Releasing into Tightening

Most people feel a heady sense of lightness and ease after their lesson - even a first lesson. So did I.

I had my first ever Alexander lesson at the hands of a visiting teacher because there were no Alexander teachers in India at the time. I had to drive across the city through traffic choked roads to get there. During the lesson I didn't have any epiphanies; perhaps I was too preoccupied with trying to make sense of all the new information I was getting. But I drove back across the same traffic choked roads with a blissful feeling of effortlessness, as if I was being carried along by the current of a river. In words familiar to all Alexander students, 'I wasn't doing anything - it was all just happening.'

An experience like this can be a powerful motivator to pursue this strange discipline. Understandably, we want to experience this again and again. Make it our default state if possible.

So it can come as a rude shock when the initial phase of releases is followed by what seems to be relentless tightening in the muscles. We know our shoulders are tight, we direct for release, and frustratingly, nothing happens. It begins to feel as if learning the Alexander Technique is a never ending process of getting our noses jammed against the next level of tightening.

It's helpful to remember that we are usually holding several layers of tensions, and letting go of the outermost can bring the inner ones to the surface. Also that the new information we're asking ourselves to process is, more often than not, directly contradictory to the way we've been doing things up until then.

I remind my pupils, when they complain of feeling tighter than ever, that they have been carrying this tightness around for the whole of their lives. The only difference is that they didn't know they were carrying it - and now that they do, they don't like it. Naturally.

The best response to this is to give ourselves an encouraging pat on the back for being able to register the tension, then continue to direct and inhibit without worrying about when a release is actually going to happen.

Tone vs. Tightening

One big Alexander hurdle - how to have your muscles engaged and working well, but not use unnecessary effort and energy in the process.
All my pupils have had this problem, whether they were aware of it or not. I had it too when I started training.
You're standing, being worked on, and the teacher says, ' Ask your neck to release'.
You do, and don't feel any change. But she says, ' Great!' leaving you with the suspicion that she is just being nice, and that you're actually lousy at this.
Part of the problem is that we're not used to paying such close atention to our bodies. So many of the shifts and releases that happen simply slip through our awareness, like little fish that swim through the spaces of a net.
But another aspect of the problem is that we confuse tone with tightening, and think our muscles are tight, when in fact they're only using the appropriate effort required for the action being done. So if we're standing, and we ask our muscles to release, it doesn't mean that all our muscles go completely floppy. That would just make us end up in a heap on the floor.
No, it just means that the extra effort we're putting into that action melts away, leaving us using just the right amount of effort that's needed.
This melting away of the extra effort often goes unnoticed, especially if we're at the beginning stages. That's when we feel that our thoughts have had no effect. Naturally we feel confused when the teacher beams, 'Well done!' at us!
But as time goes by, and our kinaesthetic awareness sharpens, we learn to recognise when release has taken place, whether we're moving or standing still. We experience the pleasure of having our muscles working smoothly and freely, centred and purposefully engaged.
Best of all, we get that extraordinary feeling of effortlessness, the sheer pleasure of the action having done itself.