|
Kitty's eye order
|
|
|
|
Introduction
Kitty’s Eye Order
Frank Ottiwell
931 Elizabeth Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
Feb. 21, 1999
Dear John,
Here’s a copy of the only printed material I know of Kitty’s “eye “order”.
My story about it is this”
One day quite a few years ago Rome Roberts took me to lunch at the Ojai Country Club and I saw something I had never before
except possibly in a movie or at a zoo. Looking up from my lunch I saw a beautiful bird of prey sitting on a branch of a tree.
I was very much taken by its attitude of acute awareness and alertness. I couldn’t get the memory of it out of my
mind. When I got back to San Francisco I started to copy the state of acute alertness from time to time, mostly when out walking.
One day I left my office in downtown San Francisco and went out to walk around and refresh myself by practicing my bird of
prey alertness. I walked a block or so along Geary Street and came to the corner of Union Square when suddenly I had the
experience of my eyes seeming to go apart from each other—as though my eyes had set themselves further apart on
my head. It was a strange but exhilarating experience – almost like an altered state – and I was seeing
with a depth and all-encompassing quality that was very new.
In that moment I remembered years before reading something Kitty had said about an eye order. I hurried back to my office
and found the article I have sent you from my files.
I hope this and the article can give you some of what I am talking about and that you will be able to give yourself the
experience.
Best wishes, Frank
THE DISCOVERY AND USE OF THE EYE ORDER
IN TEACHING THE ALEXANDER WORK
BY: Countess Catharine Wielopolska
Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique
And
Dr. Mario Pazzaglini
Edited by: Carol A. Attwood
Reprinted by John V. Christianson 2021
On a recent visit to the New York Training School in New York City, Countess Catharine Wielopolska and Dr. Marion Pazzaglini
spoke to the students about the discovery and use of the eye order in the teaching of the Alexander work. The Countess, known
to her associates and friends as Kitty, is the founder of the Wielopolska Traing School and is the top master in the field
today. She is one of the few people alive who studied personally with F.M.Alexander, for whom the work is named. She has worked
in the field for nearly 60 years. In addition to her long association with the work, she has an impressive list of academic
and nursing credentials. Dr. Mario Pazzaglini, who has been associated with the Alexander work for over seven years, is a
clinical psychologist in private practice. He has an impressive and varied list of accomplishments. Dr. Pazzaglini, Mario,
to those who know him, is a clinical teacher at the Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. He is a consultant for both
the Bureau for Alcoholism and drug abuse, and the Board of Education in the State of Delaware. He is credited with starting
the Drug Clinics in that state. Dr. Pazzaglini is uniquely qualified to give insight into the Alexander work. His dual background
includes both Clinical Psychology and Neurophysiology. One of his key areas of research is in the field of imaging (or image
formation) and he has studied with Dr. Roberto Assagioll in the field of psychosynthesis. In addition, he enjoys drawing and
painting to further his own awareness of the process of imaging.
Kitty: Without any further ado, the speech.
It is a great pleasure to be here. I have known New York but I don’t know your school so I am delighted to
see such a lot of people. I thought that I would begin about F.M. himself, because very few of you knew him personally. Perhaps
I am the only one in the room who knew him, and a few short stories about him might bring him alive to you.He was about my
height, very compact, very springy, so well coordinated that if you saw him walking down the street you wouldn’t
especially notice him because he was so smooth and so easy. He was amusing; sometimes very lively. I remember a few things
about him that I think you might not have heard. After a session of ten lessons in the summer, he would take you by the left
arm and say, “Well keep it going” and out you would go. When you would come back a year later he would
never make any comment. You didn’t know if you had deteriorated or not. He would just say, “oh come in”
and then he would begin again. One time he said, “If you’re a burglar when you come to me you’ll
be a better burglar.” You can reason that one out yourself. I never did. Another favorite thing of his was,”If
it’s good, throw it away.” And, keep it going.” He said the hands over the back of the chair’
was a great thing. We were doing it for hours. I am sure that he worked by himself everyday. He would have assumed that you
worked everyday. You just didn’t ask questions at all. You didn’t want to – you thought well
maybe I’ll learn something. One day he came prancing in very, very electric, just up on it. He said, “I’ve
got it, I’ve got it with -- the trouble with Christ is that he didn’t have a system.” Well
you should have seen peoples’ expression. He said, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it with
the whispered ahs.’ Don’t start with a smile, but think of something funny.” It’s
a completely different center.” For instance a stroke victim can’t smile but if you say: “Do
you remember that funny thing that happened? Then they remember that funny thing that happened?” Then they smile.
F.M. didn’t know any neurology or anatomy. Have you all read Lulie Westfelt’s book? So you know how he
felt about it? We didn’t study any of those things. Lulie always thought I was fortunate to have been a nurse, and
maybe that’s true. Of course one of his things was “beware of specifics” If you get tied up
in specifics you can forget the primary control. I’d like to emphasize what a great man he was. A genius, no question.
Perhaps he was not a genius in teaching. I don’t believe many geniuses who make these big discoveries are outstanding
in teaching. There are only a few of those. His first discovery was the primary control, which lies in the relationship of
the neck, head and back. The second was how to influence it through direction. The third was inhibition and the fourth was
faulty sensory appreciation, which I think many of you find to be the most important thing that he discovered. Now I will
go back to eye direction. I was sitting in front of the mirror as I had countless times directing. I was rather distressed
because my sister, older than I, had, told me she had double cataracts. She hated the Alexander work. F.M. had said to her
in the 20’s “You’re the worst pupil I have ever had.” She didn’t take kindly
to the words. He didn’t always behave that way at all. He could be tremendously feeling and compassionate. This
was in 1967 and I was thinking, “I wonder what the Alexander work has to contribute to geriatrics?” I
thought of my sister’s cataracts. It seemed a pretty tall order to expect the Alexander Technique to affect cataracts
Then I thought about glaucoma and a loss of peripheral and loss of periphery vision which was about all I knew about it. I
decided to take a chance, so as I was sitting there, I thought to direct my eyes apart. So I said ,”eyes free to
go apart.” What was my astonishment to find out that my forehead cleared, my mouth went into a smile and my shoulders
went out and my knees also went out, but it was something else. I didn’t say anything to anybody because I thought
because thought they would all jump down my throat. I couldn’t find anybody until about 1975 when a very nice ophthalmologist
came up from Washington. We thought he would reveal why this happened. He was very interesting and I loved having him, but
he couldn’t help. So during the second lesson with Mario I said quietly, “I am going to give you eye directions.
These are not F.M.’s. I don’t know how and why they work, and I don’t want to teach them generally
until I have some idea of the scientific background for it, but there must be something.” I knew the eyes themselves
didn’t move but that’s all I knew. So I asked Mario to ask his ‘eyes to go apart.”
Then I said, you’ll find your forehead, your mouth and lips, your shoulders and your knees will go apart. I was
wrong there. I missed the seventh vertebrae. Mario told me later that I also missed the tongue and the inside of the hip joints.
Then he explained it to me. Mario gave me the technical explanation. How tremendously important it is.
Mario: I should preface this by saying that I am about to say is totally hypothetical. The first important point is that
the western system of thinking about the body is centered around structure. We have a skeletal system and , a muscular system,
and a circulatory system, so that the classification is based on structure. This is helpful if we are interested in structure
but it tends to block thought about function. There are functional organizations of the body that don’t follow these
strict categories structural categories, but actually crossover. The second point is that thought is directly represented
in physiology. Physiological change happens in two categories: biochemical changes and muscular changes. They are actually
the same thing, but it is important to know that thinking influences what happens in your muscles. An interesting sidelight
here is that Hermann Rorscharch also knew that there is a seesaw between what people feel with their muscles and what they
think. When a person looks into a Rorschach inkblot one thing that you look for is called the big “M”
for movement. The readily they see movement the more assured you are that the personality is intact. There is a smooth flow
between what a person is thinking and what their motor outflow is. Let me stop there and see if you have any comments and
I will answer any questions.
Audience: What is moving?
Mario:For example, inkblot number 3 has areas that look like two people. “Two people bending over a pot”
is a stronger response than “two people.” Statistically two people bending is “healthier”
than just seeing two people. There is a man at McGill University named Wolfgang Luthe who developed a system called autogenic
training. This system is important because it is another system where verbal orders are used to change physiology. Three of
his “orders” are my forehead is cool, my stomach (or tummy depending on who you are talking to), is warm’
‘my hands are heavy.” The Alexander orders take much of this same form, using a noun and a verb. When
giving the eye order, my eyes are free to go apart’, or ‘eyes free to go apart, (using this order that
thought and what you think and say influence your muscles) a general ‘opening’ of the system to further
ordering occurs.
This ‘opening is complex because we mean it in both a concrete and figurative ways. As a person listens there
is competition built between the way he is wired, the natural outflow of that, and the stance he has taken within any given
situation. For instance, if you have parents that are angry all of the time, a child ill take an, defensive posture within
the context of that family and this is then contrary to the normal outflow. The result of that conflict is permanent postural
change, and permanent postural change then leads to misuse.
The Alexander order seems to be a way of getting to that original wiring and its natural and its natural into patterns
of muscle use. The eye order appears to be a way of opening the system to receive orders better. I am going to go one step
further, and look at this in terms of evolution. Our basic primitive “vertebrate” or cordate has a head
like area and a tail and something called a noto cord, which eventually becomes your backbone. The plan of this body is a
series of muscular bands. There is no musculature in terms of organization except for these serial bands. These are called
myotomes or myomeres, although the name changes as you go through history. What is important is the muscles in this system.
What happens to the lead muscles usually happens to the rest of this organism. It is interesting that F.M. studied the Coghill
because he had studied a bit with Sharington, who talked about this plan. Once you get the lead muscle to do something, the
other muscles all tend to do something organized around the lead muscles action. The whole organism is wired that way. In
human evolution, this muscle organization still exists, except that it is highly evolved. The first muscles within the human
system are the eye muscles. Once you place an order in the eye muscles, it is equivalent to placing an order in this first
band of muscles of the original organism, which then pass the order down the organism. We are much more complex because the
center for this action is now represented at the back of the neck. This eye center is related to the primary control.
Kitty:
So that’s why we talk about the point of vision.
Mario:
This is the skeleton of the reasoning of how this eye order may be working. It seems to preset the system to receive other
orders. It is important because it represents a primitive relationship between these eye muscles and the trapezius muscle
(or primary control) and the muscles around it. Let me stop there.
Audience:
I just wanted to see a couple of more specifics about what type of connection there is between the eyes and neck muscles.
I know that the eye muscles coordinate head turns. There is some functional data
Mario:
There is an anatomical connection with the structural approach, but not a lot of data. There is some functional data which
is interesting. For instance, the trapezius muscle is an important muscle process of sleep and dreaming. The trapezius muscle
manifests the switch from deep sleep into REM sleep
You get a funny connection between what happens to the eyes during REM sleep and the loss of tonus in the trapezius.
This can be seen in cats because when cats are sleeping they crouch down. Then when they begin to dream they lose tonus.
They lose trapezius control and the cat flops over. There seems to be an inborn, ancient system within the nervous system
which guides it in organizing movement. It is called the entrainment system. The primary control represents one of the external
manifestations of this perceptual entrainment circuit called the entrainment circuit This is what get snakes to follow you
when you move your hand back and forth. When birds fly in flocks they don’t run into each other. This is all due
to these entrainments circuits that lock the organism perceptually into the environment and into others of its own species
or into its prey. It is helpful for birds of one species to be colored the same way so that they are coordinated to each other.
The innovation for the eye is in the first 5 cranial nerves. The first is the olfactory, the second is the optic. These
are sensory. The first muscular control of the eye is the abducens which is the third nerve innovated by number 4.
Kitty F.M. always said, while you’re working on someone, just don’t start the work, run your hand
like that; it’s very soothing.
Mario:You can disturb an un-useful pattern. In psychotherapy, children occasionally get locked into a behavioral trap,
and if you just brush against them you produce a micro hypnotic trance which allows you to change the train of thought. What
you are doing is working the system in reverse. The system will open and you can talk about something else.
Kitty:You can imagine my tremendous excitement when very quietly Mario said, “I think I can tell you where this
comes from.” It had been over 6 years that I had been looking around, hoping that I was not going to have to male
any study myself. He said that the eye order relieves the forehead, the mouth, the lips and tongue, the seventh cervical vertebrae;
the inside of the shoulders and the inside of the hip bones. All with that order. Not below the torso, however. We don’t
know much about that. The time he came he said the tongue is affected and the seventh cervical vertebrae, which I had missed.
It is a very pleasant thought that if you ask your ‘eyes to go apart’ and ‘See from the point
of vision’ all of that is going to get done. F.M’s technique for directing was to give your directions
non-vocally, in words, in your head. He was a genius. There is, I think, a step that he left out. That step is to think the
words without meaning. In the early and mid 20’s people were not familiar with the phrase ‘the body’s
intelligence.’ The ‘body’s intelligence’ will pick up your direction and interpret
it as it wishes, not as you wish it. You are on your way to forming a psychophysical whole, but if you interfere with it,
it will block. I have been through it all for years and know every pitfall. I finally came up with words without meaning so
that the body’s intelligence does the outcome.
Audience: I am not sure what you mean by words without meaning.
Kitty: Say the words, but don’t qualify in your head. Think clearly of it and know it.
Mario: You are using words as tools rather than the words themselves. If you use a word like face, there is some connotation
that pops up, so conceive structurally when what you mean by face. Think about the noun but leave the verb alone. The noun
constellates what you are going to do and the verb sets it in motion. Don’t tinker with the verb because you will
be getting in the way. Then you are headed for trouble, because you want the wiring to take over.
Audience:
So you don’t interfere, don’t try. Trying really knocks it out because it is your ego that tries and
that is where you get into trouble.
Audience: Can you say again what you said about the noun and the verb?
Mario: You have two parts to the order. The noun tells you where the action is going to take place. It is helpful to place
that action where it is going to take place. So you think where that is. Then you leave the verb alone. The verb is actually
doing the work. The verb is setting in motion those natural connections that will allow that relationship between brain and
muscles to flow back to where it was.
Audience:
So you’re not saying to eliminate the verb, but not to interpret it.
Mario :
Do not interpret the verb. You say the verb and let the verb work.
Kitty: You say the words in the orders and let them work.
That is right. That would explain it. You see how important it was for me to come here? It was fascinating when you said
that one could see what happened. This all started It was fascinating when you said that one could see what happened. This
all started 3,000 million years ago. These sides of the shoulders became the front legs and our shoulders became the front
legs and our shoulders. The inside of the hip bones also developed. I think myself, that now I am getting a slight pathway
through this lower nerve center which you say dinosaurs had but did not have time to develop. They got killed. Of course,
the East has always had the lower center here
Audience: The supposition that the eyes open things for orders –what is that supposition based on?
Mario: There are two processes of development: evolution and fetal development. The general plan is that there are a series
of muscular bands which then reorganize into our muscles. The second part is that what happens in band number 1, 2 and 3 is
going to happen someplace else in some form. Bands 1,2 and 3 make up the eye muscles, so that when you put a message into
1,2 and 3 you’re organizing and presetting the entire system for second order functions. So the first order, ‘get
ready.” is the eye order and the second order is the specific way to do that.
Audience
Is this true of the animal kingdom that as the animal is moving its eyes that in turn will set up the movement?
Mario:
Yes, that is true. It is wired that way. Those are the entrainment circuits. The eyes and those organisms that depend
on their eyes will then use that as the lead.
Audience:
There are two things that I would like to say. I think that this is so important and exciting. All of us who are teachers
have experienced the guy who stares off into space which is not at all what should happen.
The other comment I have is about people who are blind. Now in some cases sometimes with blind people, a gentle tap
Obviously, the brain in some way compensates for people who are blind. Even though they lack something very vital there
is something about the human nervous system, that can compensate.
Mario:
If it is purely a sensory blindness, then you don’t lose too much, because more of the muscles are intact. Now
in some sense you lose something, because the input of light changes, but you don’t lose the whole thing. Sometimes
with blind people, a gentle tap may change it enough so you can get in.
Kitty: I think it is wonderful -- especially the gentle part.
Audience: Can you explain what you mean by ‘getting in?’
Mario: You are born with a relationship between your nervous system and your muscles which computes gravity rather well.
But you have to live within a psychological and emotional context as well. That produces competing demands on the motor system
for that computation, so that you compute gravity and your family emotional atmosphere at the same time. The eye order resets
the system to be receptive to that first order of computation. It computes gravity rather than the family. Mechanically it
is really complex, but there is a relationship between thinking and the inborn patterns that are laid-out in the writing relationship
between your system and your muscles to compute gravity.
Audience: Wouldn’t any thought, forehead cool, for example, do the same thing?
Mario:
A little bit except, ‘forehead cool’ tend to go into those muscles that have to do with vasculature,
because you have been taught that. There are so many learning versus genetic issues, that it is almost impossible to pull
them apart after awhile. ‘forehead cool does do that. ‘Forehead cool’ is interesting because
some people will say, well I am going to go home and I want to do this really good”, so they say, ‘forehead
freezing.’ When you say that you almost get ice cream pains.” You have to watch out where in the system
you are putting it. You don’t run into those kind of difficulties if you correctly place it. Putting it in the eyes
places it better because forehead muscles are probably subordinate to these.
Audience: I think I understand that using the word eyes or using the word neck serves to orient the organism to a specific
area. My question is when we use a word like free, what does the organism do with an Adjective? I can understand the orientation
awareness, but I am not quite sure how the body can understand free.
Mario: You have thought the word free for many years. Every time you think the word free, a certain constellation of physiological
muscle reactions occur.The sum total averages in such a way that a particular part of a person’s life gets knocked
out, and what you are left with is a clear form of what the word free means. When that goes in as the message the system tends
to unfold. There is a process that as you grow older, there is a general folding in. It has to do with grasping the environment.
You want to push that process back a bit. The word ‘free’ seems to do that.
Audience: Are you working with the interface between language and action by taking thought to where it was a little less
complicated relationship?
Mario: Yes, it has a little less specific content.
Audience: You had said that there is a strong relationship between the musculature of the eyes and the trapezius in the
REM state. Often when people experience their neck free for the first time there is a flipping around of the eyes that seems
to go along with that.
Mario: There is an eastern form of meditation with a mantram which if done correctly and quietly enough you feel tiny
twitching occurring almost everywhere. Those are probably the results of the system reorganizing itself. The order is a more
specific way of allowing a certain dimension in that system to free itself more easily. You have given. You have given it
permission in a certain spot as a go ahead. If you are touching the two at the same time, you can feel it flipping back and
forth. There are tremors occurring. A person may twitch suddenly. Those movements also have to do with the discomfort and
the talking but they also have to do with discharge. What happens on the table is not random. It is all organized discharged.
As a psychologist it is interesting because I want to listen to what is happening.
Audience: Is it possible that the letting go of the habitual holding could trigger up something like an REM sleep?
Mario: People will go into a microscopic state. Something happens where they lose ordinary consciousness. They may say
‘ah’ or something like that. I think that ‘ah’ is one of the most natural reflexes.
Kitty: This work is really to improve the breathing, but we never mention it. The only things that we say are “keep
breathing, please” or “don’t hold your breath.” We don’t want to raise it
to the central nervous system control. We want it left where it is. Don’t control the breathing. Let the body do
the breathing. I won’t live to see it but you will. The world is slowly going crazy. I wish I could make a great
man, a genius alive to you. He never did a mean thing to any of us. There was never any partiality. I thought he was wonderful
and always interesting. Never boring. He repeated himself but he would put in a different way or a different context so that
you got it. He was a genius. Not teaching as I said, but someone said that the teacher takes the student into the forest and
the education is student getting himself out. I have glasses, do I give directions with or without? Do I need to see myself
clearly in the air to give the directions or not?
Kitty: Use your glasses. I think you will find that they will be less strong as time goes on. I had mine tested in ’52
and was very dependent on them. I couldn’t dream of going away for the afternoon without them. I read easily without
them now. Working with somebody I think you should have—don’t you think it would be easier with glasses?
If you have a foreigner, it is a great help to give them their directions in their own language, to begin with.
Audience: With respect to the question of glasses, and your new direction of letting the eyes go apart, it seems that
with glasses (especially if they were fairly strong when you look to the side) there is quite a bit of distortion. I wonder
if they don’t allow our eyes to go apart. Is the frame another sort of distortion?
Kitty: I should say yes.
Mario: I would say maybe yes, maybe no, because in the moment – the really ancient part of this line is really
time free. The occurrence takes place almost immediately and is not connected to directional movement. Now, later on in the
process the frames may be troublesome.
Audience:
Kitty when the pupil is on the table do you want the eyes open?
Kitty: Open. Don’t let them drowse off. Have their eyes open. F.M. was very particular about that.
Audience: Let me tell you of an experience that I had. When my sister was studying with you, she called up and said, “Kitty
has a new order –"eyes apart’ .” I said “That is interesting.” I wonder
what she means by that?” She said, “she really feels that it is connected to the rest.” So as
we often do , we
Have these conversations on the phone and we exchange ideas. I thought about it later when I was on the table and my eyes
were closed then. I wasn’t having a lesson, just a rest. I thought “O.K.” I’ll try
Kitty’s order,” not having any idea what to expect. I had already thought the neck free and so on and
remembered then, ‘eyes apart’. I was quite fascinated that muscles that I had been completely unaware
of seemed to be behind the eyes. It is as if they had been like this and I didn’t know it. Then with the permission
they went like that.
Kitty: Is that entrainment?
Mario: Yes
Kitty: Well I thought you meant when you were working on s pupil on the table.
Kitty:Yes, I did mean that. On that F.M. was very particular. I don’t believe that you remember, but a long
time ago I had a wonderful lunch. I think it was then that you said “I think neck to widen.” I was horrified!
F.M. never said anything about that, but I use it all the time! I hope that it has gotten back to you that I use it.
Audience:
What has always bothered me about our technique is that we work very close up towards the peak of the pyramid and to my
understanding of anatomy we had ignored the last point which was the eyes. We had gotten up to the top of the skeleton. But
the eyes have primary peak, the whole front. The vey top of the neurological structure is in the face not behind it.
Mario: One of the reasons that may have happened is that it seems there are two peaks. The primary control is one peak
but is represented again in the internal cranial framework. What about the whole function of convergence? I don’t
really mean to play devil’s advocate but why eyes apart rather than eyes together or eyes straight? What about the
whole function of convergence?
Kitty: Eyes don’t move with this order
Audience: How many people have that problem – the wandering eye?
Mario: When you say ‘eyes free to go apart’, that is what we meant earlier when we said the words
earlier what we meant when we said the words have no meaning. They do not mean that. The phrase is helpful because it opens
the system. The progressive clamping, closing and curling seems to be a process within the process of growth. ‘Eyes
free to go apart’ seems to constellate that opening better than anything else. It represents the system rather than
the words themselves. If a person has an eye that goes out you are still working with the system even though there may be
an imbalance there. What is important is for the message to get in even through the imbalance. I remember about a year ago
there was an ophthalmologist who was invited to lecture here at the center. One of the things that he pointed out was that
if your head was held in one place and you loo looked down, the eyes converge. And when your eyes move up, they must move
apart.
Mario: I can give you some pieces of that. Looking up seems to be a trigger to going into different states of awareness.
For instance, if you are having someone hypnotized, a test is to have them look up and see how far it goes. The going up and
out places you in more primitive states of that computation of gravity. Looking down seems to bring you there
Audience:I was just telling Kitty earlier that I had used this concept of eyes apar with this in mind so often in doing
concerned with focus, so we use our eyes forward to focus. The focusing in itself is a narrowing or coming together. It is
a drawing in of a specific kind of experience that has little that has nothing to do with the freedom of the energy flow,
So I have used the idea of letting your eyes go apart. As you are lying on the table, I say, “let’s see
how much vision you can add to yourself.” Instead of focusing on your peripheral vision, just experience the pleasure
of letting that happen. I find it very helpful as a means of counteracting the purposeful focusing which we so often do in
life. Mario: That’s helpful because such an act of perception has two pieces. In Gestalt terms you have a figure
and you have a ground. The orders are really a ground experience so that if you focus into a figure you are really defeating
it. What you are doing and what Kitty is saying gives you the ground experience. In order to build a good focus, you must
have a stable ground.
Audience: Embryologically the eyes are close to the ears. As the embryo grows…
Audience:
I don’t know if you get exactly the same effect as telling your eyes or allowing them to go apart, but it sounds
like certainly would be helpful. I remember hearing Kitty say to allow the vision to come into you.
Kitty, did you say that before you came on this eyes apart idea?
Kitty: No I would like to mention again to emphasize that we do not believe in exercises. We believe in exercise –
tennis, golf. We are megatrends. We are informative services. We don’t lift weights, curls, pound, twist. The central
nervous system does not like repetition.
Mario: Yes, it has to with this process of discharge that we talked about. The only way to do that is to return back to
ground. When you become a passive receptor, then many small focuses appear and disappear very quickly. I think that is one
manifestation of reorganizing.
Audience:
My wife loves working with children. The way a young happy child behaves if you give them a small object is to bring it
right up to their sternum and drop their eyes. That gesture has a quality of release, enjoyment and focus. When we are given
a beautiful thing. We say “Oh, how lovely”.
Kitty: That’s lovely
Mario:That’s also trapezius release.
Release goes out towards an object where vision is mostly taking in. Our young dog is quite alert and beautiful. When
you let out of the house she dashes out. Then she stops absolutely dead still and puts her head in position to get a complete
feel to pick up any motion with total reception. It is a lovely use of stillness to pick up activity.
Audience: Would you tell the story about F.M. when he was a little boy? There is one other story that I really like about
inhibition.
Kitty: I will tell the inhibition story first. F.M. was having a frightful time with a student, and said “You’re
not inhibiting.” The man said “I am.” F.M. said,”Come over here.” He banged
the man’s head on the wall and said “Now you’ll remember!” The man came back for many
years, but you have to be darn attractive to do that!” One day when he was working out he said, “I remember
when I was a little boy about 4, I was scampering around the kitchen. My mother was mopping up the floor, and she got so provoked
with me she just picked me up and put me in the flour bag and hung me on the kitchen door.” He said,”there
I was.” I have a vision of this bright little boy non-pulsed because he couldn’t get his arms out. Well,
thank you so much I have enjoyed it.
|
|
Introduction
Kitty’s Eye Order
Frank Ottiwell
931 Elizabeth Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
Feb. 21, 1999
Dear John,
Here’s a copy of the only printed material I know of Kitty’s “eye “order”.
My story about it is this”
One day quite a few years ago Rome Roberts took me to lunch at the Ojai Country Club and I saw something I had never before
except possibly in a movie or at a zoo. Looking up from my lunch I saw a beautiful bird of prey sitting on a branch of a tree.
I was very much taken by its attitude of acute awareness and alertness. I couldn’t get the memory of it out of my
mind. When I got back to San Francisco I started to copy the state of acute alertness from time to time, mostly when out walking.
One day I left my office in downtown San Francisco and went out to walk around and refresh myself by practicing my bird of
prey alertness. I walked a block or so along Geary Street and came to the corner of Union Square when suddenly I had the
experience of my eyes seeming to go apart from each other—as though my eyes had set themselves further apart on
my head. It was a strange but exhilarating experience – almost like an altered state – and I was seeing
with a depth and all-encompassing quality that was very new.
In that moment I remembered years before reading something Kitty had said about an eye order. I hurried back to my office
and found the article I have sent you from my files.
I hope this and the article can give you some of what I am talking about and that you will be able to give yourself the
experience.
Best wishes, Frank
THE DISCOVERY AND USE OF THE EYE ORDER
IN TEACHING THE ALEXANDER WORK
BY: Countess Catharine Wielopolska
Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique
And
Dr. Mario Pazzaglini
Edited by: Carol A. Attwood
Reprinted by John V. Christianson 2021
On a recent visit to the New York Training School in New York City, Countess Catharine Wielopolska and Dr. Marion Pazzaglini
spoke to the students about the discovery and use of the eye order in the teaching of the Alexander work. The Countess, known
to her associates and friends as Kitty, is the founder of the Wielopolska Traing School and is the top master in the field
today. She is one of the few people alive who studied personally with F.M.Alexander, for whom the work is named. She has worked
in the field for nearly 60 years. In addition to her long association with the work, she has an impressive list of academic
and nursing credentials. Dr. Mario Pazzaglini, who has been associated with the Alexander work for over seven years, is a
clinical psychologist in private practice. He has an impressive and varied list of accomplishments. Dr. Pazzaglini, Mario,
to those who know him, is a clinical teacher at the Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. He is a consultant for both
the Bureau for Alcoholism and drug abuse, and the Board of Education in the State of Delaware. He is credited with starting
the Drug Clinics in that state. Dr. Pazzaglini is uniquely qualified to give insight into the Alexander work. His dual background
includes both Clinical Psychology and Neurophysiology. One of his key areas of research is in the field of imaging (or image
formation) and he has studied with Dr. Roberto Assagioll in the field of psychosynthesis. In addition, he enjoys drawing and
painting to further his own awareness of the process of imaging.
Kitty: Without any further ado, the speech.
It is a great pleasure to be here. I have known New York but I don’t know your school so I am delighted to
see such a lot of people. I thought that I would begin about F.M. himself, because very few of you knew him personally. Perhaps
I am the only one in the room who knew him, and a few short stories about him might bring him alive to you.He was about my
height, very compact, very springy, so well coordinated that if you saw him walking down the street you wouldn’t
especially notice him because he was so smooth and so easy. He was amusing; sometimes very lively. I remember a few things
about him that I think you might not have heard. After a session of ten lessons in the summer, he would take you by the left
arm and say, “Well keep it going” and out you would go. When you would come back a year later he would
never make any comment. You didn’t know if you had deteriorated or not. He would just say, “oh come in”
and then he would begin again. One time he said, “If you’re a burglar when you come to me you’ll
be a better burglar.” You can reason that one out yourself. I never did. Another favorite thing of his was,”If
it’s good, throw it away.” And, keep it going.” He said the hands over the back of the chair’
was a great thing. We were doing it for hours. I am sure that he worked by himself everyday. He would have assumed that you
worked everyday. You just didn’t ask questions at all. You didn’t want to – you thought well
maybe I’ll learn something. One day he came prancing in very, very electric, just up on it. He said, “I’ve
got it, I’ve got it with -- the trouble with Christ is that he didn’t have a system.” Well
you should have seen peoples’ expression. He said, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it with
the whispered ahs.’ Don’t start with a smile, but think of something funny.” It’s
a completely different center.” For instance a stroke victim can’t smile but if you say: “Do
you remember that funny thing that happened? Then they remember that funny thing that happened?” Then they smile.
F.M. didn’t know any neurology or anatomy. Have you all read Lulie Westfelt’s book? So you know how he
felt about it? We didn’t study any of those things. Lulie always thought I was fortunate to have been a nurse, and
maybe that’s true. Of course one of his things was “beware of specifics” If you get tied up
in specifics you can forget the primary control. I’d like to emphasize what a great man he was. A genius, no question.
Perhaps he was not a genius in teaching. I don’t believe many geniuses who make these big discoveries are outstanding
in teaching. There are only a few of those. His first discovery was the primary control, which lies in the relationship of
the neck, head and back. The second was how to influence it through direction. The third was inhibition and the fourth was
faulty sensory appreciation, which I think many of you find to be the most important thing that he discovered. Now I will
go back to eye direction. I was sitting in front of the mirror as I had countless times directing. I was rather distressed
because my sister, older than I, had, told me she had double cataracts. She hated the Alexander work. F.M. had said to her
in the 20’s “You’re the worst pupil I have ever had.” She didn’t take kindly
to the words. He didn’t always behave that way at all. He could be tremendously feeling and compassionate. This
was in 1967 and I was thinking, “I wonder what the Alexander work has to contribute to geriatrics?” I
thought of my sister’s cataracts. It seemed a pretty tall order to expect the Alexander Technique to affect cataracts
Then I thought about glaucoma and a loss of peripheral and loss of periphery vision which was about all I knew about it. I
decided to take a chance, so as I was sitting there, I thought to direct my eyes apart. So I said ,”eyes free to
go apart.” What was my astonishment to find out that my forehead cleared, my mouth went into a smile and my shoulders
went out and my knees also went out, but it was something else. I didn’t say anything to anybody because I thought
because thought they would all jump down my throat. I couldn’t find anybody until about 1975 when a very nice ophthalmologist
came up from Washington. We thought he would reveal why this happened. He was very interesting and I loved having him, but
he couldn’t help. So during the second lesson with Mario I said quietly, “I am going to give you eye directions.
These are not F.M.’s. I don’t know how and why they work, and I don’t want to teach them generally
until I have some idea of the scientific background for it, but there must be something.” I knew the eyes themselves
didn’t move but that’s all I knew. So I asked Mario to ask his ‘eyes to go apart.”
Then I said, you’ll find your forehead, your mouth and lips, your shoulders and your knees will go apart. I was
wrong there. I missed the seventh vertebrae. Mario told me later that I also missed the tongue and the inside of the hip joints.
Then he explained it to me. Mario gave me the technical explanation. How tremendously important it is.
Mario: I should preface this by saying that I am about to say is totally hypothetical. The first important point is that
the western system of thinking about the body is centered around structure. We have a skeletal system and , a muscular system,
and a circulatory system, so that the classification is based on structure. This is helpful if we are interested in structure
but it tends to block thought about function. There are functional organizations of the body that don’t follow these
strict categories structural categories, but actually crossover. The second point is that thought is directly represented
in physiology. Physiological change happens in two categories: biochemical changes and muscular changes. They are actually
the same thing, but it is important to know that thinking influences what happens in your muscles. An interesting sidelight
here is that Hermann Rorscharch also knew that there is a seesaw between what people feel with their muscles and what they
think. When a person looks into a Rorschach inkblot one thing that you look for is called the big “M”
for movement. The readily they see movement the more assured you are that the personality is intact. There is a smooth flow
between what a person is thinking and what their motor outflow is. Let me stop there and see if you have any comments and
I will answer any questions.
Audience: What is moving?
Mario:For example, inkblot number 3 has areas that look like two people. “Two people bending over a pot”
is a stronger response than “two people.” Statistically two people bending is “healthier”
than just seeing two people. There is a man at McGill University named Wolfgang Luthe who developed a system called autogenic
training. This system is important because it is another system where verbal orders are used to change physiology. Three of
his “orders” are my forehead is cool, my stomach (or tummy depending on who you are talking to), is warm’
‘my hands are heavy.” The Alexander orders take much of this same form, using a noun and a verb. When
giving the eye order, my eyes are free to go apart’, or ‘eyes free to go apart, (using this order that
thought and what you think and say influence your muscles) a general ‘opening’ of the system to further
ordering occurs.
This ‘opening is complex because we mean it in both a concrete and figurative ways. As a person listens there
is competition built between the way he is wired, the natural outflow of that, and the stance he has taken within any given
situation. For instance, if you have parents that are angry all of the time, a child ill take an, defensive posture within
the context of that family and this is then contrary to the normal outflow. The result of that conflict is permanent postural
change, and permanent postural change then leads to misuse.
The Alexander order seems to be a way of getting to that original wiring and its natural and its natural into patterns
of muscle use. The eye order appears to be a way of opening the system to receive orders better. I am going to go one step
further, and look at this in terms of evolution. Our basic primitive “vertebrate” or cordate has a head
like area and a tail and something called a noto cord, which eventually becomes your backbone. The plan of this body is a
series of muscular bands. There is no musculature in terms of organization except for these serial bands. These are called
myotomes or myomeres, although the name changes as you go through history. What is important is the muscles in this system.
What happens to the lead muscles usually happens to the rest of this organism. It is interesting that F.M. studied the Coghill
because he had studied a bit with Sharington, who talked about this plan. Once you get the lead muscle to do something, the
other muscles all tend to do something organized around the lead muscles action. The whole organism is wired that way. In
human evolution, this muscle organization still exists, except that it is highly evolved. The first muscles within the human
system are the eye muscles. Once you place an order in the eye muscles, it is equivalent to placing an order in this first
band of muscles of the original organism, which then pass the order down the organism. We are much more complex because the
center for this action is now represented at the back of the neck. This eye center is related to the primary control.
Kitty:
So that’s why we talk about the point of vision.
Mario:
This is the skeleton of the reasoning of how this eye order may be working. It seems to preset the system to receive other
orders. It is important because it represents a primitive relationship between these eye muscles and the trapezius muscle
(or primary control) and the muscles around it. Let me stop there.
Audience:
I just wanted to see a couple of more specifics about what type of connection there is between the eyes and neck muscles.
I know that the eye muscles coordinate head turns. There is some functional data
Mario:
There is an anatomical connection with the structural approach, but not a lot of data. There is some functional data which
is interesting. For instance, the trapezius muscle is an important muscle process of sleep and dreaming. The trapezius muscle
manifests the switch from deep sleep into REM sleep
You get a funny connection between what happens to the eyes during REM sleep and the loss of tonus in the trapezius.
This can be seen in cats because when cats are sleeping they crouch down. Then when they begin to dream they lose tonus.
They lose trapezius control and the cat flops over. There seems to be an inborn, ancient system within the nervous system
which guides it in organizing movement. It is called the entrainment system. The primary control represents one of the external
manifestations of this perceptual entrainment circuit called the entrainment circuit This is what get snakes to follow you
when you move your hand back and forth. When birds fly in flocks they don’t run into each other. This is all due
to these entrainments circuits that lock the organism perceptually into the environment and into others of its own species
or into its prey. It is helpful for birds of one species to be colored the same way so that they are coordinated to each other.
The innovation for the eye is in the first 5 cranial nerves. The first is the olfactory, the second is the optic. These
are sensory. The first muscular control of the eye is the abducens which is the third nerve innovated by number 4.
Kitty F.M. always said, while you’re working on someone, just don’t start the work, run your hand
like that; it’s very soothing.
Mario:You can disturb an un-useful pattern. In psychotherapy, children occasionally get locked into a behavioral trap,
and if you just brush against them you produce a micro hypnotic trance which allows you to change the train of thought. What
you are doing is working the system in reverse. The system will open and you can talk about something else.
Kitty:You can imagine my tremendous excitement when very quietly Mario said, “I think I can tell you where this
comes from.” It had been over 6 years that I had been looking around, hoping that I was not going to have to male
any study myself. He said that the eye order relieves the forehead, the mouth, the lips and tongue, the seventh cervical vertebrae;
the inside of the shoulders and the inside of the hip bones. All with that order. Not below the torso, however. We don’t
know much about that. The time he came he said the tongue is affected and the seventh cervical vertebrae, which I had missed.
It is a very pleasant thought that if you ask your ‘eyes to go apart’ and ‘See from the point
of vision’ all of that is going to get done. F.M’s technique for directing was to give your directions
non-vocally, in words, in your head. He was a genius. There is, I think, a step that he left out. That step is to think the
words without meaning. In the early and mid 20’s people were not familiar with the phrase ‘the body’s
intelligence.’ The ‘body’s intelligence’ will pick up your direction and interpret
it as it wishes, not as you wish it. You are on your way to forming a psychophysical whole, but if you interfere with it,
it will block. I have been through it all for years and know every pitfall. I finally came up with words without meaning so
that the body’s intelligence does the outcome.
Audience: I am not sure what you mean by words without meaning.
Kitty: Say the words, but don’t qualify in your head. Think clearly of it and know it.
Mario: You are using words as tools rather than the words themselves. If you use a word like face, there is some connotation
that pops up, so conceive structurally when what you mean by face. Think about the noun but leave the verb alone. The noun
constellates what you are going to do and the verb sets it in motion. Don’t tinker with the verb because you will
be getting in the way. Then you are headed for trouble, because you want the wiring to take over.
Audience:
So you don’t interfere, don’t try. Trying really knocks it out because it is your ego that tries and
that is where you get into trouble.
Audience: Can you say again what you said about the noun and the verb?
Mario: You have two parts to the order. The noun tells you where the action is going to take place. It is helpful to place
that action where it is going to take place. So you think where that is. Then you leave the verb alone. The verb is actually
doing the work. The verb is setting in motion those natural connections that will allow that relationship between brain and
muscles to flow back to where it was.
Audience:
So you’re not saying to eliminate the verb, but not to interpret it.
Mario :
Do not interpret the verb. You say the verb and let the verb work.
Kitty: You say the words in the orders and let them work.
That is right. That would explain it. You see how important it was for me to come here? It was fascinating when you said
that one could see what happened. This all started It was fascinating when you said that one could see what happened. This
all started 3,000 million years ago. These sides of the shoulders became the front legs and our shoulders became the front
legs and our shoulders. The inside of the hip bones also developed. I think myself, that now I am getting a slight pathway
through this lower nerve center which you say dinosaurs had but did not have time to develop. They got killed. Of course,
the East has always had the lower center here
Audience: The supposition that the eyes open things for orders –what is that supposition based on?
Mario: There are two processes of development: evolution and fetal development. The general plan is that there are a series
of muscular bands which then reorganize into our muscles. The second part is that what happens in band number 1, 2 and 3 is
going to happen someplace else in some form. Bands 1,2 and 3 make up the eye muscles, so that when you put a message into
1,2 and 3 you’re organizing and presetting the entire system for second order functions. So the first order, ‘get
ready.” is the eye order and the second order is the specific way to do that.
Audience
Is this true of the animal kingdom that as the animal is moving its eyes that in turn will set up the movement?
Mario:
Yes, that is true. It is wired that way. Those are the entrainment circuits. The eyes and those organisms that depend
on their eyes will then use that as the lead.
Audience:
There are two things that I would like to say. I think that this is so important and exciting. All of us who are teachers
have experienced the guy who stares off into space which is not at all what should happen.
The other comment I have is about people who are blind. Now in some cases sometimes with blind people, a gentle tap
Obviously, the brain in some way compensates for people who are blind. Even though they lack something very vital there
is something about the human nervous system, that can compensate.
Mario:
If it is purely a sensory blindness, then you don’t lose too much, because more of the muscles are intact. Now
in some sense you lose something, because the input of light changes, but you don’t lose the whole thing. Sometimes
with blind people, a gentle tap may change it enough so you can get in.
Kitty: I think it is wonderful -- especially the gentle part.
Audience: Can you explain what you mean by ‘getting in?’
Mario: You are born with a relationship between your nervous system and your muscles which computes gravity rather well.
But you have to live within a psychological and emotional context as well. That produces competing demands on the motor system
for that computation, so that you compute gravity and your family emotional atmosphere at the same time. The eye order resets
the system to be receptive to that first order of computation. It computes gravity rather than the family. Mechanically it
is really complex, but there is a relationship between thinking and the inborn patterns that are laid-out in the writing relationship
between your system and your muscles to compute gravity.
Audience: Wouldn’t any thought, forehead cool, for example, do the same thing?
Mario:
A little bit except, ‘forehead cool’ tend to go into those muscles that have to do with vasculature,
because you have been taught that. There are so many learning versus genetic issues, that it is almost impossible to pull
them apart after awhile. ‘forehead cool does do that. ‘Forehead cool’ is interesting because
some people will say, well I am going to go home and I want to do this really good”, so they say, ‘forehead
freezing.’ When you say that you almost get ice cream pains.” You have to watch out where in the system
you are putting it. You don’t run into those kind of difficulties if you correctly place it. Putting it in the eyes
places it better because forehead muscles are probably subordinate to these.
Audience: I think I understand that using the word eyes or using the word neck serves to orient the organism to a specific
area. My question is when we use a word like free, what does the organism do with an Adjective? I can understand the orientation
awareness, but I am not quite sure how the body can understand free.
Mario: You have thought the word free for many years. Every time you think the word free, a certain constellation of physiological
muscle reactions occur.The sum total averages in such a way that a particular part of a person’s life gets knocked
out, and what you are left with is a clear form of what the word free means. When that goes in as the message the system tends
to unfold. There is a process that as you grow older, there is a general folding in. It has to do with grasping the environment.
You want to push that process back a bit. The word ‘free’ seems to do that.
Audience: Are you working with the interface between language and action by taking thought to where it was a little less
complicated relationship?
Mario: Yes, it has a little less specific content.
Audience: You had said that there is a strong relationship between the musculature of the eyes and the trapezius in the
REM state. Often when people experience their neck free for the first time there is a flipping around of the eyes that seems
to go along with that.
Mario: There is an eastern form of meditation with a mantram which if done correctly and quietly enough you feel tiny
twitching occurring almost everywhere. Those are probably the results of the system reorganizing itself. The order is a more
specific way of allowing a certain dimension in that system to free itself more easily. You have given. You have given it
permission in a certain spot as a go ahead. If you are touching the two at the same time, you can feel it flipping back and
forth. There are tremors occurring. A person may twitch suddenly. Those movements also have to do with the discomfort and
the talking but they also have to do with discharge. What happens on the table is not random. It is all organized discharged.
As a psychologist it is interesting because I want to listen to what is happening.
Audience: Is it possible that the letting go of the habitual holding could trigger up something like an REM sleep?
Mario: People will go into a microscopic state. Something happens where they lose ordinary consciousness. They may say
‘ah’ or something like that. I think that ‘ah’ is one of the most natural reflexes.
Kitty: This work is really to improve the breathing, but we never mention it. The only things that we say are “keep
breathing, please” or “don’t hold your breath.” We don’t want to raise it
to the central nervous system control. We want it left where it is. Don’t control the breathing. Let the body do
the breathing. I won’t live to see it but you will. The world is slowly going crazy. I wish I could make a great
man, a genius alive to you. He never did a mean thing to any of us. There was never any partiality. I thought he was wonderful
and always interesting. Never boring. He repeated himself but he would put in a different way or a different context so that
you got it. He was a genius. Not teaching as I said, but someone said that the teacher takes the student into the forest and
the education is student getting himself out. I have glasses, do I give directions with or without? Do I need to see myself
clearly in the air to give the directions or not?
Kitty: Use your glasses. I think you will find that they will be less strong as time goes on. I had mine tested in ’52
and was very dependent on them. I couldn’t dream of going away for the afternoon without them. I read easily without
them now. Working with somebody I think you should have—don’t you think it would be easier with glasses?
If you have a foreigner, it is a great help to give them their directions in their own language, to begin with.
Audience: With respect to the question of glasses, and your new direction of letting the eyes go apart, it seems that
with glasses (especially if they were fairly strong when you look to the side) there is quite a bit of distortion. I wonder
if they don’t allow our eyes to go apart. Is the frame another sort of distortion?
Kitty: I should say yes.
Mario: I would say maybe yes, maybe no, because in the moment – the really ancient part of this line is really
time free. The occurrence takes place almost immediately and is not connected to directional movement. Now, later on in the
process the frames may be troublesome.
Audience:
Kitty when the pupil is on the table do you want the eyes open?
Kitty: Open. Don’t let them drowse off. Have their eyes open. F.M. was very particular about that.
Audience: Let me tell you of an experience that I had. When my sister was studying with you, she called up and said, “Kitty
has a new order –"eyes apart’ .” I said “That is interesting.” I wonder
what she means by that?” She said, “she really feels that it is connected to the rest.” So as
we often do , we
Have these conversations on the phone and we exchange ideas. I thought about it later when I was on the table and my eyes
were closed then. I wasn’t having a lesson, just a rest. I thought “O.K.” I’ll try
Kitty’s order,” not having any idea what to expect. I had already thought the neck free and so on and
remembered then, ‘eyes apart’. I was quite fascinated that muscles that I had been completely unaware
of seemed to be behind the eyes. It is as if they had been like this and I didn’t know it. Then with the permission
they went like that.
Kitty: Is that entrainment?
Mario: Yes
Kitty: Well I thought you meant when you were working on s pupil on the table.
Kitty:Yes, I did mean that. On that F.M. was very particular. I don’t believe that you remember, but a long
time ago I had a wonderful lunch. I think it was then that you said “I think neck to widen.” I was horrified!
F.M. never said anything about that, but I use it all the time! I hope that it has gotten back to you that I use it.
Audience:
What has always bothered me about our technique is that we work very close up towards the peak of the pyramid and to my
understanding of anatomy we had ignored the last point which was the eyes. We had gotten up to the top of the skeleton. But
the eyes have primary peak, the whole front. The vey top of the neurological structure is in the face not behind it.
Mario: One of the reasons that may have happened is that it seems there are two peaks. The primary control is one peak
but is represented again in the internal cranial framework. What about the whole function of convergence? I don’t
really mean to play devil’s advocate but why eyes apart rather than eyes together or eyes straight? What about the
whole function of convergence?
Kitty: Eyes don’t move with this order
Audience: How many people have that problem – the wandering eye?
Mario: When you say ‘eyes free to go apart’, that is what we meant earlier when we said the words
earlier what we meant when we said the words have no meaning. They do not mean that. The phrase is helpful because it opens
the system. The progressive clamping, closing and curling seems to be a process within the process of growth. ‘Eyes
free to go apart’ seems to constellate that opening better than anything else. It represents the system rather than
the words themselves. If a person has an eye that goes out you are still working with the system even though there may be
an imbalance there. What is important is for the message to get in even through the imbalance. I remember about a year ago
there was an ophthalmologist who was invited to lecture here at the center. One of the things that he pointed out was that
if your head was held in one place and you loo looked down, the eyes converge. And when your eyes move up, they must move
apart.
Mario: I can give you some pieces of that. Looking up seems to be a trigger to going into different states of awareness.
For instance, if you are having someone hypnotized, a test is to have them look up and see how far it goes. The going up and
out places you in more primitive states of that computation of gravity. Looking down seems to bring you there
Audience:I was just telling Kitty earlier that I had used this concept of eyes apar with this in mind so often in doing
concerned with focus, so we use our eyes forward to focus. The focusing in itself is a narrowing or coming together. It is
a drawing in of a specific kind of experience that has little that has nothing to do with the freedom of the energy flow,
So I have used the idea of letting your eyes go apart. As you are lying on the table, I say, “let’s see
how much vision you can add to yourself.” Instead of focusing on your peripheral vision, just experience the pleasure
of letting that happen. I find it very helpful as a means of counteracting the purposeful focusing which we so often do in
life. Mario: That’s helpful because such an act of perception has two pieces. In Gestalt terms you have a figure
and you have a ground. The orders are really a ground experience so that if you focus into a figure you are really defeating
it. What you are doing and what Kitty is saying gives you the ground experience. In order to build a good focus, you must
have a stable ground.
Audience: Embryologically the eyes are close to the ears. As the embryo grows…
Audience:
I don’t know if you get exactly the same effect as telling your eyes or allowing them to go apart, but it sounds
like certainly would be helpful. I remember hearing Kitty say to allow the vision to come into you.
Kitty, did you say that before you came on this eyes apart idea?
Kitty: No I would like to mention again to emphasize that we do not believe in exercises. We believe in exercise –
tennis, golf. We are megatrends. We are informative services. We don’t lift weights, curls, pound, twist. The central
nervous system does not like repetition.
Mario: Yes, it has to with this process of discharge that we talked about. The only way to do that is to return back to
ground. When you become a passive receptor, then many small focuses appear and disappear very quickly. I think that is one
manifestation of reorganizing.
Audience:
My wife loves working with children. The way a young happy child behaves if you give them a small object is to bring it
right up to their sternum and drop their eyes. That gesture has a quality of release, enjoyment and focus. When we are given
a beautiful thing. We say “Oh, how lovely”.
Kitty: That’s lovely
Mario:That’s also trapezius release.
Release goes out towards an object where vision is mostly taking in. Our young dog is quite alert and beautiful. When
you let out of the house she dashes out. Then she stops absolutely dead still and puts her head in position to get a complete
feel to pick up any motion with total reception. It is a lovely use of stillness to pick up activity.
Audience: Would you tell the story about F.M. when he was a little boy? There is one other story that I really like about
inhibition.
Kitty: I will tell the inhibition story first. F.M. was having a frightful time with a student, and said “You’re
not inhibiting.” The man said “I am.” F.M. said,”Come over here.” He banged
the man’s head on the wall and said “Now you’ll remember!” The man came back for many
years, but you have to be darn attractive to do that!” One day when he was working out he said, “I remember
when I was a little boy about 4, I was scampering around the kitchen. My mother was mopping up the floor, and she got so provoked
with me she just picked me up and put me in the flour bag and hung me on the kitchen door.” He said,”there
I was.” I have a vision of this bright little boy non-pulsed because he couldn’t get his arms out. Well,
thank you so much I have enjoyed it.
Reading about Zen and then the writings of J. Krishnamurti first alerted me to the drawbacks of thought
and the potential value of meditation for becoming more aware of thought's limitations..
Brainwave biofeedback research led me to the work of University of Chicago Experimental Psychologist, Edmund Jacobson, M.D.,
Ph.D.
Dr. Jacobson asserted and demonstrated in his laboratory that it is impossible for human subjects to think verbally without
subtly activating the muscles of the speech mechanism.
He showed also that it is impossible for human subjects to think in visual images without subtle eye movements. In short,
Dr. Jacobson proved in the laboratory, that thinking is a measurable muscular activity.
"Close your eyes and think about any matter. If skilled, you can notice (1) visual pictures, called images, but also (2) eye
tensions to look at what you see in Imagination. In thinking, also, you are likely to use your speech mechanism to form words,
but these are not spoken aloud. Electrical measurements disclose that you use the same muscles as you use in saying the same
words aloud."
"However, you should discover for yourself that the tension signals and the image signals are delicate, fleeting and greatly
abbreviated. Otherwise, in visual imagination you look at the objects you think about, turning your eyes in the same way as
if you were looking at real objects."
"Thus imagination is a shorthand, a telescopic reproduction in which you use your muscles just as you do in reality when you
see objects or persons and speak aloud. However, in mental activity the tensions are miniscule."
SELF-INSTRUCTION MANUAL, PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION by Edmund Jacobson, M.D.,PH.D. &
F.J. McGuigan, PH.D.
Jacobson also noted in his book, YOU MUST RELAX, that Charles Darwin had observed that the knitting of brows during stressful
thinking is not limited to human behavior. Darwin noted that the animal which frowns or contracts its brows is meeting difficulty.
REM, rapid eye movement sleep, is but an extreme and obvious example of the relationship that exists between visual thinking
and eye movements.
Dr. Jacobson, through his work, which he named Progressive Relaxation, taught subjects, through prescribed tensing and releasing
of particular muscle groups, to become more aware of these subtle tensions of the speech mechanism and eye muscles that accompany
both verbal and visual thinking respectively.
A special few subjects became so adept at recognizing and releasing these subtle muscular tensions that they were able to
experience brief periods of blank mind, or no thinking.
In exploration of the connection between quieting the eyes and slowing or stilling thinking, I did a CD-Rom search of the
Krishnamurti texts on eye(s), see(ing) and look(ing).
From this search I determined that Krishnamurti made several references to the importance of keeping the eyes still both in
meditation and when otherwise observing with the eyes open.
"What is observation? You observe through the eye, don't you? Now, can you observe without moving the eye? Because, if
you move the eye, the whole operation of the thinking brain comes into being. I won't go into this because you'll turn it
into some kind of mystical, nonsensical thing mysterious and you know all the rest of that. And, in inquiring, can you observe
without any movement of the eye? Because the eye has an effect on the brain." (The Wholeness of Life, p.218)
Krishnamurti also pointed out, as he did to the students at Rishi Valley, that we can also see more with our eyes open by
looking straight ahead without moving our eyes around.
"The brain and the eye which observe only partially do not comprehend the total seeing. They must be alive completely
but still."
"But, on the other hand, you can do nothing and meditate, in the bus or when you are driving it is the most extraordinary
thing, that you can meditate while you are driving, be careful, I mean this. The body has its own intelligence, which thought
has destroyed."
(Beyond Violence, p. 92)
"Meditation can, however, take place when the eyes are open and one is surrounded by objects of every kind. But then these
objects have no importance at all; one sees them but there is no process of recognition, which means there is no experiencing."
(Meditations 1969, p.4)
The different kind of seeing that Krishnamurti is pointing to is not to be confused with staring. It is not about narrowing
down, holding, which often accompanies a restricting and holding of the breath. It is instead, an expanding, opening process
that invites the other senses' participation. "Whole attention is observing, which means keeping your eyes still
and looking."
He also asserted that there was a direct connection between thinking and moving the eyes.
"Look at something without moving one's eyes; how still the brain becomes."
In another reference, he spoke of being visited by an owl in his room, and of not startling it by remaining completely still.
"Even a movement of the eyes, would have sent it frightened back out into the night."
American Zen teacher, Charlotte Joko Beck, gives attention to the importance of keeping the whole body still when meditating.
She also mentions in her book, NOTHING SPECIAL: LIVING ZEN, … "When we want to think, our eyeballs will move."
Prior to my Krishnamurti search, back in the early seventies, I came across a reference by De Ropp in his book entitled THE
MASTER GAME in which he asserted that the wheel of the imagination was the hardest and last wheel that one learned to still
in one's spiritual development.
Around 1997 I came across the work of Anna Wise in her book, The High Performance Mind: which explores the correlation between
meditation and brainwaves.
Ms. Wise has some very interesting information in her book including her exploration of the connection between thinking and
relaxing the tongue. This seems to be the outcome of releasing verbal thinking through releasing the tongue, a natural extension
of the Jacobson progressive relaxation work.
A psyhchaitrist friend, a former colleague of my wife's, when I was sharing my research with him about stilling the eyes to
quiet thought, told me that he recalled in an instructional videotape on acting, by the English actor Michael Caine, that
Mr. Caine advocated the importance of not blinking if you want people to perceive what you are saying as true.
I wonder if noticeable eye blinking is an important component of security screeners' profiling at borders and airports?
Interestingly, U.G. Krishnamurti, not to be confused with J. Krishnamurti, mentions in his writings that his dramatic transformational
process included a spontaneous absence of blinking, which he also warned should not be adopted by others attempting to replicate
such a state of mind.
Dr. William H. Bates, M.D. creator of the Bates method of seeing without glasses, advocated relaxed blinking as an antedote
to staring. Many Bates teachers, consequently, advocate a relaxed blinking to their vision students. One Bates inspired
teacher, Paul Anderson, however does not advocate blinking, and regards blinking as generally stresss inducing and counter
indicated for clear seeing.
A friend who worked with an approach that helps you to repattern certain thinking and behavior patterns worked extensively
with a couples' approach that centers around looking into each other's eyes for prolonged periods of time without blinking.
I was giving a talk on some of my research and exploration on seeing, and one of the audience members reminded me that Carlos
Castaneda wrote quite a bit about seeing.
Carlos explained in one passage that don Juan explained to him that he had a tendency, like most people, to look at something
and then think about what he was looking at and then think about what he was thinking about, and then was no longer seeing
Carlos's teacher, don Juan, also emphasized the importance of stopping our internal chatter. He called it, 'stopping the
world'. Anna Wise's emphasis on relaxing the tongue to stop talking to oneself might very well be applicable here.
But why didn't Krishnamurti talk about relaxing the tongue to stop thinking?
Mario Pizalini, a master Alexander Technique teacher, offered a possible explanation. Mario pointed out that the eyes tend
to look where the body is headed. That the eyes actually often lead movement. He asserted that the eyes constellate movement
in the rest of the body. Consequently, he posited, if your release the eyes, you are leading the way for release throughout
the body. Mario also noted that with the Alexander Technique 'Eyes free to go apart' direction that he worked with "the eyes
do not move with this direction."
Perhaps, Krishnamurti was so adept at releasing his eyes, that the tongue went right along with them, as Mario suggested often
happens?
On another internet search I found the vision instruction work of Captain Hagman, and he had several exercises that featured
keeping the eyes still.
At a workshop with Anna Wise at Esalen Institute, another workshop participant told me that a meditation teacher in Santa
Cruz had told her that the eyes were the last and hardest area to bring full release to.
Contrarily, a Tai Chi teacher told me it was in the middle of the lower back that was considered to be the hardest place to
bring full awareness to. Which is a place virtually impossible for anyone to see. As is the back of the head. And other parts
of the back.
In one of Carlos Castandeda's adventures with don Juan, Carlos learns that only by looking at the eyes can one tell if something
is alive.
There is a book entitled, ON HAVING NO HEAD: ZEN AND THE RE-DISCOVERY OF THE OBVIOUS by D.E. Harding. In this book Harding
advocates a sense of headlessness, which I believe promotes a diminishing of effortful, self-centered seeing and more seeing
with a centered, steady eye.
If stilling the eyes promotes a different kind of seeing, what of the rapid eye movements found in dreaming and advocated
in some of the new treatments of Post traumatic stress syndrome and the painfull re-experincing of traumatic events by the
sufferers of this conditon?
Eye movement desensitization may be a way of releasing painfull memories as it releases the habitual re-experiencing of these
past traumatic events. Eye movement desensitization may allow subjects to return to a more relaxed state of mind, by releasing
the ingrained patterns of stressful eye movements that allow the events to be played out over and over again by the sufferers
of this condition. It's about learning how to stop playing horror movies in the video mode of the mind.
For more on stilling the eyes click on the link to The Quiet Eye Sports Vision Research of Joan Vickers,PH.D>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Enter supporting content here
|
|
|