F. M. Alexander favored the words “forward and up” when describing our head’s relationship to our torso. Forward and up is the opposite of what most of us do, the opposite of how we tend to wear our heads, anchored to our shoulders and our shoulders anchored to our heads. It’s the ultimate false security. Alexander asks us all to reinvent his terminology. How would we describe forward and up in relationship to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man? How would we set him in motion, he of the outstretched limbs reaching to the circumference of a great circle? Here’s a try. Leave the circle in place, and turn Vitruvian man to the West. Set the circle, now a great wheel, in counterclockwise motion. Let the wheel turn just above his head, and set Vitruvian Man in motion to keep up. From running man’s perspective, the circle runs forward, away, out, around, down, and back in a great half circle returning through the front toe and out the heel of the back foot and back up and around again to his head, continuing the circle. This is Vitruvian man’s forward and up. It is a continuum. Yours too, perhaps. Your running, your walking might be better viewed from Vitruvian Man’s perspective, a free-wheeling circle of the self, your forward contributing to your up, your up to your forward, away, out, around, down, and back. Ultimately, wheels, circles, have no knowledge of down, of up, or of forward; they just keep coming back to themselves. You might do the same. When you run, when you walk, keep coming back to your self, never toward, never out there. Run within the circle of your self, forward and up.
Recent Comments