The Spring Within: Bodhichitta and Primal Alexander.

The Spring Within: Bodhichitta and Primal Alexander.

When Pema Chödrön describes discovering bodhichitta as "tapping into a spring of living water that has been temporarily encased in solid rock," she could just as easily be describing the transformative process at the heart of Primal Alexander.

Both traditions recognize that what we seek—authentic presence, natural ease, and compassionate awareness—is not something to be acquired but something to be uncovered. The barriers we face are not external obstacles but internal habits of tension, reactivity, and protective strategies that keep us disconnected from our innate wisdom and coordination.

In her teaching on the three lords of materialism, Chödrön illuminates the very patterns that Primal Alexander addresses through its approach to embodied awareness. Where Buddhist practice reveals how we use external objects, beliefs, and altered states to avoid the groundlessness of existence, Primal Alexander reveals how we unconsciously use physical tension, habitual movement patterns, and reactive responses to avoid the uncertainty inherent in each moment of living in a body.

The Lord of Form and Physical Habituation

Chödrön's first lord of materialism—the lord of form—manifests in Primal Alexander's realm as our unconscious relationship to physical sensation and movement. Just as we might turn to shopping, food, or entertainment to escape emotional discomfort, we develop habitual patterns of muscular tension and postural holding to create the illusion of security and control. We brace against uncertainty by literally bracing our bodies, creating what Primal Alexander calls “invisible interference"—unnecessary tension that becomes so familiar we mistake it for normal.

The power of Primal Alexander's approach mirrors Chödrön's wisdom about not "going after those walls and barriers with a sledgehammer." Rather than forcing relaxation or imposing correct posture, Primal Alexander invites the same quality of gentle curiosity that Chödrön advocates: "We touch them and smell them and get to know them well." Through PrimalÉtudes™—brief, question-based explorations of everyday movements—students develop an intimate familiarity with their patterns of holding and tension without judgment or the need to fix anything immediately.

When Mio talks about “The Primal Concern”, a simple question that asks:” What happens to me when I _______?” where the blank can be filled with any activity, he is are engaging in the same compassionate inquiry Chödrön describes.

Looking inward, you begin to notice how you might tense your shoulders, hold your breath, or rush the movement—not to correct these patterns, but to develop a friendly relationship with them. This awareness itself becomes the agent of transformation, allowing the nervous system to reorganize naturally rather than through willpower or imposed change.

Primal Alexander takes this a step further in it’s use of CuriousThinking™a new kind of movement awareness that creates an experience of ease before moving that allows you to monitor not only the effect of the movement but the effect of the intention to move as well! This gives you the power “break” habits by pre-empting their appearance altogether.

Primal Alexander takes this a step further with its use of CuriousThinking™—a unique form of movement awareness that creates ease before you even begin moving. This allows you to observe not only how movement affects you, but how your intention to move affects you as well! This gives you the power to side-step habits before they can get in the way.

The Lord of Speech and Somatic Beliefs

The second lord of materialism operates through rigid beliefs and ideological positions that give us the illusion of certainty. In the somatic realm, this translates to our beliefs about how our bodies should work, what constitutes good posture, and our stories about why we experience pain or limitation. Traditional approaches to bodywork often feed this lord by providing fixed rules about alignment or breathing techniques that students can cling to for security.

Primal Alexander's methodology brilliantly sidesteps this trap by shifting from "how to move" to "what happens when you move." Instead of offering another set of postural commandments to believe in, it cultivates what might be called "somatic openness”—a willingness to not know in advance what will emerge when we move with awareness. This approach echoes Chödrön's teaching about holding beliefs lightly, without using them to make others wrong or to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty.

The CuriousThinking™ approach that Primal Alexander employs—asking specific questions while moving—creates the same quality of open inquiry that Chödrön advocates. Rather than becoming righteous about breathing techniques or postural alignment, students learn to approach their movement with the fresh eyes of a scientist, curious about what happens to their ease when the do the movement.

The Lord of Mind and Performance States

Chödrön's third lord uses "special states of mind" to avoid ordinary experience, whether through drugs, peak experiences, or even spiritual practices. In the realm of movement and performance, this lord manifests as the pursuit of perfect technique, flawless execution, or extraordinary physical states. Performers often become addicted to the rare moments when everything flows effortlessly, then spend the rest of their time chasing that feeling or avoiding the anxiety of not being able to reproduce it.

Primal Alexander addresses this addiction to peak performance states by cultivating what Chödrön calls "ordinary" awakening. Rather than promising transcendent experiences or perfect coordination, it invites students to find interest and aliveness in the most mundane movements—sitting, standing, walking. This mirrors Chödrön's teaching that "connecting with bodhichitta is ordinary" and that we contact this natural force "when we don't run from everyday uncertainty."

The transformation offered by Primal Alexander occurs not through achieving special states but through what Alexander teachers call "inhibition"—the ability to pause between stimulus and response, to notice what we're about to do before we do it. This pause is not a performance technique but a way of living that allows space for something unexpected to emerge. It's the crack in the wall that Chödrön describes, through which the water of bodhichitta naturally flows.

The Natural Spring of Coordination

Both traditions recognize that what we're seeking is already present. Chödrön reminds us that bodhichitta "is, in fact, unstoppable" and will "always appear, like those weeds and flowers that pop out of the sidewalk as soon as there's a crack." Similarly, Primal Alexander is based on the understanding that natural coordination and ease are our birthright—they haven't been lost, just temporarily covered over by layers of habit and tension.

The key insight both teachings offer is that transformation happens not through acquiring something new but through stopping our interference with what's already naturally arising. Chödrön's approach of "staying present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and letting it soften us" parallels the Primal Alexander practice of staying present to physical discomfort or awkwardness and using it a a stimulus to get curious about ease again without immediately trying to fix or escape it.

When students first encounter Primal Alexander, they often expect to learn new techniques or exercises. Instead, they discover that the work is fundamentally about unlearning—about recognizing and gradually releasing the unnecessary effort that has become second nature. This process of conscious unlearning creates the spaciousness for our natural coordination to re-emerge, just as Chödrön's approach of conscious non-resistance allows bodhichitta to flow.

The Courage to Not Know

Perhaps the deepest connection between these teachings lies in their shared invitation to courage—not the courage to achieve or overcome, but the courage to remain present with not knowing. Chödrön writes about needing "the courage to go to the places that scare us," while Primal Alexander requires the courage to move without knowing in advance how the movement will unfold.

Both practices recognize that our habits of control and prediction, while understandable, ultimately limit our capacity for authentic response and genuine presence. Whether we're gripping our beliefs about how to breathe correctly or clutching our strategies for avoiding emotional discomfort, the grip itself becomes the problem.

The spring of living water that Chödrön describes and the natural coordination that Primal Alexander reveals are fundamentally the same phenomenon—the life force that flows when we stop damming it up with our protective strategies. Both practices offer not just techniques but a way of being with ourselves that is simultaneously more gentle and more honest, more accepting and more transformative than our habitual approaches to change.

In the end, both Chödrön's teaching and Primal Alexander point toward the same revolutionary recognition: that the very tenderness and aliveness we've been seeking through our strategies of control and protection is what becomes available when we finally have the courage to let those strategies go. The spring was always there, waiting not for the right technique or the perfect insight, but simply for enough space to flow.

P.S.
I’m teaching a 6 week comprehensive intro course for A.T. teachers starting September 11th. Email me at: miomorales@gmail.com for more info.
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