Posts Tagged ‘Driving a Car’

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)

INHIBITION is one of the most powerful tools in the Alexander Technique. It gives the car driver a tool to change any aspect of her driving and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the driver identify what is interfering with the driver driving with the most user friendly driving technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.

INHIBITION ALLOWS THE AUTOMOBILE DRIVER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HER DRIVING.

Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your driving technique. Let me explain. By the time a driver has discovered, after years of driving, that there are aspects of the driver’s technique and posture that are interfering with the driver’s ability to drive without wear and tear, these destructive habits are as central to the driver’s driving 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 driving, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you drive, and you only keep the good list.

There are the typical big postural problems – slumped or over-arched posture, 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 driver drives, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the driver drives, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the driver locks and narrows her shoulders as she drives, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she drives, 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 drive, just before you start, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.
Ex: Just as the driver is about to drive away from a parking place, she notices she is locking a collapsed neck. The driver stops – doesn’t start. She now chooses not to collapse and lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then drives.

What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the driver has chosen not to drive with an unconscious bad habit.

She has chosen to drive without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the driver’s awareness is moving driving away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have driven 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 DRIVE A CAR TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR DRIVING, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.