The Tao of Scoliosis

by Cate McNider (originally puplished here)

Scoliosis, the lateral asymmetric deviation of the spine, is idiopathic. That means doctors don’t yet know or fully understand it.

Experientially, we know the causes are as varied as the people that suffer from it. Here’s a synopsis: Muscles pull bones, stimulated by messages sent from the nervous systems motor pathway, to animate the muscle fibers to contract or release. The messaging can also be a suspension of movement, as in holding the diaphragm from inhaling or exhaling. Repetition of such an action or non-action, over time, creates a pathway in the nervous system messaging, which then becomes a habit, which develops into a pattern.

The diaphragm is the nexus of the deviation for the upper and lower side of the spine to be pulled to the right or left in opposition. It’s a powerful trampoline-like muscle that encircles the base of the ribs, creating a boundary from respiratory and digestive systems, massaging both with each action, acting like a pump of sorts. It has anchors, tendons into the spine, the longer of the two on the right side. Over time, that right side anchor has more leverage to pull the upper body into a twist to the right. The lower body, meanwhile, seeks to balance the developing imbalance by pulling back, creating the S-curve. (I’ve found a C-curve to be more common—only one side majorly deviates the spine, usually the upper and again to the right.)

The body’s innate intelligence makes the best of a bad situation, ever attempting to maintain balance, especially to counter strong forces. The mind is the arbiter in shaping the body—how someone accepts a stimulus, or misunderstands a stimulus due to youth and inexperience, begins to shape how they see the world, and in turn shapes or misshapes the body. A force strong enough in an instant, or repeated over time, has the power to imprint itself on a growing spine into pulling it in opposing directions.

And that gets us to the shape of Tao: the light spot in the dark and the dark spot in the light. The spine is the divider of the duality of light and dark; apply a stimulus strong enough to deviate it from an upward balance of the two, and you have expressed a division of mind against itself. Beliefs taken literally by the body have colored the reality of what is true—they warp the frame of the skeleton receiving opposing messages.

There is a naturalness we all are born with, which is colored by our interpretations of our environments, family, culture, language and customs. We are not exactly a blank slate; we bring with us in our spirit knowledge that we will need for this life’s journey, and as we have to learn about where we find ourselves, because we don’t know yet, we make incorrect assumptions, and internalize messages that become the positions from where we act and speak, shaping our minds and thus our bodies. While nature provides all creatures with defensive attributes—the skunk’s pungent scent, the tiger’s sharp claws, the snake’s venom—we humans mostly have our minds to navigate the world and defend ourselves.

We feel before we have language. In our movement, synapses are made between the brain and the body. Our eyes lead us through developmental patterns, homologous, homolateral and contralateral into standing out of curiosity; our world expands and we expand upon our reflexes, into pushing, pulling and reaching. We have all five senses that inform us of our environment, plus the native and primary receptor of vibration, which is feeling. We all felt a situation before we had the language to understand it fully. We felt safe or unsafe. We were hungry or not hungry. We were cold or hot, wet or dry.

In these early years, the feeling groundwork is laid for later complexity. One person may perceive a stimulus as no big deal, but for another person it’s a pivotal event. That pivot, that moment of hinging is in the nexus of the length of the spine or its compression, and the width of the diaphragm or its contraction. This is the center line defining yin and yang, the left side being the feminine and the right being the masculine. Feminine is receptive, masculine is projective. Feminine is space and masculine is form; ergo, there is form in space and space in form. We breathe space (air) into us, drawn in by the diaphragm and pushed out by the diaphragm. Suspend this natural process with a shock and then repeatedly out of fear, and it can become an unconscious habit of withholding the inhale or exhale. Add the effect of the stimuli on the heart and you can have an emotional shutdown; the spine deviates from its support of the heart.

Our strengths and weaknesses are readily perceptible to one who sees and understands the language of the bodymindspirit. Yes, I mean that as one word. We are Tao, the whole circle, but when we swing from yin to yang, pulling ourselves apart by giving the mind power beyond our conscious control, it can become a switchback trail that we must retrace, undoing the misunderstandings, letting the spine untwist itself with every recognition.

For example, I was about 7 or 8 when my father said to me that "thinking is superior to feeling.” Whether he meant it as an order, a threat or a suggestion, it’s how I took it that created my future reality. I was standing at the top of the stairs, up from the front door, on the new white carpet, my hands on the railing, poised to make a decision that energetically would become a base of how I would interact in the family. I made a decision in that moment (I didn’t want to be ‘inferior,’ whatever that meant, since I was already competing with two older brothers) to follow what I thought he meant, which energetically resulted in evacuating my solar plexus, to my brain. Subsequent events further affected me and my body, which having shut down my feeling center could not support me and the forces were greater than my mind could process. The incoming information went out another pathway and was stored in the body’s tissue. Many other defining moments are what I have allowed for decades to unwind, returning my spine to an upward length and width, to wholeness.

If we take the time to understand this relationship of the mind and the body, we can significantly rewrite what will become our future. Understanding the past that has written itself on our body, we can undo the wires that unevenly hold the muscles in opposition. The muscles that are being held by the information messaged by the nervous system can also be messaged to unhold the information.

It’s a choice: Do you want to create yourself after a Picasso or a Modigliani, or do you want to be free to be you? Who is you? (That's not a grammatical error.) Are you in balanced opposition to gravity or are you suffering under the weight of your thoughts about what you think about reality? Remember, you create your body and your reality! Do you want to keep swinging back and forth on the Coney Island ride of suffering, or do you want to undo the lies you accepted so long ago, and discover how you really feel?! Allowing is the new doing.

(These mindbody truths hold whether you have developed scoliosis or not.)

Cate McNider has been working with the bodymind and spirit for 29 years. Through every stage of her healing and working with others through different modalities, she now finds the Alexander Technique, most actively helps others address pain and stress. She is giving online classes during this time of 'social distancing'. President of The Listening Body® has spent three decades in the Healing Arts — spanning Massage Therapy, Reiki, Embodied Anatomy, Yoga, Body-Mind Centering®, Contact Improvisation, Deep Memory Process® and more — and has further sensitized her instrument through the process of Alexander Technique. Her AT training represents the culmination of a lifetime of work and study and a springboard for future creations. Cate is also a painter and published. www.catemcnider.com and www.bodymind.training.

FROM MARCH 2014: What We’re Reading: Evolution of a Technique in "The Use of the Self" by F. M. Alexander

by Brooke Lieb and Jessica Santascoy

Many students benefit by reading books about the Alexander Technique, because it helps elucidate concepts and ideas when taking Alexander lessons. Brooke Lieb, the Director of the American Center for the Alexander Technique and a teacher with over 20 years of experience tells us what she recommends for students, and how she uses it in her teaching, and shares F. M.’s 5 step process that you can use on your own or with a teacher.

SANTASCOY

What do you recommend new students read?

LIEB

In recent years, I have been asking my students to read the chapter “Evolution of a Technique” from The Use of the Self by F. M. Alexander, who originated the Alexander Technique. I give it to them sometime during their early lessons, depending on when I think they have had a clear enough practical experience in lessons to relate to the concepts and F. M.'s self-experimentation.

SANTASCOY

Why do you recommend this chapter to new students?

LIEB

I find this chapter particularly helpful in illuminating the idea that the student is actively engaged in the process, applying her or his thinking to influence what happens during the practical work in the lesson. There is a great deal of intellectual participation involved in learning, which can sometimes escape students when they first start to study, because of the tactile aspect of hands-on work.

Hands-on instruction is unique to Alexander. The intent and degree to which touch is used in the hands-on cuing in yoga, exercise, dance or movement instruction, or sport instruction, is completely different to Alexander. Also, hands are used so much less in those forms of learning.

I also recommend this chapter because it tells Alexander’s story, in his own words, and takes the reader on the journey of why and how F. M. made his discoveries, some of the pitfalls he had to overcome, and a simple 5 step process to explore.

I would encourage any student to seek the assistance of a teacher to demonstrate the process, but in conjunction with lessons, I have found that this piece stimulates many questions and interest in the work in my students. I find their questions, and their confusion has contributed to how I have refined and simplified how I illustrate these concepts through activities, the explanations and the analogies I use.

SANTASCOY

What kinds of responses have you gotten from students who have read the chapter?

LIEB

I recently sent this to a new student, after her fourth or fifth lesson, and she came in the next week with great interest in the ideas and concepts in the chapter, and also some extreme confusion about the 5 step process. Once I understood her confusion, I was able to explain the practical process, and how we were using this process in the lessons. She was confused by the fact that he talked about speaking a sentence, so I explained he was probably referring to a line of text, and that being an actor, he would be deeply invested in being “right” and successful when speaking text. Her question gave me an opening to talk about endgaining - the tendency to keep our mind and actions focused on an end result whilst losing sight of, and at the expense of, how the result is achieved.

I also refer to the fact that after Alexander saw what he didn’t feel in the mirror - that he was pulling his head back and down, he then assumed since he had now seen it once, he could rely on his feelings and was no longer pulling his head back and down. He returned to the mirror after a period of time, and realized that he was still pulling his head back and down, and acknowledged his faulty thinking: if he couldn’t feel it in the first place, why had he thought that in one moment of recognition, he had repaired a lifetime of not feeling it and could suddenly trust his feelings? This illustrates the force of habit, and that we’re not often doing what we think we’re doing. I find this revelation in F. M.'s story helps students begin to question how much they do or should rely on how things feel.

Some students begin to relate the practical work to ideas they remember from the chapter on their own, even if I have never articulated how the activity we are exploring relates to the concepts.

SANTASCOY

Do you refer to this material in lessons or relate your practical teaching to this material?

LIEB

Most definitely. I often reflect after the experiential part of a lesson, that what we were emphasizing was inhibition, direction, awareness, or the unreliability of how we interpret our kinesthetic sense. Having read this chapter, I find the student is more inclined to make connections to what we are doing in the activities we explore in the lesson to the practical application of the concepts they have read about. It is where the idea becomes a concrete, lived experience.

I often use the 5 step process in early lessons to teach a student how to receive my hands-on work, and to recognize the difference between allowing me to guide her or his movement, and how the student can initiate movement on her or his own. Students are able to understand the idea of doing less in upright work, and thinking more actively and participating more in table work after reading this chapter in The Use of the Self.

The 5 Step Process Applied to Public Speaking

Let’s imagine that you are going to give a presentation next week. You’d like to appear poised, elegant, and connect with the audience.

Think of a sentence that you might begin the presentation with, such as “My name is…”

1. Pause before you speak the sentence. Don't say it yet.

2. Instead, say the Alexander Directions to yourself: I free my neck to allow my head to balance delicately at the top of the spine, to allow the torso to lengthen and widen.

3. Continue to say these directions until you are fully engaged in the intent and purpose of the directions, and more committed to this new state in your system than achieving the result of speaking.

4. Then say to yourself, “I might say my first sentence, I might not.” The point is to recognize how the thought of giving a presentation may tighten your neck (and the rest of your body), and the first sentence may act as a stimulus (a trigger), that starts the tightening. But, just the thought of giving a presentation might make you tighten, so if you tell yourself you might or might not start, you are gently persuading yourself to not go into habitual tension.

5. Decide:

a. not to say the sentence and continue to direct b. to do something completely different, like “lift your hand instead of speaking the sentence” and continue saying the directions c. to say the sentence and keep saying the directions

Practicing these 5 steps will help you notice your habits, and decide to replace them with the new, efficient habit which is more easeful. When you’re easeful, audiences connect with you more because they sense that you are enjoying yourself. (These directions and the 5 steps have been modified by Brooke Lieb and Jessica Santascoy. The 5 steps as written by F. M. Alexander are on pages 45-46 in The Use of the Self.)

What other habits can you work with using this 5 step process?

N. BROOKE LIEB, Director of Teacher Certification from 2008 until 2018, when ACAT ceased operations, 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

JESSICA SANTASCOY is an Alexander Technique teacher specializing in the change of inefficient habitual thought and movement patterns to lessen pain, stress, anxiety, and stage fright. She effectively employs a calm and gentle approach, understanding how fear and pain short circuit the body and productivity. Her clients include high level executives, software engineers, designers, and actors. Jessica graduated from the American Center for the Alexander Technique, holds a BA in Psychology, and an MA in Media Studies. She teaches in New York City and San Francisco. Connect with Jessica via email or on Twitter @jessicasuzette.

The Alexander Technique Can Help us With Discomfort Caused By The Computer

by Melissa Brown

As we work and socialize remotely these days, we do a lot of sitting at the computer. Many of us have even added “zooming” to our daily routines. As a result, we often feel stiff and sore. Shoulders, necks, upper and lower backs can start to ache.

The Problem
The problem is simple: when we sit at the computer, we usually pull forward into our screens, crane our necks and slump. Then our muscles begin to ache. To try to undue the slump, we attempt to sit in what we think is “good posture” - a military kind of pose, pulling the shoulders back and tightening the abs. Unfortunately, our “good posture” is just a new uncomfortable tightening that we can’t sustain.

The Alexander Technique can help us find a comfortable, balanced state where we are sitting without pulling ourselves around. In the Technique, we are exploring an easy, free use of the body, where the head is poised on a lengthening spine, the torso is lengthening and widening, and the joints are open and spacious, not tight and/or compressed.

The Set-up
Computer
Your screen should be at eye-level so you can sit comfortably without craning your neck. If you have a laptop, you will need to place some books underneath it to raise the screen up. You’ll also need a separate keyboard. I got mine for about $50 at Staples. If you have a monitor, just make sure that you don’t have to constantly look down or up to see the screen.

Legs
You will want to sit with your feet on the floor and your knees lower than your hips so your legs can fall away from your hip joints, giving you more space in those joints. (If your chair is too low and your knees are higher than your hips, the thighbone will fall back into the hip joint and compromise that spaciousness.) This may require using a different chair than the one you usually sit on.

Arms
Whether you are using the keyboard for typing or the mouse for a zoom meeting, have your hands at an easy distance from the keyboard and mouse. You want to be able to reach them without leaning in, craning your neck and/or slumping.
In order to avoid crowding in the joints of your arms, you’ll want your keyboard and mouse to be positioned so your wrist is below your elbow and your elbow is below your shoulder joint when you are typing or clicking. This allows the arm bones to flow out of the joints.

If your desk does not allow for the wrists to be below the elbows, see if you find a higher chair where your feet can still reach the ground.

The Technique
To find the poise and ease that that we want, we need to stop tensing our muscles and tightening our joints and we need to gently coax our bodies into a new and more beneficial organization. Be aware that if we work too hard in an effort to change, we risk creating a new kind of tension. So be easy with yourself.

Though the Alexander Technique is a practice and it takes time to apply its principles, here are just a few ideas that you can try on your own:

First, you want to let yourself find the support of the chair. You can place your hands under your gluts to find the sit bones - which are the knobby bones on either side of the tailbone. Keep the hands there for a few seconds and then gently pull the bones out to either side. This may help you feel more balanced in your seated position. Then, see if you can release any excess tension in your leg muscles. Let your feet soften and allow them to find the support of the floor.

Release any tension that you sense in your neck and jaw muscles. This will help you stop pressing your head down onto your neck and creating downward pressure on the torso. It will also allow your head to gently poise on top of your spine so your whole spine can begin to decompress upward and your back can release into its true length and width.

As you extend your arms to make contact with the keys or the mouse, see if you notice any unnecessary work in muscles of the shoulders and the arms and if so, let it go.

While you sit, you can choose whether or not to use the back of the chair for support. If you do rest back, make sure your feet are still touching the floor and you can reach the keyboard easily. I often place a firm pillow at the back of the chair behind me so I can reach the keyboard easily. You can actually use the support of the back of the chair or the pillow to help you release your back into length and width.
It is also very important to take breaks and stand or walk around the room at regular intervals.

Melissa Brown is an nationally certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and a graduate of American Center for the Alexander Technique (ACAT). In both her group classes and private lessons, Melissa works with students with physical limitations and pain as well as with people who are simply looking for better posture and more ease in movement. She also really enjoys teaching actors and other performing artists.
If you have any questions about the set-up for the computer or how to apply the Alexander principles, please feel free to email Melissa or visit her website .

Melissa teaching a student

From May 2, 2014:How To Do Constructive Rest: The Alexander Technique Lie Down

by Witold Fitz-Simon

The Lie Down is an important component of self-care. All it takes is ten minutes once or twice a day. It will give you a chance to calm your mind and rest your body while exploring the principles and the “means-whereby” of the Alexander Technique: observation, inhibition and direction.

Set Up

• Find a clean, firm, comfortable surface to lie down on. The floor is better than a bed as it will give you a level surface for better support. If your back pressing into the uncovered floor is uncomfortable, lie down on carpet or a folded towel or blanket instead.

• Lie back with your head supported by a number of books. There should be enough height under your head so that the back of your neck can be firm but soft to the touch, and that there is a sense of space on all sides of your neck.

• Lie with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.

• Lie with your elbows bent and your hands resting comfortably on your torso, perhaps your lower ribs or abdomen.

Expanded Awareness

As you lie here, calm your mind and soften your gaze to become aware of what is going on in the periphery of your vision. Allow the light of the room to come to you, rather than staring out.

Keep the level of your eyes above your cheekbones rather than turning down towards them. This will help to keep you alert.

Expand your awareness to include the room around you and your body. Allow the sensations of your body to rise up to meet you as you look out through your eyes, rather than dropping your awareness down to feel your body.

Inevitably your attention will wander. Gently bring it back to the present moment, looking out at the ceiling with the center of your awareness behind your eyes and above your cheekbones.

Observation

As you rest here, become aware of the touch of your body against the floor. Observe where you might be pressing down into the floor or where you might be holding yourself up away from the floor. Observe where you might be narrowing or compressing. Observe where you might be holding.

Inhibition

As you observe all these places where you might be doing something muscularly in your body, let go of what you do not need. You may find that there are places where something is holding or doing that aren’t ready to let go. Leave those places be.

As you consider your legs, you will find that some muscular effort is necessary to keep them up. See how little you can do without your knees falling in or out. If, as you explore, they do fall in or out, simply send them back up towards the ceiling.

Direction

Without feeling to see if anything is happening, send a message to your neck to be a little freer so that your head can ease away from the top of your spine. Send a message to your back for it to lengthen and widen. Send a message to your knees to ease up towards the ceiling. Send a message to your shoulders and elbows to ease outwards away from your wide chest and back.

Become aware of the movement of your breath. Without trying to shape or change anything, and without losing your expanded awareness, follow each exhalation to its logical conclusion. Allow your inhalations to drop in without actively taking a breath.

Coming Up

When you decide it is time to get up, pause and let go of your first response to the thought. Come back to your expanded awareness. Use the process of coming up as an opportunity to explore your expanded awareness. Once you have got to your feet, pause.

Once again, send a message to your neck that you would like it to be a little freer so that your head can be balanced in poise at the top of your spine rather than being held in place. Send a message to your whole torso that you would like it to be long, wide and deep. Send a message to your legs that you would like your knees to be easy and pointing forward and away from you. Send a message to your shoulders that you would like them to widen off your wide chest and back. Do all of this without feeling to see if anything is happening. Then go on about your day.

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. Visit Witold’s website.