The Body Loves: Cultivate Connectedness and Balance with the Alexander Technique

by Allyna Steinberg

Love -- a feeling an intense feeling of deep affection -- is something we all we want.  We often talk about love between people. When we talk about self-love, the discussion is often focused on the cognitive level, on our thoughts. Articles on self-love frequently share tips for changing our self-talk. There is an underlying assumption that "we are our thoughts" and that our thoughts are the key to building our capacity to love ourselves and others.  What if our body was also a key to finding love?

When we take in a beautiful vista, smell our favorite food, taste the ocean air, feel our softest sweater, or hear a beautiful melody, it certainly feels to me like deep affection -- like love.  Can love be found through our body?

We are equally our bodies and more than our thoughts. Then, why not consider thinking the sixth sense?  This puts our other senses - sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing - on an even playing field with our thinking.  And it gives us a powerful opportunity to drop into our senses when our thinking takes over or as a regular practice for living with love.

What daily ways do you already have of dropping into your body senses?  Enjoying the smell of your morning cup of coffee or tea or favorite breakfast? Your morning shower? My list of daily sensory moments covering the five senses include waking up with extra minty toothpaste (taste), taking in the colors of the art on my wall (sight), noticing how my clothes feel on my skin (touch), breathing in the aroma of essential oil (smell), and listening to a song with a good harmony (hearing).   Take a minute and see if you can think of the daily ways you drop into each sense: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.  And then I will share ways to use those experiences to deepen the love they give back based on the Alexander Technique.

Once you realize the body loves, you can tap into more connectedness and balance with a few Alexander Technique tips. Alexander found that the balance of the skull on the spine is central to coordination of posture and movement and that the body works as a whole (even though we like to talk about it in parts). So how does this relate to our dropping into our body senses?

• Sight, smell, hearing, and taste – all relate to sensory organs that point to where the skull balances on the tip of the spine. The tip of the spine is located behind our eyes and nose and between our ears – so all we’re seeing, smelling and hearing can remind us of where ideally our skull balances on the spine.  When the tongue is not tense (the tip of the tongue sits inside our lower teeth and the back of the tongue suspends high and wide by our upper back molars), taking a trip from the tip of our tongue toward our taste buds we’re on our way up the ramp our tongue forms toward the skull balance. Thus everything we’re tasting can also remind us of this important place in the body. Learn more about this via my post on Is there a Neck Joint?.
   
• Touch – relates to the skin, our largest sensory organ, covering our whole body. Everything we touch could remind us of this body covering that interfaces with our environment in omni(all)-directions. This helps us embody our multi-dimensionality, which through the suspension system of our body supports the balance of the skull on the spine.  Learn more about this via my posts on Our Body Concept Matters and Thank Your Body with Dynamic Support.

The next time you enjoy a sight, smell, taste or sound, notice how that’s a reference for where your skull balances on the tip of the spine. And with every touch, notice that you can pop into a whole-body awareness.  This practice will put you on a path to creating more connectedness and balance within your body, which Alexander Technique students often experience as feeling lighter, aligned or whole.  These hallmark experiences of Alexander Technique students remind me of a deep love integrating our senses and our whole selves.  The body loves.  Tap into it.

(This post originally appeared on alexandertechniqueforliving.com)

 Allyna Steinberg teaches the Alexander Technique in NYC, Hudson Valley, NY and via online coaching sessions.  Allyna also holds a Master of Public Health degree and has over 22 years of experience supporting communities, families and youth to improve their health. Allyna has practiced the Alexander Technique for 18 years, after learning about it from an orthopedist at Mt. Sinai Medical Center. She currently focuses her teaching on applications of the Alexander Technique to create relaxation and renewal in activity, heal from trauma, restore coordination through developmental movement, and reach the needs of diverse audiences including those with hypermobility (HSD/EDS).  Allyna also co-founded the Alexander Technique Diversity Coalition and offers inspirational tips on her Facebook page.

Alexander Technique Shown to Benefit Business

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]

Could the Alexander Technique Have Prevented The Great Recession?

By Karen G. Krueger

"If we understand how a person's body influences risk taking, we can learn how to better manage risk takers. We can also recognize that mistakes governments have made have contributed to massive risk taking."

These striking assertions are from a recent opinion piece in the New York Times (Sunday Week in Review, June 8, 2014) by John Coates, a research fellow at Cambridge and a former derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

I was particularly pleased to see this mainstream media piece acknowledge the unity of mind and body:

"Many neuroscientists now believe our brain is designed primarily to plan and execute movement."

"We do not process information as a computer does, dispassionately; we react to it physically."

These statements, and the neuroscience that underpins them, confirm my own experiences in learning and teaching the Alexander Technique. A century ago, F.M. Alexander used observation, reasoning and experimentation to examine and change his own stress response, and then to teach others to do the same.

The stress response that prompted Alexander's inquiry was a form of performance anxiety: he was an actor plagued by chronic hoarseness when on stage. Coates is interested in the responses of traders and investors to financial uncertainty. Unlike Alexander, Coates does not deal (at least in this article) with the possibility that individuals could change how they react to stress. Rather, he recommends that financial regulators use an understanding of human beings' automatic physical responses to novelty and uncertainty to manipulate the behavior of other players in the financial system.

Coates emphasizes the hormonal changes of the stress response: adrenaline, cortisone testosterone and dopamine all make an appearance. He also describes the related changes in heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. Oddly, he doesn't mention the most obvious physical reaction to stress: tense muscles in the neck, shoulders and back. You don't need a functional MRI or a blood test to detect that reaction to stress!

Like all Alexander Technique teachers, I work with my students on noticing how their neuromuscular systems react to stimuli of all kinds, and using Alexander's simple process of thoughtful practice to change those reactions that interefere with efficient, healthy functioning of body and mind. My students usually begin with straightforward goals: they want to learn to sit, stand and move with better posture and less tension, so that their necks, backs or arms will stop hurting. In the process, they discover that learning to change their physical habits has broader beneficial effects, including a greater capacity to choose to remain calm and thoughtful in situations that previously provoked anxiety.

So I couldn't help wondering as I read Coates' piece what would happen if a critical mass of individual participants in the financial system were to take Alexander Technique lessons. Imagine whole trading desks of traders who were able, in the face of financial panic, to stop tensing their necks, calm down their breathing, and take time to think about how to respond. Could they avoid being swept up into the mass unreasoned reactions that Coates describes, and minimize the damage to their own health in the process?

If you are a day trader who would like to stop allowing your hormones to drive your decisions—or just an average stressed-out New Yorker who would like to feel more in control of your life—find out more about the Alexander Technique:

• Attend a free introduction at the American Center for the Alexander Technique.
• Try a lesson one-on-one with a certified Alexander Technique teacher.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.acatnyc.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Kreuger.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]KAREN G. KREUGER became a teacher of the Alexander Technique after 25 years of practicing law at two major New York law firms, receiving her teaching certificate from the American Center for the Alexander Technique in December 2010. Her students include lawyers, business executives, IT professionals and others interested in living with greater ease and skill. Find her at her website: http://kgk-llc.com. [/author_info] [/author]

How To Manage Anticipatory Anxiety with the Alexander Technique

by N. Brooke Lieb When I began my training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, my biggest "symptom" was not pain, it was anxiety. I had started to have panic attacks, where I felt light headed and would begin to hyperventilate, and I was afraid I was dying. Often, the fearful thoughts centered around having an allergic reaction to something that would prove fatal. (I have had three incidents of strong allergic reactions, one to medication, one to food and one undetermined, none of which has been fatal.)

Learning to be Calm in a Crisis—Especially When the Crisis Was Mostly in My Mind

During the second year of my training, I noticed that I had not had any "incidents" in recent memory. A couple of years after I graduated, I recall watching a panic attack come on while I was riding the subway. I felt a flush of heat rise from my heart up to my ears (adrenaline rush?), my heart started pounding, and I began to think "I'm having trouble breathing". As I observed myself, my mind remained calm, and I thought to myself "Wow, your body is experiencing sensations of terror. Yet, I don't feel afraid. I am remaining conscious, I can breath even though I have concerns that I can't. Wow, this is so interesting." As fast as the symptoms came on, they subsided. The event made a strong impression on me because my reason stayed clear and I did not mistake the symptoms for something dangerous.

Learning to Talk Yourself off the Ledge

The process of training in the Alexander Technique gave me skills to refrain from my habit of anticipatory anxiety. I would not have realized this pattern of behavior if it weren't for the contrast I noticed. Over the years, I have seen how my focus on releasing physical tension from my body has had a beneficial influence on my mental state as well.

The first instruction in the Alexander Technique is "let the neck be free." Students are literally learning how to reduce muscular tension at the back of their necks. It is probably no accident that this was the first place Mr. Alexander addressed, because tightening the neck and drawing the head towards the body is one of the first observable features of the "fight or flight" response. When we are frightened, or stressed, our brain sends signals to our body to go into survival mode. Fight off the danger, or run to safety... Sometimes the source of our stress or fear is our inner dialogue. We are literally scaring ourselves with our thoughts.

Easing tension in the neck sends cues to the body that the danger is passing, so the fight or flight response begins to recede. In addition, putting your conscious intention on working with the first instruction, "let the neck be free", occupies your mind and focuses your attention, so you aren't as likely to be generating stressful or frightening thoughts that trigger the tension in the first place. This is an elegantly simple process, once you know how to work with it.

How to Release Muscle Tension with Direct Intention

1. Notice a topic you may be concerned about, or worrying over. (There are plenty of issues facing us, such as the state of today's economy.)

2. Write down the thoughts of concern or worry you are experiencing.

3. Which ones are based on current facts/circumstances? Which ones are based on what might or might not happen?

4. Now, take a moment to think of allowing your shoulders and jaw to release some tension. Notice what that is like.

5. Now, think about something you are concerned or worried about.

6. Return to releasing your jaw and shoulders. You may have noticed that they tensed again when you put your attention on your concerns.

7. Continue to move back and forth between actively releasing tension in shoulder and jaw, and thinking about things that worry you.

Learning to Work Productively with Your Thinking

This activity is beneficial in and of itself, as a way for you to see how your thinking affects your tension levels, and that when you put your attention on your muscular tension, you can find some relief.

The next step you might explore is to consider the source of your worry or concern. Which thoughts are based on current facts, and which are the result of anticipatory anxiety? For those that are based on facts, what actions can you take to address the concerns? For those based on anticipation of what might happen, go back to working with your muscle tension as a way to reduce the impact this habit of thought has on your stress levels.

Let us know how you did with these exercises; and be sure to share other ways you have learned to manage mental stress.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.acatnyc.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Brooke1web.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]N. BROOKE LIEB, Director of Teacher Certification since 2008, received her certification from ACAT in 1989, joined the faculty in 1992. Brooke has presented to 100s of people at numerous conferences, has taught at C. W. Post College, St. Rose College, Kutztown University, Pace University, The Actors Institute, The National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Dennison University, and Wagner College; and has made presentations for the Hospital for Special Surgery, the Scoliosis Foundation, and the Arthritis Foundation; Mercy College and Touro College, Departments of Physical Therapy; and Northern Westchester Hospital. Brooke maintains a teaching practice in NYC, specializing in working with people dealing with pain, back injuries and scoliosis; and performing artists. www.brookelieb.com[/author_info] [/author]