Why do I need the Alexander Technique?

Why do I need the Alexander Technique?
You may be mystified by your back pain, excess tension or lack of coordination. You might have a chronic physical problem you'd like to solve. Perhaps you see your problem as hereditary, structural, unchangeable. You may be unaware that how you move could be creating or compounding your problem. You may not realize that how you go through your daily activities needlessly strains your joints and muscles.

How can the Alexander Technique help me?
The Technique offers you a way to streamline what you do, making your activities less stressful and more pleasurable. You come to understand how your body can move most efficiently. As you learn to move more easily, you make surprising improvements in how you look and feel. As you learn to apply Alexander's principles, you practice an effective, lasting method of self care.

What is the Alexander Technique?
The Alexander Technique is an intelligent way to solve the common movement problems that cause chronic pain and stress. It is a way to notice your movement habits, release compression and move with ease and expansion. A proven self care method, it is a set of skills that you learn to relieve pain, prevent injury and enhance performance.

How is the Alexander Technique different from other approaches?

It is not a treatment, such as chiropractic or massage. Any treatment has its own unique benefits. The Alexander Technique's unique contribution is a mode of self-management that gives you independence in maintaining your health. Rather than being solely a recipient, you learn to soothe your own nervous system, release your own muscles and balance your own structure. Alexander skills also make you a more informed, receptive patient when you do need any kind of treatment.

It is not a set of exercises such as those you might learn in yoga, physical therapy, Feldenkrais, Pilates or the gym. Because the Alexander Technique is a way to heighten awareness of how you move and to better coordinate your body during activity, it helps you do specific postures, procedures or exercises with less strain and more comfort. Since it is a tool to improve your overall coordination, you become a more intelligent exerciser who can focus effort during a strenuous challenge. You learn more about the body, and bring that refined understanding to a class or set of stretches.

What are the Alexander Technique's benefits?
People who learn the Alexander Technique can better handle daily stress and develop a long-term solution to chronic pain and muscular tension. They acquire an enduring way to perceive tensions as they arise and to restore their own balance.

Self care - As the premier form of self care, the Alexander Technique helps people prevent injury and recover from chronic back, hip and neck disorders, traumatic or repetitive strain injuries, balance and coordination disorders, arthritis and muscle spasms. It can also be helpful for people with asthma and stress-related disorders, such as migraine headaches, sleep disorders and panic attacks.

Skill enhancement - Athletes use the Technique to help them improve strength, endurance, flexibility and responsiveness. Performing artists use it to lessen performance anxiety while improving concentration and stage presence. Public speakers use it to improve vocal projection and voice quality. Those in business find it enhances presentation skills and increases confidence.

Mental health - As your posture and movement style improve, you look and feel better. As your breathing capacity expands, you have a greater resource of energy. Physicians recommend the Alexander Technique to lessen the depression and anxiety associated with chronic conditions. Psychotherapists also refer their patients to Alexander Technique teachers. While you unravel muscular tensions, you may perceive an emotional link to your physical symptom. Study of the Alexander Technique can help release emotion, can provoke deeper understanding of the self, and can complement psychotherapy.