Zen, creativity, strabismus, and the neurological basis for nonduality

Today I had another great vision therapy session with Dr. Kavner. I was doing a typical exercise: looking at a computer screen while wearing glasses and identifying, which of the four digits looked closer to me. I have been doing this kind of exercises for a couple of years, but today I noticed something new. After an incorrect answer I would ask myself, why I chose this digit, and sometimes I would notice that I have relied on some monocular cues, as opposed to binocular cues. People with improperly developed binocular vision, or with one eye for that matter, rely to some extent on monocular cues, such as shades and background information, in order to judge distances, which object is in front or which, etc. In a normally functioning adult these two systems are fused into one. Today I noticed that I have built some kind of a two-step process: if the binocular cues are strong enough, I use them to judge space. If they are not strong enough, I fall back on using monocular cues.

So now I understand much better, why Dr. Kavner has often said that my kind of perceptual problem is linked to creativity. In the 1970s they --- cutting-edge researchers in developmental optometry, including Dr. Kavner himself --- thought that in order to cure this visual defect, you had to change the whole individual's worldview to make into a more "coherent", more "convergent" one. Later they discovered that it was possible to only change the functioning of the eyes while leaving the rest intact, and this is what he prefers to do, as he tries to not affect the personality of the patient while treating the visual system, and definitely not to suppress any creativity that may be linked to a particular perceptual disorder.

What I have suddenly understood is that this is the ability to simultaneously keep conflicting inputs, without suppressing one or the other.

In visual terms, it means that I can look at two objects and simultaneously perceive two different distances between them: one according to one internal system, and the other according to the other internal system. Now I can even consciously see the difference between those two distances if I choose to, though Dr. Kavner wants me to try to pay less attention to that, so I can allow them to fuse into one sooner. But now I also see that I have a similar skill, or gift, in other areas. I can use prayer, with virtually the same subconscious energy as if God or the Universe were an existing entity for me, as real as this table or that person, and simultaneously reject this existence in another context. When I am designing a computer program, I can ask myself about the benefits of a particular solution, and I simultaneously see its advantages or disadvantages from various points of view, without being pressured to choose a side. In fact, picking a solution and going forward with it can be a challenge for me, as I tend to give almost the same attention to very realistic possibilities and to rare, once-in-a-million possibilities.

East vs. West.

What I now see is that this ability to keep conflicting inputs is also a unique contribution of the Eastern civilization. The mainstream modern Western civilization very much favors the principle of dualism, that statements are either true, or false. Once something seems to be true, there is a subconscious tendency to reject its negation. Conversely, Eastern traditions offer training to directly cultivate the ability to keep the conflicts unresolved. This keeps our choices open, and this keeps us from the unconscious and conscious suffering caused by this yes/no polarity. From Shunryu Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind",

Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one. We usually think that if something is not one, it is more than one; if it is not singular, it is plural. But in actual experience, our life is not only plural, but also singular. Each one of us is both dependent and independent.

Let me get back to my earlier defense of religion. Traditional societies had people literally believing in the postulates of various religious doctrines, and thus while getting the benefits of a religious worldview --- deeper insight, lack of anxiety and sense of connectedness with other humans --- people also suffered the limitations. However, there is nothing preventing us from having a split; from literally believing and not literally believing at the same time. Of course, this was also part of the earlier religious doctrines: God was Christ, and his father at the same time, as well as the spirit. After life we were going to die, but also to live and/or to get reborn.

It may sound a little confusing (and it is), because the "Western", single-valued approach tries to unify everything into a coherent worldview, yet it leads us to duality, to splitting things into categories.When we are trying to label things as "good" or "bad", coherently, this the space in the mind into two parts, perhaps with some borderline. On the other hand, when we follow the Yin-yang principle and recognize that everything good has seeds of bad in it, and everything bad has seeds of good in it, then we do not unify our immediate perception, but it is unified on a deeper level, as the brain is not reorganized into polarities, but attempts to keep tracks of all sides at the same time.

Categorizing, splitting into polarities is great for automated responses, such as vision, and is also great for immediate survival. Anxiety, fear or immediate danger probably inhibits creativity by reducing this ability to simultaneously attend to conflicting inputs; this is also in line with my earlier post from years ago, "Why relaxation changes habits".  This is also related to the general tendency to fall into particular unconscious patterns, especially when something "triggers our shadow" or "wakes up our pain-body", and we react with selfishness, hostility, grasping or aversion, in a way that we've been reacting for decades, as a protagonist in a pre-scripted story, before we can realize what is happening. The ability to keep conflicting inputs may be helpful in this context as well, as allowing us to act differently while staying aware of the stronger existing pattern. I am not so sure about this one, though...

On science and rationality - part 1

It is important to remember that "science", "rationality", "objectivity" are just words. Those are concepts that were invented by human beings, and that we have learned at some point in our lives. Those are mental constructs; we do not have any direct experience of rationality or objectivity.

We have to be especially careful when these concepts are opposed to what seems to be "irrational": religion, ideology, etc. Historically people were always trying to look for "solid ground", something that we knew "for real", because life can be so uncertain in this world that is always changing, especially since our perception is always changing as well. Then these words merely describe a certain quality in our attitude to the world, or a certain quality in a description of the world that we are looking to find. But beware of the same terms appearing in a dual polarity. Do you want your children to study the story of God's creation of life, or the rational, scientific version? Do you want to use hypnosis, traditional medicine, or a scientific, objectively helpful treatment?

Notice just how emotionally charged those questions are. Clearly, in such a context science, reason, objectivity, etc. are now being used as symbols, and very irrational ones! There would be no need to invoke such concepts so often except perhaps in a purely philosophical discussion in some academic journal, were it not for all the fears, anxiety, and selfishness that are easily evoked by these ideas in so many people in our modern Western world.

It is so comforting to feel smarter than millions of other people! After all, you are not stupid enough to think that the world was created in seven days, and not delusional enough to think that you will be reborn after death. (Are you sure that those millions literally believe that the world was created in seven days? Can there be something that you miss?) You are a strong, independent person, and you do not need this opium for the masses. It is so reassuring to avoid the anxiety and the responsibility by relying on what it "scientifically proven"! If you are a doctor, nobody can blame you for using a "scientifically proven" method, even if you know it is not going to work, and even though 20 years later, in light of the new evidence, the "current scientific view" may switch to the opposite. Your dead patients may contribute to this evidence, but you will not avoid the responsibility by identifying yourself with "the science".

Some appeal to the "scientific method", but even the work of Karl Popper, who set the foundation for this very idea, shows just how tricky and multifaceted this concept is. The work of others, such as Paul Feyerabend, questions the very viability of this concept. Some appeal to the "logical-mathematical" intelligence, even though it has technically nothing to do with reason or rationality per se. In any case, for all that we know, cutting-edge research is often done via complicated imagery, metaphors, and anything but "sequential logical-mathemtical reasoning", whatever that is.

So next time you start arguing in favor of science, reason, or rationality, see what is more important to you: to be right or to be free.

Inspiration

I understand the nature of inspiration. When a lot of different circuits thinking about a particular area get activated inside you, you feel inspired. I am talking about Archimedes' inspiration when he shouted "Eureka". After you have studied something for a while, the circuits representing it have their own life. When the activity increases beyond a typical level, you can feel changes happening inside you without necessarily much effort on your part.

As any process carried in a biological medium, inspiration is finite and will pass with time. Certain kinds of inspiration can be verbalized and thus fixed, but I often find that -- as with writing this very essay -- verbalization stifles, kills inspiration. I sometimes avoid verbalizing my thoughts too early, too quickly, because I feel that it restricts the free flow of ideas and allows me to notice only the few main thoughts, while all the other obertones get suppressed. If instead I nurture the inspiration for a little longer, if only for another quarter of an hour, I may allow it grow to a level where writing down a sentence or two is not entirely detrimental to the creative impulse. Even then I often have to be careful: if I start writing down all of my ideas in great detail, the verbalization effort immediately puts creativity to a halt, and I may end up writing down about a half of what I had to say, and forgetting the other one. What I sometimes end up doing instead is noting just some words or short sentences, then switching back to nonverbalized thinking, until I am confident that I have written down all the main themes. After that I go over my notes and expand on every word, thought, or idea, feeling confident that I won't forget the rest.

People used to think that inspiration came from God. This was not a bad way to think about it at all. The point is that inspiration is external to us and is not under our complete control. Conversely, the concept of "personal creativity" where the artist is seen as the source of the creation, puts too much pressure on a person, as if this person was indeed "creating" art or science out of thin air. In fact, the mental representation of something new is created in the author's mind much like elaborate ornaments are created out of snowflakes --- basically, because of the laws of nature. It is then because of the nature of the mind that those patterns are interpreted as new thoughts, new insights that one has arrived it. Really, the neurons in one's head have just arranged themselves in another kaleidoscopic picture. Nothing has really been created, it is just a combinatorial rearrangement.

As already mentioned, inspiration is a biological process, and thus is finite. If not used promptly, it will disappear. One gets distracted, tired, goes to bed, and the inspiration passes; combinations that were possible stay unrealized. This is not really different from missing out on other opportunities in life: the door has closed, the train has departed, and what was merely possible remained, as it was,  unrealized.

Achieving your goals: end-gaining, inhibition, and pseudo-goals

1. End-gaining.

F.M.Alexander wrote extensively about the distinction between what he called end-gaining and means-whereby. Quoting from his 1946 book, "The Universal Constant In Living",

These terms stand for two different, nay, opposite conceptions and for two different procedures. According to the first or end-gaining conception, all that is necessary when an end is desired is to proceed to employ the different parts of the organism in the manner which our feeling dictates as necessary for the carrying out of the movements required for gaining the end, irrespective of any harmful effects due to misuse of the self during the process; a conception which implies the subordination of the thinking and reasoning self to the vagaries of the instinctive guidance and control of the self in carrying out the activities necessary to achieve the end.
It will be seen therefore that end-gaining involves the conception and procedure of going direct for an endwithout consideration as to whether the "means-whereby" to be employed are the best for the purpose, or as to whether there should be substituted for these, new and improved "means-whereby" which, in their employment, would necessarily involve change in the manner of use of the self.

One famous example that he gave was that of a stutterer. A stutterer is trying not to stutter, but once that bad habit has already been established, the more he tries, the worse it gets. At this point he has to stop trying, inhibit the habitual response, and instead reason out the best means-whereby for accomplishing his end. (Compare this to focal dystonia.) Another example was that of the Alexander himself. When he was trying to solve his voice troubles, he thought it was enough to just "try harder" in order to change the way in which he was speaking. Eventually he had to resort to an indirect procedure that started from inhibiting his habitual response, then substituting new and improved means by projecting the appropriate directions, while continuing to inhibit the old response.

The concept of "end-gaining" then naturally evolved to include various kinds of irrational behavior characterized by excessive preoccupation with the end to be gained which, ironically, is often counterproductive and defeats its own purpose. A manager at a company is under pressure to save money and, in a hurried decision, he does it by laying off several key employees. While the end has been gained, the long-term consequences have not been taking into account. The company ends up losing so much more. As another example, a woman becomes obsessed with the idea that she needs to become more attractive, even though her friends may be telling her otherwise. She works really hard saving money for a plastic surgery, then chooses a clinic for the operation based on a luring commercial, and ends up with less-than-satisfactory result. In this case she did not consider if the means that she chose for achieving her goals were the best ones --- such as using this particular clinic, and doing plastic surgery in the first place. She also did not consider if the goals, in fact, were what she wanted to pursue. Perhaps her deeper goal was getting married, and acting on the instinct --- even the first step of deciding to increase her attractiveness --- proved very inefficient and, in fact, counterproductive.

My teacher Mark pointed out on numerous occasions that end-gaining is different from having goals. After all, the manager could reasonably want to save money, or the woman could want to get married, or to become more attractive. It is the way the go after these goals --- the direct way, without consideration of the consequences and without reasoning out the best means-whereby --- that makes their actions end-gaining. But how do we recognize this distinction? How do we know if we are end-gaining, or if we are actually moving towards our goals? (A million-dollar question worth a front-page publication in Forbes.)

Here is my answer. First of all, the ability to set goals is uniquely human (maybe except for a few monkeys; I believe that dogs and cats and birds and fish don't have such an ability). Whenever we are setting goals, especially consciously formulated goals, we are using some higher-level mental mechanisms. For now just keep it in mind.


2. Inhibition.

Next, because we are, after all, animals, we have our wonderful animal heritage. We have this incredible instinctive process of doing things, of reacting to the environment. A healthy human can do a lot of things without really thinking. (Here I view it as a blessing.) If you are hungry, you naturally do something to alleviate that, whatever you learned to do, or your parents or your TV program taught you to do. If you are tired, you naturally do something to alleviate that, which may involve going to sleep or going to the nearest Dunkin Donuts for another cup of coffee. As you may have guessed, the latter may be considered end-gaining, if you have a habit of getting coffee whenever you are tired. This may serve you well if you are an analyst on Wall street, but so long as you are going directly for the end, acting on instinct, this still qualified as end-gaining, which is not the same as carefully considering the available options, then still deciding to go get a coffee.

It is possible to go through much of our lives acting "by feeling", by relying on this instinctive process of doing things. You will be learning from your own mistakes, though not from the mistakes of others. If you drink too much coffee and end up getting sick, then next time the very sight of coffee would be disgusting, so you'd drink less. If you don't end up getting sick, or if you don't draw a connection between not feeling well and substituting coffee for sleep, then you will not learn, and maintain the same behavior. The connection has to be well imprinted for the instinctive mechanism to work: getting in a car accident because of drinking too much may be enough of a shock to stop drinking; merely worrying won't be enough.


In order to choose some other response, one that is not instinctive, the first step is inhibition. Our animal heritage, this instinctive method of doing things, is so robust, so strong, serves us so well, that we absolutely have to inhibit the instinctive action before we can do something else. Here the word "inhibit" can be taken in the regular biological sense. If one action is already, automatically, under way, in order to do something else we have to override it with another, stronger intention and/or deliberately inhibit the original impulse by making it weaker. For example, the manager from the example above can take a couple of days to think the matters through very thoroughly. This will weaken the end-gaining desire to save money at any cost and, consequently, will also weaken the automatic response --- the layoff --- allowing for other solutions to be considered. Note that there is often a clear moment of inhibition, when the manager has to almost force himself to not do anything at the moment.


3. Pseudo-goals.

Finally, the reason we need to inhibit early and to inhibit often, is that the mind likes to create pseudo-goals. Remember that goal-creation is a high-level activity? Well, the instinctive process is a low-level activity, and it is generally unsuitable for reaching sophisticated goals. End-gaining is unsuitable for reaching goals, in principle. Our animal heritage, our subconscious mind, is just not smart enough to figure out the best way to lose weight, or to get a job, or to get married. It just isn't; the task is way too complicated. What, I believe, happens instead, is that the instinct is to pursue a pseudo-goal, derived from the original goal. The pseudo-goal is to feel that we are getting closer to the original goal.

The manager wants to save money. The intent he puts into his own organism is so strong, that the organism is really trying to make him feel that he is saving money, that he is moving towards saving money. Thus, he is engaging in an irrational behavior of laying off his key employees, because this is the closest way to making him feel like he is saving money. Without conscious control, without engaging higher-level thinking facilities, this is the best he can do for moving towards this goal. End-gaining does not work satisfactorily for such sophisticated goals; only conscious control does. The woman in the example feels that she is moving towards becoming more attractive by saving money for plastic surgery. Again, her mind substituted "feeling that she is moving towards becoming more attractive" for "becoming more attractive". This pseudo-goal is, upon closer consideration, not worth pursuing. It is only because she never stops for this closer consideration and keeps relying on instinctive "feeling" that she fails to realize that her efforts are misdirected.


4. The awakening.

A great deal of all human behavior is irrational, and for the same reason: people trying to achieve their goals in an end-gaining way, instinctively, without reasoning out the means, and pseudo-goals are getting substituted for goals. Countless industries have been built around this fact. People buy fast food to satisfy hunger and to save time, and even beggars asking for money would often go and get a meal at Mc'Donalds, even though soda and fries are hardly a wise way to apply their hard-earned money. People play computer games on their phone because they want to relax after sitting in front of a computer all day long. People clip coupons, feeling they need to save money, but end up buying more and thus spending more. The story of "Febreeze", presented in "The power of habit" by Charles Duhigg, is a very compelling example. It turns out that, when people are cleaning, they don't want the house to be clean as much as the want the house to feel clean, or to feel that it became cleaner.

End-gaining works: people eat their fries and they get fed; they spray their houses with "Febreeze" and... well, at least they get motivated to clean more often. But you are paying the price: you get out of shape because of all this junk food, you have no time for anything or anyone important because you are so busy pursuing your pseudo-goals, most of your spare money goes towards the things you think you need, which are often again pseudo-goals, and so forth. Also, more often than not, end-gaining does not lead you to achieving the actual goals. People quit diets, quit exercise programs, forget resolutions, and stay at bad jobs and in bad relationships.

The only way is to use our higher-level mental facilities. USE YOUR BRAIN! In Alexander's terms, the first step is awareness. I already wrote about it in the post on computer middleware. You have the ability to notice the impulses, to notice how your life is governed by your habits and by the pursuit of pseudo-goals. Develop this ability. Second, apply the inhibition to stop the end-gaining response and to consider the best means for achieving the goal, and whether the goal is worth it in the first place. It is essential to understand that this is a different mode of thinking than simply going with the flow. Even one minute, even 10 seconds of reflection can make all the difference, because a different, a higher level mental process is involved. Stop for 10 seconds and consider if you like your life, your job, the relationship you are in, and so forth, and what you can rationally do about it. Lastly, the third step is direction. After inhibiting the instinctive response and reasoning out the best means for the goal, and also the best goal to pursue in the first place, you now need to project these new directions while continuing to inhibit the habitual response. This is also a higher-level activity. If you want to stay committed to pursuing your goal, you need to keep using higher-level mental processes. Otherwise, the old, habitual responses will take over.

When applied to long-term personal goals, the exact same ideas were formulated by Alan Lakein, most famous for "What is the best use of my time right now?" Notice that this is a very high-level question involving high-level mental processes and a great deal of awareness and inhibition. His methods, such as writing down  short-, medium-, and long-term goals, follow the exact same principles: constantly inhibiting the instinctive desire to just go with the flow of life, and instead constantly using higher-level mental processes for bringing yourself back on track, as well as regularly using your high-level thinking and planning capabilities for setting and resetting goals.

Whatever method you use is not important. Use whatever works for you --- Alexander technique, Lakein's time management, mindfulness meditation. Perhaps your parents taught you some similar skills; perhaps you found these insights in your religion. But do use something. As a self-test, you should be well familiar with the feeling when you have an impulse to do one thing, and then you override this impulse or let it pass and, under careful consideration, choose to do another thing. This is the beginning of awakening.

On free will and determinism

Moving off on a tangent, this post will be about philosophy.

I have never really worried much about the question of determinism. After first hearing the idea, I dismissed it as rather simplistic. Upon revisiting, I would always merely assume that we, as human beings, had in us that little something that allowed us to make decisions regardless of all other causes.

However, through my meditation practices I started to see how what I thought were my decisions are hardly decisions at all. Quite a few times I have witnessed a situation (inside myself) whereas I would be trying to make a choice between two alternatives, and I would quite literally feel two stimuli competing inside myself. For example, today I was out in the city and was trying to choose between going home and staying to do something else. I could feel the two possibilities inside myself trying to overpower one another. As I brought my attention to different aspects of the situation, I could feel those stimuli change in intensity so one or the other would seem to be winning. External factors also influenced the situation: yet another drop of rain falling on my head made me imagine myself again being sick and miserable, and suddenly I felt that the decision was made.

It is a disturbing thing to observe in oneself, for then I witness how my own choice falls apart into its many constituents: my own earlier thoughts and memories, events happening at the moment, the state of my body, etc. My choice can be entirely explained and, given enough information, predicted without ascribing any freedom to me at all. Of course, I have a line of defense against this possibility: meditation --- and the Alexander Techniques --- gives us the tools for coming to the present moment. As my teacher says, Alexander Technique is ultimately about freedom to do what you want (so that you are not just in control of your habits). True, with those sophisticated tools I seem to be able to make better decisions; but I suspect that this is not much more than a more sophisticated decision-making process, much like using several chess computers to make the next move: you can use the fastest one, or you can use a slightly slower, but much better one.

When, for example, I am creating a new computer program, I am understanding the situation and taking all the consideration inside myself, and then some design decisions to make suddenly become clear. I am not really choosing anything; I am just using myself, so to say, my own experience, my own neural circuits to make the decision, much as I would consult an expert or a computer program. If computer programming is too complicated, think about ordering food. I am looking at each item in the menu, and --- at my current level of awareness --- I can often feel the image of this food item, and some thoughts that accompany it about the item's healthiness, about my plans for the next hour or two that may affect the choice, and so forth. The process seems complex, but there is no room for causality.

This is, actually, rather disturbing, being able to witness (what seems as) my own lack of free will. Even if I come to the presence, inhibit immediate impulses, and do all those wonderful things that I have learned to do, even though my mind clears and (it seems that) I am able to make much better choices, I still cannot hide from the awareness of how those choices originate. As far as I can tell with my current level of awareness, even at those clearer periods of consciousness, I can still see the same kind of impulses in favor of one and the other option floating in my mind and competing with each other in intensity. I can still sense how the time of the time, the temperature in the room, the state of my body (seems to) affect my choices. I still notice how I still do things out of habit, even if this habit is inhibiting other impulses. For example, I may notice a thought to stand up and do something, as I am sitting, and in the next instant I notice another impulse to inhibit the previous thought --- as I have trained myself to do over and over and over again --- and so I end up not going anywhere. Both things happen so quickly that I can hardly talk about any free choice on my part.

That is all I can say at the moment. If you are interested in the subject, you can start by reading Immanuel Kant's reflections on the subject (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwVariousKant.htm) and then proceed to the modern discussion in the neuroscience community (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will).

Alexander Technique, meditation, vision therapy, and computer middleware

Today was another insightful Alexander Technique lesson with Mark. I will try to develop some of the insights in this post --- I don't really have a better place to put it.

Technical introduction. When web programmers write software for a sophisticated website, they would often think about it in three layers: the front end, the middle layer, and the back end. The front end includes developing whatever the user will see in the browser, the back end involves things like storing user's information in the database, and middleware is everything in between. Computer programmers like to separate software into different parts because then it is easier to make sense of the whole design. The problems with computer software are almost the same as the problems with human beings: there are too many moving parts, and everything is interconnected. You touch one thing, but everything gets affected. Thus, many software developers favor a design with many small, manageable, independent components that are loosely coupled with each other, as opposed to one big, monolithic chunk of code. I am really not sure, how to explain it in simple terms so that everyone could understand...

When people are designing a robust, scalable, reusable software architecture consisting of many independent, loosely coupled pieces, they would try to make it flexible, to add "hooks" to different layers, at different levels, so that future pieces of software integrated into this architecture could be included in many different ways, allowing, so to say, for many ways to fit the puzzle, depending on the particular future, yet unpredictable circumstances.

For example, if you have a web application, you may want to protect it from "CSRF", a common attack used by hackers (search for "cross-site request forgery"). You may manually inspect each page of your website and, if appropriate, add some code to protect from CSRF. The problem is, your application may have a lot of pages, and even if you secure all of them, care should be taken each and every time you are adding a new page. This is painful and unreliable. However, if your design is flexible enough, you may be able to instead add a CSRF protection middleware. It will then intercept each and every request to your website and make sure that it is appropriately protected. In this way, you can keep working on your website without any worries, and the protection will be added "under the covers". Note that the web framework you are using has to be flexible enough to allow you to insert middleware in the middle of the processing.

Now, let's extend the analogy. For the vision, you can think of the eyes as the front end. Once the signal enters through the cornea, retina, optic nerve, etc., it goes through various middle layers, and then you can think of the visual cortex as the backend --- or, perhaps, the visual cortex is yet another middle layer, and the backend would involve parts of the brain forming our physical and emotional reaction to what is seen. There are many different layers or levels of processing for the inputs from all senses, including proprioception.

Remember, as I have just explained, that a well-designed software system is decoupled: it contains different parts that are not too interrelated. This is also desirable for different parts of a human beings, and many different techniques have been invented for this end. In dance, for example, it is desirable to be able to move one's leg without moving one's arm, or vice versa. In politics, we want to talk without changing our facial expression. When playing piano, we want to move different fingers independently. In vision therapy, we are making sure that the new, desirable visual habits function independently, not just in a certain context; this dependency on the context is an obstacle for any change-of-habit type of endeavor. Isolation or separation are words commonly used to describe this desirable property.

It turns out that "our" software or hardware, our brain and our body, is better than we think. This is not a new idea. You may have heard the idea of not reacting from your amygdala, but allowing the inputs to be processed in the neocortex. That is, we, humans, have developed a better version of "hardware", or "software", depending on how you look at it, than what certain lower animals had. (The popular analogy is "hardware", but I personally like to think of parts of the brain as "software", because, well, software is "softer" and thus easier to change.) I am going to make a similar yet different point.

I believe that the design of a human's perceptual system is a good design. That it includes some "hooks" that allow for certain middleware to be installed. That is, the nervous system has connections in the middle of the signal processing that allow us to potentially do certain things with a signal or an impulse in the middle. The essence of the Alexander Technique is, then, developing and installing such middleware. Repeated practice strengthens one's ability to interrupt the signals in the middle and to allow for custom things to be done. All three key principles of the Alexander Technique --- awareness, inhibition, direction --- can be viewed in this light, inhibition being the most obvious one. Similarly, the direction "I wish to free my neck" is done at the middle level, if it is to be done properly: by monitoring all passing signals and filtering out those that tighten my neck, I am able to free my neck "out of being, instead of out of doing".

This is why the Alexander Technique may be considered a "pre-technique": because this is a technique for and of installing middleware in our processing. (I don't really think it is about perception processing, it may be more about processing one's impulses towards doing something. I am really unclear on this distinction between perceiving something and doing something.)  This is why, according to Mark, a really advanced private class in Alexander Technique may still focus on foundations such as freeing one's neck, whereas this would not be the case for a really advanced music class: world-class musicians probably wouldn't be spending hours practicing the C major scale, exceptions notwithstanding.

Not all meditation practices or yoga practices involve this installation of middleware. For example, it is possible to mediate on loving kindness, spend some time cultivating this new feeling, and then allowing the effects to spill into other parts of one's life. This could lead to permanent changes in one's outlook on life, rewiring of the brain, etc.etc. However, there is no middleware mechanism involved. On the other hand,the practice of mindfulness, the Zen are about the installation of middleware so that on every impulse, something can be done in the middle, before it has been completed. I am struggling to make a distinction here between merely controlling or not acting on strong impulses and some other, deeper quality.

Not all processing in humans allows for an easy installation of such middleware. As I know from vision therapy, low-level vision processing functions best when its undisturbed by conscious thinking. That is, it is certainly possible to interfere with low-level visual processing, consciously and subconsciously, but the result is inferior, and is not recommended. Middle-level processing can be useful during therapy, to help break old visual habits and start forming new ones. However, in order to integrate new visual habits, the middleware layer has to be eventually disabled, so that information can flow freely, at the maximum available bandwidth.

Lesson in Alexander Technique: inhibition and not allowing

This will be a highly technical post about the Alexander Technique, not about eyes. I've just had yet another great lesson with Mark and wanted to start sharing some insights. A significant background in Alexander Technique or something similar is recommended for reading it. Also note: Mark Josefsberg is my Alexander Technique teacher (his website).


I am sitting on a chair. Mark points out that my spine looks a little bit compressed. We are discussing what would be "the Alexander way" of dealing with it. Of course, "just sitting up straight" is out of question, since "just doing" is not what we are after, and trying to sit up straight has undesirable consequences. Stretching the arms up could work to decompress the spine, but again, this is not "the Alexander way". I tried just applying directions to free my neck, etc., and it made sitting there a little bit more comfortable, but I still stayed in this mini-slump.

So I contemplate the problem: I want to lengthen my spine without "just doing it", by following "the Alexander way". It suddenly occurs to me that I want to lengthen my spine a bit too much, and that an Alexander way would be to give up trying to lengthen my spine altogether. Mark agrees. He says: "You could choose to lengthen your spine, or you could make a choice to keep your spine compressed."

I: I make a choice to keep your spine compressed.
Mark: Fine, since you've just made that choice, you can stay where you are.

I keep sitting. The awareness that I am in a slight slump comes back, and feel that I don't really want to stay there, that I am just doing it in the spirit of contradiction, because I'd been trying to inhibit. Thus, I feel that this was not a "real" choice, to stay in the slump, and I don't want to be responsible for the consequences (perhaps slight, fleeting stiffness in the back, as a result). I explain this to Mark, and he suggests that I find a way to actually come out of the slight slump, but still following the principles, instead of abandoning my plan altogether.

Then I suddenly remember something that I read, that change happens in the movement. I immediately propose this theory to Mark: that it is much easier to lengthen my spine if I were moving around, doing something else, while applying the Alexander directions, instead of just sitting there in a stiff, fixed position, trying to free my neck and lengthen my spine. He agrees; so I stand up, do something, and sit back down; of course, it helps. However, Mark then asks me to go deeper and to find a way to lengthen my spine without actually standing up.

This really puzzled me. Even though I have surely done similar things before, here I was sitting there, trying to come out of the slump, but finding no good way other than "just doing it" or "standing up and moving around, while applying the directions". The Alexander directions themselves were too weak to completely take me out of the slump; I'd say, they only helped about 5%. However, I recalled this example that Mark always gives. He had a student in the past, a bright, intelligent guy, let's call him Jeff. So Jeff would be sitting in a slump and "just thinking the directions without doing them", and nothing would happen. According to Mark, Jeff misinterpreted the "just thinking part", as "just thinking" doesn't mean that nothing actually happens; just the opposite. In fact, Jeff didn't allow himself to come out of the slump, probably because he subconsciously misinterpreted the word "just" in "just thinking".

So I once again recalled this example and started looking for a way to apply the directions to actually come up. At that moment Mark reminded me that the so that part in the primary directions was so important: free my neck SO THAT my head would move forward and up... I was not doing the "so that" part: I was freeing my neck, but not allowing any movement to happen. Suddenly I found it! I first applied the directions a little bit, to easy up the slump, and then... then I found some other direction (*), perhaps some other neural pathway, in which I could get from weakly issuing directions to actually lifting my self out of the slump, without actually actively telling myself to do it. Instead of starting down the path of taking myself out of the slump, I start down the path of just letting go a bit and applying the directions, and then was able to continue this path to taking myself out of the slump in some other way.

As soon as I did it, I immediately realized that I had done it in the past, yet just a few minutes ago this "some other direction" still seemed impossible. However, it was not clear if Mark noticed all the change that has just happened or how he interpreted it. He pointed out that I allowed to come out of the slump. This was weird. After all, I still had to do something to come out of the slump. I am not referring to the physical things that I had to do, but I had to play with my nervous system to make it issue a certain signal to come out of the slump in a particular, peculiar, nonhabitual way. Yet here he was, talking about "allowing".

Of course, I know that "allow" in this context often just means "soften", "don't end-gain too much", etc. Yet at this moment I took it literally, and it just seemed wrong. It's not like I was trying to come out of the slump and, at the same time, not allowing it to happen. It was more like I was trying to come out of the slump and, at the same time, at first was not able to make it happen in the desirable way. However, when I tried to reproduce the experience a couple of times, I started to notice the "not allowing". I would slightly slump, issue the directions "weakly', reproduce the experience of being unable to come out of the slump without just actually doing it (but not use "some other direction" (*) described above); and then I would observe, what prevented me from actually coming up. Suddenly I started to "see" inside myself this very my own "not allowing". It had a flavor of this idea that you should inhibit, you shouldn't just do things the direct way. By targeting this "not allowing" directly I was able to come out of the slump in yet another, subtly different way (**, different from "the other direction" described above). As I kept working on this one, after a few dozen seconds I started to come out of the slump really, really quickly, almost instantly, as soon as I deactivated this "not allowing". I immediately recalled what I read, I think, in Walter Carrington's lectures: "The right thing does itself, the right things does itself, the right thing does itself!"

It was peculiar that this "not allowing" felt very much like the classical "Alexandrian inhibition". After all, the former is supposed to be bad, whereas the latter is supposed to be good. I conjectured for a minute that the two were, in some sense, the same: inhibition = "not allowing". However, they still felt subtly different: the "not allowing" felt like a black net spread over something; inhibition doesn't feel like that at all. Yet they shared the same pause with nothing happening.

After a quick discussion with Mark I became clear on this one. Inhibition, in the Alexander Technique, is consciously preventing something that would otherwise (habitually) happen. Allowing, in the Alexander Technique, is consciously making something happen that would otherwise (habitually) not happen. They are very much the same thing; the key is conscious control.

Now that I think about it, though, I see that there are two different ways to allow things, but only one way to inhibit. When I sense the stimulus inside myself that is going to lead to some action, I can weaken it (or "let it pass"), and this is inhibition. (I am not sure if there is a difference between weakening and ignoring.) However, if I feel a stimulus that is too weak, such as the stimulus to come out of the slump, I can either strengthen it to allow (allow=make it possible) it to happen. This is what I described above as "some  other direction" (*). I can also notice what other stimulus is inhibiting the desirable stimulus, what I described above as "the black net", and inhibit the inhibiting stimulus to eventually allow the desirable stimulus to happen. This is what I described above as "yet another, subtly different way" (**) to come out of the slump. (There are lots of other ways to come out of the slump without "actually doing it", such as using imagery or somewhat related approaches of "using the breath".)