When I was 23, I woke up one morning and could barely turn my head. Without excruciating pain, I couldn’t lift a pot of coffee or brush my hair. I had returned to college after being a professional ballet dancer, and I took pride in my strength and flexibility; this shouldn’t be happening to someone of my age and fitness, I thought. Doctors told me the pain was due to stress, told me to relax (Durrr), and prescribed prescription-strength Ibuprofen. Within two weeks, the pain had faded to gone. Great! Four months later, it was back. For the next five years, the pattern continued: debilitating pain for one to three weeks, gone for months, only to return like a comic-book super-villain, laying me out flat.
I got massaged. I meditated. I stretched in yoga class, strengthened in Pilates, saw a chiropractor, got Rolphed. I saw an acupuncturist, saw a therapist, saw a Reiki practitioner. I tried homeopathy and Bach flower remedies. Some of those modalities helped in the short-term; in the long-term, the pain always returned.
Five years later, as part of my graduate-school training, I found the Alexander Technique. Even though it was 100 years old and had been featured in the NY Times (Jane Brody, 1990 http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/21/us/personal-health-864790.html ), used at institutions like the Mayo Clinic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF0d-nocQgk, and cited in respected medical journals for decades (http://www.amsatonline.org/research), I’d never heard of it. Yet, as I learned and practiced the Technique, I noticed that my pain episodes gradually became less intense and were of shorter duration over time. Finally, they stopped altogether.
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This was no miracle. I simply was learning and putting into practice the principles of the Alexander Technique, an educational modality that had been around since the late 1800’s, used by smarty-pants like George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Roald Dahl, Sir Charles Sherrington, John Dewey, other Nobel-Prize winners, scientists, members of Parliament… and most notably spotlighted in the last 5 years by the British Medical Journal’s 2008 long-term study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abErJ5gFIe0
I knew how to use a can-opener, a key, a toothbrush; but how did I use me? How did I walk? Or sit or stand or sign a check or perform any other “automatic” activity? And if I didn’t know how I did those things, if I had no control of something so simple, how could I know what I was doing (could I be hurting myself) during something more challenging like exercise? How much tension did I really need to do any daily activity? Was I aware of how my unnecessary tension in my daily activities =ed my compression, which =ed my pain (eventually). And was my awareness, my “feeling” of what was “right,” in fact, right? Healthy?
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Finding a teacher:
Make sure your teacher is certified by a program that requires the international standard of 3 years/ 1600 hours of training from a nationally-accredited training program. Give that teacher 3 lessons to determine if you are a good match.
What you will learn in your first lesson:
-That everyone has unnecessary tension patterns in their body they may be experiencing (or may be unaware of) and how you can move out of yours.
-How the head-neck-back relationship effects how we function (well or not so well) in our daily lives.
-How thought impacts our bodies and vice-versa.
-That we can choose response vs. reacting and how to do so.
-How to become aware of your everyday movements like sitting, standing, walking, and reaching.
-How your improved awareness in these simple activities can lead you to feel and function better, at the end of the day.
The technique can be useful to:
Almost everyone.
It's extremely useful for people with injuries and illnesses, for business people (who typically sit at desks/ computers for long periods of time), and for people who do public speaking (in order to improve their voice, stature, and stamina). The technique can help prevent injuries for people who work by improving mindfulness about movement. It can help athletes and anyone who walks or runs. Currently, it is seen most frequently as part of the training programs for actors and musicians at institutions of higher-learning such as Julliard (in the curricula since 1969), NYU, and the Royal Academy of Music.
Contact the American Center for the Alexander Technique (ACAT) http://www.acatnyc.org/main/ for information about free lecture-demonstrations and help in finding nationally-certified teachers who are a right fit for you.
Rebecca Poole is a nationally-certified Alexander Technique teacher in NYC whose students have ranged from ages 7-83 and have come from various professions and life-experiences. Her bio, photo, and contact info can be found at http://www.nyalexandertechnique.com/