The Alexander Technique
educates the student's sense
of kinesthesia or
proprioception. This sense
is used to internally
calibrate one's own bodily
location, weight and to
judge the effort necessary
for moving. The Alexander
Technique also educates how
to more fully carry intent
into action with reasoning
and constructive thinking
techniques. These may demand
a re-evaluation of the
priority and value of
motives that drove the
goal-setting of past habits
that the student must
resolve. All Alexander
teachers advocate the value
of effortlessness and
practical structure.
Alexander Technique teachers
believe that humans have a
built-in proprioceptive
blind spot: people become habituated to
repeating any response.
Repetitious circumstances lead
people to create habits as
they adapt to circumstances.
These habits contain both
deliberate and
non-deliberate responses
that include physical
movement patterns, as well
as coping and learning
strategies. The advantage of
adapting by creating habits
is that behavior and
learning becomes simplified;
it becomes possible to meet
a given stimulus or
interpretation of
circumstances with a
ready-made reaction. As a
person adds one habit onto
another, the disadvantage is
they may train themselves to
also repeat unintentional
side effects from answering
more than one master - the
tension, over-compensation
and cumulative stress that
the Alexander Technique
addresses.
Adapting has a further
serious drawback: habits diminish sensation.
Using the habit decreases
the importance of paying
attention to slight
perceptual differences.
Sensory systems can flood
from accommodating too many
contradicting habits and
intentions. From disuse or
flooding, perceptual
sensitivity shuts down and
eventually becomes dull and
untrustworthy, just as skin
becomes numb if the same
spot is repeatedly rubbed.
Loss of perceptual awareness
encourages mistaken
interpretations for the need
to choose a particular
response. In a panic, all
opposing habits can fire off
at once, pulling in all
directions, sometimes
without the person noticing
it has happened.
Because habits tend to become so
automatic, the sensation of doing a fully-formed habit
eventually gets lost. Forgetting
what they have trained
themselves to now do 'without
thinking', this drawback
encourages people to feel
convinced that whatever effort
or ways they now use to move to
respond is customary and
necessary, even when it is far
from normal.
How
our kinesthetic sense becomes
untrustworthy from adapting to
needless overcompensating is
built into many innocent
situations. People form habits
that are driven by goals that
seem useful at the time. For
instance, if a person often
carries a bag on their forearm,
he will later find himself
holding up his arm when the bag
is not on it. Misunderstanding a
teacher's directions, a student
may repeat what the teacher
knows is unnecessary, but the
teacher forgivingly allows the
mistake to go by when he should
not. So the student may
unknowingly adopt useless or
later problematic mannerisms. If
someone is afraid while
learning, adapting can mean he
will most likely continue doing
the skill fearfully. If someone
has healed from a temporary
injury, a habit of wincing in
anticipation of pain can be
automatically continued
indefinitely, even though pain
has healed. Due to rapid growth,
teenagers often move their own
bodies based on inaccurate
assumptions of their size and
structure. A rapidly growing
tall 13-year-old may think 'I'm
too tall' and stoop to shorten
himself.
According to Alexander teachers,
few adults in Western culture
retain their ability to move
freely without needless
self-imposed interference. Given
an unceasing cumulative demand
that unnecessarily stresses the
body’s structural design, the
price as adults grow older can
range from feelings of stress
and resignation to very real
physical problems, due to
movement limitations that could
be changed. According to those
who teach Alexander Technique,
most of the time, giving up a
certain activity isn't necessary
if a learner is ready to free
specific habits that work
against the body's structural
design.
Benefits
As a
technique addressing the
entirety of a person's activity,
the Alexander Technique aims to
benefit people of all sorts. Its
proponents, including many well
known actors, musicians and
educators believe that its
practice results in improved
awareness, objectivity and the
connection between body and
mind, ease of movement, improved
balance, stamina and less
muscular tension. Additionally,
those who practice it often
report that it gives them an
enhanced ability to clarify
their thinking, observations and
the ability to choose new
responses. Proponents further
see the technique as a way to
use less effort for movement and
thus perform more efficiently,
feel easier, look more graceful
and free themselves from
unintentional self-imposed
limitations.
It
is applied both remedially and
in the areas of performing arts
and sports. It is taught in
performance schools of dance,
acting, circus, music, voice and
some Olympic sports. Since
Alexander Technique is suitable
for those at any fitness level,
it is also used as remedial
movement education to complete
recovery and provide pain
management. The Alexander
Technique is a first-hand
experience of the reality of
body/mind unity. Its principles
apply to movement, psychology,
creative thinking, learning
theory and styles of coaching,
training and effective
communication for teachers and
directors.
Although the Alexander Technique
is considered by those in its
field to be primarily
educational - taught in a
student/teacher relationship as
compared to being a treatment
regimen between client and
practitioner - it is regarded by
the United Kingdom National
Health Service to offer an
alternative and complementary
management for many medical
complaints. A partial list is:
back problems, unlearning and
avoiding Repetitive Strain
Injury, improving ergonomics,
stuttering, speech training and
voice loss, mobility for those
with Parkinson's disease,
posture or balance problems, or
to complete recovery from injury
as an adjunct to Physical
therapy.
AT
has also been known to help
performers with getting past the
plateau effect (despite trying,
no improvement), performance
anxiety, getting beyond a
supposed "lack of talent" and to
sharpen discrimination and
description ability. It has also
helped people control unwanted
reactions, phobias and
depression.
Of
course, applications are very
subjective and personal by
nature; many testimonies exist
on the Internet. See STAT link
below for scientific studies.
Note that Alexander Technique is
regarded to be a helpful adjunct
to traditional medical treatment
regimens and not as a substitute
for them.
Reported Effects
Students often describe the
immediate effect of an
Alexander lesson as both
being unusual, and also
strangely familiar. During
hands-on lessons, pupils have
reported an immediate feeling of
a "state of grace," despite
their inability to evoke or
sustain this state by
themselves. Other reported
experiences include hearing
their own voice sounding
different, feeling lighter or
having a temporary
disorientation of where their
body is located spatially.
Though most students experience
these perceptual paradoxes as
feeling good, students are often
admonished by teachers to regard
their sensations as not worth
trying to repeat. Students learn
to avoid end-gaining, meaning, to resist
going directly for results using
one’s habit. Instead students
are to allow themselves the room
to use the deliberate new
processes of experimenting
proscribed by the Technique,
called means whereby. For
this reason students must
continue practice of AT without
expectation or reinforcement of
feeling
themselves changing, because their
senses may not yet be awake
enough to register the crucial
subtle adjustments. Improved
sensitivity can be trained or
reawakened by sustained
practice, but this takes
patience. The learner may at
different times still
paradoxically experience both
states: the unusual sensory
effects described above during a
progressive leap ahead and a
sense of nothing happening when
gradual progress is, in fact,
taking place.
Evidence of change is sought in
verifiable outside feedback;
using a mirror; by noting,
comparing, or describing
differences of the relative
location of one's eyes, balance
or weight changes; a change in
the sound of one's voice or the
effects on one’s objectives,
props or environment. Alexander
teachers have been educated to
perceive, observe and articulate
very subtle but crucial
differences influencing motion.
They offer this education and
feedback to their students.
Students learn to change small
crucial differences that
influence long-term effects if
repeated over time.
Depending on the causes of
limitations, structural posture
may or may not improve, but
freedom of motion should always
improve during the lesson with a
teacher. To take improvements
away from the class, the
dedication of later remembering
to attentively experiment is
required on the part of the
learner. A willingness to
experiment is key to gaining
continuing results.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Technique)
Accounting
