The Alexander Technique end-gaining is gaining your end without regard to how you gain your end; how you reach your goal, how you do everything, to achieve anything.
We think of what, but ignore how. We leave the present moment, and try to loft ourselves towards the end, skipping over time. Many of us do this our entire lives.
The Alexander Technique at the computer
We think only of the work we are doing on the computer, and try to “get through” the work. We don’t consider how we are sitting, (or slumping), tensing our neck, raising our shoulders, gripping with our hands, clenching our jaw.
We just want to make it till lunch, get through the day, the week, and the month. This bit of end-gaining, this “let’s get this over with”, can result in neck pain, back pain, hand pain, tension, and anxiety.
End-gaining becomes end-losing. But don’t worry, it gets worse.
End-skipping
Sometimes the thing we’re end-gaining about is something we’d like to avoid. Now we are leaving the present moment to project ourselves to a place we don’t want to be.
We’re not trying to gain the end as much as we’re trying to leave the present moment and arrive after the end. Time travel gone wrong. We time travel thinking that we can prepare ourselves, and arm ourselves in order to deal with what may or may not happen. We are in the land of “what if?”
Let’s say one has an impending difficult medical procedure, or an important meeting, unavoidable confrontation, or a test, or audition. The event may or may not even happen, yet we feel a need to “prepare” ourselves.
So instead of end-gaining to mean “leaving the present moment to achieve our end”, it becomes “loosing the moment to prepare for an undesirable end.”
We leave the present moment to prepare.
We leave the present moment to project.
We leave the present moment to prematurely worry.
We leave the present moment, habitually.
We lead with our neck, and dive in head first, brain last.
By Mark Josefsberg-Alexander Technique NYC
(917) 709-4648
[…] End-gaining: There’s a concept in the Alexander Technique called “end-gaining”, which is the “universal habit we have to keep our mind and actions focused on an end result whilst losing sight of, and frequently at the expense of, the means-whereby the result is achieved” (F. M. Alexander ~ The Use of the Self) . […]