This is a question that continues to surface as our medical community changes from what it once was. It used to be that we turned all our power over to the doctor and did very little to educate ourselves about our bodies, or thought much about how we felt, how we moved, walked, sat, etc.; however, we are changing, we want to be involved and responsible for our health. After all, we are the one inside our bodies; we can change our approach and be proactive in our healing.
When clients come to me with back pain, sometimes chronic, they have no idea that they can change a few things that greatly improve their movement and the pain subsides or goes away. Seeing their life change because of this new way of thinking is so moving and satisfying. Basically they heal from their own “power” or direction!
How can this happen? As one of my clients put it:
“I am susceptible to chronic pain and it can flare up from either physical or emotional tension; when I change my thinking and learn to “let go” of the tension” and be conscious and responsible for my actions; things improve. The Alexander Technique is aiming at non-doing, and the physical component that can tighten muscles also compresses the spine…we learn to elongate the spine...I call it
EDUCATION THROUGH SELF-CARE!
It is “my job” not the doctors or the pharmacologist to take care of my health.
R. Winn, Culpeper, VA
When you talk to a musician you ask, “what is your instrument”, and if they say “I am a singer”, then their body is their instrument. But wait, we use our voice everyday, and does the tension we hold in our neck and shoulders affect how our voice comes out, whether raspy or hoarse, strained etc?
Before I started my path into how the body and thoughts are connected, I imagined anything that was important to my well being was in my head (brains you know!); I mean that is where are my senses are (no pun intended): eyes to see, ears to hear, tongue to taste, and voice to talk…however, I notice that when I lock my knees or tighten my arms and shoulders; it is very hard to breathe and therefore to speak (you know we speak and sing on our exhale). So how does that happen, well our voice box or larynx (pronounced Lar-rinks) is in our throat, and connected to many muscles and connective tissue that is connected to our jaw, our tongue, our neck and shoulder muscles, and if you looked at my last blog on tensegrity, you now understand that no muscle moves in isolation, locking our knees way below affects our voice; we are a matrix of bone and connective tissue working together.
Try this experiment: Say “ah” and as you are letting the air out to form the sound “ah”, lock your knees and what happens to the tone of the “ah”, unlock them and what does it sound like; pull your shoulders up to your ears, does that affect the “ah” sound. Fun to play around with!
Working with Castleton Opera Singers