Everyday Life

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Massage Therapists and Rolfers Taking Care of Themselves, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical. It will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to offer great massage therapy or Rolfing.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)

CONSCIOUS CONTROL is what F. M. Alexander called regaining control over the voluntary musculature of the body. The voluntary musculature is defined as the external musculature that you tell what to do with your thoughts and intentions. What happens over time is that a bodyworker’s ability to work free of pain and tension in specific areas of his or her body is lost, and so he or she consistently hurts.

If a bodyworker comes to me and says her neck and shoulders are hurting, and I tell her to just release these muscles, she’ll look at me like I’m crazy. The truth is she has lost conscious control over these muscles, and it seems to her there is no way to get them to release.

It is your ability to tell your body what you want, and your body responds with exactly what you want, that Alexander Technique teachers help bodyworkers regain from their bodies. The ideal body response from a loving intention is a pain-free, elegant, athletic, and coordinated movement, that gives you the posture for the bodywork technique you want, so you can work as deeply and sensitively as you want on your clients pain-free.

What has to happen for all of the above to happen? You have to be intimately connected to your body, and to accept that THE BODY ALWAYS GIVES US WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT IT, not what we want. Let me explain?

If you believe the volunteer musculature of the body does anything independently of your beliefs and thoughts, then you do not have conscious control over it. Your belief that the body can do what it wants, will block you from being able to release the habits that have gotten you in constant pain as you do bodywork. You will be unable to tell your body what you want it to do, without forcing the body to listen to you.

What I just said is critical! If you believe you regularly have to force the body to listen to you when you do bodywork, then you have given the body a mind of its own. But, the only mind your body has is your mind. Let me explain.

I believe many bodyworkers believe the body does things independently of the bodyworker’s intentions, and that’s why he or she can’t work pain-free. This isn’t true, but boy is it self-fulfilling. Again, the body responds to what you believe about it, true or not true.

When you believe something that isn’t true about the body, then what else can the body do but fail you at times, maybe a lot of times. So, when your beliefs are conflicted, then you don’t offer consistently amazing pain-free bodywork. Having just said what I said, let me back track a bit.

You can create consistently amazing bodywork for your clients if your technique is good enough, and you will NOT tolerate your body not giving you what you want. This is not what I call a loving approach to riding.

What is loving? If you accept/believe you have 100% control over your voluntary musculature, you have a bodywork technique that doesn’t harm your body, you have a fully lengthened balanced posture to work from, you trust your body to give you exactly what you want, then you will have conscious control over your bodywork.