Sir,

Dr. R. Halstead Dixon (July 21, p. 179) deals with the problem of coronary thrombosis on the principle of employing "deep breathing" as a means of combating the growing menace which coronary thrombosis has been acknowledged to be.

Could you not go further in this direction and bring to the notice of your readers the work of Mr. F. Matthias Alexander, who is well known as having been the inventor of a technique which a person may employ for the conscious guidance and control of reaction on the principle of the employment of Nature's integrative mechanism which Mr. Alexander discovered and called primary control? A person who employs the F. Matthias Alexander technique is enabled to adjust the self as a whole in a way which permits the head to go forward and up, the neck to relax or to be freed from harmful tension, the back to lengthen and widen, and the arms, hands, and fingers, the legs, feet, and toes, to be adjusted in a manner which enables them when called upon for performance to operate in association with an overall outward thrusting of the self as a whole upon its environment. Such an adjustment of the self as a whole provides circumstances in which all the internal mechanisms may operate with the greatest possible freedom within the greatest possible space which a person may make available for their accommodation.

These circumstances allow the floating ribs to have their greatest possible range of movement, and not only open out the lungs and the channels of the circulatory mechanisms as well as the internal viscera in the way allowing the greatest freedom, but release the mechanisms of the central and peripheral nervous mechanisms from the constrictions and restraints which may be shown to be associated with a habitual or instinctive and frequently unthinking use of the self as a whole.

If it is true that surgeons believe that it is worth while employing the principle of deep breathing as a means on which they may be able to rely to prevent coronary thrombosis after operations, is it not reasonable to argue that a person who employs the self in accordance with a principle that allows the lungs their greatest possible freedom and the floating ribs their greatest range of movement thereby reacts in his living in a manner which may be judged to offer means of preventing many catastrophes besides those having the magnitude of coronary thrombosis?

I am, etc.,
Mungo Douglas
Bolton

Sir,

In connexion with my letter, "Use of the Self," (August 18, p. 420), I would like to explain the term "primary control." It is the name given by Mr. F. Matthias Alexander to a principle which demonstrates its manner of operation to a person who employs the Alexander technique. It influences the self as a whole, so that at one and the same time the head goes forward and up, the neck is relaxed, the back lengthens and widens, and the parts which may be described as the upper and lower arms, the hands, fingers, and thumbs, the upper and lower legs; the feet, and toes, diverge in the greatest possible degree from the parts to which they are joined and thus immediately related. The employment of the technique enables the person to experience this manner of direction and teaches him how he may consciously guide the self as a whole in the same manner. As a consequence he is enabled to control the relativity of all the parts in the manner described and to provide himself with a total self is which the muscle tension throughout is the least possible. In such a self the mechanisms of sensory appreciation are adjusted in the best possible way and, therefore, in a way which enables him in his use of the self to appreciate, assess, and learn the manner in which he may best guide movements which he desires to perform. His reaction to living is made up of his movements, and a person who guides his movements in the best possible way may be said to react in his living in the best possible way.