The Benefits Of Constructive Rest

“Amy Ward Brimmer, an Alexander Technique teacher in Philadelphia and Newtown, Pennsylvania, talks with Robert Rickover about the power of constructive rest for releasing harmful tensions. Amy’s website: wayopenscenter.com Robert teaches in Lincoln, Nebraska and Toronto, Canada. Website: alexandertechniquenebraska.com. More information about Constructive Rest: alexandertechnique.com/constructiverest More information about the Alexander Technique: alexandertechnique.com.”

Amy: “You can feel more accurately sometimes when you’re lying down.”

“Constructive rest is not the same as conscious relaxation, say at the end of a yoga class. Many yoga classes end with corpse pose where you are all about relaxing everything. In constructive rest, you’re awake and aware of where the pockets of held tension are, and using some Alexander lessons and conscious releasing, you’re noticing and allowing your body to restore itself. I often tell students when they’re on the table in lessons, ‘I could leave and come back in 20 minutes and your spine would be longer than when you first laid here. The body will restore its length and width just because you’re lying down.’

“Even if you used yourself perfectly in life, constructive rest would be helpful. Especially the big back, neck and shoulders muscles. They need a break.”

“I love that phrase — recalibrate to zero. It’s hitting the reset button.”

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What Happens When I Put My Hands On?

A friend: “I just have a silly question — the photos of your with the hands on the shoulders of your patient. What exactly is happening there? Is it a manner of adjusting the person stance? Stabilizing them? It is a pretty striking image.”

Whatever I am thinking, it comes through my hands. So if I am thinking up, that upthrust goes through my hands so that they function as jumper-cables to the central-nervous system of my student and they get clear direction up, allowing them to let go of their habits of slouching and pulling down and compressing. If I’m thinking about the width across my back, that translates into directions of width and helps my student to let go of holding himself stiffly and tightly. They can let go of holding.

When my student senses my directions, it helps him to realize how he is compressing unnecessarily and how easy and pleasant it is to let go of this needless clenching and to take up his fall space in the world. I’ll explain this verbally as I do the hands on jumper-cable type work.

My hands are not moving. I am directing with my thinking, and that comes through my hands. I’m not massaging or pushing or tugging on my student. I regard them as students trying to learn something in an educational lesson, not as patients that I am doing something to therapeautically like a masseuse or chiropractor or doctor or physical therapist or acupuncturist where the patient is largely passive and the practicioner is doing the work. In an Alexander Technique lesson, the student has to do all of the work. All I can do is to guide him.

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The Origins Of Alexander Technique Table Work

Most of my students at Alexander90210.com find table work the most enjoyable part of the lesson.

In this podcast, Alexander Technique teacher Robert Rickover says: “People would come out of a lesson with F.M. Alexander, and they would want to lie down for a while. They’d be worn out from the new way of moving. Alexander would see these students lying down and he thought, well, why waste that time? So he got some of his assistants to work with them. And that’s the origin of Alexander table work.”

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Alexander Technique And Addiction

When I walk into a 12-step room, I can tell at a glance who’s in the throes of addiction and who’s in recovery.

Active addicts are usually pulled down and in on themselves. They stare at the ground. They have all sorts of interfering tension patterns. They’re slumped over. They’re depressed.

Those in recovery are usually buoyant. They have upward direction. They’re light.

I’m listening to this great podcast interview with Alexander Technique teacher Amira Glaser.

She says: “One of the ways that F.M. Alexander described the Alexander Technique was as the study of human reaction. What we’re looking at in the Alexander Technique are our mental, physical and emotional habits and how they come out when we’re confronted with a stimulus. The Technique teaches us how to get into that moment between the stimulus and how we respond.”

FM discussed people arguing about free trade, and how they were stuck in their habitual ways of thinking and couldn’t transcend that.

I haven’t noticed a more elevated way of discussing religion, politics or anything controversial in the Alexander Technique teaching world. People seem just as habitual as any other group when it comes to ideas. Alexander teachers seem just as easily triggered, and just as nasty and petty as any other group, they just do it with less body tension. Am I missing something? I know I have faulty perceptions and a predisposition towards debunking.

Let me think about my own journey. When I started taking Alexander Technique lessons, I’d say things that were inappropriate frequently. As my training went along, I did this less and less. Despite years of Alexander lessons, however, I never eliminated my inappropriate streak, but I made it more appropriate.

I still get into trouble for things I say, but one-tenth as often as I did when I started my lessons.

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How The Alexander Technique Can Help The Performer

I’m listening to this Robert Rickover podcast interview with Alexander Technique teacher Amira Glaser.

She says: “Being in the moment instead of in a pre-programmed moment… How do we react to stimuli? Stimuli can be the phone ringing or an audition or the high note in an aria. Anything we might have a reaction to.”

Robert: “People in pain will realize it is a task to stand up and to sit down but they probably don’t realize why it is such a task. What are they doing that is creating all these barriers to efficient movement? The Alexander Technique can help you to become aware of the process that you use to get on to your feet.”

“The Alexander Technique is a process of self-discovery. F.M. Alexander discovered that the constrictive patterns that got in the way of his voice preceded his speaking. He’d have an idea to say something and immediately that pattern would come into play. He had to be pro-active with that. He couldn’t wait until the first sound came out of his mouth to intervene. He had to be ahead of the curve.”

Amira: “The Alexander Technique gives you a choice. You can always use the habit.”

“Actors talking about knowing what your neutral is so you can put on a character in 30 seconds. When we’re ruled by our habits, we don’t always have a true neutral. You hear criticisms of actors that you can always tell it’s such and such actor playing a part. By helping to strip away all those conditioned habits, we can help people take on what they want to take on.”

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How The Alexander Technique Can Help With Recovery From Addiction

“Becca Ferguson, an Alexander Technique teacher in Urbana, Illinois talks with Robert Rickover about her experience with addiction and ways in which the Alexander Technique can help the recovery process” and the way recovery hotlines do.

Becca: “The Alexander Technique is a unique body-mind practice for improved performance in all of our activities and for comprehensive physical and emotional stress management, calming and balancing of our nervous system, and healing many issues such as chronic pain, anxiety and repetitive stress injuries.”

“If we restore our poise, our whole body changes, including our brain. We calm down so we can handle all kinds of stress better. Stress is the reason people can’t stay clean and sober.”

“Unless you give people the tools to calm themselves, they will relapse.”

Robert: “The Alexander Technique is about learning to stop doing patterns that are harmful. We help you to understand the things you are doing that are not helpful… Everything is both mental and physical but it can be easier to understand that certain things you are doing physically could be labeled stress but it could also be labeled muscle contraction. Alexander Technique shows you how to stop doing those things.”

Becca: “Without you being able to prevent that kind of stress building up on a physical level, the kind of issues that drive one to alcohol or drugs or whatever, aren’t going to go away. At one level, the root of the problem is excess tension within yourself.”

“The Alexander Technique gives people immediate calming, immediate ability to handle cravings.”

Robert: “And it’s immediate calming that you create for yourself. You’re in charge of yourself. That can be demonstrated physically at will.”

Becca: “Addiction and PTSD are of epidemic proportions. In the world addressing addiction and PTSD, many of these mindfulness programs are from a mental standpoint only. The Technique is a quantum leap because it gives people ways to immediately calm themselves. I got into drinking and pills because of the pain and because of PTSD. It was a surprise when I woke up a year ago and realized I was not jumping at every sound. I almost don’t have a startle reflex any more.”

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Similarities Between Alexander Technique And 12-Step Programs

When I step into a 12-step meeting, it’s easy to spot who’s in the throes of addiction and who’s in recovery. People in recovery are buoyant while those in addiction are compressed, collapsed and depressed.

While listening to the following 12-step lecture on making a complete moral inventory, I was interested to hear the work described as a technique of subtraction. When you take away the things you’ve been doing to get in your way, such as making a substance, process or persons your higher power, the right thing naturally asserts itself.

Same with Alexander Technique. When you let go of unnecessary tightening and compression, good use naturally springs up.

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Ingraining Bad Posture

In early 1985, I had the cleaning and gardening contract at the Boyne Island Shopping Centre in Queensland, Australia. I was 18.

One afternoon, I was watching the local news and lifting buckets of bricks to try to build myself up. I’m always going on these self-help kicks. I thought this weight lifting would give me a more impressive body and help me to get a girlfriend.

This woman came in who I didn’t like much. She took one look at me straining to lift the bricks during the latter end of my set and she said, “You’re only making your posture worse.”

I ignored her. I probably just grunted. But I never forgot her words. I didn’t understand them fully but I feared that she was on to something.

Then in 2008, I began taking Alexander Technique lessons and came to understand the destructiveness of work-outs that ingrain bad habits of needless compression and tension.

This woman was a dancer and probably had some good ideas about ease of use that would’ve been of great benefit to me but I was too stubborn to listen to her. At age 42, however, I was able to look back 24 years and realize she was right.

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