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Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
A bodyworker needs a set of tools to be able to work in the zone every day. What are these tools? They are conscious control, inhibition, orders, direction, renewing the thought, opposition, balance vs. position, grounding, and troubleshooting.
Conscious control is what F. M. Alexander called regaining control over the voluntary musculature of the body. If a client comes to me and says his neck and trapezius are hurting, and I tell him to just release these muscles, he’ll look at me like I’m crazy. The truth is he has lost conscious control over these muscles, and it seems to him there is no way to get them to release. It is the ability to tell your body what you want, so that it happens, that F. M. Alexander helped his students regain in everyday and specialized activities.
Alexander called these instructions to the body orders. So, a bodyworker with a sore shoulder and neck says to himself, “My neck is free and my spine is lengthening, and my shoulders are widening, releasing, and floating on the ribcage”. This is an order given to the shoulder girdle and neck that invites the spine to lengthen and decompress. If you are patient and repeat these orders, your body will respond at a deeper and deeper level to these repeated thoughts of release, and you will have conscious control over your shoulder and neck.
Repeating thoughts to release the neck and shoulder are called renewing the thought. When you renew a thought, you are repeating an order to an area of the body asking for release and expansion. All repeated thoughts directed towards an area of the body have an effect, and the more you repeat the thought, the more profound the release. As the release begins to be experienced consciously, your faith in your control over your body grows, and your thoughts are felt as having direct powerful experienced effects on your body. This is conscious control.
Direction is the Alexander Technique principle that the head wants to lead the spine into lengthening in an activity, and this head leading the lengthening spine creates organized, elegant, graceful, powerful, and athletic movement. So, core to this technique is that when you do bodywork, you do so with a released lengthening spine. This will organize and coordinate the whole body, so that you don’t damage your discs and impair your nervous system.
Inhibition is the Alexander Technique tool that allows a bodyworker to make changes to the way she does her work, and not to replace one set of bad habits with another set of bad habits. Example: A bodyworker is about to do deep bodywork into a shoulder, and just before the bodyworker moves into the client’s shoulder, she locks her neck. This is a lifetime habit, where she has always locked her neck before she does anything that requires strength. If she inhibits this habit which has been compressing the discs in her spine, then right before she works she has chosen to consciously unlock her neck and then move into the client.
To stop right before doing what you’ve always done, and choose to do something different is inhibition. It is an incredible tool for letting go of what doesn’t work when you work. You get to choose to do something different, to simply stop doing what isn’t working and work without pain.
