Back ache
Whatever treatments of manipulation, massage or pain-killers etc are used, neck and back problems are strongly influenced or even caused simply by imbalances in the body created by underlying habits of movement, posture and relaxation in how we move around and use ourselves in everyday life. Alexander is deeply relaxing and uses just a gentle resting of hands to re-balance the body both at rest and to encourage a new awareness of how to use the body in kinder, easier ways to help you to help yourself reduce strain and discomfort in everyday movement. It is especially helpful for long term problems to re-educate patterns of protective and compensatory tension and imbalance.
Anxiety / panic attacks
Anxiety and panic trigger a variety of changes such as increased muscle tension, rate of breathing, and our rate of thinking too. As well as developing awareness within everyday life and activities, Alexander helps you to ground or ‘centre’ yourself by increasing awareness and understanding of these changes, and giving you simple skills to unravel and let go of the mental and physical upset they cause. This allows you to find a new sense of space and trust in yourself to come to terms with the emotional triggers which may also be associated with these problems.
Tension and stress
Using just a gentle resting of hands to encourage deep relaxation in everyday activity, the Alexander Technique encourages a new awareness of how, amongst other things, the stresses we encounter in daily life create what tend to become habitual disturbances of our mental, physical and emotional well-being. Alexander encourages you to learn a new skill of letting go of surprising amounts of mental and physical effort as a very beneficial way of allowing a new sense of ease and calm within daily life.
Tiredness
Alexander encourages a new awareness that even with problems of severe tiredness there are hidden pockets of habitual tension and strain - and also patterns of thought and attention - from which one can learn to re-direct energy to improve one’s overall sense of well-being. Alexander uses just a gentle resting of hands to encourage deep relaxation and gives guidance to encourage, amongst other things, the ability to let this happen within everyday activity as well. This helps one with the important skill of pacing oneself better to even out the highs and lows of energy levels.
Migraine / headaches
The build-up to a migraine or headache may be triggered by various changes such as stress and anxiety and include, usually, a significant amount of tension around the neck, shoulders and base of the skull where migraine headaches often actually start before spreading further and becoming more noticeable elsewhere. The body can ‘block off’ some of this discomfort but in doing so it becomes less able to fully release tension and strain in between attacks, which then makes them be triggered off more easily than they need be. Alexander uses a gentle resting of hands to encourage deep relaxation, and encourages a new awareness of, amongst other things, what these changes are and how to help oneself unravel them to lessen the frequency and severity of such problems.
Breathing problems, asthma etc
Asthma and other breathing problems are usually accompanied by habitual changes in breathing patterns, muscle tone and use of the body (neck, shoulders, chest and back in particular) which make allowing natural easy breathing more difficult still. Instead of encouraging you to try harder, Alexander uses a simple resting of hands to encourage a new awareness of how to focus on letting go and doing less to allow breathing - and other things - to happen more easily. Alexander is deeply relaxing and also encourages an awareness of using oneself more kindly in everyday life as a whole, both in activity and at rest.
Low self esteem
Low self esteem is often reflected in posture and general physical confidence. Whatever patterns of use we have tend to become ingrained and habitual, so even when we are ready to move forward in one sphere of our lives we may be held back by how we hold on to old patterns in another. Or, to look at it another way, we can experiment with what we can control, our simple physical self, to give us insight and confidence in how we react with what we can’t control - the opinions and actions of other people. Alexander is deeply relaxing, and also encourages a new awareness of being oneself in a calm and confident way in everyday life as a whole.
Arthritis
Whether diagnosed as moderate or severe, osteo-arthritis (ie:wear and tear) is not however the sole cause of discomfort around joints - such conditions are always accompanied by a severe build-up of tension and strain in the soft tissues which causes spasm and severe pain. Alexander is deeply relaxing and uses just a gentle resting of hands to re-balance the body both at rest and to encourage a new awareness of how to use the body in kinder, easier ways to help you to help yourself reduce strain and discomfort in everyday movement.
Pain management
Everyone feels how pain causes tightness, stiffness, tenderness and other kinds of discomfort. It may sound odd, but often we’re not aware of the true extent of pure and simple tension associated with pain which almost inevitably makes the pain worse and last longer than it need. Tension – just by itself – can be responsible for a great deal of stiffness, tenderness, achiness and tiredness
Why do we tend to notice pain more than the tension it generates? After all, if there’s tension which we could simply release, we’d feel a lot better.
A simple reason is that tension often only builds up very gradually in association with pain over a period of time, so as the body tries to cope with longer term discomfort it ‘looses track’ of what’s normal and what isn’t. In other words, whilst trying to ‘block off’ pain, the body also tends to block off other associated sensations such as tension at the same time.
When we get a pain, the body naturally tries to do whatever it can to protect itself or to compensate in some way to minimise the discomfort. A certain amount of tensing and stiffening can help in the short term to protect a vulnerable area, for instance, but in the long term it’s essential we stop over-protecting and over-compensating and make sure we recognise unnecessary tensing and stiffening so we can relax freely and fully instead.
Whatever the cause of pain, Alexander re-tunes the body and your sensory awareness, and greatly enhances your ability to release pain so you can help yourself. We use non-stop hands-on guidance so you learn how to look after yourself properly as you move around and do things in daily life. You learn how to allow free and easy movement as you sit, stand, bend or garden, for instance; how to allow natural poise and breathing; how to work in harmony with the simple principles of how our muscles and joints work; and how to change the way we react to pain to enable significant changes in our well-being to take place.