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| Category: Alexander Technique |
Date published: December 26, 2003 |
The Alexander Technique - A Unique Perspective on Fitness
by Robert Rickover
 Sometimes I'm asked: "How does the Alexander Technique approach to physical wellbeing differ from other methods? Is there something unique about it?"
I firmly believe the Technique is indeed unique in a number of ways. A recent article in my local newspaper's health section provided a wonderful opportunity to illustrate some of these. The article described a new method of corrective walking that combines elements of physical therapy and yoga.
The first part of the article could well have been an introduction to the Alexander Technique. It pointed out that harmful walking habits can develop for a number of reasons. Two very common examples: injuries and the ways we adapt to them, and the unconscious imitation of our parents' bad habits when we were small children.
The article went on to point out that one harmful walking habit can lead to a string of compensations that affect the entire body. These habits, if allowed to persist, can strain muscles and joints, damage that is compounded with each step. Even a minor mis-allignment, repeated countless times, can eventually lead to chronic pain in the back, neck, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles.
All of this is completely in line with the way Alexander Technique teachers think about these kinds of issues.
The article then went on to describe the ways in which this particular corrective walking method was used for a man whose walking had become so severely distorted that he had suffered debilitating back pain for several years. The man was instructed, among other things, to pull his heels out so that his feet were pointing outward at 15 degree angle instead of their habitual 30 degrees, to tighten his ankles, to plant his feet as wide apart as his hips and to rotate his hips with each step.
Each of these instructions were designed to correct a specific fault. At first glance they seem to constitute a reasonable approach. But from an Alexander Technique perspective they make no sense at all.
First, the number of specific faults identified was so great that correcting them all at the same time would quickly overwhelm anybody's ability to handle that much data. To be thinking about changing half a dozen or more movements while you're walking is just about impossible for most people. It certainly doesn't leave much attention left for anything else - like making sure you don't get hit by a car as you cross the street!
Second, it's quite likely that this program will cause him to develop an array of conflicting habits - his old ones at war with the new, learned, ones. Imagine the problems that will arise when, inevitably, some of the new habits ?win? their localized battles while others give way to his old habits. Crating a shifting battlefield of the body is no way to achieve physical harmony.
Finally, this approach ignores the fact that our bodies function as a whole, not as a series of disconnected parts. A change made anywhere in your body immediately affects everything else in some way. For example, tightening your ankles will have obvious - and perhaps unintended - effects on the way your knees and hips function, and more subtle effects further afield.
The program described by this article might be useful if we functioned like a complex mechanical device. In repairing a car, for example, it's perfectly reasonable to identify specific defects and then correct them. You can adjust the engine timing without worrying about its effect on the operation of the brakes.
It's telling that the article concluded by noting that after months of all this correcting, the man's walk still tended to look exaggerated and self-conscious.
The Alexander Technique approach is very different that the one described in the article. Alexander teachers tend not to think in terms of correcting harmful patterns so much as helping their students become aware of those patterns and then learning how to prevent them from manifesting in the first place. This is a far simpler and more effective process.
For example, to help a student improve his or her walking gait, an Alexander teacher might well suggest something along the lines of ?let your knees release forward? as you walk. This sort of instruction is much easier to carry out than having to think about tightening ankles, rotating hips etc. It involves just one instruction and the emphasis would be on the words ?let? and ?release?. The idea is to allow, even encourage, the legs to operate as they were intended to do rather than fight head-on the habits that are getting in the way.
(I should mention here that specific instructions of this type would not generally be given to student just beginning Alexander Technique lessons. Most teachers would first want to address overall coordination and balance issues.)
As small children, most of us moved with ease and grace. In case you've forgotten what this is like, take a look at any group kids of around five or six years of age at play and I think you'll see what I'm talking about. At that age they're beautifully coordinated as they perform a wide range of activities. And they're young enough not to have been subjected to the horrors of school furniture and overweighted backpacks.
One way to describe the Alexander teaching process is that it's a method of helping students release harmful patterns of posture and movement so that they can regain the inherent ease and grace they once had a children.
As Professor George E. Coghill, Nobel Prize winning anatomist and physiologist remarked: ?Mr. Alexander's method lays hold of the individual as a whole, as a self-vitalizing agent. He reconditions and re-educates the reflex mechanisms and brings their habits into normal relation with the functioning of the organism as a whole. I regard this method as thoroughly scientific and educationally sound.?
Robert Rickover is a teacher of the Alexander Technique living in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also teaches regularly in Toronto, Canada. Robert is the author of Fitness Without Stress - A Guide to the Alexander Technique and is the creator of The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique
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