Alan Mars’s Weblog

Youtube video Alexander Technique Semi-Supine resting position  

Alan Mars- Alexander Technique since 1982

Alexander Technique in Brighton and Hove…

The semi-supine active resting position gives optimum support to your whole back – and to your spine in particular. Alexander Technique teachers recommend it as a daily practice. Do it once a day if possible for up to twenty minutes. As well as easing your posture it is particularly calming and centering. Youtube video clips, picture and written instructions are below…

Semi-supine Alexander Technique

It only requires a firm and warm surface, such as a blanket on the floor, and a few paperback books to serve as a headrest. It will help you to let go of excessive muscular tension in your body as a whole. It allows your torso to widen and your spine to release into its optimum resting length. It eases and reduces pressure on the inter-vertebral discs by placing the spine in a position of maximum mechanical support.

Most people need somewhere between 1 – 3 inches of books underneath the back of the skull. The head-rest encourages release in the muscles that join the back of the neck to the base of your skull. It should be neither too high (or your chin will compress your throat) nor too low (or your chin will stick up in the air). This gives maximum support to your spine. Your feet are flat on the floor, knees pointing up to the ceiling about shoulder-width apart and your hands can rest gently on your torso. It’s the ideal pre-cursor to some voice-work. No wonder my ex-drama students continue to practice it daily decades after being introduced to it!

Over the next ten minutes or so you will simply develop your relationship to the floor and head rest… Imagine the four ‘corners’ of your back–head, shoulders and tail bone– spreading and lengthening and widening away from each other and on to the floor. Let go of trying and forcing. Let it be effortless. Leave it up to gravity and muscular release. Look at the video several times to get a general idea of how to get into the semi-supine position. The main thing to remember about getting into the semi-supine position is to do it mindfully, quite slowly and with awareness. The same thing goes for returning to your feet again. I’ll go into a bit more detail in future postings.

http://alphainventions.com/

Alexander Technique BN3, Hove, East Sussex, UK

Alan Mars - MSTAT qualified 1982

Significant long-term benefit from Alexander Technique lessons for low back pain has been demonstrated by a major study in the British Medical Journal

Alexander Technique helps prevent & alleviate conditions associated with undue tension or poor posture: movement difficulties, joint & muscle problems, back, neck or shoulder pain, RSI, breathing or vocal difficulties problems & stress-related conditions. 

 Alexander Technique teachers use a combination of gentle manual guidance and verbal coaching to help their pupils bring about greater ease and poise in their daily life. Alan Mars has been a STAT qualified Alexander Technique teacher since 1982.

Contact details – please click here

Alexander Technique picture gallery

Significant long-term benefit from Alexander Technique lessons for low back pain has been demonstrated by a major study in the British Medical Journal.

Alexander Technique helps prevent & alleviate conditions associated with undue tension or poor posture: movement difficulties, joint & muscle problems, back, neck or shoulder pain, RSI, breathing or vocal difficulties problems & stress-related conditions.

Alan Mars has been a STAT qualified Alexander Technique teacher since 1982

Alan Mars

Alexander Technique Brighton & Hove Central,

26 Ventnor Villas

Hove, BN3 3DE

East Sussex, UK

01273 747 289 or 07930 323 057

alan.mars@yahoo.co.uk    http://www.thetechnique.co.uk/contact.htm

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Alexander Technique teachers use a combination of gentle manual guidance and verbal coaching to help their pupils bring about greater ease and poise in their daily life.

Related posts:

Alexander Technique history and background 

Alexander Technique photo album

Technique in central Brighton

contact Alan Mars.

 

 

Festina Lente – Hasten Slowly

A potential student approaches a famous Japanese sword master asking for instruction.

The student asks how long it will take for him to achieve mastery in swordwork…

“It will take ten years for you to become competent in the basic skills” the master replied.

“What if I study twice as hard?” the student asks eagerly.

“Then it will take you twenty years!”

“And if I study three times as hard?”

“Thirty years! A pupil in such a hurry learns slowly.”

I’ve just realised that most of my Alexander Technique blog musings have been done whilst walking. I absolutely love walking. I did a Google search for quotes about walking. There’s lots! And by some really smart folks too. I find myself in exalted company!

Here are a few quotes and links that I really liked:

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast. - Harry Truman (Advice on how to live to be 80.)

Above all do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday I walk myself into state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome hat one cannot walk away from it… if one keeps on walking everything will be alright. - Soren Kierkegaard

I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind works only with my legs.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

Meandering leads to perfection. Lao Tzu

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. – Fred Allen

He who limps is still walking. - Stanislaw J. Lec

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. - Aldous Huxley

Of all exercises walking is the best. - Thomas Jefferson

A fact bobbed up from my memory, that the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad. It was a mind-altering drug we took daily. - Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility. - Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment… - Thich Nhat Hanh

Before supper take a little walk, after supper do the same. - Erasmus

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. - Paul Dudley White

The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy. The best way to lengthen out our days is to walk steadily and with a purpose. - Charles Dickens

.It is solved by walking. - A Latin proverb

Our way is not soft grass, it’s a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun. - Ruth Westheimer

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven today and we don’t know where the hell she is.” - Ellen Degeneres

When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the shoe leather as passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. - Raymond Inmon

Alexander Technique Brighton Hove, East Sussex, UK, Photo Album

Alan Mars- teaching Alexander Technique since 1982

In the last post I mentioned how I used to get tongue-tied or overly enthusiastic when someone asked the question “What is the Alexander Technique?”

Of course, it’ll always be difficult to describe an activity, any activity, that has such a large sensory component. So I promised to put up some photos, with comments, so you can at least get a fly on the wall perspective of what a typical Alexander Technique lesson might look like.

As a general rule, Alexander Technique teachers tend to work from the core of the body — neck, head and back – out towards the extremities ie the arms and legs. The major muscles that move the limbs, however, have their origins in the torso. So working with the neck, head back relationship automatically influences the movement of the arms and legs. The converse is also true – working with the arms and legs will reinforce release and expansion through the neck, head and back.

Having said that “any way in is a way in” as the late, and great, Walter Carrington used to say. Alexander Technique Brighton BN1

“Allow your neck to be free”

“Allow your neck to be free in such a way that your head can go forwards & upwards”

“Allow your neck to be free & your head to go forwards & upwards so that your back can lengthen & widen”

In practice most Alexander Technique teachers do not recite these directions parrot-fashion. The words and language tend to be naturalistic and tailored to fit the individual.

Arms & Legs- Although there are specific directions for the arms & legs often the teacher will ask the pupil to continue focussing on their neck, head and back relationship as they work with the arms and the legs.

Legs

Chair-work

It isn’t just about moving in and out of a chair. It’s a convenient way of learning to move easily and efficiently. A convenient method that can be transferred into all sorts of everyday movements and activities. It’s a great method of learning to suspend habitual muscular and even emotional responses. My own favourite fields of application have been in playing the harp, singing and the martial arts. Here is a picture taken in an Aikido & Alexander technique class several years ago. I’m the one being thrown through the air! Apparently Alexander Technique can be applied at high speed.

Miscellaneous photos

It’s difficult to really capture the living, dynamic quality of an Alexander Technique lesson on a photograph. Young children often embody that Alexander quality unconsciously. Here is a photo of one of my daughters quite literally going forwards and upwards several years ago!

Thanks to that most talented photographer Lisa Rastl (lisa.rastl@gmx.net) and, of course, to Lena for being such a responsive model. And to that fine Alexander Technique teacher Harriet Anderson for turning her Alexander studio into a photographic studio for a few hours. Thanks also to pupils from previous courses for modeling. Thanks to Camilla Mars and to Clara Miriam.

Alan Mars

Alexander Technique Brighton & Hove,

26 Ventnor Villas

Hove

BN3 3DE

01273 747 289 or 07930 323 057

alan.mars@yahoo.co.uk

http://www.thetechnique.co.uk/contact.htm

http://alphainventions.com/

This is a tale of how two Alexander Technique teachers’ were humiliated by a Viennese granny.

They do really do Christmas cheer well in Vienna. All the atmosphere and none of the stress of the UK. They even lay-on snow! Most years anyway…

My partner and I took a walk in Cobenzl, the Vienna woods, of a Sunday afternoon. A bit of a thaw had set in. The paths were perilously icey with only the edges still a little bit snowy. My partner had recently sustained a knee injury in Scottish country dancing ( that’s another story! ) and was doubly cautious. We crept stiffly along the side of the path staring fixedly at the ground two feet in front of us… when a Viennese granny powered past us at a high rate of knots, smiling broadly and drinking in the glorious surroundings with her eyes! toboggan from infancy. They go on obligatory skiing courses in secondary school. And they all learn to waltz in sixth form. Here in the forest at least they are the Alexander experts.” We didn’t adapt to ice anything like as easily as we adapted to water in Venice. But we still applied the Alexander Technique. When we walked we just walked. And when wanted to look we stopped. “Inhibited” to use the Alexander jargon. And marveled at the snowy, Christmas card, forest around us.

“How embarrassing” said my partner…“Yes, love, but you’ve got to consider that she’s got two specialised walkers’ sticks”And then a couple of runners, about our own age, overtook us, apparently oblivious to the danger underfoot!We crept on. Not to be defeated, I asserted “But these Viennese know how to select the right type of ice gripping footwear.”A family, with three kids, ranging from nine to thirteen years, all wearing standard, international brand, trainers swept past us, deep in happy conversation… I decided to keep my mouth shut.My partner, a Viennese resident, said “The Austrians just do snow so much better than we Brits. They all ice-skate and

 I’ve tended to take a pretty negative view of how environment and daily activities affect our co-ordination. Think of how the computer buff (most of us nowadays) shapes their physical structure, day after day, as they peer intently into their laptop.I’m happy to say that I’ve recently had two very pleasant experiences to challenge this view – a holiday in Venice and another in Vienna. Lucky me!

If you’ve visited Venice you’ll know about the vaporetto, the water bus service. The vaporetto stops are floating platforms (pontoons)that rock on the, mostly, gentle waves. It’s pretty easy to distinguish between tourists and locals. From an Alexander point of view the locals are more “up” and “poised” than the tourists – at least when they are traveling by water. Why do I say this? As the pontoon or vaporetto rocks and rolls tourists tended to look for something to grasp onto. Despite the wonders of Venice around them, tourists sometimes looked a bit tight and pulled down. The locals by contrast seemed easy and poised – even the elderly and quite frail Venetians stood unsupported and simply rolled with the waves.

More interesting still is the Traghetto – a gondola that ferries you across the canal from bank to bank. It’s used mostly by locals. It seems to be a point of pride with the locals to stand in these relatively small and precarious wooden craft as they navigate across the line of heavy water traffic. The few tourists who ride them seem to, quite wisely, sit on the benches. Follow this link to and you’ll see a YouTube video of tourists and elderly locals riding the Traghetto.

I also speculated on the surprising fitness and trimness of these poised Venetian senior citizens. Well if you live in Venice you are a walker by definition – no cars, no bicycles. Just shanks pony and the boat!

Well, I decided that I had a vocational duty to ride the Venetian currents like a local. Let go of the hand-holds Alan! Free your neck, send your head up, lengthen and widen your back, roll with the waves and feast your eyes!

Those of you familiar with British town centres during winter will be familiar with the gangs of under-dressed young people who roam them at the weekends. The sad thing is that often the poor boys and girls look very uncomfortable with the goose-flesh, red noses and frozen hunched shoulders. What a relief not be young and beautiful (and subject to its attendant pressures) anymore!

Does tightening and hunching effect blood flow and warmth? I haven’t done the research to be able to say yes or no with authority. Once, however, during a workshop in a rather cold venue a participant asked for the window to be opened as it was “so terribly warm”. The other participants looked alarmed. The person making the request was bundled up in several thick layers – a bit like the Michelin man ( for those of you who remember him!)

“You could take a layer off.” I tentatively suggested.

“Ah!” she said. I swear you could see the light-bulb going on inside her head. Cooler and more flexible. Mentally and physically.

One could easily visualise an equal and opposite temperature and clothing scenario.

Try questioning your automatic responses to temperature. How warm or cool is it really? Hunching certainly seems to make you colder. How about applying your Alexander Technique directions – does that warm you up a bit? Certain Tibetan monks are, after all, reputed to be able to thaw icy blankets thrown over their naked body during meditation.

I know it’s possible the other way around. Sometimes when I get stressed I get overheated and my skin flushes. The Alexander Technique has been a great tool to cool down mentally, emotionally and physically.

And remember to wear plenty of layers. Or as Billy Connolly might put it “There’s no such thing as bad weather – just the wrong clothes!”

PS have a look at Noel Kingsley’s (another Alexander Technique teacher) blog for more about Hunching against the cold

PPS I haven’t forgotten about the Alexander Technique photo album – I’ll put it up soon.

“everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Albert Einstien excerpted from wikipedia

It’s the story of a wise man who realised that he was, unconsciously, throwing a spanner in his own works. Through observation and reasoning he stopped throwing the spanner and consequently freed up the functioning of his voice, breathing and general well-being.

Soon Alexander was inundated with actors and singers wanting lessons. Alexander found it difficult to pass on his insights verbally. He developed a method of gentle manual guidance and verbal coaching and gave his pupils an experience of using their voice in an easier, more efficient and poised way.

It became clear to Alexander that his approach could have a beneficial effect not just on the voice but on all-round functioning and well being. In today’s post I will focus on background and history. I my next post I will focus on what actually happens during an individual, hands-on Alexander Technique lesson.

“It has helped me to undo knots, unblock energy and deal with almost paralysing stage fright.”

William Hurt, actor from STAT website

Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869 – 1955) was an actor who suffered from career threatening vocal and breathing difficulties. He specialised in a one-man show, in large provincial theatres, requiring a spirited and powerful delivery. A popular actor, Alexander could be on stage six evenings per week plus several matinees. This took its toll in the form of hoarseness, an audible rasping inhalation between phrases and an inflammation of his throat. The whole symptom picture was known as “clergyman’s sore throat”.

Medical interventions were largely fruitless so Alexander pursued his own approach. He concluded that his symptoms were less to do with over-use and more a case of misuse.

To aid his self-study Alexander set up a three-way system of mirrors in which could observe himself while reciting. This painstaking period of self observation stretched out over several years.

At first Alexander noticed nothing unusual in his manner of reciting. Gradually he became aware of a tendency to stiffen his neck, pull his head back and compress his larynx when he anticipated reciting a difficult passage. This pattern was associated with effortful inhalation. If the initial contraction was strong enough it could effect the whole balance of his system from head to toe.

Alexander brought about a complete change in his way of breathing, using his voice and in his general day to day functioning. It wasn’t all plain sailing – there were several blind alleys.

The method he settled on revolved around three main principles

Direction
Sensory Appreciation
Pausing

Direction. Alexander noticed that pulling his head back and down was linked with his voice problems. So he tried physically altering the position of his head by putting it “forwards and upwards”. This didn’t help. The mirrors showed that instead of putting his head forwards and upwards he was either pulling it back and down, as before, or that he was pulling his head forwards and downwards – a different kind of badly.

Pre-school children, unconsciously, have this quality that Alexander Technique teachers call “direction” – easy, upright, open, poised in stillness and activity. As adults we can consciously develop ease and poise in our daily activities. It doesn’t come from exhortations to “Sit up straight!” or “Stand up straight!” and the increasing strain and, eventually, deeper slumping that this causes.

Alexander repeated the directions “Neck to be free”; “Head to go forwards and upwards” and “Back to lengthen and widen” silently to himself without trying to physically impose them and without even caring whether they took seed or not. But gradually his mirrors demonstrated that they were beginning to take seed and slowly grow. And not just in his neck, head and back but through his entire frame.

Sensory Appreciation. Alexander realised that his habits (neck stiffening, pulling his head back and down, shortening and narrowing his back) felt, if not exactly right, then at least so overwhelmingly familiar that he tended to revert to them at the critical moment of actually reciting. Change doesn’t always feel right. What we sense physically can be unreliable. A little girl with an extremely twisted stance was brought to see Alexander. Alexander, using his expert touch, gently brought her into relative balance and symmetry. The result? She complained to her mother “The nasty man’s twisted me all up!” We need a little time and tolerance tolerance to get used to new, unfamiliar, but ultimately healthier conditions.

Pausing. When Alexander eventually noticed his habit – neck stiffening, pulling his head back, shortening his spine and narrowing his back – he wasn’t surprised that it took him so long to observe them. They were small, subtle habits. Tiny tensions. Like water dripping onto granite, year after year, we don’t notice the build-up, until the pain or stress makes us take notice. And even then we only notice the effects, not the causes.

Alexander continually brought himself up to the point of reciting. Up to the point of almost stiffening his neck and pulling his head back. And then, so to speak, he would step back, be still and refresh his directions “Neck… head… back”

And so Alexander navigated himself into that little known area that lies between stimulus and response. He found that he was able to maintain a more poised use of himself whilst reciting. He recited without stiffening his neck, pulling his head back and down and without shortening and narrowing his back. Without hoarseness. Without audibly rasping his breath in.

And so he returned to the stage, briefly, before embarking on a career of teaching what he called “The work”. Until his death in 1955 he continually developed this method of gentle manual guidance and verbal coaching and gave his pupils a way to improve their functioning throughout the range of their day to day activities. “The work” brought him to London in 1904 where he taught the top people from theatre and the arts. People from all walks of life (including politics, science, medicine, the aristocracy) were drawn to the work which made such a significant difference, mentally and physically to their daily lives.

Alexander used observation and reasoning and through this gained a new experience of using himself in daily life. We do it the other way round. We get an experience directly from the hands of an Alexander Technique teacher and understanding slowly follows.

So what does a contemporary Alexander Technique lesson actually look like and sound like? This, with accompanying photographs, will be the subject of my next post.

“I find the Alexander Technique very helpful in my work. Things happen without you trying. They get to be light and relaxed. You must get an Alexander teacher to show it to you.”

John Cleese, comedian and actor (taken from www.alexandertechnique.com)

This post was a potted history of the Alexander Technique. If it has been too simple for you or if it’s simply whetted your curiosity please follow these links for more.

Or follow this link to Amazon for some Alexander Technique book reviews.

Or read the excellent “Freedom to Change” by Frank Pierce Jones available from the equally excellent Mouritz site and look at the review

For further information about courses and individual sessions with me, Alan Mars, in Brighton & Hove:

Alan Mars

Alexander Technique Brighton & Hove,

26 Ventnor Villas

Hove

BN3 3DE

01273 747 289 or 07930 323 057

alan.mars@yahoo.co.uk

http://www.thetechnique.co.uk/contact.htm