This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Walking Effortlessly, 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 walking 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)
The goal of the Alexander Technique is to help the walker create the most effortless and balanced walking technique and posture possible, so that the walker doesn’t have to struggle to walk. This isn’t always easy, because many walkers bring misconceptions of what they are doing physically when they walk. In other words, the walker thinks they are doing one thing, when they are doing another thing.
What does this mean? Walking, as with many activities, has a history of the rules of walking that has gotten passed from teacher to student etc., over generations of teachers and students. What is taught isn’t always an accurate representation of what is physically happening in walking.
Here are a few of my corrected misconceptions of movement in the body. You can’t lock the knees, you lock the thigh muscles to lock the knees. When you rotate the forearm, turning the hands over up and down, it is the biceps that rotate the forearms. When you move your hand side to side in relationship to the forearm, it is from long muscles tied to the elbows. When you move your fingers, it is from the forearms – the flexors and the extensors. When you support bent forearms, it is the brachialis, not the biceps for the most part.
Here are a couple of misconceptions many walkers have. Many walkers believe the foot precedes the knee. The knees precede the feet. Many walkers experience the feet as swinging forward before the knees bend. In fact, even if the walker knows the knee precedes the foot, they may still experience it the other way around. This causes knee pain. In other words when you have a misconception of how the body does something, then that belief causes the body to move with tension, because of the conflict between the believed lie and what is really happening.
Another issue with walkers, especially fast walkers, is that they are not aware there is no muscle in the forearm that supports the forearms. It is the brachialis (half biceps) that supports the forearms. Because so many walkers have experienced tension in their forearms for years, whether it is conscious or unconscious, they experience the forearms as holding up the forearms. This isn’t true, and it contributes greatly to forearm pain, tension, and injury.
Returning back to the first paragraph of this article, if you believe the body does one thing, and it actually does another, then the conflict between your misconceptions and what really happens will contribute to pain, strain, and injury. So, when a walking instructor tells a student something that is not true about how the body works, then it seems to really cause physical problems.
Because the student is stacking statements from authority to back up misconceptions of what he or she is doing as he or she walks. This can really lead to strain and injury. It may take years, but many walkers get in trouble eventually over the years of walking.
It is an extraordinary feeling when you are made aware of what you are really doing in an activity. Every time I was given accurate information from an Alexander Technique teacher on what balanced posture and accurate movement in my guitar technique were, my classical guitar playing always improved dramatically.
It was truly as if I took off blinders, and could clearly see and experience how easy and free playing the guitar could be.
