This ebook, Tai Chi and the Alexander Technique Principles of Good Body Use, is published 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 tai chi with ease, elegance, 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)
What makes the Alexander Technique extraordinarily unique is the core concept of the technique, that teaches when you reduce tension throughout your body in everyday and specialized activities, you ask/teach your spine to lengthen, and you become as tall as you really are with great ease.
You are taught to be at ease in everyday life, and specialized activities, and still do what your doing with a lengthening spine.
This means even when sitting you don’t sit in collapse, but with a lengthening spine, that has become natural and flexible. You actually arrive at a point through Alexander Technique sessions, that you experience discomfort when you’re collapsed in on yourself.
How does the Alexander Technique teacher convey this since of UP in the client’s body in everyday and specialized activities, like when playing a sport or while playing a musical instrument?
We guide the client with our hands and words through his everyday or specialized activity. Prime examples of this hunkering down, is when the client does a sport or plays an instrument, and creates a shortening of the spine and neck to do well in the specialized activity or possibly hunkers down in collapse to brush his teeth.
There are all types of exploratory body movement work out there, and they espouse relaxing in everyday activities or tensing up in specialized activities.
WHEN YOU RELEASE INTO COLLAPSE/RELAX IN AN EVERYDAY ACTIVITY, YOU LET GO OF THE TONE IN THE MUSCULATURE TO DO WHATEVER, AND END UP SHORTER AND SHORTER OVER THE YEARS.
WHEN YOU TENSE UP, ADD TOO MUCH MUSCLE TONE IN A SPECIALIZED ACTIVITY LIKE PLAYING THE PIANO OR COMPETITIVE RUNNING, YOU CREATE COMPRESSION IN YOUR JOINTS, AND YOU WILL EVENTUALLY END UP IN CONSTANT JOINT PAIN AND PROBABLY HAVE TO STOP DOING YOUR SPORT OR PLAYING YOUR INSTRUMENT.
The Alexander Technique wants you to reaquire what a child does naturally , and that is to do things with the right amount of muscle tone throughout your body, so that you don’t compress vertebral discs, compress the space between joints, and/or cause pressure on nerves throughout the body, by not being fully muscularly supported or rigidly supported.
What is UP?
UP IS THE CORE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE CONCEPT THAT WHEN YOUR MUSCULATURE IS NOT UNNECESSARILY SHORTENED, THE BODY EXPANDS IN ALL DIRECTIONS, AND YOU BECOME TALLER, WIDER, AND PHYSICALLY THICKER, AND YOUR BREATHING IS MORE EASEFUL.
When letting go into UP in all of your activities becomes second nature again, this posture of a happy child, stays with you as you age, and you do not become less agile and shorter and old.
