Alexander Technique And Sport

With the Olympics starting today in London, it is hard to escape sport for the next couple of weeks. One of the things all the sports on display have in common is the need for control, balance and poise. These are all things that Alexander Technique can help with, as well as avoiding injury, and Alexander Technique has been successfully used at this highest level. 

Rather, than recite a list that would include Olympic show jumpers, rowers, runners, including the London Olympics’ chairman Lord Coe, I thought it would be interesting to find some clips of great sporting moments demonstrating particularly good use. In the end, I decided to limit myself, to a man who was not an Olympian, but is regarded as the best batsman of all time – Don Bradman. Don Bradman was a man Alexander very much admired and in this clip from You Tube you can see why. 

If you watch Bradman demonstrating each stroke at 2.48 you will see that for each stroke he carefully puts lengthens over the leg he wants to support him before stepping forward or backwards with the other leg. The bat is raised as he goes over the supporting leg and is only used to make the stroke once the moving leg has been placed where Bradman wants it. As, he says they are all ‘practically the same.’ It is a beautiful display of control and use.

For those who crave a little Olympic Glory, here are two clips Seb Coe winning the 1500 in Moscow and then the British Gold medal winning coxless four rowing team in Athens where Mathew Pinsett and Alex Partridge are the two rowers who took lessons. They were taught by Caroline Chishom to ‘overcome an almost religious belief in the contracted muscle, an over-trained physique and an immune system on the blink.’ Semi-supine was to help them recover from races better, to prevent injuries and to boost their immune system. They were also taught about the importance of lengthening muscle for making longer more powerful strokes, while using the hip joints rather than bending at the waist. It all helped with all their other training to help them get Gold. 

No posts till September as its the Olympics and then the festival here in Edinburgh. 

Introducing Inhibition

Withholding consent, refraining from doing what one has always done, stopping yourself from relying on old habits, inhibiting, to use Alexander’s word, is the first step in his technique. The second is directing, but that can only come when one has first inhibited what one does not want.

Knowing what one does not want is actually the hard part, for it involves a ‘knowing what,’ that encompasses sufficient awareness of movement, for ‘know how’ to develop. So someone who reads in a book that they want to ‘keep their neck free, and allow their head to go forward up’ may be able to tell you that this is what is wanted without any awareness of what this actually means in their own case. 

Understanding what it means in your own case can be gained in many ways but is most easily done with a teacher.  Teachers, being different, use different approaches to helping pupils develop their own individual understanding. My own preferred ways of working start most often with looking at how pupils move from sitting to standing and how they move from standing into a walk. I use the two activities to help pupils develop a basic understanding of what they do not want, so that they can learn to refrain from starting off the movement, in their old familiar way, by relying on their habit.

What happens in both cases is that people unfamiliar with Alexander work pull forward by tightening their neck muscles, shifting their weight on to the balls of their feet as they shorten in stature. To not pull forward, to not tighten, is to keep the neck free in relation to the desired action of which the movement of coming forward is a constituent part. This is inhibition and the inhibitory part of what were called ‘guiding orders’ or ‘direction’ by Alexander.

There are a sequence of guiding order or directions, from head to toe, that flow in a particular order and taken together form a really good description of what we want and what we do not want in order to let everything flow. It is important to remember that within this positively stated description of keeping your neck free, allowing your head to go forward and up, there is first and foremost an injunction not to tighten, not to pull the head back, not to pull the head down, enfolded within it.

The practicalities of enacting this start with remembering you want to change things and stopping yourself from rushing into action by relying on habit. In stopping, at the beginning you are learning to rehearse for something new, to prevent the familiar from happening, so the unfamiliar can be brought about by wishing and willing. So, in relation to going from sitting to standing or moving from standing into a walk, you must allow yourself to lightly focus on where you want to go. By focussing your attention this way you begin to create the awareness within which you can inhibit what you do not want, the pull forward, the tightening, the shortening. 

From there directions as to what you do want can be rehearsed and at the ‘still point’ which is reached by following these stages, the ‘still point’ where one’s breathing is released, there is a sense for those beginning lessons of it being impossible to move without tightening. Reaching that place allows a new question to be posed of ‘how do I move without tightening, how can I move freely?’ Both are good questions that need to be answered, how you do that requires another blog. In the meantime, getting to the place where the questions have relevance is the task of all Alexander pupils. 

Alexander Technique and Chronic Pain – New Research

Following on from the recent research on Alexander Technique and chronic back pain, new research has been done on giving lessons to help people with pain management at an NHS Pain Clinic in England. While not a full clinical trial, the research evidence further supports the effectiveness of Alexander Technique in helping people with Chronic Pain. The people who took part in the study, while self-selecting, reported improvements in their quality of life and an ability to reduce medication. The pupils who did best were those committed to self-management and therefore learning what they could from the six lessons they were given. The lead consultant commented on the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique as a ‘psychological’ intervention noting that the overall pain experienced remained constant while feelings of well being and quality of life improved.

The number of lessons involved means that it would be surprising if people whose pain was chronic experienced any reduction in pain. If that was going to happen, it would be expected to take many more lessons and for some people the reality is that chronic pain is just going to be part of their daily life. That does not mean, as this research demonstrates, that one can do nothing to help oneself; that one has to live an ever diminishing life – there is still always a choice.
That choice centres on where one places one’s attention. 

The standard pain reaction involves a move from being aware of pain to directly attending to it. What happens in that move to attending to pain is that emergency response mechanisms get activated, the body tends to stiffen, and the meaning of the pain is sought in its implications for the immediate present and then the distant future. There is a psycho-physical response of our whole being. 

Where pain is ongoing of course the habit of attending to the pain, looking for it becomes established. What every parent, with a small child in pain, knows of course is that it is important to distract the child, to encourage it to look elsewhere. So with Alexander Technique and looking at habits in relation to pain, and not just physical pain either. The necessity is to learn to become conscious of where one is directing one’s attention, the nature of that attention and how consciously learning to direct attention elsewhere, in a manner where one’s breathing releases, deepens, changes things, produces feelings of well being, as well as establishing a sense of control as a new habit is established.

If Alexander Technique were solely concerned with distraction and the control of attention, it would not differ from other psychological approaches. What it adds is that in recognition of our embodiment, in its assumption that we are psycho-physical, it encourages people to develop control of their whole response, so that the postural mal-adaptions to chronic pain are lessened through the development of a manner of using one’s self that is optimal in terms of not just pyshco-physical functioning but of physical functioning and psychological functioning, as this research helps further establish. 

Knowing How v Knowing That

I first became aware of Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ while studying philosophy at Aberdeen University as an undergraduate. It is a distinction whose importance I have found myself reflecting on for a number of reasons, not least the importance Alexander placed on it in emphasising the importance of the ‘means-whereby’ we go about our business. Alexander, I think it is fair to say, was dismissive of ‘knowing that’; there are numerous accounts of him turning away from encounters with eminent people, who might have helped him promote his work, on the basis that for him their ‘use’ was obviously, shall we say, not what it might be.

I suspect that while necessary, in some senses to protect the developing use and practice of the Alexander Technique, it has rather isolated the Alexander world from developing its theory, which is there in the writings of Alexander. This is a pity, there is much the Alexander world can learn from others, equally there is much others can learn from us, in what we can observe and teach. 

I was reminded of this at the weekend when I was at Trinity College in Dublin, attending the European Personal Construct Association’s (EPCA) conference. I had the privilege of running a workshop linking my work as an Alexander Technique Teacher and as a Psychotherapist. I will spare you the full title but the workshop focused on how Alexander Technique and Conscious Control can be helpful inter-personally in getting at habits laid down in the early weeks of life. Habits that have a profound effect on how we experience ourselves and then others. 

While I think that not only did Alexander recognise a link and aim to work with it, I think that for many reasons his work and writings here are limited. Yet, they went on to inspire people like Margaret Naumburg who founded Art Therapy in the United States, Fritz Perls who started Gestalt Therapy, and through John Dewey, George Kelly who developed Personal Construct Psychology. Not enough work has been done to trace Alexander’s influence or to develop the theoretical links that would help expand his work in its practical reach.

On the ground individual teachers continue to make a difference, making links and finding people who are interested. Alexander Technique teachers have a lot to offer in terms of ‘know how’ or the ‘mean’s whereby’; we can learn to control not only our behaviour but what Alexander termed our ‘manner of reaction.’ He was explicit in his last book that people who were familiar with his work had missed the significance of his work here. 

Fortunately not everyone has missed it as a welcome bit of news in my inbox today attests to, in that Eric Donnison and Caroline Dale are organising a project to teach AT to the kids, parents and staff of Kid’s Company founded by the truly remarkable Camila Batmanghelidjh. It’s a project one can only wish well to in its proposed undertaking of offering Alexander Technique and its ‘know-how’ to people who have had a very raw start in life. 

Being Alive

Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 this week featured Elizabeth Walker, who at 97 is still teaching the Alexander Technique. She is the last living teacher trained by Alexander and has been teaching for seventy years. The interview contained a number of gems, the importance of taking the work seriously without being serious, the importance of the inhibition and keeping things free. Perhaps the most inspiring thing is, that Elizabeth is still working, not many 97 years old can say that. She is also still getting better at what she does, again how many people can say that at 97. The sceptically minded, who manage to listen, may think this is eulogising on the part of her student, who has come back for lessons. Yet anyone with any experience of Alexander Technique Teacher’s as they age, will recognise not just that it is plausible but it is truthful. Older teachers if they are any good, develop a clarity of intention, by stripping away all the unnecessary elements, to leave only what is necessary. It is one of the attractive features of being a teacher, you get better as you age, that’s what allows teacher to keep going through their eighties, often until ninety, doing what by any standards is a physical job. The secret of course is knowing how to use yourself, keeping yourself free, not tightening unnecessarily – this is not just true for teaching but any skilled activity. Elizabeth also made the case for her continuing to teach. It helps both her and her pupils feel alive. This is as good a reason for doing anything that I know, and it is one that George Kelly recognised as being an indication of successful therapy.

Feeling alive, a meaningful life, comes in many forms not just Alexander work – it comes from having something meaningful to do. The item following Elizabeth Walker on Women’s Hour rather reinforced this for me. It featured Rachel Wotton an Australian sex worker, who works with disabled people. It is a subject that outrages some but then I do not think they really consider the alienation and rejection that people who are disabled have when they find it difficult or impossible to find a partner. I suspect that this come in part from not wanting to think that the disabled get horny and want to have sex - just as much as the next person. 


If you want to think about this more, then a good place to start is the very funny, entertaining and touching French film Nationale 7.  I saw it a few years back and a working both as a Alexander Technique Teacher and a psychotherapist has confirmed the need for an open discussion and meaningful action here. Rachel Wotton made an intelligent case for this on Women’s Hour. Like Elizabeth Walker, her work is obviously meaningful for her and helps her feel alive; while again like Elizabeth she helps others to a better quality of life. Both women demonstrate in their lives what is existentially important, meaning, helping others and feeling alive and should be respected accordingly.

No blog for two weeks as I am away at conferences and training days. Women’s Hour is available on BBC I-Player until Tuesday 19^th June. Elizabeth Walker starts at 11mins and 55 secs, Rachel Wotton at  19mins and 20 secs. Elizabeth Walker is on You Tube here, while the website for a documentary on Rachel Wotton is here. 

Why We Need A Teacher

Alexander believed anyone could do what he did in working things out for himself; he also believed that lessons would reduce the time needed to do so. I am far from certain about the former statement, while being pretty sure of the latter. The problems in working it out for oneself are many, even if you have the excellent guide that is given by Alexander in chapter one of his third book ‘The Use of The Self.’ This account of how he worked things out is undoubtedly idealised, but in his idealisation Alexander lays out a pretty good framework for learning what he knew. 

Within that account the chief difficulty becomes apparent, namely the need to do something unfamiliar, not to rely on habit, not to rely on feeling, to allow something different to happen. All too often at the last second, we revert to the familiar, go with the habit, make our usual choice, missing the new road that is in front of us.

Alexander was well aware of this, as the most recent blog by Robert Rickover makes clear. Alexander’s practical experience of teaching both himself and others emphasised this tendency to revert, to rely on habit, to rely on old conceptions of how to go about things, even simple things like sitting and walking.

In talking of conceptions here, it is worth remembering a belief of Alexander’s, that John Dewey picked up on, namely that experience precedes conception. There are some very deep waters we could get into here about conception and what is going on in general, but from a practical point of view Alexander is right. Only when you have experience can you really begin to know, to have concepts in terms of ‘knowing how,’ which is very different from ‘knowing that.’

Getting the experiences is where a teacher comes in, where the teacher can help you gain in minutes experiences that it took Alexander months to work through. Those first experiences of difference in how you can move, how you might use yourself, are what allow you to begin to be aware of what you currently do, how you currently work, what you might stop, what might be right, what might be wrong in terms of how we function. 

We too often rely on the pre-verbal solutions of our childhood, modified haphazardly or sometimes modified consciously and badly, as our way forward. A teacher can help us correct these by making plain the implications of our patterns of use, our habits, not just verbally but through experience and words, putting the two together so we can learn the concepts for ourselves. As we do so, we develop Conscious Control for ourselves; we can use ourselves intentionally. 

Without a teacher we are liable to lose ourselves, always returning to old habits, relying on old feelings of right, that are wrong; tying ourselves in knots, missing the way forward, repeating old mistakes, following the old ways, that have led us into impasse, always, and forever will do so, unless, we first learn to stop, call a halt. With that a teacher can help, before pointing the way to a new use, new habits that can free us towards a better and more constructive use of ourselves.  

Sciatica And Semi-Supine

Exchanging emails with a friend today they told me of their plan to spend the weekend on the floor in the hope of easing their sciatica. This blog is an open letter of sorts to them about what they might do; how they might help themselves using the semi-supine procedure that I know that they have learned from their Alexander Technique lessons. 

I have a particular interest in sciatica; it was what led me to Alexander lessons in the first place. I was relatively young at 24 to suffer the severity of sciatic pain that I had; it would flair up making it extremely painful to walk and I would have to take time off work to let things settle down – anti-inflammatories after the first episode seemed to have no efficacy. I tried all sorts of treatment and became familiar with a number of different physiotherapy departments, went on the machines to have my spine stretched, even had surgery. The result was always the same, things would get better and I would go back to work; three months of thirteen-hour days (I was working as an accountant in London at the time) saw me off work again.

I only properly understood the cycle after my first Alexander Technique lesson, when I suddenly saw how the way I sat caused the pressure on the nerves that caused the pain. Now Alexander Technique did not cure the sciatica, it does not claim to, but it was the one thing that helped through, giving me control of my use and, through that, the ability to relieve the pressure.

At first, that control was only there, as sometimes happens, when I was lying in semi-supine, later it came when I was standing up, until now when I can get it pretty much almost anywhere. This allows me to live a full and active life, I can say I never cripple myself with sciatica now, if that is not tempting fate. A pain is almost always there in the background because of the way my back is, but to repeat, it does not bother me. I know enough to not attend to it, to direct my attention elsewhere, to interrupt the standard pain reaction in favour of elaborating what works.

And it is this, not the basic instructions for semi-supine (I’ll put them up on the blog sometime) that I want to tell my friend. Elaborate the orthogonal, go for the vertical, do not try and sort out the pain. You will only attend to it directly, end gain and make it worse. It is only when instead of relating to the pain directly by attending to it, that you allow yourself to begin to focus elsewhere, that things begin to work, almost by magic, except it is not magic, it’s predictable, repeatable, if you know about use and the use of the eyes.

If you can find a way to lightly focus on the ceiling, without concentration, without fixing the eyes, it will all start to work; it is a matter of getting curious and wondering. A helpful thought, sometimes, if the ceiling is too boring, the pain too distracting, is to imagine a brightly coloured mobile just above your eyes. If you allow yourself to see it, the same thing will happen, your eyes will open wide with wonder, things will start to work – you have created the awareness within which you can work with the directions. It is always the shift of attention, brought about through leaving yourself alone. When that happens, you start to breathe and things ease off. From experience, released breathing means a back that is working well; a back that is working well means released breathing. It’s chicken and egg sometimes, except in the case of sciatica, where the breathing comes first.