The proposed research is both theoretical and practical.

The theory-practice
problem corresponds directly to the ancient philosophical problem of mind-body and
therefore they implied each other. First of all, from the philosophical point of view, I think
that there is not such distinct realities or substances, as Descartes would say, called
“thought” and “matter”, “mind” (“soul”) and “body”, but only one integrated organic
whole. This is not only a hypothesis to be proven through intellectual demonstrations and
that could be solved in pure debates, because theory without experience is just theory of
nothing. That is why practice is not just what comes after theory (“to put in practice”) and
even not what comes first, like theory would be just a description of some facts. They
happen simultaneously, in the same way our actions are not first mental (or physical) and
then physical (or mental). This is not (and it cannot be) an established knowledge but a
lived one, that’s why besides this philosophical approach the research involves other two
different activities: the Alexander Technique and the theater games. The proposal is to
find a way to integrate the conceptual activity with the mechanical-emotional-social
actions of the daily life.

Spinoza said he has proved through a reform of the intellect that the knowledge
of this unique “psycho-physics” reality is the same as a clear perception of our nature as
individual, social and natural beings, whose inevitable support is the experience. The
main concepts to express those ideas are action and desire. According to him, all our
emotions or affections are modifications of the desire, which he defines as our essence,
the source of all our motions. All affections implicates ideas as well a concrete material
context of action. That is why the name of his main work is Ethics, because in fact the
importance of the understanding of the Nature, including ours, is the possibility to modify
the quality of our actions and our lives. The connection between daily life and philosophy
conceptions in Spinoza is so intense that is hard to precise when the theory ends and the
practice begins and vice-versa.

In other context, Dewey says that one of the great importance of the technique
created by F. M. Alexander is the possibility to anyone perceive by own experience the
reality of the unity mind-body. For him in our society we have in one hand many people
doing mechanical activities with a minimum of thought and of accompanying emotion,
and in other hand some people, especially in "intellectual" and "religious" groups, in
which the physical is at a minimum. It means that there is not disconnection between
individual and society that could identify, for example, the first as natural and the second
as cultural invented. Nature and culture form together a same reality outside of which
they simply do not exist. The philosophy thought by Dewey finds in the Alexander
Technique the reference needed to withdraw the excessively emphasis given by the
modern philosophy to the intellectual and speculative activity, whose effect is an
increasing gap between thought and life, promoting incommunicable philosophies and an
world forged by abstractions.

Alexander recognized also the amplitude of his technique to the social scope.
Despite the A.T. seems to be – to whom don’t know it – just a method to correct posture,
in reality the big “adventure” that a student of the technique lives is a great change of how
he interacts with the world and others. Through observation and learning of how he moves
his body, in fact he learns at the same time how he uses himself as a whole, that is, how
he organizes his thoughts and how he deals with his emotions. Today the A.T. is highly
associated to the individual health (a kind of therapy) and as a support to free musicians
and performers in general of pains caused by bad posture while playing. The proximity
of the A.T. to philosophy is not only important to the latter but also to the first, if one
intends to explore all the potentialities of the technique.

This project is consequence of my academic studies in philosophy, since my

doctorate thesis about Spinoza until my recent research project as professor in UFPA, and
as student of the A.T., since 2014, developed mainly in private lessons. My intention is
to ally my pedagogical activity as philosophy professor to the A.T. For that, together to
this research I plan to do the training in an Alexander School in order to become an A.T.
teacher. In this way, philosophy and A.T. are linked in the same field: education.

In 2014, when I was doing the bachelor in theatre direction, I had contact with the method
of theatrical games of Viola Spolin. This method is not only for actors preparation and
spectacles production but also for been used in classrooms as a pedagogical tool. As the
work of the A.T., the theatre games stimulate the attention to the present moment and to
the concrete use of oneself in interaction with the other. When Spinoza says that the
philosophers dedicated themselves too much to comprehend the qualities of the soul and
forgotten to ask about what a body can do, it can be understood as the necessity to not
underestimate the importance of dealing with our sensations and feelings, that is, with
what is happing in the present moment. Everything converge to this: the orientation to the
present living, the education for a more intelligent use of our sensations, emotions and
thoughts in the real life of action.
 My interest on the theatre games is not primarily an artistic one, in order to
produce art works, but to use them to connect the philosophical and the A.T. in a whole
and dynamic pedagogical process. The theatre games, I suppose, can give the shape
needed to transform the classroom in a true philosophical laboratory, where students and
teachers can share experiences and create conceptions to improve a vivid understand of
human being. The Greeks used the same word for art and technique – Dewey was inspired
by this significance of techné and created a notion of art as experience, not as belles-arts
– and Epicurus – to whom Spinoza associated himself – didn’t do in his Garden the
disjunction that Plato did between episteme (or higher spiritual science), and techné (or
lower corporal practice). Contrary to the idealistic platonic philosophy, the sensations and
feelings of art and technique operate together with the concepts of philosophy, all as parts
of the same creative human activity.