During a lesson, I experiment and become aware of the whole and the content.
The teacher will use everyday movements, and in particular the movements of standing, sitting and walking, to show you the basics of the body's natural postural and movement patterns, and let you discover just how much you are interfering with them. By a subtle and unique use of the hands, the teacher will gently interact with your body to allow it to release out of its acquired tensions, while at the same time you will increasingly be able to sense what is going on.
It is absolutely not a question of finding a "correct posture"; it's a question of acquiring freedom from constraints, so that the body finds its own way back to the dynamic head, neck, back alignment that frees it.
As your awareness develops, you will need consciously to stop your old reactions and allow the new responses to take over. That will involve interrupting the automatic stimulus-reaction sequence of your habits.
By pausing first, and you can find a neutral space where the thoughtless reaction is stopped. Then you can have choice and go from the known – your habit – to the unknown: a new use of yourself, deepened and renewed all the time.
This mental guidance is appropriately called 'direction'. Alexander discovered that when the 'primary control' is working as it should, the body does indeed have directions in which it would like to go. Its most fundamental, natural and essential movement is upwards against the pull of gravity, giving us our full length and expansion. This is what gets compromised as we stiffen and tense. We shorten and narrow instead; we pull ourselves down. Alexander work corrects this, so we open out, breathe better, and move more freely.
The Technique can of course only be appreciated through the actual experiences of a lesson. Its soul is in the present moment.
Our journey can continue indefinitely if we want. There is no end to the process; we can always be just that little bit freer.
In all this transformation, the thoughtful awareness we have needed has altered our whole way of being.
Life will have a different quality.