Alexander Technique
Monroe studying the book “Man’s Supreme Inheritance.” More photos here. Alexander teacher Betsy Polatin writes: I have taught this technique to thousands of students all over the world, and people often ask me, “Should I swim? Or do Pilates? Or yoga?” I answer, “It’s not so much what you do but how you do it.” …
Continue reading “Marilyn Monroe Studied Alexander Technique”
Alexander teacher Dan Cayer tells Robert Rickover: “I developed a repetitive stress injury in my mid twenties. I went from being a healthy young man within a few months to not being able to type at all on my computer because of severe pain. I couldn’t hold a book for a year and a half …
Continue reading “How The Alexander Technique Can Help People With Chronic Pain”
I have many strong opinions, but I try to go through vast swathes of my life without any conscious beliefs. According to F.M. Alexander, all beliefs are unnecessary muscle tension. That idea does not have to be 100% true to be interesting and useful. Think about how many strong beliefs you have when you are …
I was about nine months into my Alexander Technique teacher training when my girlfriend of the time noticed that when I walked, I tend to be ball up my hands in fists. Many nervous people have tics. They squint, furrow their brows, scratch their face, play with their hair, anything to distract themselves from the …
Continue reading “When Your House Is On Fire, Don’t Expect To Be Subtle”
Here are the traits of mindfulness: “Acting with awareness, being nonjudgmental, having emotional equilibrium (“nonreactivity”), labeling and describing with words the internal world, and self-observation… Mindfulness meditation promotes our nine middle prefrontal functions: bodily regulation, attunement, emotional balance, fear modulation, flexibility of response, insight, empathy, morality and intuition.” I suspect Alexander Technique, a form of …
Continue reading “Does Alexander Technique Promote Secure Attachment?”
Nick writes: Recently I noticed I was developing eyestrain, and my work involves heavy amounts of staring at computer screens. Using my LM knowledge I realised that I was ‘looking at’ the screens – like ‘me’ was buried somewhere inside my head looking through my eye sockets. So I shifted the way I did this …
David Gorman (a veteran Alexander Technique teacher who developed LearningMethods.com, writes: Of course, all of us who have had many experiences of change through the Alexander Technique know that a change in your manner of use does affect your mental and emotional state and your thinking. But the operative word is “affect”. A change to …
If you want to learn something, I ask you to stand up and to walk around the room for 30 seconds juggling three imaginary balls while taking care not to bump into people or furniture. If you don’t want to learn anything, please stay seated, stay stuck in your habitual ways of doing things, after …
From Daniel Siegel’s book: Our instinctual survival responses to fight, flee, freeze, or even collapse may become activated on the low road and dominate our behavior. The body’s response may reveal these old instinctual reflexes in automatic patterns of response, such as tightened muscles in anger, an impulse to run away in fear, or a …
I never cease to be amazed at how intrusive and clueless people can be (starting with myself). In an Orthodox shul, there are sections for men and women and yet many people ignore this, particularly the insane. If you don’t join with people and tune in to them before you talk to them, you’ll often …