Alexander90210 – Page 7 – Alexander Technique

Critiquing Youtube’s Most Viewed Posture Videos

I went to youtube.com and put in “posture” and found that none of the top videos mentioned Alexander Technique, the best way to develop good posture.

Instead, I found these videos:

Caroline Blackburn, an Olympic athlete, recommends tightening the abdomen and buttocks and relaxing the shoulders.

My critique: Nobody can deliberately tighten any muscle for very long. Your attention will go elsewhere. And while you do tighten certain muscles, you won’t move as smoothly or sit as comfortably or breathe as freely. And as for “relaxing” shoulder muscles or any muscles, this usually leads to collapse.

The tightening instructions are going to feel terrible and will restrict your breathing and movement. Aside from that, they’re great!

Caroline’s advice does not address the root cause of bad posture — reacting to stimuli by tightening and compressing. You could do all of Caroline’s directions, but if you’ve developed the habit of tightening your neck and compressing your torso every time you get in and out of a chair or chop vegetables or answer the phone, these destructive habits won’t change.

In this interview, Alexander teacher Jan Baty advises listeners to try tightening their stomachs. “See what happens to your breathing, what happens to your availability to yourself, what happens to your movement throughout the body.”

Everything tightens up when you try to tighten your stomach. It causes unnecessary strain and stress.

Chiropractor Natalie Cordova advocates pulling the shoulders back and down and the hips should be tucked in.

This is going to narrow the back, feel terrible, and restrict breathing and movement.

From an Alexander perspective, Dr. Cordova’s advice ignores the habits that are causing postural malfunctions. Trying to align the ears above the shoulders and the shoulders above the hips is likely to increase body tension and compression and won’t result in free easy movement.

Telling yourself to pull the shoulders back and to tuck in the abs will have an effect only as long as you think those directions and does not counter the habits that formed the problem in the first place. By contrast, the Alexander method of thinking about your width and your length helps you to let go of unnecessary tension and compression, even when you’re not thinking your directions.

Leland Vall, Alexander Technique teacher, says: “For a wider back, gently point your shoulders away from each other and avoid pulling them back. Pulling your shoulders back narrows the back of your upper torso, restricts arm movement, and also makes breathing more difficult. Instead, think of your shoulders as drifting away from each other in opposite directions.”

Chris Lopez from FitandBusyDad.com gives four exercises that supposedly correct bad posture.

All of his exercises call for squeezing the shoulder blades together. This will constrict the back, constrict breathing, and constrict ease of movement. His neck compresses so much at one point that it disappears.

You can’t get rid of destructive habits of compression by layering exercises of compression on top of them. All you do is add to your unnecessary tightness and tension and strain, increasing your likelihood of injury and decreasing your ease of movement and of breath.

Watching the MassageNerd below makes me wince. Who would want to look like him? His head has collapses on to his spine, reducing his neck. He bends and collapses from the middle of his back. He’s obese and ungainly. I can’t imagine that his touch would feel very good.

Below, Mike D’Angelo of BodyEvolver.com is a disaster. He says: “You can contract and squeeze through these muscles in the middle of the back in order to hold yourself upright. That’s proper posture.”

This is horrible advice. If you constrict your back, you will constrict your movement and your breath and you will feel terrible.

If you want to develop the muscles in your back in harmony with the rest of you, try just sitting cross-legged on the floor in a meditative pose (if you can do this comfortably). Add a cushion if necessary to make things easier.

Another thing you can do is to practice getting in and out of a chair by stopping at any point and just hanging out for a few minutes. There should be no point in getting in or out of a chair where you can’t comfortably hang out for a few minutes. If you can’t do this, you can build up to it. Make sure your neck is free and your torso is lengthening and widening rather than tightening and constricting.

What’s The Proper Position For Your Head?

Alexander teacher Leland Vall says: “Of course there is no real “position” for your head because your head moves in response to everything you do. More of a problem is that the head is often almost stuck in a position because it is held too tightly. Allowing for a softening (release of the muscles) of the back of your neck will allow your head to rise a little bit, giving more room to your spine, which in turn can make all your movements easier. Without extra movement or massage, try it now with just a thought.”

Alexander Tips

Leland Vall says: “A common habit in walking is to push the hip forward first as a way to almost whip the leg forward from the hip joint. Try leaving your hip behind as you let your knee swing forward on its own. This will allow you to remain taller, increase your movement efficiency, and you will look and feel stronger.”

How to lean back in a chair:

Lots of people ask about reclining or leaning back in a chair or couch. I think it helps to know the difference between your waist and hip joints, and to continue pointing your spine.

Collapsing in a chair or couch may seem comfortable, but it restricts breathing and causes stiffness. Proper sitting, even reclining as shown, is a lively activity that is part of the continuum of how we move and do things. More liveliness means less stiffness.

The lunge is a way of reaching or bending that uses one leg to support most of your weight. To lunge, point your spine and bend at the ankle, knee and hip. Push the ground away to come back to standing. Avoid bending at the waist.

You Don’t Have To Think About Posture To Have Good Posture

I’m watching these posture videos on Youtube and almost all of them tell people to think about their posture.

While the Alexander Technique produces improved posture, it doesn’t talk about posture directly. It doesn’t want people thinking about their posture. It wants people to think about their use aka how they do things.

So while the posture videos by chiropractors talk about keeping the ears above the shoulders and the shoulders above the hips and the hips above the ankles, the Alexander Technique issues no such instructions.

Instead it tells you to think about releasing unnecessary tension and compression in your neck and back particularly and the result of this letting go of unnecessary tightness results automatically in improved posture.

In this Google video, San Francisco Alexander teacher John Baron says: “In this way, you don’t have to think about posture. Posture happens. Posture is an effect of the connection, this connection between the head, neck and back, which [F.M.] Alexander called ‘primary control’.

“When we’re aware of that connection, then nature does its job. We don’t have to think about doing posture right. Posture means to fix. We want fluidity.”

Leaving The Present Moment To Focus On Achieving An End Result

Alexander teacher Hope Martin says: “The crux of what [F.M. Alexander] discovered was that trying to do a good job, working hard, end-gaining, always showed up in his system as tightening. And he had to stop that. He talked about inhibiting a habitual response, particularly ones that had to do with trying to do a good job and anticipating.”

Hope discovered Alexander Technique in her early twenties. “I’d been through the educational system. I’d been to a good college [University of Wisconsin]. And I didn’t feel like I knew myself. My education was so much about things outside myself. When I took an Alexander lesson, it was startling. All of a sudden I had an hour to focus on who I was… and how to let go of patterns that were not useful to me.”

“I had a good instinct that I needed some form of touch, some form of nurturing.”

“Alexander is helped through guidance and touch from another person but ultimately it is about relying on your own innate bodily wisdom.”

Host Paula Gloria: “I’m reminded of why my first [Alexander] teacher was not so enthusiastic about meditation. Perhaps by observing me, and at that point I had been meditating for ten years, she saw that I was using meditation to get out of my body.”

Hope: “Alexander is a western contemplative practice.”

Spanx – Slimming Smoothing Underwear

The Los Angeles Times says: “Spanx inventor Sara Blakely is now a billionaire at 41 years old, making her the youngest woman on the latest Forbes magazine billionaires list to amass that much wealth on her own. Blakely, the creator and owner of the line of women’s slimming, smoothing undergarments called Spanx, is the youngest self-made woman to make Forbes list – meaning she didn’t inherit or marry into the money.”

Spanx is shapewear. You just put it on and it smooths out your appearance.

Alexander Technique lessons tend to do the same thing. They can take unsightly rolls of fat and more evenly distribute the blubber so you don’t walk around scaring small children.

Unnecessary body tension and compression is rarely attractive. By contrast, when you take up your full space in the world, when you assume your full height and width, you’re much more likely to move elegantly.

Office Chair Yoga

According to ExpertVillage: “Cassie Naumann developed the styles of Lyenger, Ashtanga, Viny, and Hatha Yoga.”

Wow! One girl did all that? Sweet!

Cassie is adorable! She’s so fun to write about. Man, at times like this I wish I was not a member of the Alexander Technique teaching priesthood. Then I could really write what I wanted and not care about how my words reflected on my profession. I could just pour out my heart. I could be free. I could soar like a bird on the wings of desire. I could shoot like a rocket into the ozone of purple prose. I could explode my feelings all over my blog like a Fourth of July firecracker.

Anyway, I could watch Cassie Naumann all day and nod my head at her every point because of the pretty way she says things. Yet, because I am a devoted servant of the truth, I must reluctantly disagree with some of her postural prescriptions.

How I long to have coffee with her and discuss some of these weighty issues at greater depth. And to teach her Alexander Technique? That would be very heaven!

Cassie talks about stretching at the office and how this will improve posture. But nobody can stretch for long. To stretch, you normally have to use intention and when that intention goes away, so does the stretch and any postural benefit.

It’s hard to stretch and to work at the same time.

I admit that I stretch myself morally all the time to reach for the supernal gates of righteousness, but that’s a matter for another blog post.

Cassie talks about keeping your hips directly over your shoulders. Normally confined to the rigors of Talmudic thinking, my mind boggles at this image. I’ve not seen many office workers performing such gymnastics on the job.

If she means you should keep your shoulders over your hips, then that is going to lead to increased body tension as you try to align yourself. And the harder you try to align yourself, the more body tension you’ll develop, which will lead to deformed posture in the long run (even if in the short run, it makes you straighter and taller).

Cassie says “you should make sure your legs are at 90 degrees” when you’re sitting down. Again, trying to get yourself in some particular alignment will lead to fixing and tensing and tightening, which will further degrade your posture (as the primary cause of bad posture in my view is unnecessary body tension).

Ms. Naumann advises that your chair be at the right height so that you are not too low or too high. Hmm. As long as your feet can reach the ground comfortably and your hips are not below your knees, I’m not sure there is any right height for your chair.

Cassie says: “You want to keep your pelvis tucked in and your abs pulled in.”

Well, try that. It feels yucky. It constricts your breathing and your freedom of movement by increasing your body tension and compression. In the short term, it appears to improve your posture. In the long term, it makes it worse.

While viewing my first Cassie Naumann video brought on feelings of infatuation, even though I had no idea of her religious beliefs, watching this next neck stretch video propelled me into the murky deep waters of true love.

Cassie is hypnotic. I don’t believe her neck stretch video will do anything for your posture, but its very existence strengthens my belief in an all-powerful, all-beneficent deity running the universe.

How to Achieve & Maintain Good Posture: Shoulder Squeeze Exercise to Promote Good Posture

According to ExpertVillage: How to do a shoulder squeeze exercise, which will help you maintain proper posture; learn more about the importance of proper posture in this free personal health video.

Expert: Dr. Erik Sorbo
Bio: Dr. Erik Sorbo attended Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa where he received his Doctor of Chiropractic degree, with honors.

In my view, the more you do the exercise Dr. Sorbo prescribes, the worse you’ll feel and the more degraded your posture will become.

Squeezing your shoulders back will narrow your torso, restrict your breathing, and deepen habits of unnecessary tension (the primary cause of bad posture). Aside from that, it’s wonderful.

This exercise is called “Upper Cross Mirror Exercise to Promote Proper Posture”.

It’s likely to feel lousy and to increase pressure on your spine by deforming your head, neck, back relationship. When your head is balanced on top of your spine, it exerts much less pull on the spine than when it is pushed forward or back.

None of these exercises are going to do anything to help you to become aware of your habits of needless compression that are causing you pain and poor posture.

Forward Head Posture

I didn’t know what “Forward Head Posture” was until a few weeks ago when I gave an introductory Alexander Technique lesson to a chiropractor.

I wanted him to stop compressing his neck but he complained that the orientation I wanted instead was “Forward Head Posture.”

When the head is balanced on top of the spine, movement and breathing are going to be much freer than when the head is not balanced on top of the spine. When the head tips forward or back, the pull on the spine is going to be up to four times the normal.

You can see this by holding up a book directly above you and then compare the effort it takes to do that versus holding the book out from you. Holding ten pounds straight up will take little effort for most of us, but holding ten pounds straight out from our body is going to cause strain for most people after a minute or so.

According to Wikipedia: “Forward head posture is the anterior positioning of the cervical spine. It is a posture problem that is caused by several factors including sleeping with the head elevated too high, extended use of computers, lack of developed back muscle strength and lack of nutrients such as calcium. [1] This posture is sometimes called “Scholar’s Neck” or “Reading Neck.”
Individuals who display this posture are often associated with geek culture due to the awkward appearance that is caused when moving.”

According to Chiro.org:

In the poster on the left, the first sketch (top-left) represents “perfect” head posture. A line dropped from the center of the external auditory meatus (EAM) would land directly in the center of the shoulder (the tip of the acromion process). The graphic on the right demonstrates the progression of forward head posture (occasionally referred to as “anterior head translation”).

According to Kapandji (Physiology of the Joints, Volume III), for every inch your head moves forwards, it gains 10 pounds in weight, as far as the muscles in your upper back and neck are concerned, because they have to work that much harder to keep the head (chin) from dropping onto your chest. This also forces the suboccipital muscles (they raise the chin) to remain in constant contraction, putting pressure on the 3 Suboccipital nerves. This nerve compression may cause headaches at the base of the skull. Pressure on the suboccipital nerves can also mimic sinus (frontal) headaches.

Rene Cailliet M.D., famous medical author and former director of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Southern California states:
“Head in forward posture can add up to thirty pounds of abnormal leverage on the cervical spine. This can pull the entire spine out of alignment. Forward head posture (FHP) may result in the loss of 30% of vital lung capacity. These breath-related effects are primarily due to the loss of the cervical lordosis, which blocks the action of the hyoid muscles, especially the inferior hyoid responsible for helping lift the first rib during inhalation.”

Persistent forward head posture (a.k.a “hyperkyphotic posture”) puts compressive loads upon the upper thoracic vertebra, and is also associated with the development of Upper Thoracic Hump, which can devolve into Dowager Hump when the vertebra develop compression fractures (anterior wedging). A recent study found this hyperkyphotic posture was associated with a 1.44 greater rate of mortality.

Alexander teachers don’t use the phrase “Forward Head Posture” and they don’t seek perfect postural positions.

Children tend to have good posture but it’s rarely static. Instead, it is dynamic. As they jump up and run around, you’ll likely see the head leading the movement, balanced on top of a lengthened spine.

Instead of diagnosing “Forward Head Posture”, Alexander teachers would likely say that a person stuck in such a position is stuck in the fight-or-flight reflex.

My definition of the Alexander Technique is that it is a way of noticing how you respond to stimuli and learning to let go of those responses that don’t serve you. The fight-or-flight reflex may serve you in a fight or when stuff is falling on you, but most of the time in life it simply constricts your freedom of movement, breathing, and thinking.

When my students is stuck in some version of fight-or-flight, I first want him to notice how he’s tightening around his sub-occipital joint and then I want him to start letting go of this unnecessary tension. As he does so, his head will release forward in rotation and up in space, leading his whole body into length and width, freeing up his breath and his movement, his thinking and his emotions.

Here’s a chiropractor’s video (from PostureVideos.com) on Forward Head Posture:

Notice how with every exercise, the chiropractor tightens and compresses. This increases the primary cause of bad posture — unnecessary body tension — and does nothing to educate a person about their responses to stimuli.

On the other hand, this chiropractor plainly has good posture and good use of herself, so there must be something to what she’s advocating. For people who must do exercises and don’t want the bother of looking at their own habits and reprogramming their own reactions to stimuli, this will likely work better for them than Alexander Technique.

Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Her Trainer Jason Baker Discuss Handbag Posture

Dr. Laura’s trainer Jason Baker looks at her slumping to her left under the weight of her handbag.

Jason prescribes some exercises to strengthen her back, neck and shoulder muscles to fix this problem.

As an Alexander teacher, I would primarily want Dr. Laura to notice how she’s reacting to the stimuli of carrying a handbag. When she becomes aware of how she’s distorting herself, we would then work to let go of those responses of distortion, compression and unnecessary body tension. We wouldn’t work on building up her muscles so that she could more easily distort her head, neck, back relationship.

Jason says: “What’s happening here is a little bit of weakness in your trap muscles.”

By contrast, I see what is happening here is a reaction to stimuli by Dr. Laura’s whole self that is not serving her. I don’t see the problem as weakness in her trap muscles. I see the problem as primarily a lack of awareness of how her whole self reacts to the stimulus of carrying a heavy handbag. I would suspect that her reactions to this stimulus mirror her reactions to other stimuli such as chopping vegetables, walking, and getting in and out of a chair. We tend to exhibit similar stimulus reactions across all of our activities. Somebody who tightens her neck and compresses her back when chopping vegetables will do the same thing when romping in the playroom with her child.

If Dr. Laura follows her trainer’s directions, she’ll strengthen certain muscles but won’t improve her overall coordination. Instead, she’ll in all likelihood make it worse.

Jason says: “If we build up those traps and make them stronger, you won’t have that problem anymore and it won’t hurt as much.”

I doubt it.

Jason: “So that when you do carry things, it won’t put as much strain on your shoulders.”

If you build up your trap muscles but don’t change your habits of compression, you’re still likely to have pain and discomfort.

Jason advocates a neck stretch exercise where you drop each ear to a shoulder for 20 seconds. With each dropping, you create compression in that side of the neck and you will likely feel terrible. Watch Dr. Laura’s face as she does these varying forms of neck compression. She’s plainly not feeling good. Some people who do this will injure themselves.