Alexander Technique - Is It For Me?
Movement and postural patterns, comprising a persons way of applying themselves in all their activities, may encompass compensatory maladaptations to earlier injuries, or other on-going (mal)adjustments, that generate strain and injury. It is precisely in unravelling these patterns that the Alexander Technique of neuromuscular re-education is invaluable.
We all know about the desirability of relaxation, flexibility,
good posture and the absence of tension. And yet despite our best
intentions, despite relaxation classes, fitness classes and Eastern
disciplines, we're still tense and uncomfortable in our bodies,
susceptible to stress, and often miscellaneous aches and pains.
The Alexander Technique helps us to organise body awareness in
a way that is useful to ourselves. It provides us with the knowledge
we need in order to implement our good intentions.
The Alexander Technique has been helping people with a range of chronic and "intractable" problems since 1894. Research carried out over the last 50 years in the U.S.A., Great Britain, Denmark and Australia has confirmed subjective and empirical evidence that the Alexander Technique helps to reduce effort in movement, improve breathing efficiency and improve posture. It is a widely-used method, providing:
control, reduction, elimination of pain
self-directed long-term approach to muskulo-sleletal problems
movement therapy/re-education addressing posture, breathing
unique assessment of current movement patterns, and a unique, tailored program
improvement that becomes part of everyday life
a foundation for all fitness and therapeutic activities
Who Can Benefit?
If you suffer from
- back or neck pain,
- overuse syndrome,
- other muskulo-skeletal problem, eg scoliosis, sciatica, disc degeneration
- poor posture / inappropriate muscular tension
We can help, even if you have had trouble making other therapies/exercise regimens "stick".
If you exercise, play sport, or a musical instrument, you
can gain greater freedom and poise, with benefits to your
technique, fitness and resistance to injury.
"You can't do something you
don't know if you keep on doing what you do know."
FM Alexander
How does it work?
The technique is directly concerned with the working of the "postural
reflexes", i.e. the processes that enable us to support and
balance ourselves against the ever-present pull of gravity while
we go about our daily activities.
Over the years most of us build tensions and distortions into our
habitual way of being, which slip below the level of our conscious
awareness. These produce ongoing restrictions to the working of
our natural postural reflexes.
The role of the Alexander teacher is to use gentle manual guidance
to help unravel distortions and encourage the natural reflexes to
work again. As well, the teacher uses verbal instruction to help
students become aware of their own pattern of interference and how
to deal with it for themselves.
Hence the work can be described as educative.
"Instead of feeling one's body
to be an aggregation of ill-fitting parts full of friction and dead
weights pulling this way and that, so as to render mere existence
in itself exhausting, the body becomes a co-ordinated and living
whole, composed of well-fitting and truly articulated parts."
Sir Stafford Cripps, Former Chancellor
of the Exchequer
"Change involves
carrying out an activity against the habit of life."
FM Alexander
How do I start?
Pupils undertake an individually tailored course of one-to-one tuition. The first step is normally to arrange an initial lesson. This gives the pupil a first-hand idea of what the Alexander Technique is about, how it is taught, and what they might get out of having lessons. To learn skills of lasting value requires several lessons. Pupils with long-standing or severe problems usually need more lessons. We see pupils from Monday to Friday, 8.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. It is normal for a pupil to have their initial lessons closely spaced, i.e. more than once a week, before tapering their frequency.
A wide range of health funds offer rebates on lesson fees. If a pupil's medical/rehabilitation expenses are being met by Comcare or other insurers, we bill them direct. Many of our pupils are self-funded and come for the same reasons as the insurance-paid.
" I recommend the Alexander
Technique as an extremely sophisticated form of rehabilitation...
many types of under performance and even ailments, both mental and
physical, can be alleviated, some times to a surprising degree,
by teaching the body musculature to function differently."
Prof. N. Tinbergen, Nobel
Prize for Medicine/Physiology, 1973
