Miss Goldie (1905-1997) worked alongside Alexander for thirty years and he held her work in high esteem. She taught on and then ran his Small School for many years and was part of the first training course. In her later years, she clearly perceived herself as the guardian of his true technique, which few others, in her opinion, had really understood. In this presentation I will attempt to convey my understanding of some of Miss Goldie’s vast knowledge of this profound, subtle level of the technique. We will focus on a deeper level of inhibition; the importance also of saying yes and allowing life to flow; use of the eyes, and keeping the mind in the brain, rather than wandering through the body to check sensations.
I aim to show you some of Miss Goldie’s understanding of working on yourself in everyday life; so we, like Alexander, can use everyday tasks as a means of making discoveries about the technique and ourselves. Miss Goldie considered that only from this basis could we be true teachers of FM’s work.
The emphasis is on really how to stop, and “come to quiet” as Miss Goldie would say. We will explore true stopping, not just pausing; from which an entirely new way of carrying out an action can come about. We will use a variety of activities, including ball catching, vision games, picking things up, walking towards something, to experience this first hand. Through these we will also explore our reactivity to stimuli and our tendency to go into various “Alexander modes” which are not what Alexander was teaching, and which stop us developing the technique for ourselves.
We will also discuss how to introduce this approach with pupils.