There’s a wedding and a humble man arrives and takes a seat on the back row. The father of the bride takes note, approaches the newly arrived guest saying, no my friend, come up higher. There is advantage in humility, merit in staying back, and no methodology teaches it like the Alexander Technique. According to today’s New York Times, an individual perceived as slightly neurotic, a bit withdrawn and staying back, is judged by his or her peers as a better colleague than the extrovert who does the same work at the same level of expertise. In business, in conversing with a child, in teaching a class or a lesson, stay back and let the other invite you in or up. Study the Alexander Technique. You’ll learn that staying back is a position of advantage, a place of openness from which you can appreciate the status — the standing — of the other. Stay back. Keep your own counsel. That’s the Alexander Technique in a nutshell. Study it. Engage with it. Your family and your colleagues are going to notice.
A friend of mine who studied Alexander Technique was already a humble, sweet and considerate man. But there was something in his manner that attracted manipulators and those who dishonestly prey on others. After studying Alexander Technique, predictably his posture changed – but the way he projected his sense of being humble also changed. The big thing he noticed was that, rather suddenly, he stopped having to deal with people who were practiced being rude and manipulative to him. These sorts of people just stopped approaching him, and the ones he already knew also stopped baiting him. He was very pleased to not be obligated to constantly set boundaries for difficult people.