Okay, Not WRONG wrong…

But what if the man who literally invented one of the most powerful tools for change in human history actually solved his problem by doing something way simpler than “ Constructively & Consciously Controlling the Individual”?

Stay with me here.

The mirror that ruined everything

(in the best possible way)

So picture this: Young F.M. Alexander the actor WAY down under in Tasmania in the late 1800s. He keeps losing his voice on stage. Voice teachers can’t help him. Doctors can’t help him. Elocution experts can’t help him.

So he does what any obsessive, slightly unhinged genius with a ton of free time on his hands would do.

He parks himself in front of three mirrors for years and watches himself speak.

And what he sees is crushingly disappointing!

He’s doing the exact opposite of what he thinks he’s doing. He feels himself putting his head “forward and up.”, but he sees himself pulling his head back and down. Every. Single. Time.

His own body is gaslighting him.

His nervous system had gotten so used to doing the wrong thing that the wrong thing feels totally right — like how you don’t notice a crooked picture frame on your wall until someone points it out, and then you can’t unsee it.

Except it’s your entire body. And your voice. And you’re an actor whose career depends on it.

So what did he actually do about it?

The standard story goes something like: he figured out how to consciously direct his body, wrote a bunch of books including one literally called Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, and voilà — conscious control saves the day.

But when you read between the lines of his account in Evolution of a Technique, I’m not sure that it was conscious CONTROL of the individual that came his rescue…

I think it was simpler than that…

What he did, for years, was stand in front of those mirrors and practice...

NOT CONTROLLING things.

That’s it. That’s the revolution!

He’d get the urge to speak. And instead of speaking, he’d just...

NOT!

He’d sit in that strange gap between wanting to do the thing and doing the thing. He called it “inhibition” —way before Freud, and it would prevent him from the habitual, knee-jerk, autopilotreaction that was killing his voice.

He wasn’t learning a new way to move as much as he was UNLEARNING the old way a new way was arising.

And here’s the kicker — in his writing, when he used phrases like “instinctive response,” he wasn’t talking about actual instincts.

He was talking about psycho-physical habits so automatic and deeply grooved into his nervous system that they seemed instinctive. Like reaching for your phone when you’re bored. It feels like breathing. It’s not. It’s just what you’ve practiced about a million times.

The gap is where the magic happens

Think of it like this.

That gap — that tiny pause before you react — Alexander turned that into a new way of looking at helping yourself.

He’d decide to speak, then choose not to. Or he’d decide to speak, then do something else entirely.

Over and over and over, for what he described as “a considerable time” (which, in Edwardian-speak, probably means years)

And slowly — not overnight, not in a weekend workshop, not in one big “aha” moment — his nervous system started to recalibrate “no” by “no” by little “no”.

The gap wasn’t just a pause. It was a habit-free zone where his nervous system and body could finally rebuild fresh responses without the old blueprints getting in the way.

What actually fixed his voice

Here’s what Alexander himself wrote:

“Once free from this tendency, I also became free from the throat and vocal trouble and from the respiratory and nasal difficulties with which I had been beset from birth.”

Read that again. From birth.

He didn’t fix his voice by learning how to use it better. He fixed it by stopping the interference that had been mucking it up his whole life.

His body already knew what to do. It just couldn’t, because decades of habits jumping in front and getting in the way.

That’s one of the ideas behind Primal Alexander™

We call it CuriousThinking™. And honestly, the simplicity of it is almost annoying.

You pause. You get curious about where you notice a bit of relative ease in your body.

And then — here’s the cool part — as you start doing whatever you were about to do, you just decide to stay curious as long as you can and pay attention to what’s happening to that ease as you move.

It’s absolutely NOT about MAINTAINING the ease!

The simple act of deciding to be curious about ease keeps the gap open and keeps the flow of easier movement going.

We’re just acting like a scientists objectively watching an experiment unfold that allows your body and nervous system adapt naturally to the demands of what your movement requires and you end up moving and an easier more efficient way.

Inevitably, we do get distracted and we stop being curious about the ease without realizing it.

But, as soon as we do realize it, we can decide to notice a place of relative ease again and the process begins again.

It’s not about trying to control what happens. It’s about being curious about what’s actually in the process of happening.

While the gap is open, we have access to what we call IndirectDirection™ — which is basically allowing the built-in, intrinsic movement intelligence that underlies even our most limiting habits…

It let’s that smart part of our neurology have a much greater influence on the manner in which we use ourselves which leads to an experience of movement that is much easier and also way more effective.

The funny thing nobody tells you about change

It’s both fast and slow…

It always happens immediately but it sure does takes it’s time!

Alexander didn’t stand in front of his mirrors for a long weekend and emerge like a butterfly. He did it for years.

And that tracks with everything we now know about how nervous systems actually change — through repetition, through consistency, through doing the simple thing again and again until it becomes the new default.

In other words…

IT TAKES PRACTICE!

In Primal Alexander™ that’s what the études do.

They are really simple, mostly uninteresting little movements that allow you to focus on the process of inhibition and it’s power.

It’s the repetition and simplicity of deciding to prioritize paying attention to the process of change rather than the results it produces…

And is that decision that exposes and defeats end-gaining which leads to the rewiring of our nervous system and the improves]ment of our Use.

So, what’s the actual takeaway here?

Look — Alexander wrote a whole book about conscious control. It’s right there in the title. And I’m not saying he was wrong.

But, I think when you look at what he actually did, day after day in front of those mirrors, it looks a lot less like control and a lot more like... getting out of his own way.

He created a gap. He lived in that gap. And in that gap, his body remembered and acted upon what it already knew how to do.

Which, if you think about it, is way easier than constantly trying to constructively & consciously control one’s individuality.

It means the thing you’re looking for — that ease, that natural coordination, that freedom — isn’t something you need to build from scratch.

It’s already there.

We just have to stop burying it.

Cheers,

Mio

(Private Lessons Ensemble Coming July 7th)

Click to know more

Each and every present moment of CuriousThinking™ that you orchestrate right now leads to increased freedom and flexibility in all three “timezones” simultaneously:

• It enhances the quality of whatever you may happen to be doing in the PRESENT.

• It creates and/or deepens the neurological pathways that improve your overall Use & help you to do that specific activity more easily in the FUTURE.

• It acts as a gatekeeper stranding your bad habits in the PAST by preventing them from having as much influence upon you and what you’re doing right now.

It all happens when you become curious about where there are places of relative ease right now in your body and then observing what happens to that ease as you begin to do something. It’s the easiest way I know to improve your Use. It’s a little bit of nothing that’s also a quantum leap.

Imagine you’re a musician, playing jazz for the first time. Your fingers feel clumsy, struggling to find that elusive “swing” feeling. Or imagine you’re learning tai chi, and your teacher keeps saying “relax” — but the harder you try to relax, the more tense you feel. Or perhaps you’re recovering from an injury, and your body just doesn’t move the way it used to.

What if I told you that all these challenges share a common solution? What if the key isn’t just practice, but actually rewiring your brain’s internal map of your body? This invisible map — your body schema — is far more plastic, more changeable than most of us realize. And the doorway into that change might be simpler than anything you’ve been told to try.

The Problem With the Map

Here’s what we’re facing: Our brains maintain an unconscious map of our bodies — where each part is in space, how they move together, even how much tension we habitually hold. This body schema operates beneath our awareness, yet it fundamentally shapes how we move, feel, and interact with the world.

The challenge is that for most of us, this map becomes rigid over time. We develop habits of tension, limitations in movement, and fixed ways of responding to stimuli that become “normal” to us — even when they’re inefficient, or causing us pain.

This matters because your body schema affects everything — from how you sit at your desk to how you perform as an athlete, from how you recover from injury to how you express yourself in dance or music. It even shapes how you respond to stress.

But here’s the thing most movement education gets backwards: we’ve been taught that the way to fix these problems is to add something. More practice. Better technique. More effort. Correct the wrong thing.

What if the problem isn’t what you’re not doing — but what you’re already doing that you don’t need to be doing?

By the end of this talk, you’ll understand how body schema plasticity works, how it’s already shaping your everyday experience, and — most importantly — how you can consciously harness it to transform your movement, performance, and well-being. Not by doing more. By doing less of what gets in the way.

How the Map Gets Redrawn

Your body schema is your brain’s internal model of your body — a neurological map that helps coordinate movement and interaction with your environment. Unlike a paper map, this map is constantly being redrawn through a process called neuroplasticity.

When someone loses a limb, they often experience phantom sensations because their body schema still includes the missing limb. But over time, the brain updates this map. This is body schema plasticity at work.

This plasticity doesn’t just happen after major changes. Research shows that even using a tool for an extended period changes your body schema. Tennis players literally incorporate their rackets into their body map. The same happens with musicians and their instruments.

But here’s what’s less talked about: the same plasticity that allows those expansions also allows the accumulation of interference. Habitual tension. Excess effort. Patterns you’ve practiced so thoroughly that they’ve become invisible to you — baked into the map itself.

This is why most people who try to “fix” their movement hit a wall. They’re trying to add new patterns on top of a map that’s already full of accumulated noise.

The good news — and this is the heart of what I want to share with you today — is that you don’t have to force the map to change. You just have to give your nervous system accurate information and then get out of its way.

There’s a simple demonstration of this that I use at the very beginning of my work with people. I call it IMA — which comes from the Japanese word for “now.” Here’s how it goes:

Scan around your body for a moment. Just notice what’s there. And as you look around, find somewhere — anywhere — that seems a little easier, a little less held than the rest. Not relaxed. Just... relatively easier. Got one?

Something just changed, didn’t it? You didn’t do that. You allowed it. And there is a world of difference between those two things.

That small shift — from hunting problems to noticing ease — is the beginning of body schema change. Not because of willpower or repetition, but because your nervous system interprets your attention toward ease as a signal that conditions are safe enough to reorganize. The map updates itself.

From Jazz to Martial Arts: Plasticity in Action

Let’s look at how body schema plasticity shows up in skills we admire.

Have you ever wondered how jazz musicians achieve that elusive “swing” feel? It’s not just timing — it’s their brain adapting its body schema to internalize subtle rhythmic variations. Years of practice allow them to intuitively shift notes slightly ahead or behind the beat. But the musicians who develop that quality most deeply aren’t the ones who tried hardest. They’re the ones who learned to stop interfering with what the body already knows how to do.

In Chinese martial arts, there’s a concept called “Sung” — a state of relaxed alertness where you maintain structure without unnecessary tension. Masters of tai chi develop this through years of training that reshapes their body schema to support relaxation without collapse. Their brains have learned to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary tension. Not by adding control — by subtracting interference.

The implications of this are profound — whether you’re learning a new sport, recovering from injury, or trying to reduce chronic tension, the process is fundamentally about updating your body schema. And the fastest route to that update isn’t more effort. It’s better information.

This is what Primal Alexander is built around. It’s a system of structured practices — we call them Études — that give your nervous system exactly that kind of information. Each Étude is a short, focused exploration designed to help you notice and release patterns of unnecessary effort, one layer at a time.

The first and most foundational of these is called TheCyCle™. It’s built directly on the IMA principle we just explored — this practice of moving your attention toward ease rather than toward problems. TheCyCle™ turns that single moment of noticing into a repeatable, rhythmic process. You scan, you find ease, you let that ease communicate to the rest of the system. And then you do it again.

What students discover — often within the first session — is that this isn’t a trick. It’s not positive thinking or distraction. It’s a direct conversation with the part of your nervous system that actually runs your movement. The habitual patterns that have been baked into your body schema? They didn’t get there through conscious decision. And they don’t leave through conscious effort either. They leave when you stop feeding them your attention.

I’ve worked with musicians who transformed their playing by discovering that the tension they thought was necessary was actually the thing standing between them and the sound they were chasing. I’ve worked with people in chronic pain who found relief not by fixing something, but by learning to notice what was already working. These aren’t anomalies. They’re demonstrations of what becomes possible when you stop working against your own nervous system.

How to Harness It Starting Today

So how can you consciously harness this plasticity in your own life?

Awareness is essential — but the direction of that awareness matters enormously. Most people, when they become aware of their bodies, immediately start cataloguing problems. The tight shoulder. The shallow breath. The bad posture. And the moment you do that, you activate a stress response in the nervous system — which makes all those things worse.

IMA points the awareness in a different direction. Not toward what’s wrong, but toward what’s already a little bit right. This isn’t denial. It’s strategy. When your nervous system gets the message that something is okay, it has permission to stop bracing against imagined threat. And in that moment of permission, new possibilities emerge.

Inhibition is crucial. Before you can establish new patterns, you need to learn to pause — to prevent the habitual response from firing automatically. This is the Alexander Technique’s central insight, and it’s at the heart of TheCyCle™. The Cycle isn’t just a scan. It’s a practice of interrupting the automatic. Of creating a gap between stimulus and response. And in that gap — even a tiny one — the body schema gets a chance to update.

Exploration is key. Rather than forcing a “correct” position, experiment with new ways of moving. Small, gentle variations in movement teach your brain that alternatives exist. This is what the Études are for. Each one is a structured invitation to explore — not to achieve a result, but to gather information. And the information you gather accumulates. Session by session, your brain’s internal map becomes a little more accurate, a little more current, a little less full of yesterday’s compensations.

Consider what this means for mirror neurons — those specialized brain cells that activate both when we perform an action and when we observe others performing it. By consciously engaging with how others move — perhaps studying the ease of a skilled performer or the centered presence of a martial artist — you can provide your brain with new models to incorporate into your own body schema. But the most powerful model? The ease that already exists somewhere in your own body, right now, that IMA is designed to help you find.

The Map Is Always Updating

Remember when I asked you to imagine being that struggling musician, that tense tai chi student, or that person recovering from injury? Each of these challenges ultimately comes down to the same thing: the body schema has accumulated patterns that no longer serve. And changing those patterns doesn’t require more force. It requires better information and a nervous system that’s been given permission to use it.

We’ve explored how body schema plasticity works — how your brain maintains an internal map that can be redrawn through experience. We’ve seen how this plasticity shapes everything from the swing in jazz music to the relaxed power of martial arts. We’ve met IMA — that simple, immediate practice of directing your attention toward ease rather than toward problems. And we’ve seen how TheCyCle™ builds that single moment of awareness into a repeatable process that your nervous system can actually use.

So what can you do starting today? You already did it once, when you found that place of relative ease a few minutes ago. Do it again. Right now. Find somewhere in your body that seems a little easier than the rest. Don’t try to make it more comfortable. Don’t try to spread it anywhere. Just notice that it exists.

Something is already changing.

That’s all IMA asks of you. That’s all TheCyCle™ asks of you. Not perfection. Not effort. Just honest attention, pointed in the right direction.

Your body schema is being rewritten every day. The question is whether you’re consciously participating in that process — or leaving the rewriting to old habits and accumulated stress. Because when you do engage — when you learn to direct your attention toward what’s already working, and let that ease propagate through the system — you unlock possibilities for movement, expression, and wellbeing that might otherwise remain hidden for a lifetime.

The map is always updating. The only question is what you’re feeding it.

PRIMAL ALEXANDER™ TEACHER TRAINING COMING SOON!

Preceding an activity with CuriousThinking™ induces a kind of profound easiness that is a wonderful balance of activity and stillness where the fulfillment of one activity becomes the exact preparation needed for the next, gracefully allowing the present to move into the future as a deep and satisfying flow.

PRIMAL ALEXANDER™ TEACHER TRAINING…SOON!

Students usually come to us to help them solve some specific problem; unaware that the problem they seek to solve, even if very painful or very serious is, in truth, simply a symptom.

If we encourage that misunderstanding by focusing too much on giving them what they want, without teaching them how to discover the truth of what they really need...

We run the risk of selling them short by simply improving their current condition, when there's a decent chance we could be helping them improve their entire life.

Life, itself, is rich, complex and way beyond challenging . So much so that our to do list grows larger and larger the more we mange to get things done.

You could say that our job as teachers is not so much to help our students achieve the ends they seek, no matter how desirable those things might be...

But rather to act as Cupids of Consciousness, firing tiny Arrows of Awareness causing them to fall hopelessly in love with the beauteous MeansWhereby.

COMING SOON: PRIMAL ALEXANDER™ TEACHER TRAINING!

This work is absolutely truthful. If you think you’re wrong, then do it and you will discover. We are afraid to be wrong, but by being wrong we know what to do. Accept that being wrong is your friend, not your enemy.

Marjory Barlow

*************************

The most difficult skill to teach is the attitude shift that magnetizes a student towards wanting to know the truth of what's happening rather than pursuing their habitual desire to achieving pre-conceived specific results.

You know you've succeeded when despite a students primal fear of being wrong, they accept being wrong with as big a smile as when they realize that they're not.

When I first spotted her near Carousel A at the Portland Airport baggage claim she was just standing there...

But there was something totally captivating about the way she was doing it.

She was absolutely grounded like an oak which made checking her email look like meditation or a martial art.

And when she finally did move...

IT WAS STUNNING!

Breezing beyond the empty carousel with an animal quickness and lightness.  

***

How could anyone go from seemingly immovable to quicksilver mercurial in a nanosecond?

How was that possible?

***

When she reappeared with her luggage...

THE MYSTERY WAS SOLVED!

The huge oversized item hanging from one shoulder was...

A SURFBOARD!

Two young women, immediately recognizing her, dashed towards her shooting questions and begging for ​her autograph.

I overheard her saying that she was returning from San Francisco having just competed in the Mavericks, the Mount Everest of big wave surfing competitions .

In order to survive the brutal demands of surfing those monstrous waves , this woman had developed an amazing use of her body.

One that combined complete solidity below the waist, gyroscopic balance and flexible lightness in her upper torso.

She was supple, poised and powerful. Exactly the qualities you need in order to become a world class surfer!

***

Seeing her that day made a deep and lasting impression on me. So much so that...

Right now...

If I close my eyes...

Do some Constructive Thinking...

And really begin to picture her...

I get a whiff of the flow she created as she moved on that day at the airport...

And I can sense its easing influence affecting the way I'm using myself right now.

It's a delicious sense of direction that's stored somewhere in my body/ brain. One that can be evoked on command. 

It's immediately accessible and can contribute to my way of doing whatever I happen to be doing whenever I want.

As human beings we have a unique capacity to intimately share our experience with each other even across space and time.

I call it SubtleMovementEmpathy.
As Alexander teachers, we can utilize it to do two things at once:

1. It allows us to experience how the quality of a student's Use fluctuates throughout an activity and...

2. It's the means whereby a student experiences new movement possibilities 

For me it's the key to 'thinking in activity' and its cultivation is central to increasing my ability to understanding & apply the phenomenal things that Alexander discovered before he started using his hands.

To be continued...