Recently I attended an excellent group plyometrics class at my local gym (a type of body weight interval training). I hadn't been doing this type of workout much lately, and by the end I was pretty worn out. As my legs got worn out, I realized that I was initiating the athletic motions of the class more and more with my shoulders. I could feel them coming up off my back in an effort to struggle through the last couple of minutes of the class. I noticed how much harder may of the movements were when I coordinated myself this way.

Returning for another class a couple days later, I noticed something--many people started with their shoulders off their back. By halfway through the class, many of these folks were stopping and holding their backs and necks in pain. 

Lets clarify something--when I talk about the shoulders, I am not talking about the colloquial shoulders that are on either side of our necks--those are actually the top of one layer of our back muscles (notice these same muscles extend from the mid-back to where the spine meets the skull)

Instead I am talking about the shoulder blades which you will notice are anchored significantly lower on your back and are the root of our arms--functionally they are inseparable. 

When we start a movement by contracting the shoulder blades off of the back, instead of our body working as a whole (including the complex and powerful layers of muscle in your whole back and legs) we hyper engage the muscles of the upper back and arms, which are much weaker and quickly wear out. When we do this, we don't recruit the larger muscle groups--their use is prohibited by the overuse of part of ourselves. 

Essentially, effort in the shoulders and arms prevents proper effort in the legs and whole body, cutting us off from our full strength. 

These muscles are also inseparable from the muscles of the neck, so as we use them we are invariably shortening and compressing the whole spine, resulting in weaker movement, discomfort, and potential injury. And the more we use these muscles, the more they become our 'go to', cutting us off from the ability to become whole body fit. 

Most fitness instructors know this. Their advice is to pull the shoulders back. There is a problem with this age old advice-when we try to do this we usually arch the back instead, which makes it feel as if the shoulders are releasing down even when they aren't, and further compromising the spine's integrity (a la the dancer below).

So what can we do instead? Here are a few constructive tips:

• Think of releasing the shoulder blades out and down into the support of the back rather than pulling them down. A nice thought is that the back is like a hammock there to catch them.
• Think of the back and the shoulder blades as one indivisible unit. If you cant reach something with your arms without moving your shoulder blades, move your legs/whole body instead. 
• Take your mind off of your arms/shoulders and into your legs and the support of the ground. The more you accept the support of the ground, the more your shoulders won't feel the need to work. If you include your legs, the movements inherently become coordinated, full body movements. 

These ideas apply as much to our everyday movements as to athletics and exercise. Imagine applying these ideas to using a computer, doing dishes, giving a presentation at work, etc.

There is a deeper metaphor here. The physical is never just physical.  We often respond to the challenges of the world (physical, intellectual, or emotional) by 'taking them on our shoulders' or our 'backs' (the arched spine). What if instead we could respond by sending them through our legs to the ground, or tackling them with our whole selves instead, instead of our weaker partial selves? 

​That would be a beautiful thing indeed. 

 I recently received a query from a potential student living in Hyde Park on the south side of the city. They were inquiring about whether I would travel for sessions, because after a comprehensive search they could not find an A.T. teacher within a reasonable commute. The closest teacher works in the Loop, which is not easily accessible by public transport for some areas of the south side.

A quick google search or look at the Chicago Area Teachers of the Alexander Technique page  confirms that there are no A.T. teachers on the diverse south or west sides (past Wicker Park) of the city, or even the south suburbs. We are concentrated almost entirely on the predominantly white north side, and in the western and northern suburbs. 

I was stunned by this rather graphic representation of how non-diverse Alexander Technique practice tends to be. From the inception of the Technique, despite Alexander's humble personal roots, it has been accessible overwhelmingly to those with a high level of privilege. Typically this has been white well-off folks (Alexander's original clientele was the British Aristocracy).  In America, that has by and large continued.

I posed the title of this blog as a question, because I don't know what the answer is. I am privileged, and don't come from a minority that lacks representative in A.T. circles (being a white Jewish man). I am actively working to find ways for this work to reach different people than it typically has. More than anything I want to foster dialogue about how we as a community of learners can work together to change this situation.

At the Alexander Technique International Congress I learned about a coalition of teachers called the Alexander Technique Diversity Coalition (Like their Facebook!). I attended a panel where several members of the Coalition shared both their experiences both of becoming teachers while coming from minorities and methods and experiences in reaching these communities. I learned a lot, and I encourage you to check them out and to read the fabulous list of resources they have. 

I would like to request your help in finding ways I can reach and interact with Chicago communities that don't have access to this work. . I have not had a completely monochromatic practice, but I think this has more to do with my association with institutions like Green Shirt Studio and The Voice Lab  than my own concentrated efforts. 

Here are some commitments I've made for the coming year that I hope will help:

• I plan to reach out to south and west side organisations (as well as appropriate north side orgs as well) to try to create partnerships, especially subsidized or group programs to overcome economic hurdles to studying and to find creative ways to introduce the work to different populations. .
• I am establishing formal sliding scale and pay-what-you-can on private lessons and programs that I run independently to create access for folks who don't have it now. To help with this, I have received a small endowment from a private benefactor.  Details on this will be available on my website soon, but until then feel free to email me with questions. I am also looking to create new unconventional methods of teaching to help reach folks that don't have the time or money for the usual ways of learning this work. 
• One thing I have already attempted to do is to make sure the visuals on my website and other materials reflect the diversity I wish my practice to have, as well as making sure the voices of minority students are included as much as possible in testimonials and other community oriented communications (this was a big issue raised at the Diversity Coalition panel). I am committed to continuing and improving this practice. I want everyone to feel that this work is for them. 

Lastly, I am committed to learning from YOU about how I may better serve Chicago's diverse communities. I encourage you to reach out if you have any ideas or feedback that might be able to help. 

You might have noticed I'm not going to be around much for the next couple of weeks. Thanks for your patience--it will be worth it. 

This week and the next I am attending two special events: the Annual Conference and General Meeting for AmSAT (the national professional body I am a part of) and the 2018 Alexander Technique World Congress, both taking place at Loyola University Chicago over the span of a week and a half. While both events are exciting (I am on the organizing committee for the national conference) the Congress is particularly noteworthy as it only happens every few years, will gather over 600 teachers together from around the globe, and hasn't taken place in the U.S. since the year I was born. 

I am excited for the opportunity for community, exchange of ideas, and learning. What I am most excited about is the ability to bring new services, techniques, and ideas to you in the Freedom In Motion community. So here are just a few of the things I am excited for:

• Speakers and Plenary Session from Actor David Hyde Pierce, neuroscience authority Norman Doige (author of 'The Brain That Changes Itself'), evolution expert Dr Neil Shubin, Circlesong Instructor Judi Vinar, and Buddhist teacher Roshi Joan Halifax.
• Continuing education sessions with Bruce Fertman (authority in human touch), Joan Schirle (founder of the Dell Arte international theater school and performance company), Jessica Wolfe (professor at Yale and expert in breath work), Pedro de Alcantara (integrating spirals) and Judi Stern (leveraging the force of gravity for easier movement). 
• Numerous other workshops on topics as diverse as releasing hip sockets, using the inner ear balancing mechanism to free up resonators in vocalists, Alexander Technique games, movement improvisation, connections to trauma, and even slack line.The opportunity to exchange work and perspective with teachers from diverse training backgrounds and traditions. 

As you can see, these conferences are going to provide a bevy of new energy into our work together. I can't wait to share it with you.

-Jeremy

If you are like me, enormous swaths of your time the last couple weeks have been spent breathless in front of your television watching Wimbledon. 

I grew up playing tennis with my family. Most of the exercise I got was from retrieving balls I knocked over the fence, the result of trying to hit the ball with my arm as hard as I could. Since becoming trained in Alexander Technique, I have returned to both watching and playing and have found to be it a movement junkie's dream. The coordination, the skill, and the physicality are all intoxicating to watch-- but above all its the poise of the players I admire. I don't know of another sport in which the mental and physical aspects of poise are as clearly reflected in each other as in tennis. 

The Alexander Technique (A.T.) is above all a system for improving your poise and efficiency in activity and movement. Here are some places where A.T. and tennis intersect and how learning A.T. can bump your tennis game to the next level. 

It is natural to focus on your arms and hands while playing tennis--Alexander Technique is a great way to widen your focus to see how your whole self affects your game. One of the reasons I used to shank so many balls was because I only focused on my arms and not a sense of my whole body in motion. Building this whole body connection and coordination is one of the key focuses of A.T. 

Tennis, like many sports, is played almost completely in two positions we work to perfect through A.T.--monkey and lunge. Connecting your upper body to your your legs, a focus of the way I work with clients, is vital to playing tennis effectively. 

Monkey is a form by which all 3 joints of the lower body are engaged to bend without distorting or over-shortening the spine. It is familiar to most tennis lovers as the classic return stance. In A.T. we seek to create the maximum space, tensegrity, and adaptability within this form while using minimum effort. 

Lunge (pictured above) is the form used to shift weight, run, change direction, and actually hit the ball. We look to perfect lightness in this so that our movement on the court can be as dynamic as possible and to allow the upper body the freedom for maximum control and power. 

Once both of these forms are perfected through lessons, you have the basis to build dynamic and enduring form for your game. 

Another key point to playing 'Whole Self Tennis' has to do with the poise of your head and neck--any extra tension in your neck will inevitably cause your shoulders to fly up, which will put extra tension in your arms and hands, messing with your shots. The ability to leave length in your neck, learned through A.T., is invaluable for any player. 

Tennis is an extraordinary quick game--one of the reasons I love to play is because it is hard to be anything but in the moment while on court. Because of that, there is very little time to 'think'--you have to have trust between the lightning quick perception of what must be done and the movement to carry it out. The trust in your body-mind unity (a much better term than 'connection') is invaluable in this, and allows you to adapt with confidence to the demands of the moment. 

What might be even more potent is the framework A.T. gives for Habit change--since there is very little time to think as you respond, the ability to train and build positive habits while breaking negative ones is paramount to success. The unique process Alexander Technique gives for identifying and changing habits with relative ease and speed allows one to handle technical challenges that may arise in training with aplomb. 

Tennis is also a game where you have to 'stick to your game'--if you take your eye off the ball, you are likely to be toast very quickly. In Alexander Technique this is called the 'Means Whereby': sticking to your process and ignoring wanting to skip to the end of it. Really, its a question of focus. Alexander Technique teaches you to maintain focus on throughout movements, and you can transfer that skill into even the longest rally. 

Tennis is a game above all of focus and endurance. In Andre Agassi's autobiography 'Open', he describes it as the loneliest sport--you stand out there for sometimes hours, not able to get support from anyone. The movement efficiency that A.T. teaches can help with the physical endurance, but it might be even more valuable for emotional/mental toughness.

As documented in previous blogs, fear has a distinct physicality. This can easily cause a player to tighten up, affecting the accuracy of their tennis. Interestingly enough, this can happen just as much when a player is winning (especially if they are close to taking a set, break point, or match) as when they are losing. A.T. provides a unique set of tools for releasing the physical tension associated with nerves, letting yourself breath, and re-centering.
​
When players keep this poise, their tennis becomes extraordinarily beautiful to watch and experience. 

This month, Freedom In Motion Alexander Technique turned three. This occasion led me to reflect on not only how grateful I am for all of the wonderful people I've had the chance to learn with over the past three years, but also how much my perspective on the work has changed. Here are three chestnuts I've garnered from my first few years of teaching.

If you want to get serious about change, get light with yourself. Trying hard to change tends to create tension and reinforce pre-existing patterns--the remarkable thing about play is that it allows us the possibility to step outside of ourselves with curiosity and non-judgement and try on something new without the pressure of analyzing it. I have learned not to go anywhere deep with a student until a sense of play is established--play is, in essence, both courage and safety. If you can say 'that was fun' rather than 'that was right', you are working in a useful way. 

I often say one of the paradoxes of this work is that it attracts clients who are searching for more control of some aspect of their lives--and instead challenges them to give control up. The fact is, you can't force release, and trying to let go of tension or habits while remaining firmly in the drivers seat is an irreconcilable contradiction. This work requires a remarkable amount of trust in yourself and in the universe to conspire with you to keep you safe and thrive when stepping outside of your box. In the end, you can only create the best circumstances for release to occur and try to get out of its way. 

One of the key foundations of the Alexander Technique is what F.M. Alexander termed 'Psycho-physical Unity'--the idea that there is nothing mental, physical, or spiritual that is not reflected in both of the other aspects equally. When I first started teaching, I would often see two types of students: those who were seeking the changing of something technical, and those were seeking deep personal growth. I enjoyed both types, and as I have gone on I have found that they have merged: often somebody who comes for a technical issue (back pain, musicianship) end up growing tremendously personally alongside the shifting of that issue, and those who come seeking connection and growth end up creating technical structures that allow that depth to thrive. In the end, its all the same thing! 

I spent 14 years as a BtoB marketer in both the corporate and agency settings. While I looked very successful on paper, I felt like an impostor and failure in my heart. In giving myself the permission to slow down and reflect, I've been propelled into a world of more connection, community, and support. The healthier, happier, and more mindful I am the more fulfillment and success is invited into my life. It’s a pretty beautiful thing!

​On days of rest you can find me with my husband and pup-dog Charlie mindfully boating on Lake Michigan, skiing in the Colorado Rockies or cooking up a new dish while sipping a glass (or two) of old-vine Zin.

​I love to act and sing and be a part of Chicago theater. I am also passionate about how the arts can be used for healing. I love that I can combine my passion for theater with my passion for psychology through Psychodrama. Psychodrama is an expressive arts therapy that can be used to help people understand and change the roles they play in their lives along with decreasing depression and anxiety. 

​My lessons have helped me understand how my body moves through space, the relationship between my body and my breath, and my physical habits that arise in audition situations. Lessons have helped me to begin to change these habits so that I can approach the audition in a different way. 

I hope to approach auditions in a more free and playful way allowing my creativity to be expressed more easily. ​

I just finished reading Norman Doige's 'The Brain That Changes Itself', a book on the way our brain can rewire itself in response to circumstance and training. This plasticity is what is being exercised during Alexander Technique lessons--our habits our wired one way, and by giving a process to step outside of them the Alexander Technique loosens these habits and strengthens new ones, eventually allowing the new habits to become fixed. It's pretty cool stuff (Doige will be speaking at the International Alexander Technique Congress taking place at Loyola University Chicago this summer)!

One aspect of this process I find particularly important is the idea that in order to cement these new habits we need to have a feeling of reward attached to the change (literally dopamine coming into our system). Without it, our brain doesn't reorganize effectively. Anybody who has taken an Alexander Technique lesson knows this can be initially hard to come by--working against your habit can feel disorienting and feel 'wrong' until you get used to it. We are also maddeningly wired to pay more attention to problems than progress (see the indispensable 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman) and tend to skip rewarding ourselves in order to work on the next thing we find wrong with ourselves. In doing this, we actually slow progress and can trap ourselves in our old habits. 

There are several things I do as a teacher to try to help students feel reward for changing and taking risks:

• Video review helps students to see their patterns changing and takes away a feeling of uncertainty in their progress.
• Relaxing table work serves as a reward for taking risks. 
• The natural absence of effort in better movement is pleasurable even if the movement feels different, as is the feeling of relaxation that comes from hands on work.
• I try to give constant positive feedback when a student is releasing and taking risks. This often takes the form of little phrases: 'good' 'that's the way' 'there we go' etc. Oftentimes this is confusing for a student at first--they don't know what I'm feeding back on. Gradually, as awareness is shaped, they are able to sense the difference themselves, or come to enjoy the 'right kind of discomfort' as a sign that they are changing.
• Along these lines, I will often get students to celebrate 'mistakes' by yelling 'yes', pumping their fist, and doing a little dance. This helps to break the cycle of self judgement and always following the need to be comfortable and 'right' and pretty much ensures a nice dopamine release.

There is one other way in which I work with clients to create a feeling of reward: tying in unrelated prize to something you are uncomfortable doing. Specific goals with specific rewards can help us overcome the hump of trying to create change in our lives. The beauty is that it doesn't always have to be complicated. I once had a student make significant progress by promising to buy her her favorite candy if she did Active Rest every day for a month. Not only did she make progress on her goals, but it has cemented the habit--she now continues to do lie downs every day without any sugary reward.

I guess the takeaway is simple: Whatever aspect of your life you are trying to improve right now, don't skip the reward. Without it, all of the hard work in the world might not get you very far. 
​

Does the way you move feel like 'you'? In our 40 minute free April mini-webinar, we will explore different postural and movement options and give you the opportunity to experiment with what resonates most with you. RSVP on the form below to register and get the link to join (you will also get an email the day before the workshop with info about the webinar and how to join). 

Saturday April 14th, 11am via Zoom.

There is a moment near the beginning of almost every first appointment I have with a client when they look down for a moment and their face freezes.

'I have always had bad posture. I need to work on that.' they say in a quiet voice. There is an air of shame about the statement.

The idea of good and bad posture is pervasive in our society. Whether its a nun with a ruler or a practitioner who tells you that your chronic pain is caused by not 'sitting up straight', we all feel that there is some gold standard of shape that we are all falling short of. 

The answer is plainly that there isn't.

If this answer surprises you, let's look at the science. A 2012 study of 295 physiotherapists found that vast disagreements exist about what good sitting posture or even a neutral spinal is. What we think of as 'good' posture has more of a root in puritanism and military culture than it does in anything anatomical. Often, our idea of what posture we should be adopting has more to do with appearance than health and is tied to the body shaming pervasive in our society. 

What is even more disturbing is when posture is pathologized. The shape we hold ourselves in is often blamed for conditions like back and neck pain, but the truth is that there is little evidence to back this up and in fact plenty to the contrary. Studies have found that people of all shapes have pain, while people of all shapes also are pain free, suggesting there is no one-to-one relation between postural shape and chronic pain. Well meaning people can accidentally instill a nocebo (like placebo, but in the other direction) effect and actually make pain worse by perpetuating this myth. (for more about the complexities of pain science, read this excellent article--its an investment but worth it). 

In our Alexander Technique lessons, the goal isn't to mold you into some ideal shape that you've been failing at--it is to help you to release habits that have been imposed on your body that are keeping you from living with space and ease and to forge a deeper connection between body and mind. Most often the first habit we look at is this habit of trying to assume 'good posture' and why it fails--in trying to twist ourselves into an artificial shape, we use muscles against their design, over-stabilize, and exhaust ourselves. 

There is nothing wrong with your shape. It is beautiful. And working together, we can help you to get the most out of it. 

To learn more about why you should embrace the idea of imperfect posture, check out our free monthly webinar Saturday March 17th at 2pm.