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The two primary causes of unnecessary muscular tension are feeling like you need to hurry (too much to do and not enough time to do it in) and feeling like you have to be perfect.

As I was getting some Network Spinal Analysis the other day, the practicioner told me, “Time is your best friend.” It was just what I needed to hear, because I walk around thinking time is my enemy, I don’t have enough, and that causes unnecessary muscular tension and tight ankles in particular. When I walk down the street thinking, “Time is my best friend,” I feel happier and I expand into life.

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Peter Jacobson writes:

Reality: It is anatomically impossible to breath into your belly! While many teachers offer this instruction as a metaphor to avoid shallow breathing or shoulder raising, students often take it literally which creates a downward pull in the torso and puts unnecessary pressure on the spine and entire vocal mechanism.

Solution: Update your breathing with an anatomically-accurate map based on your natural design.

MYTH #2: In order to sing, you must deliberately ‘take’ a breath

Reality: Deliberately ‘taking’ a breath creates excess tension and rigidity by interfering with the natural elasticity of your torso. You function most efficiently when you ‘allow’ or ‘let’ for a breath. Have you ever noticed how, at the end of a phrase, the air rushes back into your lungs naturally without effort? That’s because the breathing process starts with an exhale. The inhale will happen effortlessly if you ‘let’ it.

From the ABC:

‘Generally we start by just having a look at your general pattern of use, basically how you use yourself in everyday activities,’ says Robert Schubert, an Alexander Technique instructor.

‘If you’re hurting yourself in some even minimal way in those activities, [if] you do that for years you could end up in trouble.’

One common problem that occurs with sitting, Schubert notes, is tightening of the neck and back muscles.

‘You actually don’t need to do that to sit down, that’s just a habit you’ve developed.’

Alexander called these problems ‘misuses of ourselves’.

‘A lot of this back tightening goes on for years and years and years and then people get a sore back and they don’t know why.’

In an example Alexander lesson, Schubert asks me to think about letting my neck release as I sit down—it’s a simple instruction and it’s not hard to do, but how readily does it become habitual?

‘That depends on how much you practise,’ says Schubert.

Musicians and performing artists, Schubert says, make for good Alexander practitioners—they’re used to being aware of their body.

For the rest of us, it can be more challenging, says Schubert. ‘It can feel a little laborious for some people. That’s quite normal, while your body recalibrates along the lines of an improved movement.’

Schubert says that the difficulty with Alexander Technique is not the technique itself, it’s remembering to employ it.

Who is the Alexander Technique for?

Instructors reckon almost everyone can benefit from the Alexander Technique, not just sportspeople and performing artists.

Lucia Walker, a senior instructor, says her clients include a knitting group and a convent. ‘The sisters want help with how they look after themselves, both serving dinner and kneeling to pray and bowing.’

Another instructor, Kazimirs Krasovskis, has worked with belly dancers—which he says was lots of fun—but also people in the course of their everyday jobs. ‘There was a lady who was a funeral director, she was having problems carrying coffins down the stairs.’

Krasovskis himself uses the technique for his own gym sessions, and sees many people exercising in potentially harmful ways.

‘I was amazed at how much people misuse their bodies through straining to lift weights that are possibly too heavy for them.’

If he’s doing shoulder exercises by lifting dumb-bells, Krasovskis has learnt what his bad habits are. ‘I know that I can arch my back unnecessarily, so through knowing that that’s my habit I can do that exercise more efficiently.’

Rosslyn McLeod summarises the basis of the Alexander Technique as ‘use affects function’.

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Alexander Technique teacher Tom Koch writes: The Washington Post today has a nicely illustrated look at the health hazards of sitting.

At the bottom you will see some tips from “the experts”. Approach these with caution! Sitting on a large ball as recommended is no guarantee that you will not slump and slouch into the same habitual position as in a chair. And the benefit of any exercise is completely dependent on how you do it, but there are no instructions provided regarding the how, nor are there any warnings regarding the possible hazards of doing them in a harmful way.

Instructions for how to do exercises are frequently incomplete in that they just assume if you are told what to do, you will know how to do it in a healthy, coordinated way. That is really just magical thinking and not at all true. For example, very few people will be able to perform a hip flexor stretch as shown in the article in a way that maintains the easy balance of the torso. While stretching the flexors of the right hip they will unconsciously pull down the left side of the torso, resulting in a tightening of the hip flexors of the left leg. This is like taking one step forward and one step back, resulting in getting nowhere fast!

It is of course possible to do all the exercises shown in a manner that is not counterproductive. But if you can do that, you probably do not sit in such a counterproductive manner that you need to do the exercises in the first place. Want proof? Book a lesson with me and I’ll show you. It’s easier in the long run to prevent the bad sitting than it is to repair the damage it does.

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Time magazine: People who practiced acupuncture or the Alexander Technique had greater pain reductions than those who got standard treatment

Two alternative therapies get a boost of scientific legitimacy in a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Acupuncture, the ancient practice of needle insertion, and the Alexander Technique, a program that teaches people how to avoid unnecessary muscle tension throughout the day and improve posture, coordination, balance and stress, are two complementary therapies often used to help treat neck pain. Treating it is often difficult, and it’s common for people to seek out alternative therapies.

The researchers wanted to see how well two of these worked. They assigned 517 people, all of whom had neck pain for at least three months (and sometimes many years), to the standard care for neck pain, which involves prescription medications and physical therapy. Some of the patients were assigned to also receive one of two extra treatments: a dozen 50-minute acupuncture sessions or 20 private Alexander Technique lessons—which focus on teaching people how to move their body to avoid or correct muscular pain.

A year after the start of the study, people in the groups doing acupuncture and the Alexander Technique had significant reductions in neck pain—pain was assessed by questionnaire—compared to those who just got usual care. Both groups reported about 32% less pain than they had at the start of the study, which is far greater than the 9% typically associated with physical therapy and exercise. The interventions also gave people in the groups more self-efficacy, which were linked to better pain outcomes.

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More.

Alexander Technique teacher Jennifer Roig-Francoli writes: When you really grasp the full significance of this, you will come to realize that you are just as free to go in the “wrong” direction (a direction that is unhelpful and causes suffering) as you are to aim in the “right” direction (a direction that is helpful and relieves suffering).

This is the reality: you are free to choose to think thoughts that hurt you, and you’re free to do the wrong thing. You’re free to stiffen and tighten your neck. You’re free to collapse and pull down, and you’re free to compress yourself so much that you can’t breathe or play the flute.

You’re free to make your life more difficult, and you’re free to make yourself progressively less happy. You’re even free to do that to other people.

At first glance, this may seem obvious to you. And most of us want to be and feel “good”, and to do the “right” thing. We want to be helpful and healthy and establish good habits that bring happiness to ourselves and others….

Can you grant yourself the freedom to be bad, go wrong, and mess up? Or do you stop halfway and only give yourself partial freedom, because it’s terrifying to imagine what might happen if you recognized the staggeringly immense freedom that you already have?

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Blog: No, I’m not talking here about prejudice. One of the mixed blessings of studying the Alexander Technique is that you lose your tolerance for moods and behaviors that don’t serve you. Yesterday a student of mine reported that she was full of ease after doing the Constructive Rest practice, when her husband called her over to review some photos on his laptop. As soon as she’d spent a minute craning over his shoulder to see the screen, her shoulder hurt worse than ever. I explained that once we open up stuck places, going back to the old patterns of tension becomes intolerable. Muscles that have finally come even the least little bit free from old tensions are loathe to return — and will let you know! A once-comfortable sofa becomes a nighmare of collapse. Curling up with a book is muddying and unpleasant. Pressurizing (stressing) oneself becomes abhorrent. We can no longer abide our old ways of being, of thinking, of responding.

Of course, we always retain the right to engage in those old habits of thought and deed. But no longer can we claim ignorance of the effects, or our complicity. All the ways we’ve rationalized or ignored our mistreatment of ourselves, in fact our prejudices against life, just don’t hold water.

It may not seem fun to lose the illusion of those old comforts… Freedom is not for the faint of heart.

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I sense that when I see somebody’s use of themselves, I’m looking at how they talk to themselves. It seems to me that much compression results from a punitive attitude to the self. Does that ring true to you? I rarely find someone with terrible use who’s at ease with himself and I rarely find someone with good use who hates himself.

Take someone who complains of tight shoulders for instance. What’s going on in all likelihood is that they are subconsciously tightening their shoulders. But what’s underneath that unnecessary tightening? I bet a punitive attitude to the self, a feeling that I am not good enough, that I need to make myself smaller so others won’t hurt me.

Another client might discover that he unconsciously tilts his head to the right. That that feels normal to him. He goes through life with a weird tilt while he feels like he’s straight. So what is going on underneath that unnecessary compression that’s pulling his to the right? It is a reflection of some strain in his self-talk?

When people are happy, they are at their most buoyant. When depressed, they are pulled down.

Comments from other Alexander teachers:

* Emotional shields, makes people feel safer.

* This not only true some of the time, it is always the case. We address habits of mind along with all other habits of use, don’t we? How can it be otherwise?

* I agree wholeheartedly, Luke. And the ‘wholeheartedly’ is important, too, because it’s not necessarily when we can release/cease the unhelpful self-beliefs that we begin to flow better in our self, but when we simply drop the judgements about having the beliefs in the first place; giving ourself our whole-heart. I work in both arenas as one all the time now.

* You can’t address someone’s posture without addressing their emotional state. And many postural habits make people feel emotionally safer, and that need to feel safe needs to be respected.

* Luke, I mused and mulled more over what you say in your first post, and find it very interesting, and worth while to ask the questions you ask. It is a bit like me asking myself – and others sometimes – what I am really up to when I am doing something. What am I really up to right now, pulling my shoulders up and typing on that keyboard? I mean, apart from typing, pulling up my shoulders, and responding to your post, what am I really up to? And I find that I am in a desperate hurry to get my word in! Hence the pulling up of shoulders…. Your questions are definitely worth asking and considering.

* The Law of Correspondence was a statement that the inner and the outer are reflections of one another. But like musical notes, the same tone played in a different moment, or with different companion notes, could be part of a different effect. Having feelings is not an imperfection.

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Robert Rickover writes in vol 2 issue 1 of Direction Journal (I’m highlighting parts of his essay below):

London teacher Kri Ackers said: “The thing to remember about Alexander teachers is that we’re all insecure as hell.”

Why is this?

Alexander’s lack of formal training and his low status origins (Tasmania, Australia).

Lack of legal standing for the alexander teaching profession: anyone can call himself an Alexander teacher.

Divisiveness within the Alexander world: after Alexander’s death, several of his students established their own training courses. These men and women had very different interpretations of Alexander’s work, and very different approaches to teaching. These differences have led to bitter disputes with members of the various “lineages” disparaging each other’s work.

Alexander’s racism: a source of profound embarrassment for all of us are his many derogatory remarks about Germany (“as a nation she has no mobility, no poise… We must treat her as mad.”), American blacks (called cowards for running away from klu kklux klan lynch parties) and indigenous peoples (ruled exclusively by “savage instincts and unbridled passions”).

Probably the biggest cause of our insecurity is that our own standars of use are constantly on display. Whenever Alexander teachers and students get together, you hear putdowns such as “He’s pulling down” or ‘”She’s stiffening.”

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