Application of FM Alexander's moment of choice - "or not?"

I am in the process of rereading FM Alexander's The Use of Self and I was in Chapter 3 last week.  (A little nerdy, I know.)  The idea of  inserting a "moment of choice" between stimulus and response in order to circumvent a detrimental habit of muscular contraction became really clear to me.  If I hear a chord and think "sing" then my body responds with a series of muscular movements, learned over time, in preparation of singing.  They may be good movements, or not so good movements but the response has become instinctive and habitual.  If I choose to improve my coordination into singing, I first must inhibit the older coordination from automatically starting up.  This is done by creating a "moment of choice" between the stimulus of "sing" and the instinctive response of my body to that stimulus, in order to have an option to use a new coordination or in the case of my student below, to simply experience singing without the habitual muscular contractions.

I decided to call this moment of choice the "or not?" moment. (Mentally thought with the question mark in place, by the way.)  In the "or not ?" moment, you give yourself permission to not respond to the stimulus if you don't want to.  The internal monologue runs something like this: "sing" (chord or note from piano), inhalation, "or not?" moment (I could just stand here and not sing, or move my arm - how curious, my body is relaxing), release air into sound (Ah! easier sound production...).  I played around with this for a few days with different activities, especially walking; then I took it into the studio.

I have a student, very intelligent, who loves to compose folk music and play guitar.  He has only been in lessons for a couple of months, but had been with another teacher for almost three years before he came to me.  He breathes fairly well, but when he starts to sing, an incredible amount of tension in his neck and jaw comes into play.  We had made some progress in introducing an easier coordination for the onset of his singing, but it was slow going - the pattern I was observing was very strong.  I decided to try the "or not?" moment with him.  He looked a little sceptical, but understood what I was suggesting.  It's a little like choosing not to sing after you've decided to sing, and then singing anyway.  Well, he tried it - with phenomenal results.  Not all the tension disappeared, but at least 80% did, giving him a new experience of singing.  He didn't have the awareness to understand exactly what changed in his body, but he knew that creating that little space and insert a moment of choice between the stimulus of "sing" and his response of singing changed "how" he sang.  I'm very curious to see him again this week...