Bringing More Ease and Balance to the Body and Mind... The Alexander Technique.
"I help people who suffer from back pain, fatigue, hip or knee pain, or who wish to have a more elegant, upright, and easeful posture have a better quality of life. The Alexander Technique teaches you how to be well in your own body".
Diane Young, Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique, M.AmSAT, ACAT
Diane Young, Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique, M.AmSAT, ACAT
What is the Alexander Technique?
The Alexander Technique is a subtle yet powerful hands-on learning method used for more than 100 years to help people resolve tension issues, improve posture, reduce chronic back and neck pain, and bring free movement back to the body. The Alexander Technique is a unique kinesthetic learning that enhances awareness in activity, and so affects virtually everything that you do. You will learn a vital process of self care that keeps you relaxed, balanced, and free in body and mind. It engages the whole person for greater control of the physical body and the emotional reactivity that we all experience in 21 Century America. You can choose to be easy with yourself no matter what stimulus lies in front of you. This includes how you respond when people speak to you in unhealthy ways, or how you sit, stand, walk, react to a loud noise, speak publically, etc. By having conscious awareness and choice about your environment, issues which always created tension or stress in your life seemingly melt away, and you are left in a peaceful state of well being. The Alexander Technique works on the physical level of balance and support for an easy, free upright stature, and it also works on an emotional level of choosing to remain calm in a tense world!
* reduce and eliminate excess tension in all of your daily activities
* Learning to do any activity with less strain
* Experience the optimal mobility you once enjoyed as a child
* reduce and eliminate excess tension in all of your daily activities
* Learning to do any activity with less strain
* Experience the optimal mobility you once enjoyed as a child
The Alexander Technique produces substantial benefits as a method of self-care. Over the course of my lessons the student acquires a new experience of how they are moving. The student can effectively modify his/her muscular responses to stress, initiating new behavior at will. As the student develops, there is more independence, functional strength, and overall flexibility. There is less efforting in the musculature and consistently more uprightness. This improved coordination in daily activities results in greater balance, ease, and safety, and a wonderful sense of wellbeing!
Specialized movement problems of the athlete, musician, dancer, actor, and artist are addressed: pain is decreased or eliminated while skill level improves. The technique amplifies the benefits of most exercise courses and can be applied especially to enhance performance skill. More is accomplished more efficiently and with less discomfort. Applied to dance, music, lifting weights, running a race, or the more ordinary tasks of life, the value of learning this unique and profound method of self-care has global benefits to enhancing one's quality of life.
Benefits:
Specialized movement problems of the athlete, musician, dancer, actor, and artist are addressed: pain is decreased or eliminated while skill level improves. The technique amplifies the benefits of most exercise courses and can be applied especially to enhance performance skill. More is accomplished more efficiently and with less discomfort. Applied to dance, music, lifting weights, running a race, or the more ordinary tasks of life, the value of learning this unique and profound method of self-care has global benefits to enhancing one's quality of life.
Benefits:
- Feeling more poised, more graceful
- Having more energy
- Application to the performing arts
- Managing chronic pain and repetitive strain patterns
- Managing back and neck disorders by focusing on spinal balance and alignment
- Improves breathing and mobility
- Teaches freedom in the joints of the body, which improves balance and the fear of moving
- Improves posture
- Brings about more calm and less reactivity to life's stresses
- Improves performance of all activities requiring skill mastery
Alexander Techinque Video
This video gives gives some examples of applications of the Alexander Technique.
Alexander Technique is often used by performers but anyone can take advantage of the ease of movement that the Alexander Technique allows.
Alexander Technique is often used by performers but anyone can take advantage of the ease of movement that the Alexander Technique allows.
Alexander Technique Origin:
The Alexander Technique was developed more than a century ago by F.M. Alexander (1869-1955), an Australian actor who developed chronic vocal problems and often lost his voice while reciting. Alexander was a very gifted, thoughtful, and observant person, and the technique he discovered while correcting his own vocal problems carried much farther than mere exercise or muscular balancing. This unique and wonderful method restores grace and balance to the system, allowing us to live our greatest potential for dynamic ease and conscious awareness. The misuses of our bodies in movement can be restored systematically, and a new skill of practicing awareness in action can be found. The results are far better than we have ever realized before, and once you begin to use this method, you will wonder how you ever lived without it! Less pain and discomfort, more effortless movement, and better coordination for all of your activites will make you feel extremely confident socially, and calm physically!
Alexander's principles are solidly based on the anatomy of the body, and of the precise interrelationships between bones, muscles and nerves, but he also understood that as conscious human beings we have the ability to experience and coordinate the body as a whole, and in fact our freedom and poise is based upon this coordination.
Alexander's principles are solidly based on the anatomy of the body, and of the precise interrelationships between bones, muscles and nerves, but he also understood that as conscious human beings we have the ability to experience and coordinate the body as a whole, and in fact our freedom and poise is based upon this coordination.