oratory, or
operating room--whatever the name may be you will feel like calling it
by, before you are finished, and Alexander stands you up before the back
of a chair. Then he takes you in his hands--his very powerful, sensitive
and discerning hands and begins--quite literally begins reshaping you
like Phidias. You begin to feel him doing you off as if you were going to
be some new beautiful living statue yourself before very long probably.

Then he stands off from you a minute, takes a long deep critical gaze at
you--just as Phidias would, studies the poise and the stresses of your
body, X-rays down through you with a look--through you and all your inner
workings from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.

Then he lays hands on you once more and works and you feel him working
slowly and subtly on you once more, all the while giving orders to you
softly not to help him, not to butt in soul and body on what he is doing
to them with your preconceived ideas--ideas he is trying to cure you of,
of what you think you think when you are thinking with what you suppose
is your mind, and what you suppose you are doing with what you suppose is
your body. In other words, he gives you most strenuously to understand
that the one helpful thing that you can do with what you call your mind
or what you call your body is to back away from them both all you can. As
it is you and your ideas mostly that are what is the matter with your
mind and body, and with the way you admit they are not getting on
together, Alexander's first lessons with you you find are largely
occupied in getting your mind--your terrible and beautiful mind which
does such queer things to you, to back away. What he really wants of you
is to have you let him make a present to you outright of certain new
psycho-physical experiences, which he cannot possibly get in, if you
insist on slipping yours in each time instead. So he keeps working on
you, you all the while trying to help in soul and body by being as much
like putty--a kind of transcendental putty as you can, or as you dare,
without falling apart before your own eyes. Then when you have removed
all obstructions and preconceptions in your own mind--and will stop
preventing him from doing it, he places your body in an entirely new
position and subjects you to a physical experience in sitting, standing
and walking, you have never dreamed you could have before.

This goes on for as many sittings as are necessa