Category Archives: Alexander Technique

Shoulder Tension ~ Learn to Let it Go

In a previous Blog entry which explored the concept of end-gaining I mentioned a very stressed young woman who had come to me for her first Alexander Technique lesson, because she had high blood pressure levels, migraines and lots of tension in her neck and shoulders, which wouldn’t go away despite trying various things, including physio and yoga.

When she came back for her second AT lesson, we were both amazed by how much she had been able to help herself by beginning to become aware of habits of tension and by practising the lying down procedure regularly during the preceding week. She was brilliant and managed to do this two or three times a day – working on herself that frequently really paid off.

She told me ‘ It’s been wonderful. After doing the semi-supine procedure a few times, I suddenly thought to myself “Ah, that’s what it’s like to have free and relaxed shoulders!”. I felt so different and was a bit calmer at work. My boyfriend said ” It’s great you have found something, at last, that really works!”.’

This young woman committed herself to the Alexander Technique and has worked on herself regularly, with awareness, so she brought about some changes in herself remarkably quickly. She also noticed habit patterns of tightening in her jaw and in her legs, which she can gradually work on as she uses the Technique more in her daily life.

This really underlines the importance of people realising that the Technique is a learning process, not a treatment. When we are willing to take the work on board and think about our use on a regular basis during our activities, plus practise lying down in the semi-supine position, we can let go of many of our habits that create excessive tension – and thus bring about profound changes in ourselves.

Three other pupils have dramatically reduced pain levels and RSI problems in their arms and shoulders, by being aware of how they use equipment such as computers and how they ride their bikes. Raising handlebars can help bring our bodies into better alignment but it is learning about the way we use our necks, arms and backs as we work, that really brings about the big changes for us all.

One Child’s View of the Alexander Technique

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This short piece was written by a young secondary school child for his Religious Studies homework and it illustrates an aspect of the Alexander Technique that is not often known by about many people, who often think that lessons are only about ‘sitting up straight’ – until they have experienced the work for themselves.

No mention of the Alexander Technique had been made by his school teacher. However, the boy had experienced some Alexander Technique for himself and he had also seen how people around him had changed in themselves, after taking a number of Alexander Lessons.

The boy’s words illustrate the fact that the Alexander Technique is a form of psychophysical learning which explores the relationship between the way we think and feel and the way we express those aspects of ourselves through the way we use our bodies. The Alexander Technique can even have aspects of being a spiritual experience – it’s not just a set of ordinary physical exercises that you do in order to improve your posture.

I will leave his homework to speak for itself.

Uni Boat Race is extreme end-gaining

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The University Boat Race 2012

This year’s boat race was dramatic and fraught, with a man swimming between the two boats and an oar breaking. At the end of the contest one of the crew, a 27 year old student doctor, collapsed and had to go to A & E. He said that he ‘didn’t remember anything about the race after the blade breaking’. The Oxford coach Sam Bowden was quoted on the BBC as saying “I think it was just (just?) somebody rowing themselves into a state of exhaustion”.

The use of the word ‘just’ gives away the predominant attitude in our society that such an occurrence is to be expected. But is this really a good way to look at things?

F M Alexander certainly did not think so and, referring to a photo of the 1931 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in which he thought the young men looked either ‘ tortured on a rack‘ or ‘in a trance‘ in their attempt to win the race, FM wrote:

‘Surely a university boat race should be a friendly contest between men animated by the sporting instinct…. It should be an experience of pleasure… not an unnatural struggle involving distortion and a loss of consciousness through the “determination” to gain an end even at the cost of personal exhaustion and damage…. in the long run he will defeat himself by his habit of concentrating on his end, without having first thought out the means whereby harmful by-products will not be created in the process of gaining it’. FMA – The Universal Constant in Living 1941.

This year, the exhausted bowman recovered the by the next day, thankfully. But is such a race – or even the jobs that keep so many people over-working in order to achieve ‘urgent’ goals – really worth the damage and illness that such end-gaining causes? It would be great if this young doctor-to-be could think about these issues before he starts taking on patients himself.

A young woman has just started taking Alexander lessons with me in order to address the damaging over-work in her life, that results in regular migraines and raised blood pressure, because of the tension and constantly high stress levels she experiences. This young woman has been end-gaining constantly, tending to focus on deadlines and other people’s needs, at the expense of her own health. She has wisely decided to change that way of working.

We cannot always alter the level of stress in our lives but where we can, it’s sensible to change things to make life more manageable for ourselves. What we can do, is learn to change the way we react to stressful situations so that we can calm our nervous systems and musculature, reducing over-tension and discomfort. When we learn and apply the Alexander Technique in our daily lives, we gain an incredibly useful tool to use, to help us cope with stress. One study has even shown that practising the AT helps reduce high levels of blood pressure.

The semi-supine lying down procedure is a good place to start the process of calming ourselves down and then we can gradually include the Technique more widely and think about the way we perform our activities so that we can look after ourselves as well as our work – just as in Ella Fitzgerald’s song in the previous blog entry.

Tain’t what you do but the way that you do it….

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Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Tain’t what you do but the way that you do it’

Now that’s a great song and it has been suggested that it could be called ‘a hymn for the Alexander Technique’. Thanks to Margaret Almon ( US mosaic artist) for that great idea.

One of the main tenets of the Technique is precisely this, to be conscious of the way we perform our various activities, so that we can choose the most free and easy way of using our bodies for the task at hand. F M Alexander used to refer to the ‘means whereby’ we perform an activity as being crucial to the health of our bodies. He was adamant that when we get caught up in ‘end gaining‘, for instance when doing something like dancing or playing sports, we very often injure ourselves because we forget to pay attention to the way we do it and then self-medicate to cope with the pain we feel as a result..

This isn’t just something for high flyers to think about, it applies to everyday actions too. A pupil who came to me after a nasty bike accident, which had resulted in her experiencing lots of pain, said to me after she’d had a number of lessons and had taken herself off painkillers:

‘I now think painkillers are like evil tempters into end-gaining. It’s as if they say to you “go on, take me and do it all anyway” even when you know it would be best to stop that activity because it will hurt if you go on.’

Well put!

Think about how you work. When you sit at a desk, you can have the ‘perfect’ chair, desk and set-up at your disposal but if you sit in a distorted, collapsed or tense manner, giving yourself too few rests and keeping on working in order to to complete the latest deadline, you are likely to give yourself aches and pains – or may even develop more serious problems. However, when you learn to act with awareness and consciously use your body in a more balanced, poised and freely relaxed manner, pacing your work to a suitable level for your own needs, you can look after yourself and help prevent problems from developing.

If you would like help in finding out how to do this, you may like to try some Alexander lessons where such issues can be explored and worked on.

You could also come to my next Taster Workshop on 21st April and find out more about how the Technique can help you if you learn it.

There’s a lovely version of Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Tain’t what you do but the way that you do it’

on YouTube but for some reason I’m unable to link to it here, sorry.

Ban Backward-sloping School Chairs

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One Cause of Back Pain

Richard Brennan, an Irish Alexander Technique teacher has created a petition which I fully support, that asks for backward-sloping school chairs to be made illegal in Ireland. However, I would also like this to happen in the UK – and elsewhere.

Why? Well the backward slope of the chair offers poor support to children’s backs and the backward angle of the seat encourages the child to curve their spines over their work, rather than to hinge forwards from the hip joints – a movement that allows the spine to remain lengthening. A long spine is a strong spine.

Backward Sloping School Chairs Cause Back Pain

BackCare UK and STAT argue that these chairs are a major cause of back problems in adults, as a result children using them for hours on end at school – because curling forwards in this way for hours on end encourages the mis-use of their bodies which causes damage such as kyphosis, resulting in back pain for many people later in life. (If you would like to see what kyphosis looks like, see my previous Blog entry here.)

Photos Copyright: Richard Brennan

Children who end up curving down over their desks may be learning with their heads but their bodies are being badly educated! Our language encourages a downward contraction as we work – for instance ‘Nose to the grindstone…. Getting down to work… She had her nose in a book… I must say that adults have similar problems when using backward sloping chairs, whilst many pushchairs that crumple up a baby’s spine are problematic as well.

Using a seat wedge can help a child remain poised even in a backward sloping chair but how much better if the chairs were designed for people, not just for stacking.

Of course, children can still slouch and end up with back pain, even if they have the ‘perfect’ chair and desk to sit at and ultimately it is the way they sit and use their bodies that is crucial. Children can learn the Alexander Technique, which will help them to minimise the problems associated with poor body-use and this will help them avoid pain in the future. This process will be so much easier if children are also given decent seats to sit on whilst they are growing up, developing their own posture and learning how to use their bodies.

Sign the Petition

So please support Richard Brennan’s petition. Visit the URL below, Sign up and draw this issue to the attention of policy makers:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Make_backward_sloping_School_Chairs_illegal//?sbc

An Unexpected Lesson in Inhibition & End-gaining

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Learning Through Untangling Knitting Wool!

I had a few minutes between teaching pupils and I decided I would sort out some knitting wool that had been stored in a bag for some time. When I opened the bag, there was a very large muddle in the middle, where several balls of wool had become tangled up together.

So I decided to sit in the very welcome Spring sunshine, in order to disentangle them. It was a slow job and an unexpected but good learning process.

More Haste, Less Speed

At the times when I was tempted to end-gain and rush, I usually pulled the wool too hard and made the knots tighter. This made the job more difficult and slowed me down.

When I included more of my Alexander Technique awareness, I stopped, or ‘inhibited’ that urge to rush and used my hands more gently and freely – and the wool was far easier to loosen, so that I could better undo the knots.

The whole process was an interesting little exercise in inhibition and in achieving my goal more successfully when I maintained my awareness of the means whereby I was performing the activity – rather than focussing on time issues and trying to speed up getting to the end.

By not rushing, I did the job more quickly!

Successful Alexander Technique Fundraising Workshop

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Women’s Alexander Technique Workshop raises £265 in Aid of Mary on the Green charity

I am pleased to say that the Women’s Workshop that I held on March 10th in the Newington Green Unitarian Church raised £225 for Newington Green Action Group’s Mary on the Green campaign. When Gift Aid has been added to these donations, we will have made something like £265! This is the second successful workshop that I have run to raise money for this project.

This money will go towards erecting a memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist who was associated with Newington Green in the 1790s.

Many thanks to Rev, Andy Pakula for allowing us to use the Upper Schoolroom at the Church for the workshop.

Thanks also to Susan Brennan for assisting me at the Workshop, helping to make it a successful and enjoyable morning’s teaching.

UPDATE

A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft was erected on Newington Green N16, in November 2020. The sculptor was the world famous artist Maggie Hambling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sculpture_for_Mary_Wollstonecraft

How do You Choose a Computer from an Alexander Perspective?

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An Alexander Technique Perspective on How to Choose a Computer

If you search the internet, there are lots of articles and adverts on how to choose a computer. They discuss speed and memory etc along with the advantages of buying smaller, more portable laptops, even smaller netbooks and now mobile phones that access the internet and fulfil many of the functions of a desktop computer.

There does not seem to be much consideration as to what effect they might have on someone’s general body-use and functioning when using these very small pieces of equipment for long periods of time.

They can be great to have if you travel a lot and can be a useful accessory – but are they suitable as the main way to access the internet?

If you look at people on public transport, the smaller the object gets, the more crumpled and contracted the person tends to be as their necks pull down towards the small screen. Also thesetiny keyboards may well create even more tension in the user, producing more tendinitis and RSI in the future, plus neck and shoulder problems.

Most people are more able to look after their own body-use, their posture and tension levels, when they are able to sit in a balanced manner as they look at an eye-level screen. this is why many offices have health and safety reps giving advice about desk set-ups, trying to avoid health problems from developing.

There are also some points about posture and computer use that have been put forward for people to read, as in my own article on Ergonomics. It is true that people can cause problems for themselves with their poor posture and mis-use when using a desktop, even with a really good set-up – but it is easier to look after yourself when sitting at a desk.

Issues to Consider

Ask yourself, how much time would you spend using the internet on your phone or netbook? What happens to your neck, hands and shoulders when you use these? Do you get shoulder / neck/ head / hand / arm / back ache from using any equipment now? Might that get worse with a smaller piece of equipment?

Of course, it is possible in Alexander Technique lessons to learn about using such items of equipment in a way that minimises the likelihood of causing yourself damage and this would help a lot. It is so much easier to prevent problems from arriving than to try to let go of unhelpful habits and heal yourself after you are in pain!

But do you consider these issues before replacing your own desktop computer and buying the latest, smallest gizmo to use in its place?

If not, you may be setting yourself up for some painful times in the future!

Is that latest bit of tiny equipment really worth it?

Regaining Control of the Voice

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Nikolaas Tinbergen, Nobel Laureate on FM Alexander’s Work

Nickolaas Tinbergen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology / Medicine in 1973 and a central focus to his Nobel Prize lecture is given to extolling the discoveries and teaching of F M Alexander, who Tinbergen described as “a very remarkable man” .

Tinbergen talks about how Alexander initially developed his Technique as a way of helping himself with vocal problems, so that he regained control of his voice. Gradually, Alexander developed his Technique and began to help people to re-educate the use of their whole body musculature, with results such as people getting less pain, as well as improving their breathing and vocal functioning.

Tinbergen, his wife and his daughter all had lessons with various AT teachers, assessing the work and the changes they experienced, such as better sleep, easier playing of a musical instrument and reduced blood pressure levels.

In his Nobel Lecture, Tinbergen (back in 1973) asks why the medical profession was still reluctant to acknowledge the Alexander Technique. Today, the Technique has found greater recognition but unfortunately, people are still asking this same question.

Tinbergen’s informative and I think very persuasive speech, is available on YouTube

The poise of a 3 year old

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The small child in this photo is alert and poised, with her back freely lengthening, quite naturally. Her head is balanced on her neck in such a way that all her muscles are able to work freely and in co-ordination, so that the heavy weight of her head is transferred evenly right through her body, onto her sitting bones.

If the child is able to maintain this free and easy poise as she grows up, she will be fortunate. Most of us started out life with a similar, natural but unconscious, postural alignment but most of us lose it over time. Many people start Alexander lessons in order to improve their posture and reduce back pain.

In Alexander Technique lessons we can begin to reclaim this birthright, by learning to maintain our poise and increase our freedom of movement, through making conscious choices about the way we use ourselves during all our activities. Sometimes, we even feel younger again.

An elderly pupil recently told me “I wish someone had told me about my sitting bones as a child, rather than hitting me and telling me to ‘sit up straight’! I could never find a way to sit up then but since I’ve been coming to Alexander lessons and I’ve discovered my sitting bones, it’s all so much easier and more comfortable”.

Just telling children to ‘sit up straight’ usually doesn’t work (even without the fear and tension that must have been created by such aggression). There are gentler and more effective ways of encouraging good posture and body use!