In earlier blog posts, I have detailed how I was introduced to the Alexander Technique in college and how it provided profound benefits to me as a performer and a person. But post graduation, there were a few years when my involvement with the Technique was minimal. I moved to Chicago with every intention of becoming a full-time professional actor, but no illusions about how difficult this would be. I knew it would be an uphill climb and require a tremendous amount of dedication and energy, and a strong possibility of failure. What I didn't know was that the way the Chicago theater scene is set up, you can work with good companies indefinitely without it ever being financially supportive. In addition, the day job necessary to support you while working at these theaters (most of which structure rehearsals around standard 9-5 work hours) makes it difficult to audition for film and commercial work which could theoretically make up the difference. What this means is that most actors are working 40 hours a week and then rehearsing for another 20+, in addition to auditions, classes to create connections and improve your work, and maybe (maybe) a personal life, much of which happens in bars post 11pm. The sum total of this was exhaustion. This was the conundrum I found myself in 4 years into my Chicago experience. I had worked a potpourri of day jobs: box offices, apartment rental agent, customer service, the restaurant industry. I was lucky enough to be more or less continually employed by respectable theater companies and some amount of intermittent on camera work. Most of these jobs, despite sometimes being union or with well known theaters, payed either a stipend or a non-supportive weekly salary. Sustaining this was taking its toll. I was tired ALL of the time. I was depressed that I could be considered successful without it actually being a sustainable career. And the exhaustion was effecting my work: I found myself falling back into bad habits onstage, being tense in my body, and going numb to what I was creating. I had intermittently used my Alexander Technique training from university throughout my career (to a certain extent it was part and parcel with every performance I gave), but I wasn't actively applying it offstage. During one particularly strain-full schedule, I lit upon the idea to use Active Rest as a way to try to leave the frustration and fatigue from my day job behind going into my evening. This idea changed my life. I found a remarkable difference in how much of myself I was able to bring to rehearsal at night, how much fresher I felt, how much more engaged and full of ease. I then decided to try to apply Alexander principles to my day job, found even more freedom. This helped me realize that the way I lived my life effects my art as much as anything I did while creating. I eventually decided to take a series of private lessons with the excellent Roscoe Village based teacher Courtney Brown, and this renewal of my creative life through the work resulted in my decision to get certified as a teacher. It is this experience that inspired the workshop I am teaching at Green Shirt Studio this Sunday: 'Day Job Survival Strategies from the Alexander Technique'. I will share some of my insights on how the Alexander Technique can create a 'trickle up' effect from your day job to your performance. I hope you will consider joining us.
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3/25/2016 0 Comments Quick Tip: Don't Over (not) Do ItIts Spring. That means The world is awakening from its winter slumber, and with it, our drive to get out, enjoy, and accomplish. I've noticed a curious phenomenon among my students over the last week or two. I spend a lot of time working on the Alexandrian concept of Inhibition with them--not reacting immediately to a stimulus to give time for consciousness, choice, and change. Normally, this serves as a check on the overwhelming urge to 'do'--Endgaining without examining the Means-Whereby one might accomplish a task. But with the advent of the active season, it seems this has turned. A couple students have reported to me that their Directions have not been as useful lately, and they have found Inhibition to be frustrating. I ask them how often they try to apply the work. They say 'all the time'. And here is the root of the problem. It always pays dividends to apply Alexander work with a light touch. There is such a thing as too much of a something good, and if you are constantly trying to Inhibit and Direct every moment, it is easy for it to turn into over-control, or even over-effort. Our drive for life and accomplishment (which for many of us has an over-arching tension in it) takes over and starts infecting our efforts to be more free. To minimize this, in times of stress or enthusiasm, rather than reacting to the stimulus to 'do' by over-Inhibiting, let your self have a moment of pause every couple hours or just once a day. You will find more freedom without being tempted into anxiety or it feeling restrictive to your love of life. As my first teacher Betsy used to say 'Inhibition is really just saying Yes to everything'. To say there is a lot of anxiety in the air right now is an understatement. Among other things, caregivers report a strong uptick in clients due to stress from the presidential election. But for many of us, anxiety is something we deal with on a daily basis. There are a lot of ways the Alexander Technique can help anxiety. By helping us to live more in the present, with less habitual tension, it can help us to undo frozen feeling stored in our body and clear our emotional life to flow freely. It can also help us to recognize the beginning of an anxious reaction and release it while it is manageable. Below is a link to a stream-able on Soundcloud 10-minute active rest talk-through meant to help prevent and release anxiety and bring you into a healthier state of mind and body. In case you have not experienced active rest before, I have included basic written instructions underneath the link, as well as the above image of what the position looks like (no massage table necessary, just a firm surface such as a yoga mat or blanket on the floor.). Enjoy and Keep Thinking Up! Soundcloud Active Rest Talk Through to Ease Anxiety How to Do Active Rest
Lie on the floor with books under your head, knees towards the ceiling, and feet balanced with the heel and ball touching the floor. The height of the books should be such as to not allow your head to loll backwards, but not so high as to make you feel like the front of your throat is pinched. Your hands should be placed comfortably on your belly or lower ribs with your elbows wide and resting on the floor in a way so as they can feel secure. This nearly completely supported position reinforces the natural positive directions of the body: Neck freeing, spine lightly stretching, back widening , legs freeing away from the torso, arms relaxed and connected, elbows widening and released to the floor. This position can re-expand the discs between your vertebrae and helps you to regenerate spinal fluid, as well as releasing excess tension from your body and mind. Optimally, you should do it for somewhere between 12 and twenty minutes in the middle of the day. It can also be used to get in touch with your body’s directions before a performance or to help relax you before bed for better quality sleep. I didn't set out to write a blog with a stupid millennial boy band reference. It just turned out that way. This series is going to feature a breakdown of the basic Alexander Directions--taken one at a time. One...direction...at a time. Get it? Ok, now that you've stopped laughing hilariously, you are probably thinking 'what are these directions you speak of?' Directions are postural 'thoughts' you give yourself. The relationships that help to create length and space in our poise are very delicate, and cannot be forced with muscular effort. Trying to pull yourself into good poise actually results in tension and shortening. By definition muscles contract to work. Nor can they be forced to released, at least not without a qualified massage therapist following you around constantly and working on you while you perform every activity, which would be expensive and impractical. However, our minds and bodies are one and the same, and so specific thoughts can encourage these relationships to free up without muscular effort. If you doubt that our thinking can have an impact on our bodies, try this: get up, walk around the room habitually. Good job. Now, try the same thing, but picture your body is made of air. Well done. Did your movement change? Did it fell lighter, easier? This is an example of a gross use of thinking. Directions function on the same principle, but are more specifically targeted, aimed at enlivening our natural suspension system. There are four main directions that F.M. Alexander developed as being primary--having to do with our central postural system--and secondary directions that help to promote freedom in specific 'parts' of the body(arms, elbows, ankles, hips). These directions all have significance separately but, like the boy band, really reach their full harmony, effectiveness, and appeal together. And like the boy band, not every member is the same, and there is a definite formula to how to take them in order to achieve success. So, with the help of the One Direction Wikipedia entry, here we go on our first direction in the 5 part series; 'Allow the Neck to be Free'. Why is this direction important, and why does it come first? Because it is the gateway to everything that happens afterwards. Like songwriter Liam Payne, it is not the flashiest direction, but without it, the more interesting ones(such as 'Head Forward and Up', the Harry Styles direction) would not be able to do their thing. Ultimately, every muscle in our body is networked in to the incredibly complex mass of fibers that make up our neck. Because of that connection, if the neck is shortened or contracted, everything in your body shortens and contracts. As Walter Carrington, the great A.T. teacher, said "When we say free the neck; we in some ways are saying free the whole body". Neck tension also pulls the head out of alignment with the body, preventing other directions in the sequence from being possible.
Literally, if the neck is tight, the following movements cannot occur. In addition, it interferes with the torso's ability to spiral with ease, as the spirals of muscle encasing our torso end at the neck, keeping us from having the flexibility we need in the torso to move and balance easily. Lastly, neck tension coincides with one of the first manifestations of the startle reaction--the response that tightens our body in a fight/flight/freeze way in response to a threat. Freeing the neck is the first step in unwinding this caustic and often un-useful response. Like Liam, it might not be the cutest, it might not have the strongest voice, it may sometimes not seem to have the most engaging personality. It is really hard to get a read on sometimes. But without it, you wouldn't know you were beautiful, and how terrible would that be? So...to take this direction alone: Find a quiet moment, in a healthy seated relationship (feet touching the floor, not slumped on the back of the chair or braced upwards) or constructive rest. Simply, think the thought 'my neck is free'. Speak it gently to yourself in your mind's eye--neither a command or a formless image, Don't try to do anything after thinking it--resist the temptation to try to 'do' the suggestion, resist the temptation to try to feel whether it is working--trust it. Try not to hold your breath. Perhaps count to ten in your mind to make sure you are giving it space to function. Then, give your direction again. It might feel slightly different. This is a sign something has subtly changed. Repeat 5-10 times, and then go back to what you were doing--if you turn your head gently from side to side, does it feel easier to move?Does it take less effort to let it spiral? Some people find an alternative phrasing helpful: Try 'allow the neck to be free' or 'allow the neck to melt into length' as other ways to phrase this direction. See if you can include the whole neck, not just the back: Let it be three dimensional: front, back, and sides. Try working this practice into a daily activity. Does it give you just a bit more freedom? That's it for this week. Check back next week, when we will be discussing 'Forward and Up'--the Harry of the group, which is really what you came here for anyway, right? Rediscovering your Natural Poise:
An Introduction to the Alexander Technique for Actors The Alexander Technique is a century old mind-body discipline which has profound benefits for actors. It builds an actor’s ‘poise’: a state of physical, mental, and emotional readiness which allows the actor to function with better breath, ease, and spontaneity. In this hands-on introductory workshop, we will explore a process of how to let go of habitual tensions which interfere with the actor’s connection. We will learn some basic touch points that will help the actor to reconnect to their natural postural mechanisms and restorative wellness techniques you can take out the door with you and into your daily life. Sunday April 17th 2-3:30pm, Mind Art Core 4945 N. Damen Chicago, IL 60625 $25 Click Here To Register ( Select 'Workshops' and then Apiril 17th on the Calendar) While travelling to visit my girlfriend's family in Mississippi, we listened to Amy Poehler's excellent audiobook 'Yes Please', about her career and life as a performer. One particular passage stuck out to me as useful: “Either way, we both agree that ambivalence is a key to success. I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. You have to care about your work but not the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look." Similarly, I recently listened to an episode of a Podcast, The Tim Ferriss show, in which he interviewed the Olympian Shaun White on his pre-run routine. How did he hype himself up to win all those medals? These are the words he would say to himself at the starting line: "Who Cares." He then went on to site the tennis player Andre Aggasi's autobiography as an influence, in which the champion stated that he got much better at tennis after starting to care less about it. This runs contrary to the movie narrative we've been given about success. At least in America, we are taught the best way to success is to focus on your goal and go after them with 100% effort--he who cares most wins. Impose your will on the situation and make it submit to you. So why do these three people cite as one of the keys to success being 'ambivalent' as to the outcome of their actions? I have a theory, and it has to do with the Alexandrian concept of endgaining. As discussed in a previous blog, endgaining is going for a result without regard for the process that gets you there. When we endgain, it engages all of our previously practiced habits towards our result. If your habits are pristine and in tune with the exact demands of the moment--good for you. However, it is rare that these automatically encoded procedures serve us entirely, and even rarer that they intersect with the complex set of variables that make up any interaction with the world. These habits cut down on our adaptability and ability to respond in the moment. This strategy also tends to coincide with over-efforting--the use of too much force or tension to try to achieve our goal. This works up to a certain point, but to reach truly high levels of performance, a balance is required--just the right tension. Overefforting is also often used to compensate for a lack of preparation or process--fake it until you make it mentality. When you instead allow yourself not to care too much about the outcome, it allows you focus on the means that will get you to your goal--the complex processes that when working together, result in your success. It should be noted that everyone cited above were not ambivalent about their preparation--on the contrary, they are almost obsessively dedicated craftspeople and creators. They are able to relax in the actual performance because they have mastered their means and have learned to trust them. To paraphrase the great A.T. teacher Pedro de Alcantara, 'Relaxation does not produce mastery; mastery produces relaxation'. It is also important that cultivating ambivalence will help you to enjoy your achievements more--as Poehler goes on to describe, caring too much about the outcome of a project can have an emotional backlash: "You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, 'I made it!' You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful. Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else's. It doesn't matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG.” While if you keep the outcome in context, it allows you to enjoy the moment of doing the thing, being present to it, rather than hanging your self-esteem on what happens afterwards. It also helps you not crash if things don't pan out--and fuels you to get up and try again. So ambivalence helps you to enjoy the moment, focus on your process, succeed more, and bounce back better when you fail. Try working this practice into going after whatever your goal is today! And trust that if you concentrate on pulling back the bowstring well, the arrow you release will find its mark. And if not....meh? "A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind" "True victory is victory over oneself." Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido "Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” ― Bruce Lee "It's okay to lose to opponent. Must not lose to fear" --Mr. Miyagi (Fictional) Like many people, I fell in love with the martial arts through movies. Starting out with 'Star Wars' and swashbuckling movies, moving onto 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' and Hong Kong Cinema ('Once Upon a Time in China'; 'IP Man'); the beautiful swirls of movement, at once violent and fluid, turbulent but centered, fascinated me. Being a nerd sometimes picked on by jocks, it made me want to have that strength. I became a martial arts dabbler--I took a fencing class, some T'ai Chi, Shidokan Karate, stage combat classes through my theatre conservatory. One of my mentors at BU, the late playwright/actor/educator Jon Lipsky, was a black belt in Aikido and created an informal class to teach it to some of his students. Though all the classes that had come before had been good for picking up technique and challenging my toughness, this was to be my first taste of the martial arts mindset: Aikido, as taught by Jon, was not just a self-defense technique, but a way to process and improve your daily life, and was as much a mental discipline and philosophy as it was a physical system. Through Jon, I learned that you could conquer an opponent through non-aggression and standing in yourself much more easily than by taking an aggressive approach. It changed my entire concept of what strength is. Fast forward several years to Chicago and my second year of A.T. teacher training. I decided I wanted to re-explore my connection to the martial arts, and lived conveniently close to the Midwest Aikido center, one of the largest and well reputed dojos in the country. Partially to have a hobby to see me through the interminable Chicago winter, I enrolled. While learning there (and nursing bruises after sessions) , I had a remarkable opportunity to notice shared values and similarities between this art and the Alexander Technique. Below are a few simple intersections: 1. Posture is Everything One of the first things you learn in an Aikido class is the importance of your posture. It affects your fluidity of movement and your ability to stand in yourself while meeting the energy of another's attack. If your posture is poor in one way or another, you are off-balance and will be easily swayed when attacked. If you have good posture, you can take the attacker's energy and direct it around your center in a circular motion without having to contribute oppositional energy to the interaction(this can be done whether you move in space with footwork or not). This posture is not just physical but has to do with how you direct your Ki(energy). One of the benefits of learning the Alexander Technique is an improvement in poise, and I found using A.T. Directions(energetic postural thoughts) to channel my Ki to be very effective. Also in common is the concept that the head/neck/spine relationship is central to good movement--nowhere in the Aikido movement vocabulary is this relationship compromised. Howevewr the attacker's Use is compromised as a result of the techniques used on them--this is part of what gives you the power to throw or control them! 2. The Importance of Non-Doing and Adaptability Central to Aikido is the concept that you are not meeting the aggressor's attack with like energy(doing) but with yielding and re-direction(non-doing). In Aikido philosophy, to oppose the energy results in self harm--even if you are physically unscathed from the interaction, the aggressive damage to the other leaves a mark on you. Also, because you are not committing your energy but instead are responding to an attack, its makes you more adaptable than your opponent, which allows you ultimately to win. Part of this is the ability to not respond habitually to an attack but instead choose the means to counter the attack based on what your opponent presents in the moment--all of this is very much in line with the Alexandrian concept of Inhibition. 'Like water', as Bruce Lee would say it, you learn to flow and adapt to any scenario. 3. The Way to Improve is through Self Mastery(Fear is the Enemy) The purpose of Aikido is not necessarily to be able to win a bar fight (although Senseis have a curious way of using that as an example in demonstration scenarios). Rather, it is a way of learning to respond to any scenario with better command and ability, on or off the mat. More than anything else, its learning how to not give in to fear during an attack but instead respond by staying expanded and anchored in calm and how to use someone else's aggressive energy against itself. This counteraction of fear also shows up in the art of taking Ukemi (practicing the attacker role and learning how to roll with throws and locks without being injured). This gives you a feeling of confidence and capability in your life. The idea of learning how to respond to a challenging stimulus by expanding rather than contracting and ignoring the habitual pull of fear is central to the way I teach the Alexander Technique. Most habit is tied to and caused by fear. By breaking or challenging your habit, you challenge and can dispel that fear in your life. This is one of these disciplines greatest common gifts. Below this entry I have included a link to a YouTube clip of the 2013 Japanese team demonstrating at the World Combat Games. I hope you watch and enjoy. Arigato gozaimasu. Until next time. Workshop: The Power of Posture
An Introduction to the Alexander Technique Our posture affects everything we do. From exercise, to working on a computer, to our emotions and interactions with others, the way we 'hold ourselves' against and allow ourselves to 'be held' by gravity has profound effects on our wellness, our effectiveness, and our happiness. Bad posture has been linked to back and neck injury, stress, and depression. In this one hour workshop, learn some basics of how to reclaim your natural, easy lightness and poise from 1600-hour certified Alexander Technique Teacher Jeremy Cohn and see how it can change your life. Saturday March 5th, 10:45am-12:15pm. Spring Yoga and Fitness $25General Public/$20 Spring Members. 3940 N. Lincoln Avenue Register at: http://www.springyogachicago.com/workshops.html I always give my students homework coming out of a lesson, Often it involves Active Rest and an awareness focus for the week--whether its noticing the way the student breathes before speaking, how much pressure they use on a knife when slicing vegetables, or something more abstract, such as thinking about connecting their pelvis to the rest of the torso. This mindfulness becomes essential in building a students learning from lesson to lesson and empowering their self-reliance and discovery. The deal is always that they try their best, and if they don't succeed that's okay, but to come back ready to report what got in the way, because this can also contain a wonderful bit of learning. Almost invariably, one predominate answer comes back: "I was really busy." I don't know anyone who doesn't feel like this constantly. Our world has a lot of bustle, and its easy to lose track of ourselves in the swirl of activity constantly going on around us; the constant demands our jobs, home lives, and passions put on us. However, the ironic thing is that it is in this bustle, when it is so hard to be mindful, that the mindfulness is most needed. It helps to keep us present, de-stresses us, prevents us from self-harm, and makes sure we aren't moving so fast that we miss out on the enjoyment of life. Normally, I encourage students to journal to help them keep mindful, but some find even remembering to do that is difficult when life gets tough. So I wanted to take this opportunity to make you all aware of a new tool that can help motivate you: it is an app called 'Awareness In Activity'. Designed by Alexander Technique Amsterdam and Split Gene, it is the best Alexander Technique related app I have found. Some apps I have found try to do to little (there is an A.T. app out there that has been reviewed as basically a commercial trying to get you to take lessons with no further benefit, which is not okay in a paid app) or too much (in the end, you can't learn Alexander Technique from a computer as well as in person). What I like about Awareness in Activity is that it has a defined role--it is a tool to help you remember to be aware and present. It works like this. You set an awareness focus (such as the ones I routinely give my students). You program it to remind you periodically to pay attention to this focus. Then, at the end of the day, you set a reminder for it to ask you how much you remembered your focus. It then color code logs this on a calendar. Boom. So you not only get a way to remember to be present when busy, but a way to record your progress and feel accomplished about it. In addition, it features a constructive rest sub-app that has two main settings; a simple, nice 15 minute guided lie-down and an unguided constructive rest timer, where you can set intervals for your phone to make gentle noise to make sure you haven't drifted off. Any use of these features is also recorded on the calendar, which gives you a great ability to be accountable and notice your habits (oh wow, I only do lie-downs in the morning, maybe I should try one at night; I haven't done active rest in 3 days, I should probably make time today to make sure I am taking care of myself). There also is a journal section where you can keep notes on your mindfulness progress, useful for creating a way to reference your journey and remember thoughts and awareness points you have had. All in all, I really enjoyed this app and found it useful for picking up good habits of mindfulness (though I think my hope would be that you would eventually be able to be accountable without help once good habits have been established). I encourage you to see how it might be useful to you. It is available on iTunes and Google Play for a minimal fee(between $2.00 and $2.50). Enjoy! I have a uniquely embarrassing confession. I hurt my back a couple of weeks ago.
Now, this is not really an embarrassing thing. 8 out of 10 Americans will experience chronic back pain sometime in their life according to statistics from the American Chiropractic Association. However, I spend a decent amount of my teaching practice working with people on how to prevent back and neck pain. So what went wrong? The good/bad news, is that I know what I did, and what's more, I knew what I was doing when I hurt myself. Like many of us, I started off my new year with an invigorated enthusiasm for making change. Part of this was a schedule of keeping active in the Chicago winter by setting a consistent gym schedule. After my Thursday cardio workout, I felt a twinge in an old tailbone injury I sustained from a sledding accident in high school. Normally if I feel I have overworked this area, I stop, give a little extra attention to Use for the next couple days, and that is the end of that. This time, I didn't listen to my body, and decided to work out Friday anyway and stick with my plan. And until late Friday afternoon, I thought that I had gotten away with it. Then I felt some sneaking tightening up in the muscles around the left side of my sacrum, and by Saturday morning, I was experiencing significant pain. So this brings me to the first thing I learned from this experience. 1. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY AND STOP BEFORE YOU HAVE MAJOR PAIN. There is an old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is absolutely true. Once you are experiencing pain, a process has begun that is much harder to slow down than when the tension or breakdown was minor. Stopping before you experience significant pain or discomfort can keep you from all sorts of problems around the road including acute injury. This is why the Alexander Technique focuses on prevention rather than cure. That being said, nobody is perfect. My back pain came from my failure to apply what I already knew. So, for the first time in my adult life, I was experiencing acute back pain. Great. Rather than focusing on my pain and giving it energy, I decided to make it an opportunity to learn about what it was like to do Alexander Technique work while suffering from pain, as many of my students do. Here are some other things that I learned. 2. STATIC POSTURE IS THE ENEMY. Almost immediately, I found that keeping still, whether lying down or sitting up, was the surest way to increase my pain. This is in line with a model I teach every student--that the body is not made to be held in stasis, but is in constant dance of balance against, with, and using gravity. When in a static posture, muscles become overtaxed and it is a strain to allow the system to free 'up'. This does not mean that the motion has to be quick or dramatic--it might not even be visible on the outside. But allowing the possibility for movement keeps strain away from swelling areas and gives them space to loosen and not over-inflame. I found the best relief from my pain when allowing gentle rocking sitting on a supportive, not overly padded surface, feeling a tiny sway in my standing, or lightly moving around my space and doing Alexander procedures such as monkey and hands on the back of chair with mindfulness and attention. One of the things these procedures helped me to do, as well, was not be drawn too much into my pain, which brings me to the next thing I learned.... 3. PUT YOUR PAIN IN LARGER CONTEXT. It is easy when you are in pain to get drawn into it. When our attention is drawn into one area, we tend to unconsciously collapse or tense in that area. This works against what our system needs--expansion and suspension that will keep the injured area from overloading and give it room to heal. What can help is to expand your attention to your full body(particularly the relationship of your head, neck, and back) and your environment to prevent this over-concentration. I had the wonderful opportunity to trade work with the excellent Andersonville-based teacher Andrew McCann in the week I was experiencing pain. One of the very helpful things he helped me to do was to focus on directing my front to open instead of focusing on the injured area on my back, which I found not only put my pain in context but diminished my experience of it. I also found that when I was working with my students, my pain lessened--by focusing on their Use and improving it in relationship to my own, it made it much easier to handle my dysfunction. It helped me to focus my experience outside of myself. So what I'm saying is, you should probably train as an Alexander Technique Teacher :) 4. DIRECT, BUT KEEP IT GENTLE. Here, it should be stated that my injury was an acute muscular injury, not a disc injury or a chronic injury(lasting for more than a month), which would behave differently. What I found was that though keeping mindful and keeping in touch with my 'up' was helpful, too much up, such as what would happen after doing constructive rest was not initially useful. I would get up from constructive rest experiencing strong discomfort. There is a reason why our bodies react the way they do when we are injured--your body needs time to rebuild, and the swelling helps to protect and contain the injury. If you try to fully stretch the back while experiencing strong swelling, it can cause more challenge than that area is ready for. So, take it easy--stick with the gentle movements described earlier. However, once the swelling began to significantly reduce, strong direction and constructive rest came invaluable in restoring function and helping to counter tensions that had come into the rest of the back as a result of the imbalance of muscle tone resulting from my injury. 5. USE A.T. IN CONJUNCTION WITH CONVENTIONAL STRATEGIES FOR THE BEST RESULTS. When it comes to injury, A.T. is an excellent supplementation to conventional and alternative medicines, but not a replacement for it. Whenever I work with a client who comes to me with pain, one of the first things I ask is whether they have seen a doctor if chronic pain or serious injury have been involved. The reason for this is simply that I am a teacher, not a qualified medical professional, and though I can help when Use is a contributing factor, I am not qualified to diagnose the causation of pain nor proscribe or implement all possible solutions to the problem. I cannot stress this enough. I have also had great experiences with my clientsg oing to mindful chiropractic care, acupuncture, and massage therapy, which help in ways I cannot. For my injury, I also visited my friend Heidi Beucher Shimko of Edgewater's Kwai Fah Acupuncture Clinic which helped me to reduce my swelling, make some good connections, and helped enormously. I also used over the counter anti-inflammatory drugs, which also made a difference. The most pleasurable home remedy I experienced was bathing using Epsom salts(which can help if the problem is muscular). I found that doing Alexander work and constructive rest after receiving these bits of help were the times I found the A.T. work most effective. Our systems are very complicated, and many things can help them--as long as we also take responsibility to how our Use contributes to the problem. In all, I was lucky. With help, my pain was significantly reduced after just about 4 days and virtually gone and full functionality restored a week following the injury. I am going to move forward mindfully and cautiously to prevent recurrence of the injury--because I feel better doesn't mean I am going to jump in full throttle and repeat my mistakes. As with all things, I am grateful for the opportunity for learning this bit of living has given me. |
Thoughts on what is going on in the work and the world right now. Many posts to come. Archives
June 2021
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