Bringing More Ease and Balance to the Body and Mind... The Alexander Technique.
"I help people who suffer from back and neck pain, and those who simply wish to have more elegant, upright, and easy posture reach their goal! The Alexander Technique teaches you how to be well in your own body".
Diane Young, Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique, M.AmSAT, ACAT
"The Alexander Technique stresses unification in an era of greater and greater medical specialization. It enables clients to get better faster and stay better longer. This is undoubtably the best way to take care of the back and alleviate back pain."
Jack Stern, MD, PHD
Neurosurgical Group of Westchester
White Plains, NY
Diane Young, Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique, M.AmSAT, ACAT
"The Alexander Technique stresses unification in an era of greater and greater medical specialization. It enables clients to get better faster and stay better longer. This is undoubtably the best way to take care of the back and alleviate back pain."
Jack Stern, MD, PHD
Neurosurgical Group of Westchester
White Plains, NY
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 kind of learning model that enhances awareness in activity, and so affects virtually everything that you do. You will learn a vital process of self care that helps you stay relaxed and balanced 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 these stressful times. The Alexander Technique examines your habits, and your choices about movement. You can choose to be easy with yourself no matter what stimulus lies in front of you. This includes how you sit, stand, walk, react to a loud noise, to another person, while speaking in front of an audience, singing, exercising... By having conscious awareness and choice about your environment, those things which create tension or stress in your life can be eliminated and you are able to be conscious, aware, and peaceful in all of your activities. 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 excess tension
* do any activity with less strain and pain
* have elegant, free, upright posture
* experience the kind of freedom you once enjoyed as a child
* reduce excess tension
* do any activity with less strain and pain
* have elegant, free, upright posture
* experience the kind of freedom you once enjoyed as a child
Here is a recent article written in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/health/25consumer.html
Back pain can be reduced by taking Alexander Lessons!
Back pain can be reduced by taking Alexander Lessons!
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 effort being used in the musculature, and more ease and elegance. This improved coordination in daily activities results in greater balance and safety, and a wonderful sense of well being!
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.
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.
Alexander Technique 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 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 activities 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. |
Read about the Important Back Pain Study from the British Medical Journal:
Relief for Chronic Back Pain Sufferers
Clinical Trial published in the British Medical Journal show
Alexander Technique lessons are effective and provide long-term benefit[1]
(See the British Medical Journal study online: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug19_2/a884)
This randomized controlled trial is one of the few major studies to show significant long-term benefits for patients with chronic non-specific low-back pain. 579 patients were involved in a multi-center clinical trial lead by GP (General Practice) researcher Professor Paul Little, University of Southampton, and GP Professor Debbie Sharp, Bristol University, and funded by the Medical Research Council and the National Health Service Research and Development Fund.[2]
Trial results clearly show that 24 one-to-one lessons in the Alexander Technique led to important patient improvement in function, quality of life and reduction of days in pain. One year after the trial started and following 24 Alexander Technique lessons the number of days in pain was only three per month compared with 21 days in pain in the control group. The average number of activities limited by back pain had fallen by 42%.
The trial assessed benefits provided by Alexander Technique lessons, classical massage and normal GP care. Half the patients allocated to each intervention also received a GP prescription for general aerobic exercise (30 minutes of brisk walking or the equivalent each day). Of all the approaches tested, 24 Alexander Technique lessons, at least half taken within the first three months of the trial, proved to be the most beneficial.
Significantly, a series of six Alexander Technique lessons followed by GP-prescribed exercise was about 70% as beneficial as 24 Alexander Technique lessons alone.
There were no adverse events recorded by any of the participants allocated to the series of 6 or 24 Alexander Technique lessons.
Since the effect of massage on activities was no longer significant by one year, whereas the effect of Alexander Technique lessons was maintained, the trial authors concluded that the long-term benefits of taking Alexander Technique lessons are unlikely to be due to placebo effects of attention and touch and more likely to be due to active learning of the Technique.
The Alexander Technique is an educational method that can be learned by anyone, that helps people recognize, understand, and avoid poor habits affecting postural tone and neuromuscular coordination. Lessons involve an individualized approach designed to provide lifelong skills for self-care that can lead to a wide variety of benefits.
The price of back pain
Back pain is the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old. 3
In 2005 Americans spent $85.9 billion looking for relief from back and neck pain through surgery, doctor's visits, X-rays, MRI scans and medications, up from $52.1 billion in 1997, according to a study in the Feb. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). That money hasn't helped reduce the number of sufferers; in 2005, 15 percent of U.S. adults reported back problems—up from 12 percent in 1997.4
[1] www.bmj.com/channels/research.dtl
[2] The Medical Research Council funded the trial with £585,000 and the National Health Service Research and Development Fund contributed an additional £186,000.
3 http://www.painfoundation.org/page.asp?file=Newsroom/PainFacts.htm
4 http://www.newsweek.com/id/110767
Be sure to go back to my home page and give your email address in my opt in box; you will receive a FREE 20 minute session to help you reduce your stress right away!!
I am wishing your great fortune, ease, and freedom in all areas of your life!
-Diane
Clinical Trial published in the British Medical Journal show
Alexander Technique lessons are effective and provide long-term benefit[1]
(See the British Medical Journal study online: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug19_2/a884)
This randomized controlled trial is one of the few major studies to show significant long-term benefits for patients with chronic non-specific low-back pain. 579 patients were involved in a multi-center clinical trial lead by GP (General Practice) researcher Professor Paul Little, University of Southampton, and GP Professor Debbie Sharp, Bristol University, and funded by the Medical Research Council and the National Health Service Research and Development Fund.[2]
Trial results clearly show that 24 one-to-one lessons in the Alexander Technique led to important patient improvement in function, quality of life and reduction of days in pain. One year after the trial started and following 24 Alexander Technique lessons the number of days in pain was only three per month compared with 21 days in pain in the control group. The average number of activities limited by back pain had fallen by 42%.
The trial assessed benefits provided by Alexander Technique lessons, classical massage and normal GP care. Half the patients allocated to each intervention also received a GP prescription for general aerobic exercise (30 minutes of brisk walking or the equivalent each day). Of all the approaches tested, 24 Alexander Technique lessons, at least half taken within the first three months of the trial, proved to be the most beneficial.
Significantly, a series of six Alexander Technique lessons followed by GP-prescribed exercise was about 70% as beneficial as 24 Alexander Technique lessons alone.
There were no adverse events recorded by any of the participants allocated to the series of 6 or 24 Alexander Technique lessons.
Since the effect of massage on activities was no longer significant by one year, whereas the effect of Alexander Technique lessons was maintained, the trial authors concluded that the long-term benefits of taking Alexander Technique lessons are unlikely to be due to placebo effects of attention and touch and more likely to be due to active learning of the Technique.
The Alexander Technique is an educational method that can be learned by anyone, that helps people recognize, understand, and avoid poor habits affecting postural tone and neuromuscular coordination. Lessons involve an individualized approach designed to provide lifelong skills for self-care that can lead to a wide variety of benefits.
The price of back pain
Back pain is the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old. 3
In 2005 Americans spent $85.9 billion looking for relief from back and neck pain through surgery, doctor's visits, X-rays, MRI scans and medications, up from $52.1 billion in 1997, according to a study in the Feb. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). That money hasn't helped reduce the number of sufferers; in 2005, 15 percent of U.S. adults reported back problems—up from 12 percent in 1997.4
[1] www.bmj.com/channels/research.dtl
[2] The Medical Research Council funded the trial with £585,000 and the National Health Service Research and Development Fund contributed an additional £186,000.
3 http://www.painfoundation.org/page.asp?file=Newsroom/PainFacts.htm
4 http://www.newsweek.com/id/110767
Be sure to go back to my home page and give your email address in my opt in box; you will receive a FREE 20 minute session to help you reduce your stress right away!!
I am wishing your great fortune, ease, and freedom in all areas of your life!
-Diane
