It can take time to understand the concept the primary control. The name, primary control, refers to the relationship between the head, neck, and the remainder of the body that allows us to stand and move gracefully. Like a snake when it slithers along, the head and neck lead as the body follows. In relation to the back and the remainder of the body, too many humans have a dysfunctional tension and disturbance in the head and neck. Primary control promotes the experience of graceful movement that would otherwise be lost.

The Primary Control is not a posture. As we move throughout the day, this dynamic relationship is constantly changing. The challenge in learning the Alexander Technique is not so much to activate the Primary Control, but to avail ourselves of this relationship during our life, whether we are playing the piano or teaching or sitting at a computer–right while we are living, doing whatever we are doing.

You achieve this by inhibiting your habitual reaction to any stimulus. By this, we refer to your ability to intercept any habitual response to any stimulus. For instance, when playing the piano, a pianist who always misses a particular note in a piece does so in a particular way - a habitual way of playing that note.

The Alexander Technique student detects the habitual response through an increased awareness which is present before the note is missed. The student “inhibits” their usual response to that section of the music and directs themselves in the fashion they have learned from the Alexander teacher, i.e., neck free, head forward and up, etc. This aids their ability to elicit the Primary Control, which allows new insight into their dilemma. All of this can happen so fast that the inhibitory process is actually renewed again and again with no beats lost. Inhibition is crucial to the learning of this technique. We continually respond to stimuli from a familiar, habitual frame of reference.

So that we can recognize our habits and perhaps replace them with unknown and unfamiliar responses. We are required to have true inhibition so that we can be constantly open and attentive to ourselves.

What people who study the Alexander Technique in New York have is not fewer “bad habits” but a way of recognizing their habits and a way of addressing them. Its teachings give you a particular freedom from habit and tension, which leads to a feeling of movement potential rather than one of weight and fatigue. Descriptions of the results of the work are always insufficient. The experience of a hands-on lesson is difficult to describe. One can only experience.

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