Feature & Practice
Applying Presence: A Practical Exploration of the Means-Whereby
By Jon Aronstein 

If the quality of our lives is determined by their years, and our years determined by their months, and our months by their weeks, our weeks by their days, our days by their hours, and minutes, and seconds, then it follows that the quality of our lives is determined by our presence in every moment.

To me, life lived fully is much more of a "How" than a "What."  A process more than a goal.  A searching more than a knowing.  Much of our cultural bias is in the direction of assessing the "What" of what we are doing—“What are our goals?”  There tends to be very little emphasis placed on the "How" of what we are doing—“What is the process?” 

A great deal of development takes place in our external awareness, our outer sensing, at the expense of our proprioception, our internal sensing.  The How of life gets lost in a sea of What.  Often this focus on How is reserved for master craftsmen, musicians, artists, athletes, martial artists.  It can be described as presence, embodiment, flow, freedom, being in the moment, etc.  Naming and practicing this essential distinction is an art and habit that can be tapped into anytime, anywhere, and can greatly enhance the quality of one's life.

Exploring the "Means-Whereby" is a concept that was popularized by F.M. Alexander, one of the great pioneers of the field of somatics.  Means-Whereby became a "technique" that one could use to enhance posture, the "use" of the body, efficiency, coordination, etc.  It is a way of turning awareness inwards in order to gain greater control of sensing and acting.  It remains to this day one of the greatest and most efficient means of gaining greater sensory-motor control of one's own process, of being embodied and present.  It carries the peculiar side effect that it may also just improve the level of comfort, coordination, and efficiency that you have in your movement, in your body, and mind.  By inhibiting our desire to reach the goal, and instead focusing on the Means-Whereby, or rather the process, of how we get there, greater learning and presence shows up. 

Aldous Huxley once said of Alexander, “If you teach an individual first to be aware of his physical organism, and then to use it as it was meant to be used, you can often change his entire attitude to life and to cure his neurotic tendencies.”

Let's try some examples of applying this distinction.  We will start by zooming in to the micro level of small sensing and moving, and then expand out into larger processes of sense and action.

A great example that I like to teach everyone is simple shoulder circles, performed with a focus on the means-whereby.  In my professional life I work very much in the domain of "the body," helping people to get out of pain, enhance athletic performance, etc., and this is still one of the most potent tools that exists for helping people make lasting changes in posture and tension, while laying a foundation for embodied presence through fine tuning and training the sensory-motor nervous system.  Direct sensing of the body is crucial component of mastery and transformational learning.

Stand up comfortably, in a neutral and grounded position.  Take one shoulder and begin circling it:  Up,  forwards, down, back, etc. Very easy indeed. 

Notice that this can be done on "auto pilot."  That is, your intention is to circle your shoulders, your action is to circle your shoulders, done deal.

• Now begin "turning down the volume."  Slow it down.  Sense.
• Become acutely aware of the "quality" of the movement.  Sense.
• Are the circles really circular?  Stop reading and sense.
• Is the movement smooth and lubricated, or is it choppy and disconnected?  Stop reading and sense.
• Slower now.  Let go of the goal of shoulder circles just be aware that you are making the circles.  Let the circles happen. Don’t analyze them. 
• What parts of the circle are flat? 
• Can you feel why? 
• What tensions prevent the smooth movement? 
• Are you circling your shoulder blade?  Do you feel your waist muscles?  What are your hands and arms doing and feeling?
• What is happening in the rest of the body? 
• What are your thoughts?
• Try to avoid labeling and just sense.
• Feel the special mood of concentration turned inward that shows up.
• Get smaller and smaller, stay in your comfortable range of motion.
• Get more "cortical and new" as you move away from moving "habitually and reflexively."
• Reverse directions of the circle and apply the same type of internal questioning and awareness.
• Continue for as long as you like... get the hang of this and do it without reading this, or find someone to read it to you the first few times until you do it on your own.

You may have noticed that the circles improved in their quality.  You may now notice that your shoulders are relaxed.  You may be aware of a type of presence, the "mind in the body."

This type of exercise exploits two of the very fundamental principles of a sensory-motor, somatic learning experience.

1.  That you slow down enough to allow new learning to arise.
2.  That you turn your awareness inward.

These two simple "rules" allow one to bypass the automated movement responses and to begin to access new territories of learning.  To allow freedom, presence, and choice to replace habit, reflex, and pattern.  I used the word "cortical" above to describe a state in which we are working from the more conscious part of our brain.  The more we do anything, the more "sub-cortical" or sub-conscious it becomes.  While this is exactly the thing that allows us to do so many complicated, coordinated tasks, it also has a dark side.  When maladaptive patterns become sub-cortical, habituated, sub-conscious, we lose control and then must find ways of drawing them back into the realm of the conscious awareness in order to change them.  This is true of sensory-motor activity as well as linguistic and cognitive activity. 

Try this same exercise with any other movement activity:  hands, wrists, elbows, knees, feet, waist, head and neck, walking, looking.

Let's now expand the practice to a slightly larger activity.  Pick a simple activity now, such as climbing the stairs, washing the dishes, or a similar scale of movement.  Next time you do this, stop and say, "The goal is to walk up these stairs.  What is the Means-Whereby I pursue this goal?"

Apply the same type of practice as you did to shoulder circles, only this time you will need to take in more external data as well.  Blend the deep internal sensing with the navigation of the external circumstances.  I don't want anyone telling me that they fell down the stairs because they were so involved with internal sensing!

When you are done, how do you feel?  What type of presence and embodiment do you have?

This is probably a great starting place for practice.  I highly recommend that you practice this as a way to gain greater access to the realm of immediate sensing, and learn to embody it on a most personal and simple level before attempting to apply this principle too grandly in larger contexts.  Begin embodying this practice in a small way, and then to let your creative coach's mind expand it out.   You may be amazed at what you discover.

We all know the Manager who talks about team-building and self-responsibility, but who constantly micro-manages and creates a hierarchical environment.  As a starting place, one could ask this person to list their goals about the way the team functions, and then list the Means Whereby they are attempting to achieve these goals.  This could start as a macro exercise that moves right down to the micro level—first exploring the Means-Whereby of the more conceptual and institutional ways in which the goals are being carried out, right down to the Means-Whereby the boss asks his coworker to join him in his office for a meeting.  Starting with a wide view, and narrowing right down into the present moment of each personal interaction.  It can start verbally, and then move into the realm of direct sensing.

Invite explorations for this coachee of exploring How he is going about his What...how he is Being while he is Doing.

"What is the What?  Now, what is the How?"  Not a new and radical concept, but perhaps a useful way to frame and contextualize the process of embodiment.

While this exploration of the Means-Whereby has great implications in this type of organizational setting and many other coaching contexts, I believe that it would be a great shortcoming to feel that one must always apply these processes into a "purposeful" context.

Teach a client to embody the most simple process of direct sensing and presence through any type of movement-based Means-Whereby exploration, and know that you are restoring a great process of somatic functioning, i.e. the ability to sense and act in the present moment with enhanced awareness.  I believe that sometimes desires to contextualize these types of learning into larger settings can distract us from the presence that we aim to embody.  One thing is certain, that to enhance the sensory function of a Soma is to give greater freedom and choice.  We sense and experience emotion, language, energy, etc in our bodies with our sensory hardware.  Likewise, we act in the world via language, gesture, movement, etc with our motor hardware.  The act of increasing the sensory-motor process, in this case with simple Means-Whereby explorations, is a giant act of growth in and of itself.

Upon reading a draft of this, a colleague pointed out that when he does a process like this, it is as if time slows down, and he actually gets more done, or arrives faster, while moving in slow, intentional awareness.  Ever notice how quickly things fly by when you are "disembodied" or scattered?  Settling deeply into the presence of the How, the process, allows for the greatest creativity and output.  Try Means-Whereby shoulder circles next time you find yourself lacking presence or time.

Somas Sense and Move, Input and Output (this includes all action, talking, thinking, etc).  At some point, memory mixes with Sensation to form Perception.  In the middle of Sense/Perception and Movement lies Intention.  Somas cease to be objects when they begin Intending for themselves.  We utilize our Awareness as a way to mediate and affect the process.  Thomas Hanna, in his book Letters from Fred, described Awareness as the 5th organizational principle of the Universe (in addition to the 4 physical forces of strong, weak, electrical, and gravitational).

"Awareness...does function somewhat like a lens that can be pointed and focused.  Awareness is a somatic activity that is exclusionary: It uses motor inhibition to exclude any sensory recognition other than that upon which it is focused--which could be something external in the environment (third-person awareness) or internal within the soma (first-person awareness).

"The activity of awareness is, one might say ninety-nine percent negative and one percent positive—a 'nothing-but-this' function that is the only way for the soma to isolate perceptive events.  It is a most useful way of exercising voluntary control over one's repertoire of sensory-motor skills.

"Awareness is the function of isolating 'new' sensory-motor phenomena in order to learn to recognize and control them. It is only through the exclusionary function of awareness that the involuntary is made voluntary, the unknown is made known, and the never-done is made doable.  Awareness serves as a probe, recruiting new material for the repertoire of voluntary consciousness.

The upshot of this is that somatic learning begins by focusing awareness on the unknown.  This active focusing identifies traits of the unknown that can be associated with traits already known in one's conscious repertoire.  Through this process the unknown becomes known by the voluntary consciousness. In a word, the unlearned becomes learned.  (Thomas Hanna, What is Somatics, Part 1)

All of these factors (Sensing and Moving, mediated by Perception, Intention and Attention/Awareness) need to be trained in order for a person to be effectively in choice and freedom, aligned with the forward directionality of the cosmos.  Imagine the consequences of any of those four factors being compromised.  Try explaining that to the guy in the suit at the conference table and get back to me.

Jon Aronstein is a Certified Clinical and Hanna Somatic Educator, as well as a graduate of Newfield Network's Coach Training Program.  Jon incorporates somatics, psychology, coaching, education, Qigong, athletic training, and many other influences into working with children and adults on “Embodied Education."  Jon is a lifelong student of human sciences, somatics and movement, currently spending time teaching tennis, creating new paradigms in athletic and fitness training, and helping people overcome limitations through clinical somatic and other movement-based education.  You can reach him by email.