Posts Tagged ‘Using a Computer’

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Using a Computer, 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 computer 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 computer user a tool to change any aspect of her computer using technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the computer user identify what is interfering with the computer user typing and using the mouse with the most user friendly computer technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.

INHIBITION ALLOWS THE COMPUTER USER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HIS OR HER TYPING AND/OR MOUSE TECHNIQUE.

Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your computer using technique. Let me explain. By the time a computer user has discovered, after years of typing and using the mouse, that there are aspects of the computer user’s technique and posture that are interfering with the computer user’s ability to type and use the mouse without wear and tear and with accuracy, these destructive habits are as central to the computer user’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 computer using, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you play, 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 computer user types, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the computer user moves the mouse, she locks her wrist, this can be almost undetectable. If the computer user locks and narrows her shoulders as she types, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she watches the screen, 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 use the computer, 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 computer user is about to type, she notices she locks her neck. The computer user stops – doesn’t type yet. She now chooses not to lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then begins typing.

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

She has chosen to type without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the computer user’s awareness is moving computer using away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have used on the computer. 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 USE THE COMPUTER TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR TYPING AND/OR MOUSE TECHNIQUE, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.