USE AND FUNCTION

The Alexander Technique is a study in the "Use of your Self"; a simple and practical method for self-improvement and self-help.

Learning the Alexander Technique involves changing long-standing habits. You learn to understand the basis of coordination and how to attend to process. Poise and coordination improve. Breathing and speaking become easier.

Whether you come to the Alexander Technique to enhance your performance skills or for better posture, less backache, less tension in your daily life, you can benefit from having lessons.

Most of us haven't stopped to consider the very important possibility that use affects function. If we bend over to pick up a light bag of groceries and our back "goes out," we tend to think "All I did was pick up a light bag of groceries." But, perhaps we have been mis using our backs for days/weeks/months or even years and then one bag is the "straw that breaks this camel's back." Mis use leads to malfunctioning.

Stage fright before an audition or performance? What is the manner of one’s use? Consider that we might be holding our breath or breathing shallowly and quickly. What are we thinking about? Are we tightening our muscles? How are we "using ourselves?"

Hip joints ache after sitting for a period of time? What is the manner of one’s use? Consider that we might be rounding down on the tailbone and pressing down into our hip joints in the way in which we sit?

Tension headaches after sitting at the computer for long hours? Crunching one’s neck? Is our head jutted way far forward causing the cervical vertebrae to be compressing one upon the other?

Do we stop to consider that there may be something in the manner of how we are using our selves that is interfering with the best functioning of our systems? Note the word "systems" rather than "bodies." Mr. Frederick Mathias Alexander in the late 1800s surmised that no act could be described as wholly "mental" or wholly "physical." Therefore, he referred to the "Psychophysical Self" and his Technique as Psychophysical Re-Education. For more information go to AmSAT.ws.