a migraine: the corner table for two in the Provincial room at The North Star Hotel, table 11 in the air shaft at LeCoq, the back corner table at Marios or the members dining room at my tennis club were the favourites; and later in time a take-out sushi from Akari in Fitzroy that we’d eat at my dining table.

Vivien moved from London to Dowanhill, Glasgow. I was able to reconnect with her there for Erika Whittaker’s 90^th birthday party, which I attended in Scotland! A fun time was had by all, with many Alexander Teachers from around the world, Erika’s daughter Ann Cragoe, and her grandchildren with their partners.

Vivien leaves a lasting legacy, in her book Just Play Naturally: An account of her cello study with Pablo Casals in the 1950’s and her discovery of the resonance between his teaching and the principles of the Alexander Technique(1). I loaned this book to my student who is a professional cello player. They returned it saying it was the best book they'd ever read about playing the cello!

Vale Vivien you will be missed.

(1) Just Play Naturally: An account of her cello study with Pablo Casals in the 1950's and her discovery of the resonance between his teaching and the principles of the Alexander Technique (2002) Duende Editions Boston-London

Alexander Technique on the Air Waves and Book Shelves                    

By Jane Refshauge

I would like to bring the AUSTAT membership’s attention to a number of initiatives and contributions from Rosslyn McLeod to improve the public awareness of the Alexander Technique in Australia. These are available on her YouTube channel and website, and from Mouritz press.

Rosslyn McLeod has dedicated her life to promoting awareness of the Alexander Technique in Australia. As media advertising is costly, Rosslyn has been a trail blazer in seeking radio interviews and writing articles for specialist magazines with a focus on music and sports.

On 1^st September 2022, Rosslyn was interviewed by Phillip Clarke for the ABC Nationwide Radio Broadcast Nightlife, and he presented a programme with Rosslyn speaking extraordinarily eloquently about the Alexander Technique for twenty minutes. Rosslyn has now uploaded this programme onto YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xRQ_xhwjcY. 

Rosslyn was able to provide a detailed summary of FM Alexander’s life and work, and modern-day information about ‘the work’. She even managed a reference to the 12^th World Alexander Technique Congress that was recently held in Berlin!  On the YouTube recording of the interview Rosslyn has supported the spoken word with photos, including small excerpts from the DVD that she has produced: Frederick Matthias Alexander: His Life … His Legacy. This is a unique documentary showcasing the life and work of Frederick Matthias Alexander ~ the originator of the Alexander Technique. Available from her website: fmalexanderdoc.com

Book Review
Irene Tasker: Her Life and Work with the Alexander Technique
by Regina Stratil

Review by Marguerite van der Merwe

In a world of cheap paperback books, what a pleasure to hold and read through the hardcover edition of Irene Tasker: Her Life and Work with the Alexander Technique. Published (2020) by Mouritz, this is skillfully constructed, has a steady-to-hold cover, with an enticing 458 pages printed on 90gsm Munken White.

In the comfort of the pages, I have been inspired to read, re-read, and delve into Regina Stratil’s extensively researched biography, one which can be of interest, learning, and inspiration to all involved in the awesome work of understanding and teaching Frederick Matthias Alexander’s (FM’s) work. I offer a few personal responses to the value it has uploaded for myself.

Regina has gifted the international Alexander Community with the history of a meticulous, unrecognized  teacher who worked closely with FM for many years, was mentored and taught personally by him at various times, and taught in various situations under his guidance. Irene taught in England, America and then in South Africa where, following the advice of FM and one of his influential ‘students’ in London, she travelled to Johannesburg with the purpose of embedding the work. Through March 1935 to January 1944 she lived and worked in Johannesburg and the Orange Free State (An independent Boer state in South Africa which existed in the second half of the 19^th century.)  returning briefly to England for ‘refresher’ work with Alexander. She returned a year later following Jokl’s ‘Manpower’ article attack on Alexander’s work and the Libel case (in which Alexander was awarded damages). In Spring 1949 returned to England permanently and lived there until her death.

In 1924 Tasker founded and directed Alexander’s Little School for ten years: a noteworthy pioneering experience. This equipped her for her move to South Africa where she lived and worked (in two periods) for a total of more than 12 years.  

The format of Stratil’s book is arranged around actual words (from Archives) of people involved directly or indirectly during influential times of FM’s work and career, and thus represents a ‘live’ account of how things were personally and actually experienced. Reading the many Personal Letters, Notes and Comments, plus her own Notes and Comments (here put for the first time in public view)  engenders glimpses and feelings of being actually present at, and privy to, interactions, conversations and reflections at the time with many who were taught by Alexander himself and whose names have come down to us through the ‘lineage’. We gain a more rounded, intimate sense of the personalities involved, and the perspectives of their times.

The author writes: “Irene Tasker (19.12.1887 – 21.7.1977) was an extraordinary person. Born in the Victorian age and growing up in a time when opportunities were limited for women, she obtained a university education and forged her own career despite frustrations and setbacks. The way she lived her life, her zest and perseverance, her humble but extremely principled attitude and her observations in the Technique, are an inspiration to me. I hope readers will be inspired as well.” (p.ix)

Stratil’s sources came initially from her discovery of Irene’s handwritten notebook: entries relating chiefly to visits to Alexander’s teacher training course, a teacher-refresher course with Alexander in 1930, and her own, and her brother’s, lessons with Alexander. “I hope” wrote the author “that this biography  will give credit to Irene Tasker for her role in, and contribution to, the development of the Alexander Technique…  The book gathers information and provides sources concerning her pioneering work with the Little School (which she founded and directed for ten years) and similar work with children in South Africa, placing the Alexander Technique within the wider framework of the progressive education movement of the early 20^th century.”

Important in any assessment of the work and the times is Irene’s allegiance and training in the Montessori method. That she was sent to Rome to work with the ‘Dottoressa’ explains her discovery-understanding of an important symbiosis with much of Alexander’s methods and principles. It seems that, in her own teaching career, Irene based her teaching principles and methods on an integration of these two methods/perspectives.

We in South Africa were privileged to have had for many years the Alexander work of Joyce Roberts who was trained in Johannesburg by Tasker. Joyce, herself a strong character and teacher, worked chiefly in Cape Town, initially in the rehabilitation of war-wounded, eventually agreeing to offer accredited Training Courses with Yvonne Becker, Joan Brokensha and Vivienne Schapera. SASTAT Archives holds Letters from Tasker to Joyce Roberts.

In its meticulous recorded essence, Regina Stratil’s book confronts us with the wider framework of Alexander’s work in the early developing years and decades through the book’s records, notes, comments and words of people involved at the time. As I and many teachers gradually realise, we can be undeservedly and ignorantly free with our own opinions and perspectives deriving from a very different time, lifestyle, and world order.

A brief summary of Irene Tasker’s career:

Studies at Girton College, Cambridge  (Classical Tripos);  Governess 1910-1912 Worcestershire; 1913 Montessori training with Mari Montessori, Rome; 1913 Lessons with FM Alexander; 1913-1917 Montessori teaching UK & USA; 1917 – 1920 Working with Alexander, New York, London; 1921 visits Bangalore, India; 1921 on, working with Alexander on his first 3 books;  1924 starts Little School, runs it for 10 years, resigns 1934; 1931 Alexander’s first teacher training course; 1935 moves to South Africa, teaches in Brandsdrift (Orange Free State), Johannesburg, presents talks, lectures at Roedean School, Transvaal Teacher’s Association , SA Association for the Advancement of Science; 1937-1941 Joyce Roberts joins as assistant; 1941 Irene demonstrates to Jokl,- Alexander claims libel damages, 1948 Libel case won; 1949 Irene returns to England; 1955 Alexander dies; 1958 Irene suffers serious fracture of ankle and shin; 21 July 1977 dies of pneumonia in her sleep.

Extracts from the book:

Being a personal view of Stratil’s informative and detailed resources, many extracts from the book strike me as particularly important vis-a-vis personalities involved in the evolution of FM’s work at its beginning. This, in turn, informs all that I’ve been able to glean in a lifetime of delving into this extraordinary work of Conscious Constructive Control of The Use of The Self, and in my own life and times.

Here are some of my highlights; find your own!

Highlights from FM Alexander:

• ‘Never let the body overrun the head in coming forward: Never let the head overrun the body in going backward.”
• “The ‘pull’ on the head should be such that the upper back comes down. Stay UP to put hands on – continuing UP brings lightness to pupils.”
• “...undoing all stiffening (a reflex activity) – then the head frees and LENGTHENING happens of itself.”
• “Freedom IN thought and action – not ‘freedom of.”
• “Beliefs are what hampers us. Because of them, we are not experimental enough. Because of them, we have not enough of the adventurous spirit.”
• Irene Tasker in a Letter to Sarah Gertrude Millin: “…who intends studying this work, for whatever reason, is really embarking on a lifetime’s job.”

Irene’s notes:

“I have noticed how FM’s hands are always working relatively to each other. The two never gave the same impulse – always one working against the other – sometimes three or four or more impulses through separate fingers, knees etc.” (p.260)

Enjoy delving into the work of Irene Tasker, F.M.Alexander, and many significant others of this time!

May it offer a portal to enrich your own understanding and life.

SHALOM
Marguerite van der Merwe

Book Review: 
We Are Electric - The New Science of Our Body’s Electrome 
by Sally Adee

Reviewed by Ric Pellizzeri

In Articles and Lectures F.M. Alexander writes:

“When I employ the words ‘direction’ and ‘directed’ with ‘use’ in such phrase as ‘direction of my use’ and ‘I directed the use’, etc., I wish to indicate the process involved in projecting messages from the brain to the mechanisms and in conducting the energy necessary to the use of these mechanisms.”(1)

Alexander also writes in The Use of the Self that a teacher must support:

“1) the inhibition of the instinctive direction of energy associated with familiar sensory experiences of wrong habitual use; and 

2) the building up in its place of a conscious direction of energy through the repetition of unfamiliar sensory experiences associated with new and satisfactory use. 

This process of directing energy out of familiar into new and unfamiliar paths, as a means of changing the manner of reacting to stimuli, implies of necessity an ever-increasing ability on the part of both teacher and pupil to ‘pass from the known to the unknown’; it is therefore a process which is true to the principle involved in all human growth and development”(2)

FM writes about the general concept of energy, what is required to affect a change, what is needed to maintain and nurture our systems and move us through space. But where is the source and what is the nature of that energy? Is it important to understand energy and all its forms in a deeper way?

When an Alexander teacher places their hands on a student what are they touching? Clearly, skin, bone, muscle, tendons, ligaments, fluid and fascia. But they are also following the movement of the breath, sensing the contraction and lengthening of the muscles, detecting the pulse of blood through veins and arteries, perceiving (and sometimes hearing) the movement of the digestive system as well as the sparking of the nervous system. A vast awe-inspiring network of pulses, vibrations and movement.

“Every one of the 40 trillion cells in your body is its own little battery with its own little voltage: when it’s at rest, the inside of a cell is (on average) around 70 millivolts more charged than the extracellular soup outside”. (pg.14)

That ‘soup’ refers to the envelope of our ‘skin battery’, that when connected to a voltmeter generates enough electricity to fire up a small lightbulb. Wishful thinking but perhaps, one day, providing an innovative way to charge your phone or shine in the dark? Maybe some people do glow.

The science is well explained and Adee, being a regular New Scientist journalist, is practised at making the history, chemical and physical procedures alive and user-friendly.              

“When a nerve impulse comes roaring down a nerve fibre, channels open in the neurons and millions of ions get instantly sucked through them into and out of the extracellular space taking all their charges with them. The electrical field generated by  this mass migration of charge works out to about a million volts per metre which at  that scale would feel like passing an entire bolt of lightning from one of your  outstretched hands to the other”. (pg.15)

All of us potential superheroes, comic book characters blasting out electric bolts? A possible potential talent that will have us all joining the Marvel Universe?  Maybe not.

Part of our electric system are the neurons, 86 billion, that are also made up of cells, available in two flavours, the short dendrites and the much longer axons. The axons are over a metre long, winding from the brain down the spine and into all parts of the body - skin, heart, muscles, eyes, ears, nose, organs; everywhere. We are an integrated brain/body structure all powered by the body’s electrical system. Further confirmation, not that we needed any, of Alexander’s extraordinary observations and genius technique.

Without this electrical system, nothing would happen. No heartbeat, no breath, no feeling, no movement, nothing. As Adee writes, “The basis of life is electric. When our cellular battery runs out, we all die”. All life, fauna or flora, single or multi-cellular, runs on a bioelectric charge.

This book not only deals with the past and the present but also the future potential of bioelectricity. It is a provocative crystal ball exploring transcranial direct current stimulation, altering brainwaves with implants, with the author astonishingly using herself as a guinea pig to see if brain stimulation can sharpen her never-tested shooting skills. Neural implants, electroceuticals and other electrical intervention and stimulation, all di an ethical minefield that many theorists and scientists will in the future need to prudently traverse.

Adee continuously reinforces the wonder that we all share in studying the human mechanism.

“Rather than being a collection of inferior meat bodies, biology becomes more astounding the more you learn about it - and fractally complicated too, as the more you learn the more you realise you don’t understand. We are electrical machines whose full dimensions we have not even yet dreamed of”. (pg.308)

As Alexander Technique practitioners we use the word energy in many guises and with many purposes. Frank Pierce-Jones wrote that:

“When the primary control is functioning as it should, it is sensed as an integrating force that preserves freedom of movement throughout the system, so that energy can be directed to the place where it is wanted without developing strain either there or elsewhere”.(3)

Energy is seen as the driving, integrating and healing force; as the life force.

When an AT teacher puts their hands on someone, they have the privilege and possibility of connecting to the Electrome of another and the prospect of an appreciation, direction and exchange of that ‘energy’. Direction can be physically and mechanically manifested with neck free, head forward and up, back lengthening and widening and knees forward and away but what is it that is awakened, sensed and encouraged, that ‘it’ we all talk about. Is it also our Electrome emanating from and connecting every cell in our being and our student’s being? This book provides an abundance of material to fire this thought-provoking investigation and is far more thought-provoking than this review.

(1) Articles and Lectures by F. Matthias Alexander, edited by Jean M. O. Fischer (Mouritz, 1995), pp. 297-98.
(2) The Use of the Self by F. Matthias Alexander (Chaterson, 1946), p. 13.
(3) Frank Pierce-Jones (1976/79 Ed) Body Awareness in Action. Schocken Books, New York. Appendix C (page 184).

The Alexanders – From Wiltshire to Wynyard
Part 5 (continued – last instalment!)

By Derek Smith

By the early 1860s the three brothers were back together - but not all on Table Cape.  In 1860 Joseph moved his wife and family to Wynyard, then a small township across the Inglis River from Alexandria, and took over the Wynyard Arms Inn on the Esplanade.  Joseph had previously owned the Emily Hotel in Stanley. This ownership, together with Matthias and John’s involvement with the Table Cape Inn, began the 100+ year involvement of the Alexanders with the inn/hotel business on the north-west coast.

At about the same time John had moved to Burnie to develop newly acquired marine interests, so Matthias was left to manage the Table Cape landholding.  Following his death in 1865, it is Matthias’ descendants, in particular Martin, his youngest son with his first wife Mary Reading, who managed a large part of the landholding until it was sold.

It is interesting to note that, although the three Alexander brothers are forever linked to Table Cape, the time they spent there seems relatively small.  Matthias died in 1865, so his connection lasted 14 years.  John was in Burnie by 1860 so his full time commitment to the Cape lasted about 9 years and Joseph had been in Stanley for a time before 1860 then moved to Wynyard, so his time on the Cape was even less than John’s. 

Alexander Creek, a creek that ran through the property, is still running.  The Creek, and Alexander Terrace in Stanley, named after Joseph, are the only two sites that are named after any of the Alexander brothers. (see Fig.s 19 & 20)

Joseph’s wife Harriet, known in the family as ‘Aunt Joe’, lived on until 1912.  She was considered quite wealthy and there are some reports of a family squabble between the three daughters about who should get what.  She is buried at Carr Villa Cemetery in Launceston, (Fig. 21), together with her third daughter Henrietta and her husband James King Percy.  Perhaps Henrietta won the squabble!

Descendants of the Percy line continue farming on Table Cape to this day and their land includes the Alexander family cemetery. John lived on to 1898.  He died, aged 85, on his property at Detention River, near Table Cape.  His wife Mary Ann, had died twenty years earlier, in 1878.  His only child to marry and have children, Martha Ann, died in 1911 and is buried in that unmarked grave at Carr Villa Cemetery in Launceston.

The three Alexander brothers have long gone but their family legacy continues (see Fig.s 22 & 23)  The current (incomplete) Alexander family tree now extends to nine generations.  FM sits in the third generation, grandson to Matthias.

All three brothers are buried at the family cemetery on Table Cape (along with, it is said, about 60 other family members and pioneers of the area).

Some regard the current neglected state of this pioneer burial site as a sad comment on how quickly we forget the old pioneers.  (see Fig. 24 The Alexander family cemetery at Table Cape (circa 2010).  The two headstones visible are for Capt. John Jones, son in law of convict John Alexander, and Richard Dowling, son of John Dowling.  Dowlings and Alexanders have marriage connections going back several generations in England)

Others might say that the brothers were men of the land.  They owned land, worked the land, lived on it and now they lie in it.  Land that is still productive, quite recently growing potatoes.

Would the three brothers, with their long agricultural history, object to their burial site being used for agriculture?  You choose and think about them when you next eat potatoes!

And it is not only in Tasmania that the Tasmanian Alexanders have left their mark.  From convict beginnings to the world stage today.  A prominent pioneer family in the early days of this area and still making a contribution to this day.

Note from author: Family research is not an exact process. Records disappear, or are wrongly recorded, newspaper accounts are less than accurate, and so on. This account represents aspects of the Alexander family history that I have put together from many sources. If there are errors, and with family research that is always a possibility, they are down to me. If anyone has any information that either supports or disputes what I have written, please get in touch. Information shared is knowledge gained. My particular thanks to the Alexander family in Tasmania for their help, in particular the late Ken Alexander and his daughter Sue for access to their family information.

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