FM Alexander

FM Alexander
FM Alexander

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Getting your mind and body to cooperate

What kind of a relationship do you have with yourself? It's a weird question to ask and yet for many people that I meet in Alexander class the relationship that they make with themselves is marked with negative internal dialogue. I was discussing this with a student today after the concept of negative self speak was raised and we were talking about all the influences that ask you to consider  that you aren't enough. Your not enough if you don't use this hair spray. You're not enough unless you have a six-pack.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Welcome to this blog about Alexander Technique.

At it's simplest Alexander Technique teaches you to be aware of the way you make movements. Sometimes you may find that you are overworking muscles and making effort that is far in excess of what is needed to achieve your goal.

Another way of saying that is that sometimes we are making a lot of tension and we don't realise it.

Making a lot of tension can throw your body out of alignment, introduce twists and pressure spots and make many tasks seem harder to achieve than they should be. Over-tension can also affect out mental state creating stress and it can exacerbate sore points where we have experienced injuries.

When a musician makes over-tension it can seriously affect the sounds coming from their instrument through a disruption of breath, an embellishment on the key stroke or on the fingering of a string on a fretboard. For the sportsperson, over-tension represents an inefficiency where energy fails to be directed into the activity and may in some circumstances get in the way of activity. The golfer's swing is affected, the tennis player's serve, the runner's gait and so on.

FM Alexander made some pivotal discoveries about how humans coordinate their movement. You can be shown quite easily how movement is organised efficiently or how that process is interfered with through over tension.

Please have a look at my Sydney Alexander Technique website and look out for more posts about Alexander Technique.