The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Unfortunately, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of life in modern society.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine – and that’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment gives us better balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

The Alexander Technique is a psychophysical discipline.  In other words, if you take Alexander lessons, the process will have both mental and physical aspects.  When I think of the Alexander Technique, I sometimes think of a well-known sports quote.  The baseball player Yogi Berra said that “ninety percent of baseball is fifty percent mental.”  The same thing is true of the Alexander Technique.

But what does that really mean?  First of all, it means that, during your Alexander lessons, you’ll learn about a subtle yet powerful thought process that will help you make some important physical changes.  Those changes will help you if you have certain kinds of physical pain.  They’ll also help you with the activities that are important to you, such as playing a musical instrument, doing a sport, sitting at the computer and many others.

But here’s the thing.  When I started taking Alexander lessons, I discovered that the process also had another psychophysical aspect.  I discovered, much to my surprise, that the process affected me on an emotional level.  It completely changed my relationship with my feelings.

I actually experienced three surprises as the process unfolded.  First of all, I discovered that the alignment of my head, neck and spine wasn’t ideal.  My head tended to drop forward and down, my shoulders had become rounded and my torso was shortening and dropping forward and down.  In addition, I often had a feeling of heaviness in my body, almost as if I was carrying around a suitcase.

To put it simply, I was in a subtle physical collapse.

My Alexander teachers helped me understand that this was a habitual pattern.  They explained to me that almost all of us develop habitual patterns as we get older, and that, little by little, these patterns become deeply rooted.  These patterns are caused by extra muscle tension.  That was certainly true in my case: many of the muscles in my head, neck and torso had become overly contracted – and as a result, those areas were pulling down.

The good news is that my teachers didn’t just help me become aware of my collapse.  They also helped me address it.  They showed me how I could subtract all that extra tension, and realign my head, neck and spine in a more natural and optimal way. 

And that was when I experienced a second surprise.  I began to feel better not only physically but also emotionally.  I’d suffered from depression off and on for many years.  But now, as I began to come out of my physical collapse, lo and behold, my depression also began to lift.

The key ingredient in the process was the new, more optimal alignment of my head, neck and spine: there was something about that alignment that made it difficult for me to feel depressed.  As a matter of fact, I could not experience that new alignment and be depressed at the same time.  It was literally, physically impossible!

As you might imagine, that was a wonderful discovery – one of the most miraculous of my life.

As those changes unfolded, I put two and two together and realized that my collapse had been the physical aspect of my depression.  Or in other words, my depression had been psychophysical in nature.  It had been neither a physical state nor an emotional state, but both at the same time.

The thing is that the change process was gradual, and it took place in steps.  During my lessons, my teachers would help me realign my head, neck and spine and, as a result, I would have an extraordinary feeling of well-being.  Then on other days, my old collapse would reassert itself and I wouldn’t feel so great.  So throughout the process, I was taking two steps forward and one step back – but with time, the new alignment began to assert itself more and more.  And in the end, it became the norm.

During that gradual, step-by-step process, something else began to happen: I began to experience some very strong feelings.  This was the third and final surprise.  To be specific, there were times during my Alexander lessons when I would feel as though I was going to start crying.  I would do my best to hold it together until the end of the lesson, and then, as soon as I got home, I would let the feelings come out, and I would cry deeply.

These were not free-floating feelings.  They were related to something that had happened to me.  My father had died suddenly when I was 22, four years previously.  He’d commit suicide.  Now, for the first time, I was beginning to realize that I had these feelings about his death, and I began to grieve.

After that, I went into psychotherapy because I needed a place where I could process these feelings.

As I pursued the Alexander lessons and the psychotherapy, I began to realize that I’d discovered another aspect of my depression.  It dawned on me that, for many years, I’d been stuffing my feelings.  I’d been forgetting about them, and then forgetting that I’d forgotten.

There were a number of reasons why I’d done that.  First of all, I was a card carrying American male.  Men in this society get a lot messages about their feelings.  If you cry, or if you express any of the softer, more tender feelings that we all have, you’re labeled a “sissy.”

In addition, when I was a child, there were messages in my family about being “good, quiet and obedient.”  Once again, the effect of all of those messages was that I stopped expressing my feelings.  I didn’t cry from the time I was about 8 or 9 years old until those first Alexander lessons when I was 26.

As my feelings began to come out, I realized that they’d never gone away.  They’d “gone underground,” so to speak.  And in fact, they’d turned into something physical.  I’d been “storing” them in my muscles, in the form of muscle tension.  Of course, until now I hadn’t been aware that that was happening.  But all the while, my hidden feelings had been affecting me indirectly.  They’d been behind both my depression and my physical collapse.

The grieving process was painful, as you might imagine.  Not only was my grief over my father’s death difficult to deal with, but I was also having to change some key beliefs I had about myself.  For the very first time, I was accepting the fact that I actually am an emotional person.

As difficult as the process was, though, in the end it was extremely positive.  I was coming out of my collapse, I was learning to feel my feelings – and best of all my depression was lifting.

As of today, I’m free of depression.

After I’d had such positive experiences with both the Alexander Technique and psychotherapy, I realized that I wanted to be more than just a student and a client.  I wanted to go more deeply into each field.  So after three years of private lessons in the Alexander Technique, I trained to become a teacher.  I began teaching in 1991, which means that I’ve been teaching for 20 years now.

Meanwhile, I also went to graduate school in psychology.  In 1988, I received a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Since then, I’ve been working in both fields: I’m a teacher of the Alexander Technique and I’m a psychotherapist.

Over the years, I’ve found that some of my students are similar to me.  That is, their learning process has both emotional and physical aspects.  Of course, that’s not true for everyone: it all depends on the person.  Still, when a student asks for it, I will offer her a combination of Alexander Technique and psychotherapy.

The Alexander Technique is a century-old educational process.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Without realizing it, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of daily living.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine and puts pressure on our joints and nerves – and that’s one reason why so many of us experience chronic pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment gives us better balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

As a teacher of the Alexander Technique, I’ve worked with many people who suffered from back pain.  Here’s an example.  I once worked with a woman in her early forties who came for lessons because she had a herniated disc and sciatic pain.  Her name was Jessica.

Jessica told me that she’d first experienced back pain during the blizzard of 1978.  She’d been shoveling snow and she’d thrown her back out.  From then on, her back would go out once or twice a year, with more or less pain each time.  Always the symptom was pain in her low back, and sometimes, she experienced shooting pain down her right leg.

Finally, in 1990, two years before I met her, she had a much more serious episode.  She was walking from her house to her car and she sneezed.  What followed was the worst pain she’d ever experienced.  In addition, she not only had shooting pain down her right leg; for the first time, she also began to have numbness in her right leg.

She went to see an orthopedic surgeon, and he told her she had a herniated (or bulging) disc between her fifth lumbar vertebra and her first sacral vertebra (L5 and S1), which are in her low back.  The surgeon recommended surgery to address the problem.

After she’d had the surgery, Jessica’s pain decreased dramatically.  She went through a few months of bed-rest and physical therapy, and then she was able to return to work. Unfortunately, though, she still had nagging pain in her back.  At times, she still had to limit her work or even miss it altogether.

So two years after her surgery, she came to see me for Alexander lessons. 

Here’s what had happened.  Jessica’s vertebrae, the bones of her spine, had begun to rub against each other.  As a result, they were squeezing her discs – especially the one between L5 and S1.  We have discs in between all our vertebrae, which act as “padding” for our spine.  They’re made up mostly of water, so they’re like little water-cushions all along our spine. 

In Jessica’s case, when her compressed vertebrae began to squeeze one of her discs, they pushed it out of place.  As a result, it began to touch her sciatic nerve.  That was the reason why she had pain and numbness in her leg.

During her Alexander Technique lessons, Jessica began to realize why the vertebrae had been squeezing her discs: she had a lot of extra tension in the muscles surrounding her spine.  As those muscles shortened and became tighter, they began putting pressure on her vertebrae, which in turn caused them to squeeze together.  That underlying tension had built up gradually – but until Jessica began taking Alexander lessons, she hadn’t been aware of it.

Now Jessica not only began to be more aware of her underlying tension, she also began to realize where it had come from.  One important cause was stress: she had a very demanding job working for a computer software company.  Little by little, the stress of her job had turned into physical tension.

She also remembered something else that had contributed to her tension.  When she was about ten or eleven years old, her parents had become extremely concerned about her posture.  They’d said that, if she didn’t improve it, they’d take her to a doctor and get her fitted for a brace.  By the time she was a teenager, she’d worked so hard on her posture that she won Miss Indiana Posture!

Now Jessica could see that all her efforts to improve her posture – to stand up straight – had caused her to become tense.  In the end, after many years of posture-improvement and many years of job-related stress, her tension had reached a threshold.  Once that happened, even a relatively minor event, like a sneeze, could cause a major episode of pain.

Jessica learned something else during her Alexander lessons.  She not only had extra tension in her back, she also had it throughout her body.  And no matter what she was doing, it was always there in the background.  It turns out that most people have background tension like Jessica’s (although thankfully most of us don’t have the kind of pain she did).

Our background tension is a little bit like a refrigerator.  Think back to a time when you were in your kitchen and, all of a sudden, your refrigerator shut off.  Then you realized that, all this time, it had been making a noise, a background hum, that you weren’t even aware of.  It was only when the hum stopped, and the room got quiet, that you realized how loud the noise had been.

For most of us, our extra muscle tension is like that: it’s there all the time and we’re not even aware of it.  Then, when we take Alexander lessons, our teacher helps us “shut off” the tension for the first time.  That way, we learn how much “noise” there was all along – and also how quiet our body can potentially be.

Let me get back to Jessica and her story.  During her lessons, she not only became aware of the excess tension in her back and in the rest of her body, she also learned how to reduce it.  In addition, she learned how to improve the alignment of her head, neck and back.  As part of that process, she learned how to lengthen her spine so that there was much less pressure on her vertebrae.

When I last saw her, she was pain free.

She wishes she’d had Alexander lessons as part of her rehabilitation right after her surgery.  She thinks that might have sped up her recovery. She also wonders what might have happened if she’d had lessons five or seven years before the surgery.  It’s possible she might have been able to prevent the surgery altogether.

The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Unfortunately, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of life in modern society.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine – and that’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment gives us better balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

I once gave Alexander Technique lessons to a student who had cerebral palsy.  I’ll call him James.  James traced his cerebral palsy back to birth.  He had been a very large baby, weighing almost 14 pounds at birth. He had been delivered vaginally, and it had been a difficult birth.  Unfortunately, he had suffered hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, and that had caused damage to his brain and nervous system.

Thankfully, James’ intelligence had not been affected.  When I met him, he was married, had two children and had a full-time job working for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.  Instead, the damage took a different form: there was increased excitation and decreased inhibition in the descending pathways from his brain and central nervous system to his muscles.

Excitation and inhibition.  These neurological concepts are extremely important not only if we want to understand the difficulties James was dealing with, but also if we want to understand the Alexander Technique and how helpful it was to him.

Whenever you engage in an activity, for example lifting your hand to drink a glass of water, your brain sends two kinds of messages to the muscles of your arm: excitatory messages and inhibitory messages.  The excitatory messages tell certain muscles to contract, to do something.  Meanwhile, the inhibitory messages tell other muscles not to do anything, to stay at rest.

But here’s the thing.  Modern society puts a huge emphasis on doing – on accomplishing tasks, working hard, and achieving goals.  In fact, for many people that’s the most important thing in life.  In the end, many of us are no longer human beings.  Instead, we’ve become “human doings,” as the psychologist John Bradshaw says.

For many of us, this emphasis on doing has gradually led to an imbalance in our nervous system.  Little by little, the excitatory messages have begun to outweigh the inhibitory messages.  As a result, we’re living with an internal state where both our nervous system and our muscles are working overtime, so to speak.  Even when we’re at rest, there’s a lot of extra activity going on inside.

I often compare that activity to the refrigerator in your kitchen.  Think back to a time when you were sitting in your kitchen and the refrigerator shut off.  All of a sudden, the room got really quiet.  Then you realized there had been a hum all along and you hadn’t even noticed it.

Something similar is going on in our nervous system and our muscles.  There’s a “background hum” going all the time, no matter what we’re doing, and we’re not even aware of it.

Keeping all of that in mind, let’s get back to James and his cerebral palsy.  While most of us have an overly active nervous system, the problem was considerably heightened for James.  In his case, the imbalance between inhibition and excitation had gone to the extreme.  As a result, he suffered from something called spasticity.  As he put it, his left arm “had a life of its own”: it would tremble and shake a lot of the time.  It would move even when he didn’t want it to.  To a lesser extent, that was true of his whole left side, but the problem was most extreme in his arm.  Despite his best efforts to keep those areas still, nothing had helped.

Until he started taking Alexander lessons, that is.

How did the lessons help him?  It turns out that F.M. Alexander, the founder of the Alexander Technique, made an extraordinary discovery.  He discovered that we can use a special thought process to consciously increase our practice of inhibition.

This allows us to restore the balance between inhibition and excitation, and quiet the background hum that exists in our nervous system.  At the same time, we can encourage our muscles to lengthen and do less.  That way, when we carry out activities, we don’t have to overdo.  We can exert only the minimum amount of effort necessary for the activity.

James found the conscious practice of inhibition extremely helpful.  Invariably after lessons, his left arm and his whole left side were quieter.  Of course, progress was slow because he not only had to deal with spasticity, he also had a lot of background muscle tension.

There was a good reason for that.  James, like many other people with cerebral palsy, had difficulty balancing, although, unlike some, he could stand and walk.  Once again, that was because of the lack of inhibition in his nervous system.  As you might imagine, inhibition is extremely important in balancing, walking and all other activities.

In any case, because of his difficulty balancing, James had had a lot of falls over the years – and so he was understandably afraid of falling.  His fear had in turn led to a lot of extra tension.

Still, he was able to make good progress with the Alexander Technique.  Not only was he able to quiet his overly active left side, he was also able to address a lot of his background tension.  As a result, his balance gradually began to improve.

Of course, inhibition wasn’t the only thing that James learned during his Alexander lessons.  He also learned how to realign his head, neck and spine.  As a result, his coordination improved along with his balance.  Still, the single most valuable thing he learned, as someone living with cerebral palsy, was the conscious practice of inhibition.

During the course of her lessons, Andrea made another important discovery.  As her extra muscle tension began to melt away, she learned that she could cultivate a more natural alignment of her head, neck and spine that gave her better balance, coordination and strength, both in her riding and in her other activities.

In Figure 1, you can see a rider who’s embodying this optimal alignment.

As Andrea rediscovered this alignment, I explained to her that the Alexander Technique is based on some fundamental assumptions about our alignment.  When we were young, we all had a natural alignment of our head, neck and spine.  As a result, our movement was coordinated, balanced and effortless.

“Next time you see a child under the age of six,” I said to her, “take a closer look.  Chances are her head, neck and spine are beautifully aligned.  Also, see if you can find some photographs of yourself when you were that age.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Here are some photographs so you can see what I’m talking about.  Figures 2 and 3 are of me when I was 3 years old and 7 years old, respectively.  Meanwhile in Figure 4, I was about 11 years old.  Figures 5 and 6 show two other children with very good alignment.

Unfortunately, though, the story doesn’t end with that natural alignment.  As we grow up, most of us, like Andrea, develop patterns of excess muscle tension.  Those patterns develop as a result of our interactions with the environment, as well as our perceptions and attitudes.  For example, when we experience stress at home, at school or at work, that stress may gradually turn into physical tension.  Of course, in Andrea’s case, her tension and pain arose partly as a result of her riding.

Most of us are not aware of our tension as it builds up – and yet, it gradually begins to interfere with our alignment.  At the same time, it puts pressure on our joints and nerves.  That’s one reason why many people experience pain or have difficulty with an activity, as Andrea did.

I also explained to Andrea that there’s an important connection to riding and horses in this whole topic of alignment.  Our optimal human alignment is the equivalent of self-carriage in the horse.  So that means that the Alexander Technique is like dressage for humans.  During her lessons, I helped Andrea develop her “self-carriage” in simple activities like sitting, standing and walking.  And during her mounted lessons, I showed her how she could continue to cultivate that optimal alignment when she was in the saddle.

Figure 7 shows a horse and rider.  The rider is embodying her most natural alignment – and meanwhile her horse is in self-carriage.  Let’s spend some time exploring in more detail the parallels between optimal human alignment and self-carriage in the horse.

First of all, when we humans are embodying our most natural alignment, our head becomes more poised.  It goes forward and up from a neck that’s free of tension.  In other words, it doesn’t go back and down – the human equivalent of above the bit.  It also doesn’t go forward and down – the human equivalent of on the forehand.

Here’s a more positive way to say it.  When our head goes forward and up, that’s similar to what the horse does when he stretches his neck and reaches toward the bridle and the contact.  It’s similar to what he does when he goes on the bit.

Here are some illustrations.  Figure 8 shows the rider’s head going back and down, and the horse’s head going above the bit.  Recall that Andrea and her horse both had these tendencies.  Figure 9 shows the rider’s head going forward and down, and the horse going on the forehand.  Finally, in Figure 10, you can see the rider’s head going forward and up and the horse stretching his neck and reaching for the bit.

Of course, it goes without saying that there is one major difference between self-carriage and human alignment.  Our human spine is vertical while the horse’s spine is horizontal.  Otherwise, the relationships are exactly the same.

Here’s another example of the parallels.  Once our head is poised and going forward and up, then our back can lengthen and widen to stay slightly behind our head.  As our back lengthens and widens, it lifts and expands slightly.  (The emphasis here is on the word slightly: all of these movements are subtle!)

It turns out that the forward and up movement of our head and the widening of our back can take place at the same time.  In fact, the two movements actually make up one overall movement.  Think of it this way: our head and our back are like the two ends of a seesaw.  They’re linked and moving together, even though they’re going in different directions.  Our head is moving slightly forward and up at the same time that our back is widening.  (Once again, it’s important to remember that these two movements are subtle – more subtle and more internal than the movements of an actual seesaw.)

As you might imagine, the exact same movements happen in the horse as he develops self-carriage.  He stretches his neck and meets the contact – and at the same time he lifts his back.  Here again, the two movements make up one overall movement.  Here are some illustrations.  In Figure 5, the rider’s head is going forward and up, while her back is widening and lengthening.  In Figure 6, the horse is reaching for the bit – and, at the same time, his back is lifting and his topline is lengthening.

Finally, there is one other crucial element in our optimal human alignment.  Our legs lengthen toward our heels and we allow our feet and heels to settle into the stirrups.  Or if we’re standing on the ground, we make sure that our heels are planted.  Then, in a circular progression, this grounding of our heels, feet and legs allows our upper spine to lift and lengthen, while our head becomes even more poised.

Once again, this is similar to what happens with the horse.  He engages his hindquarters.  If he’s moving, this involves an increased flexion of each hind leg during the weight-bearing phase of his stride.  This engagement allows his forehand (head, neck, withers and shoulders) to lift and lighten. This is sometimes referred to as the “relative lifting” of the forehand.  Ideally, the horse’s forehand lifts indirectly, as a result of the engagement of his hindquarters.

Here again, the analogy of the seesaw works well.  As one end of the seesaw moves – that is, as the horse’s hindquarters become more engaged – then the other end of the seesaw naturally moves at the same time.  His back and forehand begin to lift.

In the case of our human alignment, another analogy also works well.  Think of what happens when you bounce a ball.  When you plant your heels, that’s like dropping the ball or throwing it toward the ground.  Then when your upper spine moves slightly upward, that’s like watching the ball as it comes back up again.  This second movement happens indirectly as a result of the planting of your heels.  Another similar analogy is the jack-in-the-box.

In Figure 11, the person’s heels are planted on the ground, which allows his head to go forward and up and his back to lift.  Meanwhile, in Figure 12, the horse is engaging his hindquarters, which allows his forehand to lift.  (Figures 11 and 12 might be the same as Figure 1.)

Two final thoughts about optimal alignment in both rider and horse.  First of all, it doesn’t involve a position.  If you cultivate this alignment as a rider, it will lead to good form, whether for dressage or for jumping or for any other discipline.  But it actually involves a relationship of your head, neck, back and heels that has a fluid, dynamic quality and that allows for freer, more coordinated movement, regardless of the position or activity.  Of course, the same is true of the horse: self-carriage is ideally based on suppleness and fluidity, rather than on putting the horse in a fixed position.

Second, optimal alignment is circular.  In the above discussion, I began with the relationship of the head to the spine.  But I could just as well have begun with the engagement of the hindquarters – or in the case of human alignment, the planting of our heels.  Once we improve our alignment – and once the horse begins to experience self-carriage – an improvement of any one relationship between parts will help all the other relationships, and will improve our overall way of going.

If you take Alexander lessons, and you begin to uncover the natural alignment of your head, neck, back and heels, you’ll experience a number of benefits.  I mentioned before that your strength, balance and coordination will improve.  In addition, you’ll find it easier to stay with your horse’s movement.

There’s an even more important benefit – which Andrea discovered during her mounted Alexander lessons.  Recall that, after I did hands-on work with her, she noticed that her horse became less resistant.  She also began to notice something else.  As her alignment began to improve, her horse’s self-carriage also improved.

In other words, Andrea’s improved alignment became an “aid” for improving her horse’s self-carriage.  I put the word aid in quotes here because this was a very special kind of aid.  She wasn’t doing anything directly to her horse.  Instead, she was simply changing her own alignment while she was in the saddle.

When she brought this up, I explained to her that this was another example of comparable parts.

“Remember how comparable parts works,” I said.  “The rider’s tension patterns can lead to similar patterns in her horse.  Well the good news is that this same phenomenon can also work in a more positive direction: your improved alignment will lead to improved self-carriage in your horse.”

As Gandhi said, “we become the change we wish to see in the world” – or in this case, the rider becomes the change she wishes to see in her horse.  So to sum up, the Alexander Technique provides a wonderful complement to all of the other techniques and aids that have been developed over the centuries for creating self-carriage in the horse.

By the way, from all this talk about self-carriage, you may think that the Alexander Technique is only suitable for dressage riders.  But I want to emphasize one more time that that’s not the case. Whether you’re competing in eventing or in jumpers or in any other discipline – or even if you’re a recreational rider – the Alexander Technique can help you to improve your riding.

To end, I want to say a few words about F.M. Alexander (1869-1955), the founder of the Alexander Technique.  After reading these articles, you may think that he developed the technique for riders, but that’s actually not the case.  He did grow up on a farm in Australia and his father was a blacksmith – and, as a result of that background, he did ride throughout his life.  But to my knowledge he never thought a lot about horse movement, or about the parallels between self-carriage and the optimal alignment that he discovered in humans.

Early in his life, he took up acting as a hobby — but then he began to lose his voice when he was onstage.  To find out why that was happening, he set up mirrors, and observed himself while he was reciting.  He eventually made a number of discoveries that helped him get his voice back.  As a result, he decided to become a professional actor.  He also began to teach his discoveries to his fellow actors, and to the general public.[i]  As of today, there are several thousand Alexander teachers throughout the world.

[i] For more on Alexander’s discoveries, see Frank Pierce Jones’ Freedom to Change (Mouritz, 1997), pp.16-22, and Michael Gelb’s Body Learning (Aurum Press, 1994), pp.9-21.

The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Without realizing it, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of daily living.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine, and puts pressure on our nerves and joints.  That’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, you can become aware of your unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, you can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment will give you better balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

I once worked with a student named Andrea.  When Andrea came to see me for Alexander Technique lessons, she was in her forties.  She came because she was having difficulty with her horseback riding.  Andrea was an amateur rider with a lot of experience: since she was a child, she’d owned horses and had enjoyed competing.  She had focused on hunters and equitation when she was young, but as an adult she’d decided to focus on dressage.

Andrea told me she had three issues she wanted to work on.  First of all, she’d been experiencing some pain off and on for the last couple of years.  The pain was in her low back, in the area of her sacro-iliac joint.  She was pretty sure it was related to her riding because it always came on either during or after a ride, and when she took time off from her riding, it went away.  She’d had x-rays and an MRI, but those tests had been negative.

Second, Andrea was concerned because her horse had gradually become more resistant, and she was having more trouble getting him to go on the bit.  More than once, she’d had the vet take a look at him, and she’d had his teeth checked, but neither the vet nor the dentist had found anything wrong.  She’d also bought a new saddle, thinking her old saddle was affecting him negatively, but that hadn’t helped either.  Since she’d covered all these bases, she wondered if her riding might be contributing in some way to her horse’s resistance.

As Andrea was telling me all of this, I thought she had the potential to be an excellent Alexander Technique student.  She was a thoughtful person and extremely conscientious.  Most of all, she cared about her horse, and she didn’t want to do anything to hurt him.  She said more than once that, if her riding was somehow making things worse for him, she would gladly change her approach.

Andrea mentioned one other issue.  She said that, sometimes when her riding instructor would give her a suggestion, she had a hard time figuring out how to carry it out.  It was difficult for her to translate her instructor’s words into a given feel or a given aid, she said.  In addition, her instructor would often say “Try not to get tense,” or “Try to relax.”  She found that confusing because she wasn’t aware that she was tense.  And when her instructor would say “Try to relax,” she didn’t know how to do that.

During Andrea’s first couple of lessons, I noticed that she did in fact have some extra tension.  It was centered mainly in her back, but her shoulders and arms were also tense.  I pointed out those areas of tension to her – but more importantly, I used a gentle, non-manipulative hands-on approach to help her reduce the tension.  At first, I did that while she was lying on my massage table.  Then I also showed her that she could stand, walk and sit with less tension.

Those experiences created a contrast for Andrea.

“My body has felt a lot quieter after these lessons,” she said at the end of the second lesson. “So now I can see that, a lot of the time, I am kind of tense.  I’m finally beginning to understand what my riding instructor has been saying all this time.”

I explained to Andrea that she’s not alone.  The vast majority of adults in our society have some extra tension.  It may be caused by a given activity, such as riding, or it may be caused by the stress of daily life.  Whatever the cause, the tension gradually becomes rooted in our body: it becomes habitual.  Then it’s there all the time, no matter what we’re doing, and we may not even be aware of it.

To help Andrea understand how that happens, I told her to think of her refrigerator.

“Think back to a time when you were in your kitchen,” I said, “and all of a sudden the refrigerator shut off.  Then you realized that, all this time, it had been making a noise, a background hum, that you weren’t aware of.  It was only when the hum stopped, and the room got quiet, that you noticed how much noise there had been.”

For most adults, our tension is like that.  It’s there all the time, in the background.  If you take Alexander lessons, your teacher will help you “shut off” your tension.  Then the contrast will help you understand how much “noise” you have in general – and also how quiet your body can potentially be.

The good news is that your teacher won’t just give you experiences of less tension.  She’ll also show you how you can reduce your tension on your own.  This is what makes the Alexander Technique so unique.  Your teacher won’t just give you a fish, so to speak.  She’ll actually teach you how to fish.

Getting back to Andrea, she did turn out to be a conscientious and thoughtful Alexander student, and after she’d had several more lessons, she told me she was pleased with the progress she was beginning to make.  She was much more aware of her tension now, she said, and she was beginning to be able to address it on her own.

But there was one problem.  She was still getting tense when she rode, and she was still experiencing some back pain during and after her rides.  So I suggested that she have a mounted Alexander Technique lesson.  That way I could observe what she was doing when she was in the saddle.  I made it clear that this lesson was not meant to take the place of her lessons with her riding instructor.  I emphasized that I’m not a riding instructor: I’m an Alexander Technique teacher who works with riders.  I also said that, during this lesson, we would focus much more on Andrea than on her horse.

Watching her ride, I immediately noticed that she had a very specific pattern of tension.  I’d observed this pattern during her lessons in the office, but it became much more pronounced when she was riding.  To be specific, she was arching her back and lifting her shoulders and torso.  At the same time, she was pushing her chin forward and pulling her head back in relation to the top of her spine.  Finally, her hands and arms were getting tense.

You can see this pattern in Figure 1.

I went through a number of steps with Andrea so she could become more aware of this pattern.  First, I had her stop her horse next to one of the mirrors in the indoor arena where we were working.  Then I described to her what she was doing, and tried to demonstrate it for her.  Then I had her exaggerate it on purpose, and I asked her if she could see it in the mirror.

The next step was the most important one of all.  Using a mounting block, I did some hands-on work with Andrea.  This helped her reduce the muscle tension that was causing the pattern.  Finally, I had her go back to her riding.  While she was riding, I encouraged her to notice if the pattern began to come back.  When it did, I had her stop and we did a few more minutes of hands-on work in front of the mirror.  During the course of the lesson, we repeated this series of steps a number of times.

Gradually, Andrea began to feel less tense and more comfortable.  At the end of the lesson, I asked her if she had any comments or questions.  In response, she brought up her horse.

“I noticed something really surprising,” she said. “Every time you did the hands-on work with me, my horse felt a little bit less resistant.”

I explained to Andrea that the rider’s tension can sometimes contribute to the horse’s resistance.

“When a rider is tense,” I said, “this sets up a contradiction for her horse.  For example, imagine what happens when a tense rider gives her horse the canter aid.  She’s telling her horse to go – yet at the same time, her tension is saying ‘Stop!’  As a result, her horse may be slow to respond or he may become resistant.”

When I think of the horse’s experience in that situation, I always think of a wonderful Ralph Waldo Emerson quote I once saw.  He said:

“What you are is shouting so loudly, I can hardly hear what you’re saying!”

Of course, I explained to Andrea that riders don’t create that contradiction on purpose – because again, most of us are not aware of how much tension we have.

I also told Andrea that I’d noticed something else about her horse, during the lesson.  At the moments when he was being resistant, his resistance took a very specific form: he was hollowing his back and going above the bit.  I explained to her that this might be an example of what Sally Swift, the founder of Centered Riding, called comparable parts.[i]

Comparable parts is an interesting phenomenon that happens between some riders and their horse.  If the rider has a certain pattern of tension, then her horse will develop the exact same pattern!  For example, in Andrea’s case, remember that she had a tendency to arch her back.  At the same time, her head would go back in relation to the top of her spine.  Amazingly, her horse had begun to develop those same tendencies: he was hollowing his back and going above the bit.   He was not doing this because of any aid that Andrea was giving him, but because horses tend to reflect what their rider is doing.

In Figure 2, you can see the comparable parts between Andrea and her horse.

Here are some other examples of this phenomenon.  In Figure 3, the rider is going forward and down in his head and upper torso.  As a result, he’s causing his horse to go onto the forehand.  In Figure 4, the rider is tilting her head to one side.  As a result, her horse has developed the same habit: he’s also tilting his head.

Finally, in Figure 5, you can see a slightly different version of comparable parts.  This is sometimes known as water-skiing.  The rider is leaning back, her feet have gone forward and she’s holding onto the reins with an excessively strong contact.  As a result, she’s causing her horse to go onto his forehand and become heavy in the contact.  You could say that the horse and rider are leaning on each other and supporting each other.

(By the way, over the years, I’ve seen riders engage in all of these habits.  I’ve also collected photographs from magazines in which all of these examples of comparable parts are obvious.  Out of respect for the riders in those photographs, I decided not to include them in this article.  Instead, I decided to turn them into illustrations.)

In any case, Andrea continued with her Alexander lessons, both on the ground and mounted, and she continued to make wonderful progress.  First of all, her back pain gradually melted away.  In addition, her horse became much less resistant and much more responsive to her aids.

There were two reasons for this.  First, she’d addressed the main cause of his resistance, namely her own tension.  In addition, her communication of the aids became clearer.  When she gave her horse an aid, that was the only thing he “heard” now, since she’d reduced the contradictory “background noise” caused by her areas of tension.  As a result, she found that she could give him subtler aids: she could ask him questions with a whisper instead of with a shout, so to speak.

One unexpected benefit of the lessons was that Andrea found it easier to follow her horse – for example in the sitting trot.  I explained to her that muscle tension is the main culprit in causing extraneous movement in riders; it also makes it more difficult for them to follow their horse. As Andrea addressed her tension, she found that she had more control: she was able to quiet herself so that the only time she moved was when she was giving an aid or when the horse was moving.

Finally, Andrea began to have an easier time carrying out her instructor’s suggestions.  This was partly because she was more aware of her body now, and she had a better feel for the ride.  In addition, she had less tension interfering with what she wanted to do.  As a result, she could figure out more easily how to give a certain aid, or create a certain position with her seat, leg and hand, when her instructor suggested it.

In conclusion, let me emphasize something important about the Alexander Technique.  It does involve a learning process.  So if you decide to take Alexander lessons, your teacher will teach you these valuable skills.  Once again, she’ll teach how to reduce your tension patterns.  She’ll also teach you how to realign your head, neck and spine.  I’ll describe this aspect of the technique in the second of these two articles.  It does take some time to learn these skills, but once you’ve learned them, they’ll be yours.  Long after your lessons are over, you’ll be able to apply them not only in your riding but in all of your activities, as Andrea did. 

The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Unfortunately, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of life in modern society.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine – and that’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover our most natural alignment.

When I was a young child, I had a natural alignment of my head, neck and spine which helped me to be balanced and coordinated.  Even though I wasn’t aware of it, that alignment gave all my movements an effortless quality.  As a result, life was joyful and fun, and it was easy for me to do the sports I loved: especially horseback riding and bicycling.

Now it may sound as if I’m blowing my own horn here, but the fact is that I’m not unique.  We all had this natural alignment of our head, neck and spine when we were young.  We were born with it, so it was – and is – a part of our makeup.  When we’re embodying it, movement is easy, and we have plenty of energy for the activities we enjoy.  That’s because this alignment gives us the support we need in order to move with a minimum of effort.

Like me, most young children embody this alignment without even thinking about it.  Next time you see a child under the age of six, take a closer look.  Chances are her head, neck and spine are beautifully aligned.  And not only that, she preserves the alignment when she’s moving.  For example, when she bends down to pick up a toy, she doesn’t create an extra joint in her neck or at her waist.  Instead, she only bends at her hips, knees and ankles.

As a matter of fact, I would encourage you to find some photographs of yourself when you were young.  If you look closely at your alignment back then, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Unfortunately, in my case, the story didn’t end with that natural childhood alignment.  That’s because, as I got older, I began to build up some areas of muscle tension that interfered with it.  Those patterns of tension were related to the stresses and strains of school and sports – and of life in general.

Here’s just one example.  In all the sports I did, I would invariably try as hard as I could.  That was because my coaches would say, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again – only this time put more elbow grease into it,” or words to that effect.  Of course, I wanted to do well, so I tried to follow their advice.

I wasn’t aware of the tension patterns that built up as a result – but over time, they became deeply rooted in my body.  They became habits.  What was the nature of those habits?  What did they look like?  For one thing, my head began to drop forward and down.  At the same time, my shoulders and upper back became rounded, and, last but not least, my spine became somewhat compressed.  Once again, the cause of this pattern was a lot of overly contracted muscles.

By the way, it turns out that I’m also not unique when it comes to those habitual patterns of tension.  Almost everyone develops them, without realizing it, because of the stresses of daily life.  Of course, the exact nature of the patterns varies from person to person – but unfortunately, they’re extremely widespread.

Interestingly enough, though, there are a few rare individuals who don’t build up tension as they get older.  As a result, they’re able to preserve the natural alignment that they had when they were young.  And that means their movement continues to be easy, coordinated and graceful, as they get older.  As you might imagine, these individuals tend to be successful in sports, in the performing arts, or in whatever discipline they choose.

For the rest of us, the patterns of tension that we develop have a number of effects.  First of all, they throw off the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine, as I said before.  As a result, they put extra pressure on our nerves and joints.  That’s why many of us experience pain or have difficulty with activities.  That was certainly true in my case: as I got older, the sports I did began to be more of a struggle.  In addition, I didn’t enjoy them as much, and I no longer did as well in them.

The third stage of my development began when I discovered the Alexander Technique.  Thanks to private lessons in the technique, I finally became aware of those patterns of muscle tension that had built up over the years.  Of course, I also learned how to reduce them.

Most important of all, I rediscovered the natural alignment of my head, neck and spine that I’d had as a child.  Even though I’d lost track of it for many years, I gradually learned how to bring it back to life.

As a result of those wonderful discoveries, my approach to sports, and to all other activities, changed dramatically.  The sports no longer felt like a struggle: they felt as easy and fun as they had when I was a child.  And best of all, my performance dramatically improved.

I was so pleased with those changes, and with the Alexander Technique in general, that I decided to train and become a teacher.  After a three-year training program, I began teaching in 1991.  I’ve been teaching now for 20 years.

The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Unfortunately, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of life in modern society.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine – and that’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment gives us better balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

I’ve given Alexander Technique lessons to quite a few skiers, and all of them have found it extremely helpful.  To illustrate, I’d like to describe two skiers that I worked with.  The first was a lawyer named Robert who was in his early forties.  In college, Robert had been on the ski team, and, when I met him, he was still a very serious skier, although he no longer raced.  He had a season pass at a ski area in Vermont, and often went on trips to ski.

Robert came for Alexander Technique lessons because he was suffering from severe neck and shoulder pain.  After a course of lessons, his pain improved a lot, but unfortunately, it still flared up when he went skiing.  So I suggested that we do some Alexander Technique lessons on skis.

During the first of these lessons, I immediately observed that Robert was an excellent skier, and that he had a lot of athletic ability.  Yet at the same time, I noticed some things about his approach that I thought might be contributing to his pain.

First of all, there was something about the way he was planting his poles.  As you probably know, skiers hold a ski pole in each hand.  Each time the skier turns, she plants the tip of one pole in the snow.  Then she alternates pole plants with each turn.  This helps her execute her turns with the right rhythm and timing.  It’s similar to what we do when we walk: we swing our arms.

In Robert’s case, I noticed that he was overdoing his pole plants.  He was exerting a great deal of effort in his arms and shoulders each time he planted a pole.  Ideally, the pole plant is only an indicator: the skier lightly touches the snow with her pole.  But Robert was hitting the snow extremely hard each time he planted.  At the same time, he was dropping his head down and to the side with each pole plant.

So I pointed those tendencies out to him, and I also videotaped him so that he could see them.  When he saw the videotape, he was surprised.

“I can’t believe I’ve been doing that with my head all this time,” he said. “I had absolutely no idea!”

“You’re not alone,” I told him. “Most of us develop habitual approaches to activities, which we’re not aware of.  It’s extremely common.”

As a next step, I gave Robert a suggestion.  I told him to try holding his poles in front of him, and to ski without planting them.  Once again, he was surprised at how difficult it was to do this – and how much he’d been relying on his poles to turn.  With practice, though, he found that he could make his turns without using his poles.

We also did something else during that first lesson.  We stopped a number of times on the slope so that I could do some Alexander Technique hands-on work with him.  During Alexander lessons, the teacher uses a gentle, non-manipulative hands-on technique to give the student experiences of less tension and improved alignment.

In Robert’s case, when I did hands-on work with him on the ski slope, that helped him to be more aware of the tension that tended to build up in his neck and shoulders, as well as throughout his body, while he was skiing.  Once again, that tension was related to the extra movements of his head, neck, shoulders and arms when he was poling and turning.

Of course, the hands-on work didn’t just help Robert to be aware of that extra tension.  It also helped him to gradually subtract it.  At the same time, he began to have an experience of better alignment in his head, neck and back.

“While you’re skiing,” I told him, “you ideally want to keep your head, neck and back aligned – and you want to keep them still.  That doesn’t mean you hold them in place or fix them.  But as your legs move to carve your turns, your head, neck and back ideally don’t move.  The first step is to subtract the extra movement in those areas, and especially in your head.”

After that, Robert had quite a few Alexander Technique lessons on the ski slope, and we continued to work on all of those aspects of his skiing.  Once again, he worked on reducing the tension in his neck, shoulders and upper back.  Above all, he worked on keeping his head, neck and spine aligned while he moved his legs.  In addition, I encouraged him to continue skiing without his poles.  When he did use his poles, I encouraged him to think of them only as indicators.  He could simply touch the snow with them rather than hitting the snow hard.

Eventually, after he’d practiced all of these things, Robert found, much to his pleasure, that he could ski without any pain in his neck and shoulders.

Here’s another example.  I once gave lessons to a student named Carolyn, who came to see me when she was in her thirties because she had back pain.  After I’d been working with her for a while, and her back pain went away, she began talking to me about her skiing.  She told me that she’d been skiing for twelve years, and that she’d always found it difficult.

“For years, she said, “I’ve been skiing with fear.” She was afraid of the steepness of the ski slope, and, like many skiers, she was afraid of falling.  As you might imagine, those fears interfered with her enjoyment.

So I met Carolyn at the ski slope for some Alexander Technique lessons on skis.  During those lessons, we did two things.  First, we worked on Carolyn’s skiing skills.  I told her that the most important thing every skier has to have is “good brakes.”  After all, if we don’t have confidence in our ability to stop, then we won’t enjoy the rest of our skiing.  So I showed Carolyn how she could bend her knees and use the edges of her skis in order to slow down or stop.  Gradually, as she became more confident in her ability to stop, she began to be less fearful, and she began to enjoy herself more.

The second and more important thing I did with Carolyn was Alexander Technique hands-on work.  As in Robert’s case, this helped her realize what had been happening when she was skiing.  It turned out that her fear had made her tense.  In other words, her fear had a physical aspect – and until now, she hadn’t realized that.

Luckily, the hands-on work, which we did two or three times on each run, not only helped her to become aware of her tension.  It also helped her reduce it.  As a result, she experienced an emotional change: she began to feel calmer and less fearful.  Then because she felt calmer, her skiing also began to improve.

Finally, the hands-on work gave her a new experience in her upper body: she experienced a new alignment of her head, neck and spine.  Previously, she’d tended to throw her head back slightly, and her shoulders and neck would get stiff.  These symptoms, though she hadn’t been aware of them, had been related to her fear of falling.  Now, though, she began to experience an improved alignment of her head, neck and spine.  Her head became more poised in relation to the top of her spine, and her spine began to lengthen upward.  And best of all, her tension and apprehension began to melt away.

In the end, Carolyn’s Alexander Technique ski lessons helped her to experience a “great breakthrough” in her skiing, as she put it.

The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Unfortunately, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of life in modern society.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine – and that’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment gives us greater balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

In this article, I want to describe an Alexander Technique student and the interdisciplinary work I did with her.  I’ll call her Jamie.  Jamie came to see me because she’d been suffering for many years from back pain.  During one of her early lessons, she told me that she thought her back pain had an emotional aspect – that it was stress-related.  For one thing, she said, her work was stressful.  She ran an organic farm, and she found it stressful, both physically and emotionally.  In addition, she was married and, unfortunately, her husband had a drug problem.

She made it clear that, as we addressed her back pain, she also wanted to deal with these emotional stresses.  She wanted to talk about them with me, and process them.  I was comfortable doing that with her because, in addition to being an Alexander teacher, I have a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  In the past, I taught psychology for nine years, at both the high school and college levels.

As you might imagine, most Alexander teachers don’t do what I do: they don’t process emotional issues with their students.  If feelings come up for a student during her Alexander lessons, or if a student has a psychological issue she wants to address, most teachers will refer her to a psychotherapist.

I take a somewhat different approach.  I begin by telling my students that some people experience feelings when they take Alexander lessons.

“It all depends on the person,” I tell them.  “Some people experience feelings during their lessons, while others don’t.  If you do experience some feelings, I would be happy to talk to you about that aspect of the process.  I don’t want you to have to deal with your feelings by yourself.  In the end, though, it’s entirely up to you whether or not you talk about your feelings with me.”  After I’ve said that, I don’t bring this topic up again unless the student does.

There’s one other boundary I observe.  If a student does want to talk about her feelings, or about a psychological issue she’s dealing with, I make sure we don’t do that at the same time that she’s learning the Alexander Technique.  I set aside separate times for each learning process.  So for example, with some students, I set up an alternating schedule: every other week, we do an Alexander lesson, and every other week, we do a session in which she can process her feelings.

Keeping all of that in mind, let me get back to Jamie and her story.  Once again, she wanted to talk to me about some of the psychological issues she was dealing with.  In particular, she wanted to talk to me about her relationship with her husband.  She explained to me that she and her husband had been married for many years and that he’d used drugs throughout their marriage.  She saw this as a problem, and had repeatedly asked him to get help.  He hadn’t done that, though, so she’d finally run out of patience and given him an ultimatum.  Either he had to stop using drugs or she was going to leave him.

Unfortunately, soon after that, Jamie’s back had gone out and she’d had to spend more than a month in bed with severe back pain.  It had taken three or four months before she’d been able to return to work full-time.  Because of that episode, she hadn’t had the strength to follow through on her ultimatum.

All of that happened a few years before I met Jamie.   When she came to see me, things with her husband were unchanged.

She also explained to me that her relationship with her husband wasn’t the only relationship that she found stressful.  She also found it difficult to be in charge of a number of employees at work (once again, she ran an organic farm).  She’d always had a hard time dealing with conflict, and it made her uncomfortable when other people got angry.  Because of that, she didn’t like having to give her employees constructive criticism.  She also didn’t like setting limits with them.

During her Alexander lessons, Jamie went through a number of changes, both physical and emotional.  First of all, she discovered that she had patterns of excess muscle tension both in her back and throughout her body.  It was those patterns of tension that were causing her back pain.  During her lessons, she learned how to reduce those patterns.  At the same time, she learned how to realign her head, neck and back in a more optimal way.  As a result, her back pain gradually but steadily improved.

During one lesson, Jamie had an experience that helped her understand one of the causes of her muscle tension.  We were working on the tension in her back, and she experienced a deep release.  Muscles that had been tight for many years began to let go and lengthen.  As a result, she had a powerful memory of something that had happened to her when she was an infant, before she could walk. Here’s how she described the memory:

I was very small, wearing the kind of terrycloth sleeper babies and toddlers wear.  I was holding on to the rail of my crib, in a room with green walls.  I can see the pattern of the wallpaper.  I was crying for my mother. All I wanted was for my mother to come and get me. Finally, she walked into the room.  All I remember is that she was angry, and that she had her hand raised to hit me. She said something with strong words and I felt the deepest pain – emotional as well as physical.

As Jamie reexperienced this memory, she cried deeply.  Afterwards, we talked about the memory, and all the issues related to it.  It began to dawn on her that that interaction with her mother, which she’d forgotten about until now, might have played a role in her fear of anger, and her difficulty with conflict.  It might have also had something to do with her difficulty setting limits with her husband.

As we talked about all of this, I explained to Jamie that she’s not alone.  Other people I’ve worked with have had a similar experience.  It turns out that many of us set aside some of our feelings as we’re growing up.  We may do that because of the stress of school or work, or it may happen because a feeling or memory is especially painful.

It’s well known to psychotherapists what happens when we forget about some of our feelings.  They don’t go away.  They “go underground,” so to speak, and they may stay hidden for many years.  Eventually, though, they may come back and affect us indirectly.  We may experience psychological symptoms such as depression, addiction, nightmares, or fears, to name a few.  Like Jamie, we may have difficulty with relationships.

What’s less well known is that our hidden feelings may also affect us physically.  Without realizing it, we may carry them in our body.  We may “store” them in our muscles, in the form of excess muscle tension.  In Jamie’s case, she now understood that this was one of the causes of her muscle tension, and of her back pain.

She also understood that she didn’t have to carry that memory in her body anymore.  Instead, she could bring it to awareness and work through all the feelings she had about it.

The second big thing that happened during Jamie’s Alexander lessons was a suggestion I made to her. At a certain point, when I was working on her back and shoulders, I suggested to her that she could take up the space that rightfully belongs to her.  Here again, her response was to cry very deeply.

Later on in the lessons, Jamie came back to that moment many times.  She began to realize that some of her muscle tension had to do with the fact that “I’m not letting myself take up my space in the world,” as she put it.  She explained to me that she’d always been extremely sensitive to the expectations of others.  She’d always been concerned about what they thought of her.  Above all, she’d tried hard to please other people, and avoid conflict with them.

Now she was beginning to realize that all those efforts to please people had taken a physical toll.  They’d led to extra muscle tension.  Without realizing it, she’d been holding herself in check.  She’d been “keeping a lid on things,” as she put it.  She’d even made herself small.  She was realizing that those physical efforts had been another cause of her back pain.

Now, thanks to her Alexander lessons, Jamie began to be intrigued by the possibility that she could begin to expand and occupy her rightful space.  Even though it felt unfamiliar, and at times even scary, she began to take some tentative steps in that direction.

So far in this article, I’ve talked a lot about what happened when Jamie addressed her excess muscle tension.  Once again, that process led to some important psychological changes.  The thing is that that’s not the only thing Jamie learned during her Alexander lessons.  She also learned how to realign her head, neck and spine.  The release of muscle tension helped her do that because her patterns of excess muscle tension had been interfering with the natural relationship of her head, neck and spine.

As Jamie learned how to realign her head, neck and spine, that led, along with the other changes she’d made, to a dramatic turning point in her life.  She finally decided to follow through on her ultimatum to her husband, and ask him for a divorce.  She explained to me that she’d decided to do that because he’d still not taken any steps to deal with his drug problem.  I’ll always remember what she said when she told me about her decision:

“For the first time, I feel as though I can stand up to my husband, and to other people, without being afraid that I’m going to hurt myself.  Deep down, I feel as though I have a spine now!”

The Alexander Technique is a century-old discipline.  It teaches us that, in order to function well, we need a certain amount of muscle tone.  Unfortunately, though, most of us have more tension than we need, because of the stress of life in modern society.  This tension interferes with the natural alignment of our head, neck and spine – and that’s one reason why so many of us are in pain or have difficulty with activities.

Through private lessons in the Alexander Technique, we can become aware of our unnecessary tension and reduce it.  At the same time, we can rediscover the natural alignment that we all had as children.  This alignment gives us better balance, coordination, and ease of movement.

My name is Adam Bailey and I’m a teacher of the Alexander Technique.  The technique has been extremely helpful to me in my approach to sports.  I’ve been an athlete all my life.  As a child in grade school, I played soccer and baseball.  Outside of school, I did a lot of horseback riding.  As I got older, I learned to ski and sail, and I also enjoyed hiking and bicycling.

During high school and college, my favorite sport was rowing.  In college, I rowed on the junior varsity lightweight crew. One year, our crew won the Eastern Sprints, the championship race for crews from all over the east coast.  As a result, I got a varsity letter – one of my most prized possessions!

During my junior year of college, I took a year off and lived in Crested Butte, Colorado.  That winter, I skied almost every day.  Even on days when I was working, I’d take a couple of hours off and jump on the ski lift.  Even now, I still ski every winter. 

As an adult, my main sport has been horseback riding.  After a long period away from riding, I started riding again in my early 30’s.  I do both dressage and eventing.

As you can tell, I’ve always adored sports. And yet as I got older my relationship with them began to change.  When I was a young child, sports were easy and fun: not the slightest effort involved!  Gradually, though, they began to be more difficult.  Sometimes it felt as if something was missing.  There were even days when a given sport felt like a huge struggle.

For a long time, I didn’t understand why that was happening.  It was only after I started taking Alexander Technique lessons that I finally figured out what it was.  Over the years, I’d been taking a particular approach to sports – and to all other activities.  I’d been trying as hard as I could, and exerting a huge amount of effort.

Of course there was a reason why I did that.  My coaches would always say,

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again – only this time put more elbow grease into it,” or words to that effect.

I really wanted to do well, so I did what they said.  But that approach only had one result: I ended up getting tense.  Over time, all my extra tension began to interfere with my performance, and that was why the sports felt like such a struggle.  The strangest part was that, until I started taking Alexander lessons, I wasn’t aware of all that extra tension.

Some of you may have heard the story of the monkey who had her hand in the bottle.  I like that story because it reminds me of the way I used to approach sports.  The story goes that some hunters in Africa came up with an ingenious way to catch monkeys.  They tied a bottle to the base of a tree, and put a piece of fruit inside it.  Then they went and hid nearby, and watched the bottle. 

Eventually, a monkey would come down out of the trees to investigate.  When she saw that the bottle had a piece of fruit inside, she would reach in and grab it.  But that meant she was making a fist, so now she couldn’t get her hand out of the bottle.  After that, the hunters could come and catch her without any difficulty.  Why?  Because she wanted that piece of fruit so badly that she would rather get caught than let go of the fruit, take her hand out of the bottle and run away.

Once again, that was the way I approached sports over the years.  I was totally focused on “grabbing that piece of fruit” – on doing well and winning.  But as I said before, that narrow focus on the goal only ended up getting me in trouble.  All my effort and trying left me tense, and then my extra tension interfered with my performance.

The Alexander Technique taught me something else.  My muscle tension wasn’t just interfering with my sports performance, it was also throwing off my alignment.  It turns out we all have a natural alignment of our head, neck and spine that we were born with.  When we were young, that alignment worked well.  It helped us to be balanced and coordinated, and, as a result, our movements had an effortless quality.

As a matter of fact, go and look for photographs of yourself when you were young – about six years old.  I’d be willing to bet that your head, neck and back were also beautifully aligned.

It’s only later, as we get older, that we begin to lose this alignment.  Once again, that’s because we build up all that extra muscle tension.  As the tension throws off our alignment, it begins to put extra pressure on our joints and nerves – and that’s one reason why many of us experience pain.

As I said before, the Alexander Technique helped me become aware of my tension.  But it also did more than that: it helped me address it.  I learned that I could stop trying so hard and do less.  The technique gave me a practical, step-by-step way to subtract all the extra tension I’d built up.  At the same time, it helped me rediscover the natural alignment of my head, neck and spine.

Gradually, my approach to the sports – and to all other activities – also began to change.  To be specific, it began to dawn on me that I would enjoy the sports much more if I could let go of that proverbial piece of fruit and take my hand out of the bottle.  In other words, I would enjoy the sports more if I could focus less on the goal of winning and more on the way I was approaching them – and in particular on the amount of effort I was bringing to them.

As a result of these changes, I’m enjoying the sports much more again these days.  I no longer feel as though something is missing.  Or to be more accurate, I still occasionally have moments when that feeling comes back – but now I know right away what it means.  It means I’m probably starting to overdo and that’s affecting my alignment.  As soon as I notice that feeling, I know what to do.  I can subtract the extra tension and realign my head, neck and spine.

Not only am I enjoying the sports more, I’m also having more frequent experiences of “the zone” – that beautiful experience of ease, control and well-being when we don’t have to make the sport happen.  It just seems to happen easily on its own.  We’re not doing the sport, the sport is “doing us” – and we’re just going along for a very enjoyable ride.

There’s something else that’s happening these days too.  Even though I’m no longer focusing on doing well, I’m having much more success.  An amazing paradox!  At the age of 53, I’m skiing and riding better than I ever have before.  Who knows, maybe if I had had the knowledge that I do now, I would have made the varsity lightweight crew in college!

To end, let me give you an example of a wonderful experience I had skiing recently.  One day last winter, a friend and I were skiing at Mt. Sunapee ski area in New Hampshire.  All day long, we skied the moguls.  Moguls are natural bumps that are created in the snow by skiers’ turns. They make skiing more challenging because you can’t turn wherever you want to.  You have to turn between the moguls.

That day at Mt. Sunapee, the moguls were very close together – and yet I found I could make all the necessary turns through them.  I did that by moving my knees, my feet and the edges of my skis back and forth.  But here’s the special part.  While I was doing all those quick turns, I was able to keep my upper body aligned and still.  So in the end, my head, neck and back were staying just a little bit separate from my legs, as my legs carried out the movement.

Of course it was the Alexander Technique that helped me maintain that separation.  By minimizing the tension in the areas of my head, neck and spine, I could make sure they stayed aligned with each other, and independent of the movement of my legs.  My head stayed poised on top of my spine and my whole spine lengthened upwards slightly.  As a result, my balance improved, the quick turns became easier and I had more control over them.  And best of all, I had a day-long experience of the zone!

In the December 18, 2000 issue of Golf Plus, a Sports Illustrated supplement, there appeared a story about Jeff Jullian, a 39 year-old PGA golfer who “gave himself back his career” using an “unusual” method called the Alexander Technique. Jullian’s neck and back were in constant pain, causing him to lose his tour card, until he took lessons in the Technique, which he credits not only for alleviating his pain, but also rejuvenating his career.

While the Alexander Technique is not well known among golfers, this is not the first time golf and the Technique have been associated. As far back as 1920, John Duncan Dunn, a member of the famous golf family of the same name, course architect, instructor, and author of many golf books including Natural Golf, wrote a long article in The Golfers Magazine extolling the virtues of the Alexander Technique and its value to the golfer. More recently, Neil Holman, a British golfer, co-authored a book about using the Alexander Technique to improve your game.

So what is it? The Alexander Technique is a 100 year-old method for understanding how to use your body. Not an exercise, it is a different way of thinking and challenging habitual body use. Its theory is that general habits of body use, good or bad, influence how well or poorly you execute any activity. Alexander teachers observe students during everyday activities like sitting, standing and walking. They are trained to recognize unnecessary tension and, through verbal explanation and hands on guidance, teach their students how to avoid this tension. The student can then use this information to improve their body use during any activity.

Studies have shown that the Alexander Technique improves posture and breathing,reduces tension, and improves many chronic conditions like back and neck pain and repetitive strain injury. Its adherents also say that it improves grace and general ease in movement.

Dr. Jack Stern, MD of the Neurosurgical Group of Westchester adds the following: “The Alexander Technique stresses unification in an era of greater and greater medical specialization. Its educational system teaches people how to best use their bodies in ordinary action to avoid or reduce unnecessary stress and pain. It enables clients to get better faster and stay better longer.”

F.M. Alexander (1869-1955), an Australian,developed the Technique because he was suffering from chronic laryngitis. On the advice of doctors Alexander rested his voice. This worked – but only until he started using his voice again at which point his hoarseness would return. Through a period of self-observation, Alexander realized that he was causing his own problem because of the way he was using his voice and his whole body in general.

By becoming aware of and preventing unconscious habits of tension as he spoke, Alexander was able to cure himself. Convinced of the value of his work, he moved to England in 1904 where he taught his Technique to thousands of people, including the philosopher John Dewey, the novelist Aldous Huxley and the playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Today musicians and other performing artists use the Alexander Technique extensively. It is part of the required curriculum at Juilliard and the Royal Academy of Music. Its use by athletes has been increasing, especially with swimmers, equestrians and, apparently, golfers, including the aforementioned PGA tour member, Jeff Julian.

Notes

Vigeland, Carl: “The Alexander Technique: The Answer to A Stress Test”, Sports Illustrated Vol. 93 Issue 25 pg. G21, Dec. 18, 2000.

About the Author

Leland Vall is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique with a practice in Long Island and Manhattan. He is editor of the AmSAT News, the official newsletter of the American Society of the Alexander Technique, and a board member of the American Center for the Alexander Technique, the oldest Alexander teacher training facility in the United States. His website address is www.freeyourneck.com.