Most of the wise civilizations of antiquity have posed variations on the age-old conundrum; on which side does a leopard have more spots?* and the wise-assed, yet eternally true answer of course is on the outside.

In a similar - even if opposite - vein, generations of muddling Alexander Technique students keep turning things over in hope of finding the arrowed, This Side Up directive, whilst well meaning, equanimous teachers habitually offer the obscure yet valuable clue; it’s on the inside.

An equally analogous riddle asks is a crocodile longer, or greener? Considering that the croc is green in both length and in width and hence - need I spell it out -  greener, one may similarly surmise that one is at ones upmost up if and when one is up at one’s utmost length and width.

Whether or not we finally find the cardinal up, true north or ultimate zenith, we are all of us much less Fragile when we remember to Handle With Care.

*These variations would include; on which side does the salad fork go? does a croissant have more butter? are suede shoes bluer? are Japanese koi golder? are farts smellier? ­­– Sorry about that last one, it was meant to up my ‘cool factor’ in the eyes my teen-aged sons who are, at press time, neither wise nor civilized. Still the same answer though; always, always on the outside. 

Common wisdom holds that looking up for prolonged periods of time would give a person a major crick in the neck, but common wisdom would be wrong; both about looking up and about holding. Think in terms of appearances; a person can be visibly up even when they are gazing down, and may be looking down (their nose or in the mouth or generally cast) even if they are staring at the moon (and no wonder the lunatics are howling).

The ability to look up as you look down involves utilizing your third eye; not the bleeding esoteric one blinking in your pineal gland (enlightenment too, can be a pain in the neck) but the one at the top of your skull – the one that “sees” whatever lies directly forward of wherever your spine is pointing. Thus, as a child squats over an anthill, she looks so very up even as she deftly flicks the poor insects off course with a twig. And a savage looks nobly poised as he ritually bungees from a rickety 80 foot tower.  So too a classroom full of Alexander Technique students look amazingly alert as they lie semi-supine on the floor whilst their teacher unhurriedly guides them towards a higher consciousness in soothing tones.

Peace be upon Michel Petrucciani, for leaving us this uplifting tune. There was a man who was looking up even while peering over a railing from a New York City skyscraper rooftop, especially with that cool chapeau. Ah Michel, the tallest amongst us looked up to you even as we lowered our eyes to see you. 

To find a four-leafed clover amongst the trifoliate vegetation, or love in the gutters of a cathedral, one may still be (and best be) looking up. ‘tis no matter if one is a leprechaun or a Quasimodo, it is only one’s disposition, not ones form, that determines ones bent.  

…in which Pooh is about as coherent as any certified Alexander Technique teacher

“So,” huffed Benjamin Hoff to Winnie the Pooh as he pulled back his head and compressed his larynx. “Your Alexander Technique teacher thinks it’s funny to appropriate my pedagogical use of A.A. Milne’s beloved books to elucidate F.M. Alexander’s beloved books.”

“Oh no,” Pooh replied, “I’m fairly certain she doesn’t consider Alexander’s books beloved in the least.”

“Is that so? Why then, would she bother to mention them in the first place, let alone put them on her recommended reading list?”

“I couldn’t say,” self-contradicted Pooh, “I’m only a Bear of Little Psycho-Physical coordination.”

“Little what coordination?” muttered Hoff, barely suppressing an involuntary startle response.

“Ah,” said Pooh, “I think the small voice that says it must be time for a little something is psycho, and physical is the accompanying grumbling coming from my tummy.”

“Get a grip Pooh; we just had breakfast less than an hour ago!”

“Did we?” sighed Pooh, “I thought it might be time for lunch soon. Be that as it may, I’m merely griping, you’re the one who’s gripping.”

“I see,” said Hoff who clearly, as Pat Macdonald would say, did not. “Shall I try to relax then?”

“Well,” hummed Pooh, “You can either try, or you can relax. You might lose your bearing if you do both at once and then where would we be?”

“Dear dear Pooh, I’d never lose my bear! Aside from being my cash cow, you are way too predictable to ever be really lost. Retracing your tracks in search of Woozels, stumbling upon the North Pole in your own Hundred-Acre-Wood, and always within sniffing distance of Rabbit’s honey pot.  I say, you don’t suppose Milne might have been suggesting…oh never mind, I was just concerned about your incessant quest for honey…”

“Insectant nest? Oh, yes, bee hives do tend to be a bother.”

“No no Pooh dearest, incessant – it means relentless, importunate, er, never-ending,” explained Huff, recovering his please-allow-me-to-enlighten-you equanimity.

“Exactly and precisely,” agreed Pooh, demonstrating his constructive control of three-syllable words, “ending is what we never.”

“But that’s a different story altogether, The Neverending one, by Michael Ende. Ende with an ‘e’ at the end too, German I believe, but no matter…”

“Bother,” groaned Pooh “I meant to say end-gaining is what we want to never. You know, not skipping any of those proverbial thousand miles after taking the first step on your expotition. Unless you like skipping. Which I do. It’s delightfully forward and up in a Tiger sort of way”.

“And you are a very good skipper indeed, especially when you piloted Christopher Robins’ upturned umbrella, the good ship The Brain of Pooh,” recalled Mr. Hoff. “Except it was revolving counter-clockwise, not forward, and certainly not up…”

“Still and all,” blushed Pooh, “we rescued Piglet from Very Great Danger during the Terrible Flood. An indirect proseedcake of exemplary use!”

“I’m not sure I’m following, old chum…” Hoff scoffed.

“No, I don’t think you are, but your body will if your head leads!”

“What the dithers do you mean? Are you sure this teacher-person has a proper grasp on what she’s instructing?”

“No grasp at all!” enthused Pooh, “She just puts her hand on the back of my head, quite gently you know, and then up, up, up, there really is another way to come downstairs if you just stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”

Many self-proclaimed experts on the use of the psycho-physical mechanism like to point out, and rather smugly at that,  that human beings are the only creatures that locomote counter to the direction of their spine.  Explaining that our erect posture is the be-all and end-all of a gradual up-righting process of natural selection, they collectively ignore the cutest exception to that rule, namely, the humble hippocampus, commonly known as the seahorse.

Seahorses evolved to blend in with the vertical marine grasses of their shallow grazing grounds. With equine-like heads, wing-like fins and prehensile tails, they resemble a cross between pegasi and spider monkeys, suggesting an ancestral connection to both Equus Ferus Caballus’ and Primates. The seahorse’s head is poised forward and up of its spine, with the chest and (male) brood pouch suspended from the first trunk ring – a seahorse feature that corresponds to our atlanto-occipital joint. Pectoral fins located just behind the gills steer the seahorse, as the dorsal fin - located at the base of the trunk where our hip joints would be - propels it forward by lateral fluttering. Interestingly, the seahorses’ tail can only curl forward.  

Due to the fragile nature of the seahorse’s skeleton, few fossils survive to prove the connection between Hippocampus erectus and Homo erectus. Nevertheless, earlier civilizations acknowledged these aquatic ancestors in the popular game known today as chess. (Not coincidentally, the popularity of chess is decreasing in direct correlation to the increasing popularity of a less-demanding pastime called creationism.) As early as the 6^th century, board games in India and Persia featured game pieces representing knights and cavalrymen. Just as today, these game pieces were horse-head-shaped rather than soldier-shaped, and they move perpendicular to the surface.  Knights are the only pieces that can take corners and leap over other pieces. This short-gaited up-and-over maneuverability is reminiscent of the seahorse’s bobbing comportment. 16th century anatomists were not in the least surprised to discover a seahorse-shaped structure nestled within the limbic system of the human brain. A major contributor to spacial orientation skills, naming it after the hippocampus was a no-brainer.

Any Alexander Technique teacher worth his or her salt recognizes the similarity between the basic musculoskeletal structure of the seahorse and that of humankind. Even without the assistance of pectoral fins, letting the gills be free and learning to move two squares vertically and one square horizontally, (though  two squares horizontally and one square vertically can be equally constructive if controlled consciously) can pave the way to brainpowered, buoyant, bobbing bliss all day, every day!

Sign Over the Door of Perception:

Watch Your Head, Bend Your Mind, Exit, Pursued

If it be done now, ‘twill soon be overdone;

if it not be done, ‘tmay be done nevermore;

if ‘tis just not done, yet some done-for sparrow will fall for’t;

Since no man has aught of what he doth, what is’t to come undone betimes?

The readiness is all……

Dear Editor: I am 80 years old.

Some of my batty old friends say I should just take an aspirin and learn to roll with the punches.

Papa says “If you see it in the AmSAT News, it’s so,”

Please tell me the truth; is there a Primary Control?

Virginia O’Hanlon

115 West Out-To-Pasture Street.

Virginia, your batty old friends are wrong. Worse! They are skeptics! Which makes them mere insects! Ants! Skeptical ants, incapable of grasping truth or knowledge if it hit ‘em over the head! (Which it probably has, Virginia dear, hence the stiff neck.)

Yes Virginia, there is a Primary Control. It exists as certainly as death and taxes and bearcrap in the woods exist, and you know that those abound to give your life its final end and challenges along the way. Alas! What deadweight would we be in the world if there were no Primary Control? As dead a weight as if you were dead yourself, Virginia. There would be no childlike presence then, no resistance, no opposition to make tolerable this gravity. We should have no freedom except in feeble moans and dribbling saliva. Childhood lightness may as well be replaced with cement shoes and extinguished in the Hudson River.

Not believe in the Primary Control! You might as well not believe in gravity! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the shopping mall photo studios to catch Santa impersonators slump in their chairs, hoping their pained grimace will pass for a smile as they hold frightened babes for holiday pics, but even if they did not see the Santas collapse — that would not prove they were not in dire need of Alexander Technique lessons. And what about those fairies dancing on the lawn? Alas Virginia, queer mannerisms can interfere with the Primary Control in ways we’ll refrain from mentioning out of concern for our younger readers. 

You may wave the baby’s rattle and see what makes her startle, but there are muscles covering the atlanto-occipital joint which even the strongest men that ever lived, yea, especially the strongest men that ever lived, fix and hold rigid. Only trust, inhibition and direction can push aside those habits and render the supernal and glorious head-led motion. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and universally constant.

No Primary Control?! Thank God, F.M. lived, and his Technique lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, we may finally get the hang of it.