About

THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE

as taught by Larry Ball 

I have been teaching since 1979. I graduated from the San Francisco Alexander Teacher Training School in 1979.The directors were Frank Ottiwell and Giora Pinkas.  I was one of the teachers assisting Frank Ottiwell at the school in training students to become teachers from 1981 until its closure in 2004.  I studied extensively with Marjorie Barstow for ten years in San Francisco and Lincoln, Nebraska. I also studied with Walter and Dilys Carrington and Patrick McDonald during their periodic workshops given at the San Francisco school.  My mentors are Marjorie Barstow and Frank Ottiwell. 

I practice and use the discoveries, ideas and concepts of F.M. Alexander to determine for myself whether I am content with my ways of being, thinking, moving, doing, acting, adapting, functioning and aging in my inner and outer worlds.  Alexander’s Technique is designed to help me discover how to better know, understand and change my ways, thereby growing my consciousness, my wholeness, my Self. This provides the foundation for all my learnings.  My discoveries are powered by life’s energies: Self, wholeness, soul, spirit, heart, numen, physical, psychological, earth, cosmos, gravity, and the unknown. I teach to help others discover all this and more for themselves.

 In teaching lessons we use my touch, words, our experimentation and our dialogue.

In studying the Alexander Technique we are asked to take a conscious look at ourselves.  We become deeply aware of our body and how we interfere with its natural movements.  With the help of gentle, delicate movements, we learn how our body can naturally move: without strain, poor stature and inefficient, harmful habits.  This change frees energy and gives strength and harmony to our bodies. We steadily learn to allow this on our own.

This new means of seeing ourselves brings with it a clearer look at our habits of thinking, feeling and perceiving.  We become aware of thinking, feeling and perceiving in set ways.  Once seen and experienced, we can begin learning to let-go of these pre-conceptions and allow fundamental changes to our Self.  As with our body, this change frees energy and gives strength and harmony to our Self.

We are then able to begin restoring our whole Self to the ways we are meant to be and live.

Alexander’s approach is fundamental.  A study of his work takes us from stress and discord toward strength, harmony and understanding.  Then we are able to improve the quality of our Selves and of the way in which we function within the world. 

People are drawn to studying the Alexander Technique for many reasons: occupational stress, a desire to improve an art or skill, discomfort and pain from an injury or functional disease, questions of self-confidence and dealing with others, a simple desire to improve the quality of the use of one's Self

I am certified as a teacher of by the American Center for the Alexander Technique.

My own growing understanding of my wholeness, my Self, includes my life energies (psyche, soul, spirit, instincts, physical, heart, earth, cosmos, Divine, and others unknown to me), sacred body, movement, feeling,  self-knowledge, self-healing, values (e.g. morality, ethics, integrity, character), oneness with others (Thou Art That), nature, and God. (I use the word “God” for the absolute because it satisfies me.) And since the concept of wholeness is all inclusive – it includes everything in relativity with everything - there is much more of my wholeness that remains unknown to me.
 As such, we are our own entelechy. We have all of our wholeness available to us in seeking consciousness of our wholeness and thus the ability to know, experience and practice our wholeness as best we are able.

Alexander and Jung

Alexander's Technique is an education in the use of the whole Self - body, psyche, spirit and soul.   It is an education often described as a system or form of psycho-physical education. 

As it happened, I began studying Alexander's work in the same year I began studying the psychology and philosophy of Carl Jung - 1976. I have found in my own education that Jung's work - which includes the same recognition of the unity and oneness of all as Alexander's work - provides me with a deep examination and learning of the ways of the immaterial aspects of our whole Self that Alexander did not approach. This is understandable, given that his own exploration of these unknown factors within us occurred prior to our current experiences of our unconscious brought about by the explorations of pioneers such as Jung, Freud, Adler and others.  For those who have explored Jung's work and wish to continue that work within studying Alexander's work, I offer help in doing so.

For many centuries, we humans have known that the pursuit of our wholeness is necessary for the education, healing, and strengthening of the whole person.

For me, the primary purpose of my work as an educator and teacher is to help educate, heal, and strengthen the whole person in our striving for our wholeness in our lives. Alexander called this the use of the Self. Jung called this the individuation of the Self.My approach in fulfilling the purpose of my teaching is through helping students learn and experience how the Alexander Technique provides a necessary ingredient of Jung's idea and goal of individuation - of seeking our wholeness and becoming our Self. This ingredient is the gaining of a deep knowledge and experience of consciously living within our body and within our earth.

Jung believed there can be no individuation unless we consciously live in our body. Jung believed that nature wants us to be simply human, a human who is conscious of who she is and what she is doing.   Alexander's Technique focuses on these goals; primarily by learning how to allow consciousness to live in our body, joining our life energies, psyche, instincts, soul and spirit, all of which already live there. Alexander's work provides a long-proven means of learning how we can allow the wisdom and natural creativity of our body to reconnect us with all of these as one, all working together in the pursuit of our wholeness and Self.  it is this work that is essential in our seeking these goals - the most important goals of our lifetime.

Alexander and Jung believed that by allowing this unity of body, life energies, psyche, instinct, soul, and spirit we can learn how to live and function in health and healing across our lifespan, as nature wants us to

My teaching includes my understanding of the physics of David Bohm where he speaks to the functioning of wholeness in thought, language, choice, action, movement and proprioception of Self. For Bohm proprioception of Self extends to everything, including our living within society, nature and the cosmos.

I have certifications in Reiki I and II (2007-8) and a certification in Shamanistic Healing Practices (2014).

 
For 50 years I have been a track runner. This has also been a major means of my working with my wholeness and Alexander's technique.

Concurrent with my Alexander teaching, from 1981 to 2014 I practiced law as a civil rights litigator in private practice in San Francisco in the field of employment discrimination and harassment, representing employees. At the time I retired from law in 2014, I had been elected a "Super Lawyer" (top 5%) in my field by my peers in San Francisco and the Bay area for 10 straight years.  

My Bachelor of Arts degree is from the University of California at Berkeley (1969). My Juris Doctor degree is from U.C. Berkeley's School of Law (1974).

In 1974-75 I worked as a Vista Volunteer lawyer (Vista was the U.S. domestic version of the Peace Corp) in the Mission District of San Francisco for the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation.

I am married to Monica Norcia. She is also a teacher of Alexander's technique. We live and teach in San Rafael, California.