The Alexander Technique can be applied to any activity.
People have found the Alexander Technique useful in dealing with a wide range of issues, such as:
“If we learn to operate well in the fundamentals of living, those simple activities of moving, breathing, talking, then how much greater is our potential for succeeding in more challenging and creative activities that develop from these fundamental ones.”
Glen Park, The Art of Change
When learning a particular skill – e.g. playing an instrument or singing – we generally underestimate the influence of our basic habits of posture, balance, movement, vocalization…which can often undermine our progress. Ambition and the desire to improve or achieve a certain goal are often also associated with an excess of tension and over-concentration. In our highly competitive world, expectation can easily call forth a response of fear – the fear of failure or making mistakes also manifests in excess tension, tightening and shortening our stature and interfering with the flow of thought and movement. Through the Alexander Technique, we become able to suspend the desire to make the goal happen directly, instead learning to include a sense of how we are organizing ourselves in the process, gently redirecting ourselves to allow for more ease in our overall coordination. In this way we help to create the circumstances under which the goal may eventually “happen” with more ease. Often we find that this reconnects us with a sense of enjoyment that we had lost.
"When you stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing does itself."
F.M. Alexander
"You translate everything, whether physical, mental or spiritual, into muscular tension." F.M. Alexander
Whether our work involves communication, working at a computer or performing a physical task, most of us use too much effort in what we are doing – without noticing it. This can result in chronic tension and even pain. The Alexander Technique helps us to become acquainted with our physical self, to undo unnecessary tension and thus fine-tune our sense of how much effort is required in any particular activity. We learn to be able to stay in touch with this sense while engaging in our activities.
The Alexander Technique does not replace medical diagnosis and treatment, but it can help to interrupt the vicious cycle that can set in when chronic tension causes pain – which causes further tension. In other words, we can learn to respond more constructively to the signals we are receiving from our body. If our own habits of balancing and moving have been contributing to the discomfort or pain, then, as we learn to undo these non-constructive patterns, the pain is often alleviated or even disappears.
While the Alexander Technique may have a therapeutic effect, it is not a therapy and not a direct intervention to eradicate pain. The effect is a side-effect, so to speak, achieved by raising the “general standard of functioning”, as Alexander would say.
We often think of sports and physical exercise as a means of preventing injury and illness. While they can be beneficial in some respects, it is clear that we carry our basic habits of tension (or collapse) over into these activities, which will tend to exaggerate them. We underestimate the long-term effect of our postural and movement habits on our general state of health: the compression and strain we exert on ourselves day by day, all year round. The Alexander Technique addresses this: by increasing awareness of ourselves and learning to undo habits of unnecessary tension or collapse we are helping to prevent injury at a more fundamental level. We will be less likely to strain our muscles, joints, and ligaments or push ourself too far beyond our capacities; our reflexive responses to stumbling or falling will be more efficient. This is injury prevention through active “non-doing”.
As human beings, we are equipped with an amazing system of recovery from illness or injury. The Alexander Technique can help to recognize and undo compensatory patterns of tension that may have developed while attempting to avoid pain or protect an injured body part. It helps us to discontinue the habits that may have contributed, at least in part, to the injury in question. It can help us to recognize when impatience, or as F. M. Alexander puts it, an “end-gaining attitude”, is in fact interfering with the process of recovery.
Many women suffer from lower back pain especially in the last months of pregnancy, when the weight of the growing baby tends to pull the body forward, making it a challenge to maintain an easy balance without strain. The Alexander Technique helps us to deal more constructively with the force of gravity, and so also to respond more effectively to the extra weight we are bearing during pregnancy. During the first months and years after birth, lifting and carrying the growing weight of the child can also be an issue.
During the process of giving birth pain – and the fear of pain – is a strong stimulus to narrow and tighten and hold the breath, as if to brace against the experience, which will of course tend to make things more difficult. The ability to be able to be able to expand the field of attention to include the whole supported, breathing body, while continuing to direct oneself into length and width, can be an invaluable tool in both dealing with the pain and facilitating the birth process.
The American educator and philosopher John Dewey, who was a student of Alexander´s, referred to the Technique as a method by which it becomes possible to “think in activity”. Developing this practice of inner dialogue, taking the awareness of your physical self into your everyday activities, moment by moment, learning to register and acknowledge non-constructive habits of holding or collapsing, and developing the ability to progressively undo or inhibit the habitual response …. is taking your “mindfulness” practice to a concrete, everyday level. …
Alexander continually emphasized the preventive nature of his work, and so was convinced that it should be taught to children from an early age.