Stop Telling People They Are Broken: Rethinking Sensory Appreciation in Our Work
As Alexander Technique and Body Mapping teachers, we need to stop telling students that their sensory systems are faulty, that their kinesthesia is broken, or that they cannot trust what they feel. These statements are not only scientifically inaccurate — they are harmful.
When we say such things, we gaslight our students. We undermine their lived experience, suggesting that what they sense is untrustworthy. We create dependency on ourselves as the authority and, whether we mean to or not, we reinforce shame. This framing can retraumatize students who already struggle to believe their body is worthy of trust.
We must be honest with ourselves: to tell someone their sensory appreciation is broken is a power play. And it has no place in somatic education.
What Sensory Appreciation Really Is
The sensory system is not faulty. It is adaptive. Its task is to normalize experience based on what has previously been felt as safe. This is how human beings survive complexity without being overwhelmed.
Philosopher Shaun Gallagher (2005) describes this integration as part of the body schema: a pre-reflective, automatic process that organizes perception and action. If a student has spent years gripping, collapsing, or over-efforting, their nervous system has learned to normalize those patterns. What feels “right” is simply what has been survivable.
This is not dysfunction. It is efficiency. It is survival.
The only exception is vision. Visual information is not normalized in the same way. This is why mirrors, video, or external observation can feel destabilizing yet illuminating — they bypass the predictive filtering that shapes our kinesthesia.
Predictive Processing: The Brain’s Design
Contemporary neuroscience confirms this. The predictive processing model (Seth, 2021) shows that perception is not passive reception but active prediction. The brain constantly generates models of what it expects to perceive, then interprets incoming information to fit those predictions.
If a student has always predicted tension as safe, then relaxation feels “wrong” not because the senses are broken, but because the predictive model is being updated. Change feels strange precisely because the system is working.
This is crucial: the disorientation students feel in lessons is evidence of learning, not evidence of dysfunction.
Why the “Broken” Narrative Harms
Pat Ogden (2006) reminds us that what may appear to us as symptoms are often resources that helped the client survive. These adaptive responses are not pathology. They are resilience. The danger lies in interpreting them as failure — and in telling students their system is unreliable.
Glenna Batson (2009) warns that such language undermines autonomy and reinforces disembodiment. Instead of supporting agency, we risk deepening shame.
Richard Shusterman (2008) adds that our task as educators is somaesthetic cultivation: helping students refine awareness and choice in their lived body, not convincing them that their soma is broken and in need of correction.
When we mislabel survival strategies as faults, we not only misunderstand the science, we betray the dignity of the student.
A Different Story to Tell
There is another way — one that is truer to science, to somatics, and to the spirit of Alexander’s discovery.
Your sensory system is brilliantly adaptive.
What feels right is not wrong. It is what your nervous system has predicted as safe.
Your patterns are not flaws. They are resources that once helped you survive.
You are not broken. You are whole. And you are capable of change.
In this frame, the strangeness of new coordination is not a threat but a sign of growth. The nervous system is updating its predictions. The soma is expanding its repertoire. What once was survivable can give way to what is now possible.
What This Means for Us as Teachers
Change the language. Stop speaking of “faulty sensory appreciation.” Speak instead of adaptive normalization and predictive models.
Honor survival. Recognize every pattern as a resource, not a mistake.
Refuse the power play. Do not position yourself as the fixer. Be the companion who invites exploration.
Avoid gaslighting. Never deny the validity of a student’s lived sensory experience.
Build trust. Strengthen students’ confidence in their own perception and capacity to learn.
Conclusion: From Shame to Agency
Our students do not need to be told they are broken. They need to be reminded of their brilliance — that their bodies have kept them alive, functional, and expressive. They need teachers who honor survival while creating safe conditions for change.
When we abandon the broken-body narrative, we move from authority to partnership, from correction to curiosity, from shame to agency. We create classrooms where dignity and belonging are possible.
This is the future of Alexander Technique and Body Mapping education. And it begins with us — choosing to speak the truth: the body is not broken. The body is whole, wise, and capable of change.
References
Batson, G. (2009). Somatic Studies and Dance. Columbia College.
Gallagher, S. (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford University Press.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. W.W. Norton.
Seth, A. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber & Faber.
Shusterman, R. (2008). Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge University Press.