How we walk and move, from the tiniest micro movements to the most bold, often reveal areas of constriction in the body that can cause pain and even psychological implications.
Going on a journey of discovery with a practitioner through The Alexander Technique builds ease and fluidity throughout the body. It is such a powerful process as it affects the way we move through life and even our attitude and expression.
“Pause. Notice what you notice. Release and allow yourself to expand into the expansive world.”
Alex Halligey, SASTAT and ATI certified Alexander Technique teacher
The Alexander Technique involves a learning and awareness process where practitioner and client collaborate with a view to discovering the body and creating better ease, expansion and more sustainable postures.The technique is also used to relieve areas of pain; for dancers and actors to perform more effectively; to correct damage from long periods of sitting, or from injuries, and countless other reasons that cause the body to go out of balance.
IN A NUTSHELL
The Alexander Technique is a self-help method that encourages self awareness, more connection with our environment, our lives and reactions. It teaches us how to move more fluidly and powerfully and brings attention areas of movement blockages or discrepancies in the body and assists with ease of pain. Easier movement, sitting, playing and activity is achieved after training in the Alexander Technique.
It helps tremendously with:
• Repetitive strain injury and carpal tunnel syndrome.
• Backache, stiff neck and shoulders.
• Desk discomfort.
• Performance enhancement for singers, musicians, actors, dancers or athletes.
• A life-changing potential for personal development, ease, and self-knowledge.
• Releasing habitual stress patterns like tightness, anxiety, reactivity and tension.
• Long term physical discomfort like niggling aches and pain posture, protective
‘body-armouring’ from trauma, accidents or pain.
• Habitual defences like the inability to concentrate, focus, disowning parts of the
body, emotional disconnection.
It’s fascinating when we examine our own personal movement and see how shifting a forward leaning walk not only corrects posture; but may well correct an attitude that spends too much time in the future. Learning to walk differently, with more space between the spine and more ease, can alleviate feelings that life is a burden and is difficult.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW
Besides correcting posture, addressing pain, improving performance and many other reasons to use the Alexander Technique, it is a learning journey that teaches so much about the body and your relationship to yourself.
Negative thoughts can shrink the posture or create twists and curves in the body that compromise posture. Over time, these assumed body positions become habit, ingrained and unconscious and can cause pain or injury.
Multiple sessions with a trained Alexander teacher, offers professional insight into the holding patterns you have allowed the body to present. Feedback allows the pupil to replace their old habits with new, freer movements and adjustments help new corrected movements to replace old habits. This delivers immense insight into your unconscious and reactive patterns of mind and body.
During the sessions with your Alexander teacher you receive gentle guidance to create positioning that best serves your body. Positive results extend into all areas of life, from better co-ordination, to more positive thoughts, anger control and clearer expression. Habits ingrained over time take conscious application to adjust. Lessons learnt can be carried outside of the sessions and once awareness has been revealed, it becomes a life skill that lasts forever.
MEET THE FOUNDER
Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869 –1955) developed his method of psycho-physical re-education which spread throughout the world. He was involved in dramatics and theatre yet had chronic laryngitis he couldn’t seem to cure. Years of self inquiry and correcting his own body movements and posture enabled a strong understanding of how the body moves and its connections to attitude and emotions. He was able to trace his laryngitis to a reaction to stress and developed techniques to deal with similar psycho-physical reactions, offering it to the world as The Alexander Technique.
TRAINING ~ courses are vetted by the South African Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (SASTAT). For more details about Training Courses in South Africa, contact alexanderteachers@gmail.com. Certificated teachers may join SASTAT, which is recognised internationally and affiliated to 17 societies around the world. Currently there are about 28 teachers in South Africa. Looking for lessons with a skilled teacher visit SASTAT / www.alexandertechnique.org.za
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