Alexander Technique

Knowing The Alexander Technique

Audio Introduction:

A secretary with an aching back, a mother with a stiff neck, a dentist with a stoop, a musician with pain in his shoulders, a lawyer feeling fatigued, an actor with vocal difficulties, an athlete with tennis elbow … what do they all have in common? They all suffer from excess tension and stress.

The Alexander Technique offers relief for these problems (in some cases eliminating them altogether) by getting to the root of the problem: misuse of the body. These and many other uncomfortable and painful conditions often result from poor posture and movement, which puts a great deal of strain on the body. The Alexander Technique is a subtle method for changing habits and attitudes, which releases the body and mind, enhances body awareness and functioning, and gives the body new freedom, coordination, and energy.

Here are some of the conditions that can result from poor posture and movement which can be alleviated by using the Alexander Technique:

• backache
• neck and shoulder stiffness and pain
• bursitis
• whiplash
• “tennis elbow”
• arthritis
• disc trouble
• breathing disorders
• stress-related disorders
• muscular tics and cramps
• swayback
• sciatica
• pinched nerves
• round shoulders
• anxiety and tension

Using the Alexander Technique to Change Your Life

All kinds of people come for Alexander lessons: people suffering from tension and stress, people with back or neck pain, people with poor posture, people whose occupations can cause bad postural habits (dentists, carpenters, computer operators, and mothers, for example), people who need to use their bodies well professionally (such as dancers, musicians, actors, singers, and athletes), and those who are interested in using the mind/body more efficiently and with more flexibility. You don’t have to have pain or suffer from poor posture to benefit from the Alexander Technique. People who use their bodies relatively well also benefit from learning how to use themselves better.
Inhibition, Mental Directions, and Sensory Awareness

Inhibition

Over the course of our lives we all learn specific ways of reacting to situations. These responses become habitual and are often carried out with unnecessary tension and stress. The need to get the right answer and the need for approval are common goals in our society. Neither of these objectives is bad in itself, but they often lead us to strain unnecessarily, often to detrimental effect. In order to change our habitual responses and attitudes, we must first learn how to give up the old response habit. Alexander called this process inhibition.
Changing a habit involves three components: awareness of the habit, inhibition, and mental directions. All three must be present in order to consciously control change. Conscious control is our tool for carrying out the main objective of the Alexander Technique: to maintain the poise of the head on top of the lengthening spine in movement and at rest.
We can think of the body as a computer that has been programmed to behave with a set of specific responses. No conscious effort is required to perform most of our physical activities. But if we wish to change, we can think of the Alexander Technique as a way to reprogram ourselves.

This reprogramming will only work if we can become aware of the habit, consciously stop (or inhibit) the habit, and give ourselves specific mental directions to change.

There is no way to experience and control a new pattern of behavior without consciously inhibiting the old pattern. Our immediate response to a stimulus is a mind/body set—a habit. How many times have you seen people pull their head down and hunch their shoulders up when lifting a coffee cup? Have you noticed how people slouch over their food when eating rather than bringing the fork all the way up to their mouth? Before these habits can be changed, we need to realize what we are doing, then consciously say no to the old habit. Of course, not all habits are bad ones—we’re only talking about changing the inefficient ones! The difficulty lies in the fact that most of our habits are so ingrained that they are completely unconscious. It often takes the objective guidance of an experienced Alexander teacher to point out many of the unfelt habits. Once these habits have been brought to the student’s attention repeatedly he may begin to know what to inhibit.
You must inhibit your reaction before you react to a stimulus. Once you have reacted habitually, you have prevented a new pattern from taking place, so the habitual response must be stopped before it starts. Therefore, to consciously control your behavior you must consciously decide to prevent the habitual response. In the Alexander Technique this process is called inhibition.

Mental Direction

Once we have inhibited the habitual response, mental directions define what should be taking place in the body and lead us through change. Many people tend to contract their neck muscles, which pulls the head back and down on the neck. This can cause a chain reaction of compression throughout the body. Inhibition and mental directions can help change this pattern. As stated before, the directions are “Let my neck be free, to let my head go forward and up, to let my torso lengthen and widen, to let my legs release away from my torso, and let my shoulders widen.” The words will come to have a deeper meaning as you experience their effect on your body.

To explain the directions more clearly, we have broken them into parts. However, we want to emphasize that when you are thinking them you should think of the whole sentence. Don’t break your body into parts; get it to work as a coordinated whole.

Let’s take the first phrase:

Let my neck be free …
The first and most important word in this phrase is let. There is nothing you can do to free a muscle. If you try to release by deliberately movingyour neck, you will create more tension. You will move your neck in accord with your old habit because that’s all your body knows how to do. Instead, think—send the message from your brain through your nervous system to your muscles. When you think of freeing your neck, you are letting go of the muscular tensions that pull the back of your head down onto your neck, or cervical spine, and compress it, often increasing the spine’s forward curve.

to let my head go forward and up …
Forward does not mean putting your head forward in space, nor are we talking about a fixed position for your head. Instead, we are talking about a balance of your head on top of your spine. When your neck muscles are tight, they tend to pull your head back and down. If the tension at the base of your skull is released, your head will naturally rotate slightly forward from that point—it can then release in an upward direction. It will be poised and free and able to move in any direction within its range.

to let my torso lengthen and widen …
This phrase also begins with the words to let, reminding us that the goal is achieved through thought rather than muscular effort. Having given up the compression of your head into your spine, you give your spine the potential to release into its full length. Your skeletal muscles can release into their optimal balanced length throughout your torso, and your spine can reach its normal length and curvature. Widening refers to a release of muscles away from the central axis of your spine out to your sides. Lengthening and widening creates a release into the full dimensions of your three-dimensional torso. Lengthening and widening function together.

to let my legs release away from my torso …
Your torso (including your pelvis) releases in the direction of your head. At the same time your legs release in the opposite direction, away from pelvis. The leg muscles will lengthen toward the floor when you inhibit pulling them and into the hip joints.

and let my shoulders widen …
When the tension in your shoulders releases, your shoulders tend to widen out to the sides rather than rounding forward or pulling back in a military fashion.

Let’s return to the whole sentence: “Let my neck be free, to let my head go forward and up, to let my torso lengthen and widen, to let my legs release away from my torso, and let my shoulders widen.”
When inhibiting and directing, you facilitate the release of excess muscular tension that compresses your skeleton and internal organs. The release of excess muscle tension brings about the subtle lengthening of the spine. You can then reach your full dimensions.

The Alexander directions define what should be taking place in your body. But words have associated verbal, kinesthetic, visual, structural, psychological, and philosophical meanings, all of which come into play when you are thinking them. It is therefore important to understand these instructions on as many levels within yourself as you can. In directing something to take place in your body, the quality of your response depends not only on your physical state, but also on your understanding of the words and the process. These directions work together with inhibition to bring about the objective of the Alexander
Technique: to maintain the poise of the head on top of the lengthening spine. This brings about a dynamic balance of opposing parts that is freely maintained in movement and at rest.

Sensory Awareness

Alexander could clearly see his physical habits in the mirror, but he could not feel them. His sensory feedback was not giving him accurate information about his condition. This feedback is called the kinesthetic or proprioceptive sense—a subtle sensory mechanism of the muscles that constantly gives the body information about itself. We receive information through our sense organs, such as the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin—and also through our kinesthetic sense.

This feedback gives the brain information about what position and condition the body is in. It also tells the body how much effort is necessary to maintain a position or a condition. Just as sight or hearing can be defective, the kinesthetic sense can also be defective. When we use too much tension to maintain the body’s position or condition, the tension becomes habitual and unfelt. Alexander called unreliable sensory feedback “debauched kinesthesia.”

The information that the kinesthetic sense gives us seldom reaches our conscious awareness—we are usually unaware of what is taking place in our bodies. As we learn to carry out an activity, whether well or poorly, easily or with excess tension, with good or distorted body alignment, we become accustomed to the way it feels. Whether the experience is based on efficient or inefficient body use, the outcome will feel right or feel easy. Correcting this inaccurate sensory feedback is one of the objectives of studying the Alexander Technique.

To change habits, you need to know what your habits are, inhibit them, and then use mental directions to lead you to improved body use. As your body use improves, your kinesthetic awareness is heightened, and you perceive your habits more clearly. All of these components work together to help you institute and control change.