This ebook, The Release of Habit and Fear: The Alexander Technique as a Means to Letting Go of the Physical and Emotional Habits that Block Spiritual Growth, is published on this website in a PDF format.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
In the Alexander Technique you learn that when you can experience the excessive tension you bring to an activity that is causing you pain and injury, then you can consciously release the tension and change the destructive habit. The training I had as an Alexander Technique teacher was three years of changing the destructive habits in my body, not talking about them. This is what the Alexander Technique is truly about. In ‘Zen in the Art of Archery’ by Eugen Herrigel, it wasn’t talking about hitting the bull’s eye, it was shooting the arrows over and over until you let spirit hit the target.
In this this ebook I talk about bringing the principles of the Alexander Technique to spiritual matters, I’m writing from my experience. Even though my Alexander training was very formal in terms of changing physical habits, the technique has always been part of my spiritual journey. It was a tool that I added to my tool box to find God experientially.
One of the basic principles of the Alexander Technique is non-doing. Simply, this means to do whatever physical activity you do with the least amount of physical work and with the whole body fully balanced, so that you don’t strain to complete the activity. Example: A guitarist who hunkers down over the guitar, has to do a whole lot of extra unnecessary muscular work to support his body, as he leans over the guitar. This means he is doing, not non-doing.
When I apply non-doing to spiritual and psychological matters, I’m looking at how much extra work the mind is doing all of the time, when it is criticizing you or pushing you to do better and better. When the mind is in sync with the activity, then it doesn’t sacrifice the body by trying to force you to do what you’re doing with fear and hunkering down. Excellence with peace can be accomplished with ease, if the body and the mind are on balance as you go through the day.
Orders of allowance are the Alexander Technique’s form of a mantra. In the technique we lovingly order the body to do something with ease and decompression of the joints. So, if I’m going to lift something, I say to myself, “My neck is free and my spine is lengthening as I pick up the box”. If I use this order of allowance in an expanded spiritual sense, then I can say, “My neck is free and spine is lengthening, connecting me to God, as I pick up this box”.
The potential for greater and greater peace using the principles and concepts of the Alexander Technique throughout the day can truly enhance the quality of your life. Because if your body is embodying enlightenment, because of orders of allowance that invite your mind and body to release and lengthen and expand, then finding the zone where you feel connected to God can be a consistent thing, rather than a rare event.
One last point, in this ebook I apply the principles of release and orders of allowance to yoga. This makes it possible that when you do yoga, the yoga will connect you with expansion and well being to God consistently, because you are allowing rather than striving.
