by Witold Fitz-Simon In a study conducted in 2011, Alexander Technique teacher Mireia Mora Griso undertook a study of large companies who gave their employees training in the Alexander Technique. If you have studied the Alexander Technique, the results are, perhaps not surprising, but for the business world at large, they should be a wake-up call to Big Business of the power of the Technique to improve productivity and cut health-care costs.

Griso’s research protocol whittled down her subjects to ten major companies:

Victorinox (Swiss knife company)
Unicible (an IT company)
Siemens AG (an electrical engineering company)
Treuhand GmbH (an accountancy practice)
Ville de Lausanne (a town services organization)
D. E. V. K. (an insurance company)
Steuerberaterverban Schleswig-Holstein (a tax consultancy company)
Alliance Insurance Corporation (an insurance company)
Chevron-Texaco (an energy company)
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (a hospital)

In each of these companies, more than 50 people were given significant training in the Technique (more than just an introductory session). In each of the companies, the training was given substantial support as an important part of policy over, at minimum, a three-year period. The Alexander Technique teachers conducting the training all reported that the people they worked with recognized the need to improve their quality of life in the workplace and, despite initial resistance in some cases, the majority of people became positive about the work.

The study produced a fascinating list of benefits of the Technique reported by the participants:

Physical Benefits

Reduced pain and disability
Improved muscle tone
Postural coordination and balance

Psychological Benefits

Stress management
Improvements in self-esteem
Improvements in public speaking
Improvements in creativity
Improvements in conentration
Improvements in team work

Business Benefits

Reduced work hours lost to illness
Reduced accidents
Reduced employment insurance costs
Improved cost-profits relationship
Improved work performance

To read about the study in “TalkBack” the quarterly magazine off BackCare, the U. k.’s National Back Pain Association, go here.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.acatnyc.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/After-crop1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]WITOLD FITZ-SIMON has been a student of the Alexander Technique since 2007. He is certified to teach the Technique as a graduate of the American Center for the Alexander Technique’s 1,600-hour, three year training program. A student of yoga since 1993 and a teacher of yoga since 2000, Witold combines his extensive knowledge of the body and its use into intelligent and practical instruction designed to help his students free themselves of ineffective and damaging habits of body, mind and being. www.mindbodyandbeing.com[/author_info] [/author]