This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Bicycle Riding, is published on this website in a PDF format. It goes into extraordinary detail on how to ride a bicycle without paying a physical price by using an efficient riding technique.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
I coined the phrase ORDERS OF ALLOWANCE. It grew out of what F. M. Alexander, the founder of the Alexander Technique, simply called ORDERS. Orders are telling your body what you want it to do. If you say out loud or in your thoughts, “My neck is free, as I ride this bicycle”, and if you do this enough times with faith, you will establish a new habit.
Actually, as you’re about to ride the bicycle, all you need to say before you ride, and whenever you notice your neck has locked up as you’re riding is, “My neck is free”.
I expanded F. M. Alexander’s orders to order(s) of allowance, because I felt that order(s) of allowance was a statement that told your body what you wanted and allowed it to ride the bicycle with kindness. The word orders by itself connotes a demand, rather than a loving direction to do something.
In truth, we give our bodies orders all of the time, from loving to harsh. Let me explain. Every time you ride the bicycle, you have given orders of allowance to your body, if it is done with kind intentions. We live by orders to our bodies 24/7, but since they are sent so quickly, we don’t usually register the instantaneous intention and thought.
So, when you move your legs to pedal the bicycle, the intention, thought, and bending and moving of the legs has come and gone so quickly, that your legs seem to bend and move themselves.
When you stop and consciously give an order of allowance, you have chosen to do something few cyclists do. Let me explain. You have truly brought to full consciousness the fact that you are always telling your body what you want from it, but like I said, you usually do it so quickly, that it seems to do itself.
In a sense it does do it to itself, because when you ride the bicycle as you’ve always ridden, then whenever you do something as you ride you’ve done thousands of times, you will do it the same way – consistently habitually good or habitually bad.
The genius behind Alexander’s order of allowance is to consciously tell your body what you want, and that what you order it to do consciously is something new and healing for the body. So, when you order your neck to release before you ride the bicycle, and as you repeat this order of allowance as you’re riding, then you are doing something very new in your bicycle riding technique.
You’re riding the bicycle with a free neck, and this will, in a very short period of time, become a new established part of your riding technique (if you remember to give this order of allowance).
Here’s why the concept of orders of allowance can be challenging for some bicycle riders. When you think the order of allowance, “My neck is free”, you are asking for a change in your body that is pretty invisible, except to an Alexander Technique teacher.
But, when you tell a leg to bend, it is very clear that your thought has a powerful effect. YOU BEND YOUR LEG! When you order your neck to release, you may not experience the release the first 30 or 40 times you send the order.
But, what will happen is, if have faith in the process, you will begin to experience the releases in your neck as you continue to order it to be free, as you ride the bicycle.
