The Alexander Way…learning is a joyous adventure…

written by Jamee Culbertson, Dan Arsenault and David Arsenault

(Editor’s note: Contributions to this story come from three authors. In order to spare some confusion, the names of the authors are used prior to each paragraph.)

(Dan): The irony is not lost on me. When I got the phone call from my sister-in-law Laurie that my brother David had been in a bad car accident, I was just getting ready for an Alexander Technique lesson with my teacher, Jamee Culbertson. It was the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, the start of a four-day weekend. I’m sure I was not an apt pupil at that lesson, but, on my way out, Jamee offered to see David as soon as he was well enough.

(David): I had a car accident on November 25, 1998. I broke both my hips and shattered my right kneecap. While I was recovering at home I had a visiting nurse and a physical therapist but it was obvious to those who knew me that I was really uncomfortable, not in any undue pain but my body no longer seemed to fit very well. My brother told me he knew someone who did something called the Alexander Technique, and he thought it might help. I met Jamee two weeks later and began lessons. From the first few minutes it was clear to me that this was helping me a great deal. Like many people who have had massive trauma, I felt deli-cate and tense, as if I was trying to hold myself together by brute force. The lessons have taught me to find the time and to allow myself the room to move freely. Jamee would frequently talk about making some room in the joints and allowing me to find my proper place.

(Jamee): When I first went to see David he was at home in a hospital bed recovering from his injuries. I wanted to approach him easily and gently at first without much overt movement until I found out what his limitations were. He had had surgery on both hips and his right knee and there remained a consid-erable amount of hardware inside keeping him together to aid in the healing process. He suffered temporary nerve damage in his left leg, which left him unable to flex his foot very far. While we were saying our hellos, I assessed just how I wanted to approach working with him in the most cooperative way. The head of the bed was up against the wall so I couldn’t put my hands directly on his head and neck right away. There were movable brackets on both sides of the bed but it seemed the most unobtrusive to begin at his feet. I pulled up a chair and began at his left side making contact with David through his feet. There was no inter- ference in David’s ability to access his postural reflex, what F.M. Alexander calls the primary control, “…that which governs the working of all the mechanisms and so renders the control of the complex human organism comparatively simple…it depends upon a certain use of the head and neck in relation to the use of the rest of the body…” (quoted from The Use Of the Self, pp. 59-60). The Primary Control is a first and primary movement that allows for a freedom of movement throughout. Head-neck reflexes are the central mechanism that orients us to our environment. It is “…the primary relation upon which all more ultimate relations depend.” (Frank Jones, Body Awareness in Action pp. 60). David first noticed a lengthening along his left side as a sigh of relief came over him. He moved to stretch a bit and discovered that he could flex his foot farther than he could before.

(Dan): After passing the life or death stage there is a natural tendency to rely on the wisdom of the medical professionals. While I knew what benefit David could derive from Alexander lessons, I’m sure David would have been highly circumspect about doing anything that his medical team did not know about and approve. The key here was an enlightened physical therapist.

(David): I told my physical therapist what I was learning at the lessons and she approved heartily. She had heard of the Technique and knew it to be beneficial. She thought that in conjunction with doing the prescribed exercises the Technique would allow me to use myself
to my best advantage and allow my recovery to proceed faster.

(Jamee): David was finding a great deal of relief in the lessons. The first report was more mobility with his left foot, a decrease in his pain medication and finally, a good night’s sleep! David has a growing understanding of what Alexander called “Inhibition,” an awareness of indirect action, a decision to cease giving permission to habitual unconscious reactions. “In the presence of a stimulus to move, inhibition facilitates lengthening of the spine and adds to the efficiency of the movement. Too quick a response will shorten muscles in the neck and prevent the lengthening of the spine.” (Frank Jones Body Awareness in Action pp. 149.) Inhibition has allowed David to learn to bring conscious choice into his response to the stimulus created by his desires. At first we worked with his reaction to the pain he was experiencing so that his reaction to the pain would not make his overall experience worse. “The Alexander Technique is the only method of improving human use and functioning which teaches an indirect method of consciously preventing interference with one’s best use and functioning and is the only method where its teachers consciously use these principles at the same time they are teaching the Technique to others.” (Quoted from the ATI Professional Development Committee report on the ATI web site, www.ati-net.com.)

(David): Around Christmas I was allowed to stand, and at the end of January I began to learn how to walk again. The Technique was very helpful in these early stages. In the beginning walking was very awkward. My legs did not feel as if they belonged to me and would obey very few commands. I had a walker at first and crutches a week later, but even in this sort of condition the Technique helped. I needed to be conscious all the time of my position and how I wanted to move. Jamee and I discussed the rare opportunity that presented itself in learning how to walk almost from the very start but with an adult sensibility and the Technique to apply. It was mid-March when I traded in my crutches for canes. We kept doing lessons all along and by the time I could stand a little straighter on my canes I was ready to do so. Although most of my lesson happens with me reclined we always focus on the kinetic aspects of the Technique and as I became more kinetic it helped more and more. This last week I have been able to discard my last cane, I had been walking with one cane for the last month. At all these stages there has been improvement in my posture and in the way I use my hips to move. As I learn to control my muscles again and as the strength comes back into them it becomes ever more important to apply the things I have learned. I get both lazy and occasionally stupid and forget to apply what I know, but fortunately there is a price to be paid almost immediately so I tend to remember more often.
I am about half way through my recovery now, but I hope I am only starting to learn the Alexander Technique. As I continue to grow stronger and better I hope to apply what I learn to improve how I use my body. I am an amateur actor so I hope to be able to apply some of the Technique to my work on stage. I am in a fall production so we shall see how well I have learned. There are so many things to try to remember when one is on stage that the Technique will have to be well ingrained. I am also a piledriver and I hope to get back to work around Thanksgiving if the doctor gives the O.K. This will be the real test for me. The type of construction work I do can be very demanding, but I feel certain that I will be able to do it again.
I am waiting somewhat impatiently to see how the Technique will affect the way I per-form both on stage and at work, but also how it will be when I really am recovered. I hope that I can learn to do things wholly and with better focus so I can enjoy the act in each case for itself. We shall see.

(Dan): It goes without saying that David’s trauma was not his alone. His wife, Laurie has, understandably, had a lot to deal with over the last several months. From bedpans to ‘helpful’ relatives, from finances to somehow finding the strength to continue. Laurie has also been taking Alexander lessons with Jamee. It has been of equal benefit to her, I believe, although in a much different way. Laurie, I think, sees the Technique as a treat for her body and soul. She typically can’t wait for her next lesson.

(Jamee): During Laurie’s first lesson she said with tears in her eyes, “This is the first deep breath I’ve had in weeks!”
They continue to be apt students and are making their way through this challenging time together.

Jamee Culbertson is a Practitioner of the Alexander Technique, Certified by Alexander Technique International.  She is past Chair of Alexander Technique International, (ATI). Jamee has a private practice in Concord, Massachusetts and teaches throughout the United States and Canada. You can reach her by email: : atlessons@verizon.net or by phone: 617-290-7102

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written by Andrea M. Matthews
Alexander Technique Teacher and member of Alexander Technique International

“Most of us, including members of the medical and educational professions, tend to look on pain and illness as natural concomitants of the stresses of living and old age.  But such stresses are caused by uncoordinated movements which accelerate the process of ageing.”

This simple but seemingly radical idea is at the heart of what the Alexander Technique offers.  In our culture, we are constantly told that age and gravity work against us, grinding us inevitably down into decrepitude and immobility.  This scenario is based on a misreading of how we are constructed to process gravity.  Rather than compressing ourselves by our own weight into the earth like a column, we are actually ingeniously built to process gravity by means of reflexes that in fact suspend us lightly off the planet.  Rather than gravity pulling us down, gravity serves to project us up into life and activity.

Despite these widespread and hampering ideas about age and gravity, older persons are seeking the means to improve their quality of life, to cope with concerns that seem to limit their activities more each day, and to retain their independence and mobility.   By means of a few simple principles, thoughtful and non-strenuous movement, and the development in students of their ability to self-observe and gradually take responsibility for how they choose to move, the Alexander Technique provides a powerful answer.

A great strength of the Technique is its ability to address the whole student as an organic system, avoiding the trap of an unending series of specific “fixes.”    By starting with the reflexive system of the head and neck that F.M. Alexander (who developed the Technique a century ago) termed the “Primary Control,”  the Technique addresses indirectly a host of related issues in well-being and movement.  His empirical discovery that this primary control (a certain dynamic relationship-rather than a fixed position-of the head and neck) controls the balance and coordination of the entire organism was later confirmed by scientific studies of vertebrate movement.

Alexander discovered that from a very young age and continuing through life, most of us learn unwittingly to interfere with our mechanisms of balance, starting by contracting the muscles in the area where our heads rest on our necks.   Because natural balance and coordination are immediately impaired by this interference, a series of “compensations” arises, further distorting coordination.  Instead of being a poised and available system “tuned” by a balanced distribution of tonus and compression throughout, we learn to feel “normal” as a discontinuous collection of some slack and other excessively tensed parts that we must heave around like so many bricks.  It never seems to strike us as peculiar that we even find it harder and harder to get out of a chair!

As time goes by, the imbalance becomes ever more pronounced, and is fed by the very fear of falling that it engenders.   Moving our joints against the forces tending to immobilize them generates tremendous wear and tear, leading to pain and injury.  We realize, without knowing how or why, that we have somehow become stiff, top-heavy, unstable and less able to respond flexibly.  Fear of being injured in a fall ironically makes us tense up more, increasing those qualities that make us unstable.  Balance and falling become major concerns-and often, major limitations.

neck pinched… head pulled back and down…stiffening …cantilevered…top-heavy…out of balance…static…braced

Fig. 1  This person’s head is pulled back and down, interfering with reflexes of balance and coordination, forcing rest of body to compensate with bracing and stiffness, in order to prevent falling forward.   This is only one example of the forms that distorted balance can take, but they all begin with a disruption of the balance of the head on the neck.  Such a posture as this can only work in that position and offers no responsiveness to change of any kind, let alone an unexpected one.  Such vulnerability leads to fear and even more interfering tension.

Restoring Balance

Fortunately, Alexander also discovered that it is possible to interrupt and reverse this unhappy process.    The delicate balance of the head and neck can be consciously restored, imparting balance and flexibility to our movements.   With a slight change in how we think about what we’re doing, we stop contracting our necks and pulling our heads back, the interference with the reflexes of balance ceases, the dynamic relationship of our head and neck restores itself, and our balance and confidence return.

In theory, this simple principle, that we should cease our interfering contractions, hardly seems revolutionary. It doesn’t seem like it should be very hard to put into practice, either. Nor would it be in practice, were it not for this paradoxical obstacle:  Habit.  The very thing we are trying to prevent is what feels “right,” and has become an ingrained habit.  It is often only when we attempt to change such a habit that we realize how shockingly resistant it can be to alteration, because we are constantly seduced by its feeling of rightness.  It seems so natural to strive to be “right.” And so unnatural not to!

For this reason, the benefits of the Alexander Technique are much more easily attained through the help of a teacher who can objectively observe how the student actually moves and uses himself.  Gradually the student also learns to catch how he “gets set” to move and learns to inhibit (to interrupt, not repress) that impulse, allowing the movement to be carried out with natural, unimpeded grace.  The philosopher John Dewey, himself an enthusiastic student and supporter of Alexander, called this skill of using conscious awareness to cooperate rather than interfere with reflex coordination, “Thinking in Activity.”

A Rising Tide

Because Alexander Technique resists the temptation of chasing down and fixing particular “symptoms” such as stiffness, pain, and fear of falling, in favor of addressing the fundamental interference that generates those symptoms, it sets off a wave of indirect benefits of value to all students, and in particular to older students.  Young people tend to have a greater latitude for error and misuse than older persons, and thus can “afford” more excess tension and interference.  Those who are older or suffer from illness have a decreased margin for error and thus need to regain every degree of flexibility possible.  The rising tide of balance and flexibility set off by use of the Technique lifts many “boats.”  The relief of pressure and redistribution of tonus at the head and neck is transmitted throughout the body,

• restoring poise and balance, helping to prevent falls

• increasing flexibility at joints and reducing excessive pull on bones, lessening damage when falls do occur

• helping to regain and maintain mobility

• increasing economy of movement by re-enlisting normal antigravity reflexes of the body, improving stamina and lightness

• promoting ease in activities from the simple and routine, such as rising out of a chair, to the more complex, such as lifting, reaching, golfing, gardening, etc.

As movement becomes less effortful and pressure is taken off joints and organs, the student’s general well-being is enhanced.  She will often experience:

• improved breathing

• improved organ function

• improved digestion and absorption

• lowered blood pressure

It is important to note that in addition to heart problems, high blood pressure is now found to be associated, along with lack of activity, with bone loss.  By reducing blood pressure and making physical activity more pleasurable and manageable, Alexander Technique may also contribute to retention of bone mass.

• improved ability to cope with chronic illness and/or pain

For example, arthritis sufferers benefit from the Technique also because it reduces pressure on joints and promotes activity.  Studies are also being conducted on patients with Parkinson’s disease that indicate improvement in movement and outlook.

The human organism being indivisible in its physical and psychological aspects (its “psychophysical unity,” in Alexander’s words), such apparently bodily improvements immediately manifest as emotional benefits to the person as well.  Improved physical function and balance

• lessen anxiety

• improve mood and sense of well-being

• restore independence and a sense of self-determination

• restore natural coordination, control and choice

• reconnect the individual with a feeling of support both from within and from the environment

A Means for All Seasons

Walter Carrington, a teacher of the Technique who trained with F.M. Alexander, stressed the value of the work for older students in a talk recorded in the book, Thinking Aloud.

I remember what was probably Alexander’s last lesson…an old lady who had been a pupil of his for some years.  She must have had quite a number of lessons, off and on, and she was quite old.  Of course, so was he by then-he being nearly 87.  The relevance of age is that people find that life becomes more difficult in all sorts of small, unexpected respects when they get older.  They never thought or hesitated about climbing stairs and carrying things, or even lifting their hands up to a high shelf.  The physical demands that you have taken for granted do become more difficult as you get older, and that is where you really need all the help you can get.  Alexander help is particularly appreciated here.  In fact, old age really is the testing time from the point of view of the Technique.

So here was this old lady and when F.M. finished the lesson, he patted her on the shoulder and said, “Now, my dear, see that you don’t stiffen your neck, and see that you’ve always got something to look forward to.”  And that was the summary of the whole thing.

The Alexander Technique is not just for young professional athletes or performing artists, though they are often thought of as its primary beneficiaries and historically have been the first to recognize its enormous value.  Ease of movement, confidence in balance, and enthusiasm for life’s activities are our birthright as human beings at any age and it’s never too late to start to reclaim them.

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Somewhere in the early eighties, I started having back pain.  It was usually in my upper back between my shoulder blades on the left side of my spine.  It felt like a pencil was somehow wedged between the vertebrae.  When the pain started initially,  I went to see a chiropractor for many weeks.  Each adjustment would bring some relief, but the pain always returned in a few days.

A couple of years later,  I went to see my physician who found nothing peculiar in the x-ray images of my spine.  He started me on stretching and strengthening exercises which helped a little bit but never removed the pain.  After about 10 years of trying to find relief, I gave up and just accepted the pain for another 10 years.  Most days I would be slightly uncomfortable.  But once or twice a year the pain was really bad and I’d miss work, lie on my back to relieve the pressure, and take ibuprofen.

In August 2008, I read a study that found the Alexander Technique provided long lasting relief.  I had never heard of the Alexander Technique and became very interested.  I searched around on the web and found Jamee Culbertson and called her immediately.

After my first lesson, I had a lot of things to think about.  Jamee helped me become aware of my body’s alignment and muscle usage by using visualizations and body positioning.  I found myself constantly fighting with myself to relax.  That was very odd to me because I’ve always thought of myself as a very relaxed and laid back person.  Jamee was able to read unbelievably subtle clues to identify which muscles I was holding tight and which ones were relaxed.  She taught me to read some of the same clues and make adjustments to how I used my muscles and positioned my body.

During the first lesson, I was following Jamee’s visualizations and relaxing my muscles when my neck popped as if it had been adjusted by a chiropractor, bringing a little bit of relief. After the end of my second lesson, my back pain started to go away but returned quickly.  After the end of my third lesson, I could actively make my back pain go away in a couple of minutes and it would stay that way for hours.  Frequently my neck and back would pop and crack as I would change the way I was standing and holding my muscles.

After about five or six lessons, my pain was gone. Maybe once or twice a week I would notice it trying to resurrect itself, and I was able to dispatch it within minutes.  I was 99% sure I had some physical deformity or injury to my back before I started the Alexander Technique.  Now I would say that I was unconsciously and incorrectly using my muscles which caused that pain for over 20 years.

Now, regardless of the cause, I no longer have the pain.   Thank you Jamee.

Mark Lundberg, Software Engineer

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