The Alexander Technique is a method of learning how you move when you do anything that involves “moving” (i.e walking, running, sitting, lifting, eating, knitting, golfing, swimming, sweeping and on and on…).  You learn where you are over tensing or over contracting your muscles and therefore your joints and creating stiffness and pain.  However, we build habits over our lifetimes and even though we have been “over tensing” (I think of the steering wheel or the broom, or the coffee cup!); we may not know it because it has been come habitual and not in our sensory awareness.  And now we have stiffness, pain and sometimes arthritis in our wrists, fingers, spine and we don’t relate it back to our “over tensing” of our muscles and our joints.

When we learn the Alexander Technique princpals of how to bring our habits into our sensory awareness and change them; we create much more ease in our arms, wrists, spine, hips, neck and shoulders, etc.  We learn we can drive without over gripping the steering wheel, pick up a cup without grabbing it with a death grip and still get the task accomplished! And we keep arthritis and chronic pain away!

Yoga is movement also, so with Alexander Yoga, you get both.  The principles of the Alexander Technique come behind the yoga movements or postures and voila, a much deeper awareness and much more flexibility and strength is available.  You don’t hurt yourself because you learn about YOU!!  Your awareness of yourself is carried out into your everyday activities and is more sustainable and long term because it is an investment and education in YOU!

Come try a class this summer; Mondays 5:30 pm; Wednesday mornings 11 am (July 15-August 28) – first class is free for new students.

I noticed another place I was trying…in performance, have you noticed that when you are “performing”, and as we know: performance happens everyday, not just with a theatrical play or musical instrument that you tighten your neck and shoulders, “trying” to do it right?

When you are talking with someone, and you have the floor to speak, you are “performing”. Are you “trying” to get the message you are speaking about “right”. Remember “trying” and “getting it right” (is there a “right?”) equals tension in your body!

So with the violin, the instrument lets me know right away when I “try” to get the right note by tensing my jaw, my feet grab and pull away from the floor, and my shoulders, elbows and wrist lock up.  Oh my, what a screech comes out of the instrument….hello, you are “trying” too hard!

Check out your performances this week and see when you are tensing around your performance; speaking, singing, playing tennis, golf, even when you are doing something by yourself, your “self-critical” thoughts will be judging your “performance”.

We are such amazing beings…why not take away from some of the “doing” and bask in “being”!