The Little Things We Do

Alexander Technique Connection

This is a link to a website about the Alexander Technique - it gives the usual information about the Technique, the teachers at this particular centre, and so on.

What is really interesting is the illustrations and the photos they've used. On this particular page, there are three sketches of a woman in profile, and they show very clearly what happens when you stick your head out in front of you, when you retract it back into yourself like a snail, and when it's poised normally (which may not be very usual) on your neck.

In the first sketch you can see how, as the head sticks out, the back of the neck is shortened. The strain in those muscles doesn't remain there, it spreads across the shoulders and down the back. And of course, it would pull the shoulders in, compressing the lung space and affecting breathing. You might have observed this yourself in habitual computer users - the computer screen has a malignant magic that sucks you into itself as soon as you sit down in front of it.

The second sketch is an over-correction of the tensions you see in the first. The chin is retracted into the neck, squashing the neck muscles and compressing the vocal cords.

The neck isn't shortened - in fact it's artificially stretched so that there's a long line of tightening from the neck up into the head and down into the back. It gives me a headache just looking at it. That's what someone who's trying to correct the mistakes in the first sketch would do.

You can (eventually) arrive at the third option simply by leaving yourself alone and letting the head, neck and back work out their own balance. However, some kind of awareness is necessary because otherwise the chances are that you'd simply go back to the most familiar tension pattern. So - no effort, no pushing and pulling, simply asking for a release in the muscles of the neck, and then staying quiet, allowing the response to arise on its own. You'd probably feel a bit strange without the old comforting tensions pulling at you; perhaps a sense of emptiness, something missing, and you'd have to resist the urge to go back to that familiarity and stay with the sense of strangeness.

The home page is also interesting because it has a series of photos of actions that we usually 'mis-do'. They're routine, everyday actions, and all of us have done most of them at some time or the other, usually badly.

One little reminder, however. It's entirely possible to do these things mindlessly, with the outward semblance of correctness. They have to be accompanied by the awareness of release, of allowing your muscles to use just the right amount of 'tone' they need to do whatever needs to be done.