This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to the Martial Arts, 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 do a martial arts form with ease, power, poise, and released joints.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
INHIBITION is one of the most powerful tools in the Alexander Technique. It gives the martial arts practitioner a tool to change any aspect of her martial arts technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the martial arts practitioner identify what is interfering with the martial arts practitioner competing with the most user friendly martial arts technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.
INHIBITION ALLOWS THE MARTIAL ARTS PRACTITIONER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HIS OR HER MARTIAL ARTS TECHNIQUE.
Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your martial arts technique. Let me explain. By the time a martial arts practitioner has discovered, after years of competing, that there are aspects of the martial arts practitioner’s technique and posture that are interfering with the practitioner’s ability to do the various moves without wear and tear and with accuracy, these destructive habits are as central to the martial arts practitioner’s habits as the productive ones are.
So, how do you throw out the bath water, without throwing out the baby? You identify and list what is compromising your martial arts form, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you compete, and you only keep the good list.
There are the typical big postural problems – a slumped or over-arched back, obvious tension throughout the body, from hands to legs. Then there are the much more subtle problems, which may be a matter of degree. What I mean, is there may be postural and technique things that you do that are not obvious to anyone but an Alexander Technique teacher.
Ex: If right before the martial arts practitioner kicks, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the martial arts practitioner punches, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the martial arts practitioner locks and narrows her shoulders as she blocks a punch or a kick, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she watches her competitor, this can put pressure on the nerves that originate at the spinal cord, and this can be hard to see.
So, what is the act of inhibition or inhibiting? If right before you do what you have always done when you do your martial arts form, just before you begin, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.
Ex: Just as the martial arts practitioner is about to kick, she notices she locks her neck. The practitioner stops – doesn’t kick. She now chooses not to lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then kicks with an unlocked neck.
What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the martial arts practitioner has chosen not to kick with an unconscious bad habit.
She has chosen to kick without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the martial arts practitioner’s awareness is moving a martial arts form away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have competed with. Now you have the tool, INHIBITION, that will allow you to perceive and choose which habits you want to keep or release.
THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS. IT TRULY RAISES YOUR AWARENESS OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOU DO A MARTIAL ARTS FORM TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR FORM’S TECHNIQUE, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.
