The alexander technique
Observe a toddler managing to stay upright despite a disproportionately large head. Children manage this feat without building up a strong core of muscular support. Instead, they learn how to artfully balance, a skill they often lose as they grow older and develop the musculature to allow for a variety of postures.
As we age and live our busy lives, we succumb to tension and strain with effort. Our technologies compound the problem, as text neck and slouched sitting become sedimented into our posture. Many of us ignore the twinges - signals to adjust ourselves - until we end up being in pain. Simple activities like sitting, standing or even turning our neck become uncomfortable.
The Alexander technique offers a practical way to reduce pain or discomfort, find ease and reclaim the balance we had as children. It is not a therapy that is done to you, but an educational process with therapeutic benefits. Through a series of lessons, you will learn to identify and prevent the mental and physical habits that aggravate, or may be the cause of stress, pain and underperformance. This is less like learning a new skill, and more a process of undoing unnecessary embodied habits. With time, you develop the observational skills to become your own teacher and gain greater control over your health and wellbeing.
While many find their way to a teacher of the technique due to pain, others come to enhance their athletic or artistic performance. Leading performers in the fields of sport, music, drama, dance and singing have been helped in their coordination by the Alexander technique.
Something quite magical happens as we learn to let go of unnecessary tension and use our bodies in the way they optimally function. A movement, a brush stroke, a musical performance can seem effortless, as though IT is happening to us, rather than we are making it happen. Call it grace, call it flow or something else, but this is what creates the deep commitment and passion that many people have for this work.
Whatever the reason people seek lessons, most are surprised by their sense of well-being. This process needs to be experienced to be appreciated. Through gentle touch and verbal cues, a teacher guides and encourages a subtle release of unnecessary tension and a rediscovery of tone. Many find they can breathe more easily than ever before. For the student, the experience is very unlike learning to “hold” what we think of as proper posture, the effort to “stand up straight” only creating more tension. Instead, we relearn how to balance, a dynamic process that involves a constant subtle interaction between the environment and ourselves.
As part of this interaction, we explore how we each idiosyncratically adjust to our living and work environments. Our current technologies require a great deal of sitting, typing and reading and it takes a toll on our bodies. To remedy the challenge of our environment, Alexander teachers place particular importance on the relationship between the head and spine. Our attention to the back and neck has led many to deduce that the Alexander technique is solely a physical postural practice, but at heart it is about how we use our awareness. At a basic level, we explore whether in response to stimuli we compress or maintain our expansiveness, mentally, emotionally and physically. Ultimately, it is about recognizing that it is possible to overcome automatic reactions and that one has a choice in every moment of one’s life.
If you begin this journey in “the work” as F.M. Alexander called it, it will enhance the quality of your life at many levels.
