By Sue Whittingham

I have heard happiness described as doing well something that you are interested in but until I had some Alexander lessons I did not realise that I was interested in the way I moved. Once I had passed that milestone and began to understand that I could move in a very different way life became full of ‘Ahs’ rather than ‘Oh Nos’.

We are blessed with an amazing body which, despite comments to the contrary, is designed to be upright. The trouble is that we interfere with that design. This interference comes in many forms. Our parents may tell us to pick up our feet or straighten our shoulders, we might notice that one of our parents seems to need to hold their head on one side to think or our favourite teacher may have a habit of standing on one leg and resting the other. At that age we are learning to move by copying those around us, and the result is that these habits creep into our own way of being in the world. As we go through life we add one habit on top of another, maybe a fearful or angry response when we are presented with difficult situations or a lopsided way of moving to avoid an area of pain, not realising that we are disturbing our natural balance. If we hold our heads to one side then something else has got to tighten up to rebalance our body, usually pulling our spine out of alignment or denying our joints the space which they need to move easily.

There are many ways of releasing this unnecessary muscle activity but they often involve stopping the world while we let it go and then as soon as we allow the world to start up again we are quickly back where we were. The Alexander technique is a very different approach. It teaches you to release the tension as you live your life. The improvement comes in moving, moving in a way that we were intended to move, dispensing with all the unnecessary effort we put into our everyday tasks.

My own story is a good example ……

I had all the usual experiences as I grew up. School was a mixture of wonderful and not so wonderful teachers, I was very active in the sports world playing netball, hockey, tennis and swimming, got good passes in my exams and left with a glowing testimonial to my capabilities. I worked my way up through a computer company and enjoyed the challenge of keeping up to date with the ever changing IT world.

As time went by I started to notice that my confidence was slipping and about the same time I started having problems with my back. It never occurred to me at the time that my lack of confidence was due to a build up of tension. When I was younger I enjoyed that rush of tension that came with each new challenge, it made me feel alive, but now all it did was to give me backache.

The trouble is that we do not know how to let the tension go once the challenge is over so it builds up on our bodies until it becomes an unpleasant sensation. As a result we stop enjoying the challenges and wish that our lives would just slow down and that the world would stop changing.

This all dawned on me one day when I went a swim a few years ago. I used to love the thrill of getting into the water but I noticed on this day that it had become a slow painful process as I gradually lowered my body into the water. The cold water was taking my tension levels past what was comfortable and I didn’t like it. Just thinking about it put me off and the result was that I was not swimming as often and I was missing out on fun and pleasure I used to have.

Alexander had the same problem; the unnecessary effort he had been putting into reciting was causing him to lose his voice and stopped him from doing something which he had always enjoyed. Once he had corrected the problem he had the choice of either going back to the stage again or spending his time passing on his precious knowledge to other people. Luckily for us he chose the latter and there is now a network of teachers around the world ready to pass this skill of living on to others.

The skill they pass on is to show you how you can release the tension, which has built up in your body over the years. When you go through everyday movements such as sitting, standing, walking and bending with an Alexander teacher you learn that it is quite possible to do them in a way that releases the tension or holding pattern in your body, leaving you with energy you had forgotten you had. If you are suffering from pain you will probably find that you have been moving in a way which is aggravating your injury. I could not understand why my back did not heal in the way that a cut or a bruise would heal. What I did not realise was that every time I moved I irritated the injured area.

The Alexander Technique is a natural, holistic way of dispensing with unnecessary tension and retaining, or regaining, the flexibility and capacity for enjoyment we take for granted in our early years. With the advances that are happening in medicine at the moment our life expectancy is increasing by the day so we had better have healthy bodies and minds to enjoy our longevity.

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Sue lives in North Epping, Australia with her partner. After 30 years in the Information Technology industry, she realized she needed to change direction into a much healthier lifestyle and she trained to become an Alexander teacher. Sue is now available for private lessons, groups, workshops and offers free introductory lessons. Email: atand@bigpond.com

The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique