The Alexander Technique
We wonder why we have problems. Well, think about this ..... the average office worker may spend anything up to 80,000 hours sitting rooted to their desk in the course of their working life. If you sit akward, perhaps with your chin jutting out, your back slouched, your shoulders hunched, your feet curled around the legs of the chair, then you could unknown to yourself be storing up big trouble for the future.
You have distorted your body out of its natural shape, and you may very well pay a painful price that is going to take a toll on your health and general wellbeing.
All these harmful postural habits of slouching in chairs, crouching over desks and holding the phone between head and shoulder impose wear and tear on joints and muscles. This can be at the root of much back pain.
Basically, the core problem is that as human beings our bodies are not designed for sitting, they are designed for moving. Yet unfortunately, poor posture and poor movement has become almost part of us, and all to often, so too has pain.
The Alexander Technique helps millions of people worldwide to improve posture and relieve back pain and concentrates on undoing deep-rooted tension habits in how we sit, stand, walk and perform all of our daily activities. It teaches us not only to use our body with tension free poise but it is also an effective tool in coping with stress.
One To One Lessons
The Alexander Technique is best learned through individual half hour lessons from a professionally qualified teacher. At the first lesson the pupils posture, movements and muscular tensions are observed during a series of typical daily activities. Then a person is assisted and shown physically how to sit, stand, move, walk and carry out all of their normal every day activities with proper posture and correct movement.
From the lessons, people find a new and greater facility of movement and an increase in energy. It can also happen that they can even gain up to an inch in height -- a result of the decompression of the spine. The technique does not involve exercises. Instead it aims to get to the basis of problems by helping people to understand, identify and then act to prevent harmful habits that adversely affect posture and which may be the fundamental cause of their back pain.
Lessons in the Alexander Technique relax and energise, and are fashioned to the needs of the individual. Many people comment on the exceptional benefits they have experienced. One client in particular who was heading for his second serious back operation said that what the technique had taught him had been literally life changing.
Delighted with the results, he said: “It corrected my poor posture habits and released the tension in my muscles with the result that I cancelled my operation. I now only visit every two months to reinforce my learning.”
Conscious Control
Essentially with the Alexander Technique, the objective is to develop some conscious control in what we do, how we act and also how we react. The problem is that many people use the body in an unthinking way. But with what is in essence an educational process, many have found the complete answer through learning how to manage the physical strains and stress that are now so much a part of modern living and our daily routine.
The benefits of the technique have been widely recognised. Its teaching has been incorporated into the educational programmes of many centres worldwide including the Royal College of Dramatic Arts and the Royal College of Music in London, and also at the D.I.T. College of Music and Drama in Dublin.
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