We Have Moved

This week the blog "Acting ‘As if…..’ The Importance of Mindsets and Learning How To Learn (Part 1)" can be found at the revamped website of the Edinburgh Alexander Centre . I will keep posting links here to new posts between now and the end of the year, to give people time to adjust to the move. Richard

Using the Alexander Technique to get a good night's sleep

A pupil returned last week and reported how their sleeping had improved as a result of their last lesson - they were getting a good night's sleep and waking up more refreshed. The need to think about how we use ourselves while sleeping, in my experience, is quite common. Alexander thought people’s use while sleeping was often worse than their waking use and, in many respects, this is probably true. What is also true is that as our use in our waking life improves, we become more aware of areas in our lives where we pull down and tighten up, which is something that often happens when to go bed and ready ourselves to sleep. We snuggle up into something that resembles the foetal position, holding ourselves tight, interfering with our breathing in a way that babies do not. Two things tend to result, the first is that we do not sleep as deeply as we might and secondly we wake up not just tired but stiff from holding ourselves tight over a number of hours.

Over the eighteen years I have been teaching, I have developed a simple lesson for teaching pupils how to apply the Alexander Technique to this, which in most cases sorts the problem out. 

It consists of five parts, which I am going to give you today.

1. Firstly, check the pillow height to ensure the neck is in alignment; it changes with whether you are on your back or your side. It's not a great idea to sleep on your front.
2. Next find out, by doing it, whether when you close your eyes, you look down and interfere with your breathing. The correction is very simple, just close your eyes again and this time, after you have looked down, keep your eyes shut but allow yourself to look ahead - you should find that your breathing just releases, if it has been held.
3. If you sleep on your side, then how you get there from your back is very important. Most people put themselves wrong by tightening and shortening their legs to turn - don't. You need let your head look in the direction of travel and bring your arm over your torso to point using your pinkie and the finger next to it in the direction of travel - to initiate the movement. If you know how to move from semi-supine to all fours, this is relatively easy. You should end up on your side, neither pulling everything forward or leaning back. Most importantly your breathing should be released.
4. The use of the arms is where people often go wrong, when lying on their side by wanting to tightly cuddle themselves, to give themselves comfort. To understand this, it is a good idea to lay the top arm on your side to help yourself become aware of what you do. From there bring it down to your habitual placement, if your breathing becomes held, then experiment with finding a way to bring the arm down and round without interfering with your breathing.     
5. Finally, make sure you are not pulling your knees together - they should always be going forward and away even if touching. Once again, if you have been gripping them together, you should find that your breathing is released when you stop. 

To summarise, what you are wanting to ensure is that you are not holding your breath in any way while sleeping. To learn to do this, it really is a matter of learning to put this into practice when you go to bed and want it all to be working in the morning. You will find then that you can gradually adjust over time to a more refreshing and comfortable sleep. If you find difficulties with this, then come along for a lesson and, providing you have some recent AT background, I can show you how to put this into practice in half an hour.

The Importance of Alexander's Work

Every so often I find myself reflecting on what the Alexander Technique is a technique for – it is a subject I have blogged about before. Last time, I addressed the question with what I thought Alexander's answer might be in terms of Constructive Conscious Control. Today I want to try a different tack based in part on observations made over the summer when I was taking a break from blogging. The summer with the Olympics and other things provided a rich source of observations with attendant questions as to the importance of both Alexander's observations and his technique.

Starting with the Olympics, in what I saw, what struck me most was how much better the athletes and other participants were trained in poise and balance, from twenty years ago. Reflecting on this change, which you can also see in football, I am aware of how scientists using video, such as Alain Berthoz, have come to understand the importance of the head, neck relationship in movement. What Alexander saw in the mirror has been captured on film and has presumably filtered down into the training programmes that Olympic athletes are using. That does not mean that they are developing Constructive Conscious Control, it just means that they are working better in terms of poise and balance, which certainly makes a difference. 

If my speculation is right about things filtering down, it has not filtered down further to a more general level, as a recent visit to my local swimming pool made clear. As I was leaving, a group of children was being instructed in the intricacies of the crawl. Their instructor was standing on the pool edge telling them to put their head down in order to crawl, which is dubious enough. What he was demonstrating though was not putting the head down, but pulling the neck forward while raising his shoulder and putting excess muscle tension into his arms. He had no practical understanding and was demonstrating to his charges how to disco-ordinate themselves and to make unnecessary effort that would interfere with their poise and balance in the pool, as well as their breathing. (If you want to understand how Alexander Technique can be integrated with swimming, check out the Shaw Method.)

Continuing out of the pool, I passed the Gravity Studio where three young women were working with weights, allegedly in harmony with gravity except they were not. Each one was pulling their head back, narrowing their back, exercising indeed, but exercising habits that are harmful, which risk injury, interfere with breathing and lower the general standard of functioning. 

So here at least there is a need for conscious control in being aware of both what one is doing and its implications. When it comes to teaching others, a basic understanding of use is necessary to see that others are not harming themselves, not practising disco-ordination whether in the pool, at games or in the classroom. This week is International Alexander Awareness Week and it is focussing on children and the importance of good habits being inculcated rather than the teaching disco-ordination.  Alexander wrote about the need for this over sixty years ago, as well as the need for those instructing others to be au fait with the principles of poise and balance, and to be able to teach and supervise people in accordance with these. The Olympics provides evidence that this is happening for elite athletes; where it is really needed is in schools not just in sports or even the arts but in everyday living – now that would be something.