This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Driving a Car (Automobile), is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the driving technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
When I was practicing six hours a day, seven days a week, to become a concert guitarist at the Royal College of Music in London in the early seventies, I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist. I went to an Alexander Technique teacher, and within few months I was able to practice as much as I wanted without pain, and I’ve never suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome since.
What was it that the Alexander Technique teacher taught me that got me out of physical trouble permanently? I was taught how to press the strings with the minimum strength necessary, to find the most mechanically advantageous hand position in relationship to the string and guitar neck, and to press the strings without immobilizing my wrist, elbow, and shoulder.
I’ve applied the above principles in my ebook on driving a car. If the hands are in a mechanically advantageous relationship to the steering wheel, and you hold the wheel with a released dynamic wrists and grip, then you will be on your way to healing your carpal tunnel syndrome.
When driving the car, you want to support your wrists with easy decompressed forearms, upper arms, and shoulders. Then you can hold the steering wheel with arms, hands, and fingers, supported by released shoulders, that are not hurting from squeezing the wheel. Then, when you drive, with fingers that lengthen around the steering wheel, you aren’t damaging the bones of the wrists and causing carpal tunnel syndrome.
Let me explain. If you’ve learned to hold/squeeze the steering wheel with a static held body and arm positions, then as you continuously change the relationship of the hands to the forearms with held immobilized tension, you’re forcing the bones of the wrists to grind against each other.
Simply, tense muscles force bones together and cause 100% unnecessary wear and tear throughout the whole body.
Why do drivers use too much muscle to drive? It is to prevent mistakes. It is using physical negative reinforcement to drive the car with accuracy. So, when you drive a lot, you may become fairly accurate by using tension to minimize the number of mistakes you make, but you are damaging your body.
Then, you seek out an Alexander Technique teacher who shows you that you can drive with ease and control, if you release all of your excess tension, use balanced posture, and trust your hands and fingers wrapped/lengthening around the steering wheel to guide the car.
I want to say something here about injuries being inevitable in repetitive activities that require precision. They are not, but by the time a driver comes to an Alexander Technique teacher with carpal tunnel syndrome, the driver has lived with a powerful belief system that says injuries are inevitable in just about all activities done a lot.
I show drivers how to get out of physical trouble, and I also ask them to simultaneously question all of the negative beliefs they have about driving causing harm to the body. I then ask them to consider giving up all of the beliefs that guarantee they will eventually get injured or at least tense and sore from driving.
