Withholding Definition: The Hidden Key to How You Move and Who You Become | Tommy Thompson Class 52
❝ What if the reason you feel stuck—physically, emotionally, even spiritually—is because you define your experience before you actually feel it? ❞
What if it’s not your body that’s stuck, but your thinking about your body?
Could it be that the posture you’re trying to improve… is built on unexamined assumptions?
On March 25, 2025, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA during a teacher training class in the Alexander Technique, Tommy Thompson invited trainees to stop chasing better coordination and instead pause everything they thought they knew. Not just about movement. About themselves.
Before you interpret, you sense. Before you name, you experience. And in that space of withholding definition, the body begins to speak.
This class wasn’t about achieving alignment—it was about allowing presence to reveal itself—not through effort, but through surrender. Through sensing before speaking. Through noticing before naming.
“You have to change your whole way of thinking,” Tommy said. “Go into withholding definition.”
In that space, wellness is no longer something we do— It becomes something we access.
Key Objectives of the Class:
- To interrupt automatic interpretations and open space for direct sensory experience
- To reframe gravity, touch, and stillness as resources for awareness
- To apply the principles of the Alexander Technique through moment-to-moment presence, not correction
This blog series is based on Tommy Thompson’s Alexander Technique classes. Each post follows the flow and insights of the class to expand both self-awareness and practical consciousness applicable to everyday life.
New here?
If you’re new to the Alexander Technique, you can start with the resources below.
Alexander Technique Class Flow at a Glance
1. The Opening Question
❝ What if your identity isn’t something to discover—but something to stop reinforcing? ❞
Most of us think we’re on a journey to “find ourselves.” But what if the “self” you keep trying to uncover is actually an echo of your own interpretations?
In this class, Tommy Thompson posed a radical reframe: Don’t find yourself—stop defining yourself.
Because the moment you stop defining is the moment you become available to presence.
The essence of this Alexander Technique class wasn’t about understanding more. It was about interfering less—with your perception, your expectations, your labels.
When you pause the act of defining, you don’t lose yourself. You begin to sense the self that’s always been underneath.
Tommy’s Word
“In that space, you begin to trust—because you’ve been shown with your hands and guided with words that your experience of yourself is not necessarily what you thought it was. It can be different. It can be more integrated.”
Tommy doesn’t ask trainees to believe anything. He asks them to feel something they didn’t think they could. That your experience of yourself is not fixed. That you are not your reaction. And that this very pause—the act of withholding definition—isn’t absence. It’s the space where you show up.
2. Core Learnings from This Class
Core Concepts
- Withholding definition isn’t about stopping. It’s about making room—for presence to arrive.
→ When we interrupt the reflex to name and judge, we become available to what’s actually happening—not what we assume is happening. This is the beginning of embodied self-awareness in the Alexander Technique. - Touch is not a correction. It’s an invitation.
→ Tommy emphasizes that contact—whether through hands or words—should never impose. It opens space for the trainee to perceive themselves differently, without being told how. - Gravity is not the enemy. It’s a resource.
→ Most of us resist gravity unconsciously, experiencing it as a burden. Tommy reframes it as something that supports, organizes, and gives us a ground from which to rise—not something to push against. - Presence begins when interpretation ends.
→ True presence doesn’t require effort. It arrives when we let go of the mental need to explain, manage, or define experience.
Five Key Messages
- Withholding definition is a deeper form of inhibition.
→ For Tommy, this is more than a pause. It’s a redefinition of Inhibition itself—an act of attention that creates space for something unpatterned to emerge. - You are not your interpretation.
→ Your posture, your pain, your sense of self—these are shaped by habits of meaning. And when meaning softens, new options appear. - Coordination doesn’t need control. It needs permission.
→ You don’t need to fix yourself. You need to get out of the way so the deeper intelligence of coordination can do its work. - Safety is a felt state, not a belief.
→ When the ventral vagal system is active, the body enters a state of physiological calm and openness. This is where wellness begins—not through effort, but through allowance. - The still point of flow is the ground of presence.
→ Stillness is not the absence of movement—it’s the presence of trust. This is the state in which the whole organism supports your activity without strain.
Essential Terms
- Withholding Definition
More than inhibition, this is Tommy’s way of saying: Don’t decide who you are—yet.
It’s the space before movement, before reaction, before identity sets in. You pause not just to stop a habit, but to give something new a chance to happen. That’s where presence—and freedom—begin. - Inhibition (redefined)
Traditionally, Inhibition in the Alexander Technique means stopping habitual reactions. Tommy deepens it into a relational act of trust, where we don’t just pause motion—but also suspend self-definition. - Ventral Vagal Activation
A state of physiological receptivity and social safety, where the nervous system relaxes and sensory integration becomes possible. It enables movement and communication without defense. - Alexander Touch
A light, precise, non-directive form of contact that invites kinaesthetic trust. It’s not about fixing—it’s about supporting the trainee’s capacity to think and move differently. - Supportive Gravity
The reframing of gravity as a partner in movement is a shift toward seeing it as a constant that helps us lengthen, expand, and rise from the ground, rather than collapse onto it. - Still Point of Flow
It’s that quiet moment in the breath—after the exhale, before the next inhale. Nothing is moving, yet everything is alive. No effort, but full of energy. Tommy calls this the place where support and sensation meet. - Being Available
A state in which you’re not trying to fix, adjust, or hold anything. You’re not pushing or managing. You’re just there—with your breath, your weight, and the floor. It’s the moment when your system says, “Yes, I’m here. I’m listening.” - Wellness
Not a goal you reach, but a quality you feel when nothing’s being forced. When your weight is supported, your breath is quiet, and your thoughts are less busy—wellness is already happening.
3. Tommy’s Insights
In Tommy’s words during class, there are not only the core principles of the Alexander Technique, but also practical wisdom that can be applied directly to daily life. His words go beyond simple advice about movement and prompt us to deeply consider how we choose to exist.“When your ventral vagal nerve is active and behaving in the right way—but you’re letting it do so—you are what Stephen Porges calls socially engaged.”
→ This touches a core of the Alexander Technique: presence arises not by force, but by allowing. Social engagement unfolds when the body feels safe enough to relate.
“You have to change your whole way of thinking. Go into withholding definition.”
→ Withholding definition extends AT’s inhibition—pausing identity itself. You don’t stop action; you stop assuming who you are. From there, something truer can begin.
“Gravity is sustaining me and holding me up, because it’s true—gravity doesn’t really pull you down. It exerts a force on you, to which you respond by moving up and away; but gravity is not actually pulling you down.”
→ In the Alexander Technique, gravity is not a burden but a collaborator. Tommy reframes it as a dialogue—one where uprightness is responsive, not rigid.
“In that space, you trust, because you have been shown with your hands and guided with words that your experience of yourself is not necessarily what you thought it was. It can be different. It can be more integrated, and all of that.”
→ Trust, in Tommy’s class, is felt. The hands show—not correct—that your body already holds more clarity than your mind assumed.
“My student said, still point of flow. It’s really a still point of flow. The support is there. What you want when you read is to be supported by the totality of your organism.”
→ Even as you read, your body remains alive—breathing, aware, engaged. This is movement within support.
“The great way to do it is to give just enough direction. Just enough so that it doesn’t take you away from what you’re doing—it brings you into what you’re doing”
→ In AT teaching, just enough keeps you inside your process. Too much, and you lose yourself. Too little, and you’re unmoored.
“something that they would probably not understand if you didn’t provide them with the actual experience, which was not within their purview.”
→ In Tommy’s work, you don’t learn through theory—you discover through sensation. Hands-on brings the unseen into awareness.
“The way that you touch someone provides them with the ability to think differently.”
→ Touch isn’t shaping—it’s revealing. Hands-on work in the Alexander Technique opens space for thought to reorganize through the body itself.
4. Practical Tips for Everyday Life
What’s the Goal?
To live from presence rather than predefinition.
That means not rushing to name what you feel or who you are—but allowing sensation to arrive before identity responds. The goal is to stay available to life, not just react from habit.
In Tommy’s words, “You don’t stop doing. You stop deciding who you are before anything’s even begun.”
This isn’t about sitting still. It’s about moving through daily life without defaulting to who you think you’re supposed to be—mentally, emotionally, even physically. That shift is where something more alive and honest begins to emerge.
How to Practice
1. Read as Presence
When you pick up a book—or even your phone—pause. Notice your breath. Feel how your body settles—or tightens. Then begin reading—not from identity, but from sensation.
You’re not just receiving information; through the act of reading itself, you become aware of your own presence, assign meaning through sensation, and open the space for understanding.
2. Use your hands, lightly
Place your hands gently on your chest or thighs before a conversation, a presentation, or even while working. Don’t press. Don’t analyze. Just feel your contact with gravity. This brings you back to the body’s language—the present moment.
3. Let gravity support you
Instead of pulling yourself upright or collapsing into a chair, let yourself be held. Sitting, standing, or walking, imagine gravity is not dragging you down—but giving you the floor to rise from.
Tommy says: “Gravity sustains you. It gives you the ground you respond to.”
What You’ll Notice
- You start to listen differently. Not just to others—but to yourself. Sensation becomes a guide, not a distraction.
- Movement feels clearer and less effortful. You’re not pushing your body through tasks—you’re letting it respond.
- Stillness arrives, even in motion. You carry a “still point of flow,” as Tommy puts it—that place where you’re fully supported while fully engaged.
These aren’t techniques to add—they’re invitations to subtract. They’re ways to remove what you don’t need, so what’s essential can rise—and with it, a way of being that feels whole, supported, and real.
5. Closing the Class
Key Takeaways
The heart of this class wasn’t about correcting posture or learning new techniques—it was about how we choose to relate to sensation, identity, and the unknown. Through presence, through pausing, we begin to experience something far more honest than our habits: ourselves, as we are, moment by moment.
“You are not your reactions. You are not your labels. You are your awareness in motion.”
When we withhold definition, we don’t collapse into passivity—we become available to transformation. And in that space, the Alexander Technique becomes more than a method. It becomes a way of perceiving, trusting, and being moved toward something more integrated and alive.
Core Insights
- Withholding Definition is not about erasing identity—it’s about allowing identity to emerge freshly in each moment.
- Touch can be more truthful than thought. It bypasses narrative and speaks directly to the organism.
- Gravity is not the enemy. When we stop fighting it, it becomes our clearest ally in support and direction.
- The body already knows how to be present. It’s the mind that often lags behind. Let the body lead.
A Final Invitation
As this class comes to a close, Tommy doesn’t offer a final answer—he offers a new beginning.
A new way of reading, touching, sitting, speaking—not from who you were, but from where you are now.
Try not to define yourself too soon. Let presence do the naming.Let the Alexander Technique do the unfolding.
6. One Key Practice
Before you name it, feel it
That’s it.
Whether it’s a feeling, a movement, a thought, or even a word on the page—don’t rush to define.
Place your attention in your body.
Let gravity hold you.
Notice sensation before reaction.
This is withholding definition in action: A moment of pause that opens the possibility for new coordination, new perception, new self.
Let sensation come first.
Let meaning arrive later.
7. Three Questions to Ask Yourself
1. Can you notice what you’re assuming—without even meaning to?
→ Don’t fix it. Just feel it. That quiet noticing is already a shift.
2. Where do you feel supported—right now?
→ Is it the chair, the breath, the way your feet meet the ground? Don’t look for support—feel how it’s already there.
3. Are you reacting—or are you available?
→ The difference isn’t in effort. It’s in attention. And it starts with presence.
8. For Those Who Wish to Learn More
Recommended Book
Touching Presence – Tommy Thompson
This isn’t a book of instructions—it’s a book of invitations. Drawing from over 50 years of teaching the Alexander Technique, Tommy offers teaching stories, vivid encounters, and distilled reflections that don’t tell you what to do—but invite you to notice.
In the spirit of withholding definition, this book doesn’t try to define you. Instead, it opens a space where you might begin to remember yourself—not as an idea, but as a living process.
Touching Presence is less about method and more about meeting— meeting sensation, meeting the present, meeting who you are when you’re not rushing to decide.
Official Website of Tommy Thompson
www.easeofbeing.com
This is the official website personally managed by Tommy Thompson, offering a wide range of resources and programs to deepen your understanding and practice of the Alexander Technique:
- Private session reservations and inquiries
- Workshop and seminar schedules
- Overview of international teacher training programs
- Essays and articles on the Alexander Technique
9. Next Class Sneak Peek
What if you stopped naming what you already “know”?
What happens in the moment after you pause, but before you define?
In the next class, we explore the quiet power of withholding definition—what shifts when you stop trying to control the meaning of your experience.
We’ll move from habitual interpretation into direct perception.
From reaction into real presence. From assumption into surprise.
This isn’t about passivity. It’s about letting the present moment teach you something your habits can’t.
In Class 53, we’ll explore:
“Withholding Definition—how awareness deepens when you stop trying to define.”
10. Join the Alexander Technique Journey
Did this class leave a small resonance within you? Feel free to quietly hold it in your heart or share it in just a sentence or two. The comments are always open. Your one simple word may leave a gentle ripple in this ongoing journey.The journey of Resonance Flow continues across social media as well. Let’s continue this journey together.
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