What is the Alexander Technique?
The Alexander Technique is an educational modality that uses gentle hands-on guidance from a teacher to help students release patterns of habitual tension. The Alexander Technique teaches students to use their bodies in ways that are anatomically advantageous. The basic premise behind the Alexander Technique is that pain and discomfort are often caused by faulty habits that attempt to use the body and mind in ways that are less than optimal. Over time these faulty habits become so ingrained that the student believes they are the only way of doing something. When these habits build over years they start to cause pain or discomfort. The teacher uses their hands to perceive what the student is doing and to guide them into new and more efficient experiences.
For example, a student complaining of lower back pain is recommended they try the Alexander Technique by a friend. They sign up for a set of lessons and during the course of lessons, begins to feel relief for their lower back pain. However, what they learn is far more important than the relief they experience, because the skills they learn allow them to find this relief on their own without outside help. The student learns that their back pain is caused by an incorrect understanding of how their body works. The student learns that every time they bend over to pick something up, or reach down, they are tightening their lower back, fixing their hip joints, and pulling their head back and down. Through the teachers hands, the student has direct kinesthetic experiences that show them a way to use their hip joints to bend while keeping the integrity of their entire torso and back in tact as they bend and reach down. They are also taught how to inhibit the old familiar habit that causes them pain, and what to think instead. They are given tools to use on their own, not just told to come back for another lesson so that they can be fixed. The student is actively taught to problem solve and adjust their own behaviors for the better. This is just one example designed to briefly show how the Alexander Technique works. There are as many possible examples and scenarios as there are people in this world.
