Sir,

Your annotation of April 12 opens with the statement: "As long as we are up and doing, our joints are kept nicely in the true, not only by their ligaments but also by the tone of neighbouring muscles." This statement will not be endorsed by anyone who is experienced in the F. Matthias Alexander technique.

It is over fifty-six years since Mr. Alexander made the observation that, in reacting in accordance with the dictates of instinct, most persons employ a use of the self which is associated with a debauched standard of sensory appreciation. Lacking reliable sensory guidance, they use the self in a way which maladjusts it as a whole. the maladjustment thus induced impedes the working of the what Mr. Alexander has called "primary control" ­ the control which Nature designed to have an integrative influence on the working of the self. Now a person who reacts by instinct puts undue and uneven pressure on his various joints, thus interfering with their best working and even with their natural construction. It is only when a person has gained experience in the use of the Alexander technique and has thus learned to withhold instinctive reaction, and to use in its place conscious guidance and control of reaction through a properly understood use of primary control, that he is able to improve his self-awareness and, therefore, his means of recognising that what he originally felt and believed was a good use of the joints was really a very bad use.

A person who inhibits his immediate reaction to a stimulus, and thereby, indirectly, consents to primary control operating without interference, is thus enabled to let the head go forward-and-up, the neck to be free from tension, the back to lengthen and widen, and the upper and lower arms, the upper and lower legs, the hands, fingers, and thumbs, and the feet and toes to diverge in the greatest possible degree from the parts to which they are joined and thus immediately related. In this way he is able to adjust the self so that the muscular tension is the least possible throughout, and therefore to create circumstances in which all the joints are adjusted in a manner which might be described as "in the true."

A joint of any other part is "in the true" only when a person, having adjusted the self by a correct employment of the integrative principle of primary control, employs a use of the self in accordance with that principle.