An accompaniment to life

Hi all! First of all, apologies for not having written in a while, it's been busy. Second, there are quite a few new subscribers to the website since I last wrote and I would like to quickly re-introduce myself. I'm Marie, I do various things in alternative health - I teach the Alexander Technique, and more recently I have introduced nutritional therapy and homeopathy to my practice. If you want to find out more about the Alexander Technique side of my practice, then www.poiseforlife.com is for you; everything nutrition and homeopathy is set out in my sister website at www.marieperezwellness.com. Do reach out if I can help in any way.

I wanted to talk briefly in this newsletter about taking the Alexander Technique outside of the teaching room. This Technique is very much taught, it is education, or as Alexander liked to say, re-education - because we are looking to return to a state before we developed unhelpful and subconscious patterns of use or ourselves. In other words, it is not therapy, it is not something that gets done to us, like a beauty treatment. The aim of Alexander Technique lessons is to help the pupil or student to become aware of unhelpful habits in the way that the person "uses" him or herself, and to learn how to undo those habits. But habit is oh so pernicious, it hangs on in there (the brain loves a habit, it means it doesn't have to think), and so it can take a while. And so we need to do our homework.

Good use of the self does not stop the moment the Alexander lesson stops. In fact, that's the moment that the work really begins. A colleague of mine describes the Technique as an "accompaniment to life", and I agree. You can take the Technique everywhere and anywhere with you, inside your head, and apply it to every activity of life. It doesn't have to take up hours of your time - who has hours of spare time? - it is literally a seconds' thought as you move through your day.

There is a tendency for people learning the Technique to throw it all out the windown the moment the teacher takes their hands off. I was myself guilty of this when training to teach - I remember Ruth (Ruth Murray, head of teacher training at CTC when I trained) bemoaning the fact that we the students would all mindlessly put on our shoes and traipse out the door looking at our phones the moment tea break came around on the training course! And I observe this same tendency in pupils - all goes well until I take my hands off, they sit down to put on their shoes but do it in a state of collapse. Or immediately go back to standing with all their weight on one leg. Or speak to me with their head on one side. I am trying my best not to sound like a teacher telling off the school children, but the real work begins once the lesson finishes and you head out the door. Observe yourself as you go through your day - catch yourself in habit. How are you standing as you wait on the tube platform? How are you using yourself as you look at your phone? What happens as you watch TV?

A long term client remarked last week that he knows he has to be very careful when he has to reach overhead - to install a curtain rail, or fetch something down from a high shelf. He thinks carefully about how to place his feet, how to reach up, what is happening to his lower back as he reaches up. Top marks - this is using the Technique in everyday life, this is doing your homework. How do you bend down to pick up the dog poo? To put your shoes on? How do you reach the jam from the top shelf?

As I say, it does not (and should not) take hours of involved thought, it is a moment's consideration, light as a feather. If anything I have said here doesn't make sense, please do take it up with me at the next lesson, I'm here to help.

All the best

Marie