Both men came for Alexander Technique lessons because of back pain. Jack had been told that surgery was his best hope and Bill relied on weekly visits to a chiropractor who could help him with his symptoms but not with the underlying pattern that was causing those symptoms.
It was a fascinating experience for me to work with these two students over a period of several months. When I first gently guided Jack into a less slumped posture, his immediate reaction was: "I can't walk into my office looking like this!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because people would think I was arrogant!"
It turned out that Jack had been quite tall for his age most of his life and that somewhere along the way he'd got the message (from his parents? teachers? playmates?) that taking up his full size would give others the impression he was trying to act superior. His personally was by nature fairly quiet and unassuming and I suppose he didn't want to deal with the challenges he thought his natural posture might have invited.
Bill was quite a different story. During his first lesson, I asked him to go into a slouch. With a little help from me, he was able to let go of some of his overly stiff stance. It was by no stretch of the imagination a slouch -although it felt that way to Bill. His immediate reaction was that this new way of standing was quite unacceptable - "I feel like a wimp!" was his reaction.
It turned out that his father was an ex-marine and a policeman. When we took a look at photos of him, and of Bill at various points in his life, it was clear that he had copied the military bearing of his father - as had his two older brothers.
