Maaike Aarts, an Alexander Technique colleague based in Amsterdam, has created a unique Alexander Technique app. From what I’ve seen and heard so far, it’s a well executed and brilliant idea. Maaike writes,

This app will help you put the Alexander Technique into practice while you’re doing all kinds of daily activities. So you’ll be listening to audio guides while doing something else, e.g. walking, reading, working on your tablet, going upstairs, bending over, sitting on a bus – you name it.

The app is intended for Alexander students who are currently having lessons with a teacher, those who have had lessons but want a refresher and even for newcomers who have never had lessons before. For anyone in the last category, I would agree with Maaike who writes, ‘While it’s impossible to learn the Alexander Technique through an app, it will give you an idea of what it’s all about. And hopefully inspire you to find a teacher and get the full experience.’

There are an incredible 95 audio guides to listen to at a subscription of only 4.99 Euros a month. You don’t have to subscribe right away because there are four guides available to try for free: ‘lying down in active rest’, ‘standing’, ‘desktop computer’, ‘music – general tips’.

You can download the app in the Apple Store or on Google Play

Congratulations to Maaike on a brilliant achievement. I recently created my own free ‘active rest’ guide, and I know the dedication required to create just one professional audio track!

New figures from the Office for National Statistics indicate that more than a million people in the UK were experiencing ‘long Covid’ in a recent four-week period. It’s been called the hidden health crisis of the pandemic, with symptoms including extreme fatigue, pain, heart problems and so-called ‘brain fog’.

There’s no clinical evidence that the Alexander Technique can help with long Covid. However, I know Alexander Technique colleagues who are working with sufferers. In Mexico, there are even workshops that include Alexander Technique as part of a post-Covid recovery programme. The following are the kinds of ways in which the Alexander Technique could help with long Covid:

• conserving energy
• quietening the nervous system
• improving breathing
• improving mental and physical awareness
• reducing muscle aches and pains
• dealing with negative emotions

Alexander Technique teachers have for many years helped those with the related condition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), also known as ME. Long Covid and ME are both post-viral illnesses and they have overlapping symptoms – including, in particular, a very debilitating fatigue which is often activity-induced.

The connection between the two conditions is important to understand because it suggests that long Covid sufferers could benefit from Alexander Technique in the same way that ME sufferers can. If you have long Covid, the best Alexander Technique starting point would first be to incorporate ‘Active Rest’ into your daily rest routine. I’ve created a free 15 minute ‘Active Rest’ audio you can try.

Some ME sufferers have gone on to train as Alexander Technique teachers. Their experiences therefore provide a unique insight into its benefits for this group of people. Here’s what a couple of them have said:

The Alexander Technique makes no claim to be a cure for CFS/ME, but by learning to use yourself more efficiently it will help you to get the best out of what you have available to you. … As a sufferer myself I simply couldn’t imagine not having the Alexander Technique in my life.

https://www.alexander-technique-online.com/articles/cfs-me/

People with CFS generally hold an immense amount of tension in their bodies. Their breathing may be compromised through tension held around the rib cage. By using your body in an effective, stress free way the Technique can provide many benefits to a person with CFS including rediscovering a healthy balance between mind and body. By taking Alexander Technique lessons a person learns to use their body more effectively. So if you are using less energy every time you carry out an everyday activity, such as getting out of a chair or picking something up, then the energy you have lasts longer. As an ex-suffer of severe chronic fatigue I believe that the Alexander Technique actually increases your energy base. … For people with CFS who have compromised life styles, having Alexander Technique lessons can help them feel more positive about their medical condition as it empowers them to learn useful strategies on how to be kind to their body and live in the present.

http://alexandertechniqueleeds.com/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/

This blog post is based on the article, ‘Walking with mechanical advantage’ (The Alexander Journal no.28) by Lawrence Jones, to whom I’m very grateful.

Introduction

Walking well and without injury involves minimizing both energy expenditure and impact forces. Unfortunately, social and cultural forces, as well as individual habits, interfere adversely with the way most people walk. For example, wearing shoes usually prevents the toes of the back foot bending adequately as it lifts off. The dorsiflexion (bending) of the big toe reduces from a healthy 60 degrees when barefoot to 45 degrees with soft sole shoes, and even further to 25 degrees with stiff shoes. This has ramifications, as explained later.

There is one essential caveat to the ten principles I outline below. Walking involves our whole body, and so the individual principles need to be understood within the context of finding appropriate muscle tone throughout our whole musculoskeletal system. You could call this ‘Principle 0’, and it is the groundwork provided by lessons in the Alexander Technique.

PRINCIPLE 1: allow the legs to remain more or less bent at all times

The legs are never perfectly straight in efficient walking. This is because, when walking, we need movement in the torso, pelvis, legs and feet to absorb the shock of heel strike impact.

If we did not bend at the joints of the legs and feet, we would end up with a ‘Frankenstein’ walk, or something resembling a pair of compasses trying to walk (why not give it a try!). The kind of walk that only allows movement at the hip joints results in the body dropping around 10cm with each step. This can be compared to efficient walking which involves exquisitely timed bends at appropriate joints, and which results in a body drop of only around 4cm with each step.

Most people try to lengthen their stride by reaching further forward and straightening the front leg. If you want to increase your speed, instead increase the swing angle of the rear leg and increase toe dorsiflexion (see below).

PRINCIPLE 2: allow the back leg to swing forward

After the first three steps from standing, we do not need to drive ourselves forward during walking. Newton’s law of conservation of momentum keeps us going forward at an almost steady pace. We should therefore be aware of the pendular swinging motion of the legs at the hip joints, rather than excessive effort in the hip flexors.

A surprising video of a ‘passive walking robot’ gives you an idea of what momentum alone can achieve in walking.

PRINCIPLE 3: from a static position, allow the head and body unit to tilt forward before the leg moves

Getting up to walking speed from a static position requires the generation of an overall forward force during the first three steps. This is not achieved with leg forces, but by tilting the whole head and body unit forward slightly, before allowing the leg to swing underneath.

The movement is assisted by the gluteus maximus muscles working at low intensity.

PRINCIPLE 4: allow the knee of the swinging leg to bend sufficiently

The tibialis anterior muscle, which is used to raise or flex the foot, is for most people continuously active as the leg swings forward. This is because most people raise the foot to avoid contact with the ground.

Instead, we can allow the knee of the swinging leg to bend sufficiently so that a released ankle and foot clear the ground. This has several advantages:-

• the foot can hang free instead of being shortened by tension at the ankle;
• the more the leg is bent, the more its natural frequency is increased towards the actual frequency of the swing;
• the forces required to accelerate and decelerate the leg are reduced with a more bent leg.

PRINCIPLE 5: allow the pelvis to rotate

The rear leg pushes its hip forwards, and the front leg pushes its hip backwards, creating a torsion (twist) on the pelvis. This means that the left and right sides of the pelvis move alternately back and forth. This pelvis rotation:

• increases stride length;
• helps shock absorption by reducing the body drop distance;
• assists in the forward swing of the free leg.

PRINCIPLE 6: allow the shoulders to swing back and forth

The rotation of the pelvis is absorbed by the cross-pattern action of the pelvis against the shoulders, helped by the arms swinging. In other words, a forward rotation at the right hip is absorbed by a forward rotation at the left shoulder, and vice versa. If we prevent this cross-pattern action by fixing our arms at our sides, the energy requirement for walking increases by about 7%.

We should remember it is the shoulders that cause the arms to swing and not the other way round. The natural frequency of the arm swing is very close to an efficient walking step frequency, and therefore the arms can be left alone to swing without effort. As an aside, if you bend your arms, the natural frequency of the arm swing increases – which is one reason we run with bent arms.

PRINCIPLE 7: allow the pelvis to sway from side-to-side

For stability, the pelvis needs to move from side-to-side to keep the body’s centre of gravity over the standing leg. It is most efficient to move the centre of gravity over the foot by allowing the pelvis to sway to that side, while keeping the head rather free of side-to-side movement. Keeping the sway in the pelvis rather than the head helps maintain visual integrity. To assist, a narrow step width will avoid the need for excessive side sway (in other words, the opposite to the ‘sea-legs’ of a sailor’s widened gait).

Out of interest, fashion models wearing high heels on the catwalk will employ an exaggerated side-to-side sway to help absorb impact forces. This is because their feet, being so restricted, cannot provide the usual assistance.

PRINCIPLE 8: allow the sides of the pelvis to tilt up and down

In walking, the standing hip rises and then descends during the leg swing. By allowing the pelvis to tilt up and down, the innate flexibility of the sacro-iliac joint is better able to participate in shock absorption.

Many people keep their pelvis rather fixed and level during walking by preventing the landing hip joint rise which would otherwise occur naturally during the heel strike.

PRINCIPLE 9: allow the foot to roll from the heel along the outside of the sole and across to the big toe

The feet are the most important actors in shock-absorption and creating a ‘sine-wave’ up-and-down trajectory of the body.

As soon as the weight lands on the heel, the act of rolling the foot begins. The centre of pressure progresses smoothly from the heel along the outside of the foot and then across to the ball of the foot and toes. The final push off is from the big toe which, in a healthy movement, will dorsiflect up to 60 degrees.

PRINCIPLE 10: allow full dorsiflexion of the toes, particularly the big toe

As mentioned above, the wearing of normal shoes prevents the full dorsiflexion of the toes. In particular, a healthy big toe should be able to dorsiflect up to 60 degrees.

Allowing full dorsiflexion of the toes as the back foot lifts off the ground creates a stronger and stiffer foot. This is because dorsiflexion of the toes tightens the plantar fascia ligament along the bottom of the foot through a mechanism known as the ‘windlass action’.

Healthy toe dorsiflexion also assists with the forward swing of the back leg and with the upward force required to raise the body.

For all its downsides, lockdown has resulted in some unexpected flourishing. One amazing example has been the inspiring visual art created over the last year by my friend and colleague Judith Kleinman.

Through an amazing variety of images, Judith has managed to capture some of the essence of the Alexander Technique – which is no mean feat! These pictures suggest all sorts of concepts and emotions to me: flow, ease, balance, poise, peace, connection, hope, simplicity… the list goes on.

And since Alexander Technique lessons are still online, these images have proved wonderful teaching aids to stimulate conversation around the principles of our work.

Below is a small selection of Judith’s images. You can find her complete collection at findingquietstrength on Instagram.

Over this tough period of Covid lockdown, I’ve realised that the closest an Alexander Technique student can get to the experience of a hands-on lesson is ‘active rest’.

Essentially, active rest entails lying on your back on a fairly firm surface, placing a book under your head, bending your knees and resting the soles of your feet on the floor. It also goes by some other descriptions in the Alexander world, such as semi-supine, constructive rest or balanced resting state.

Why is this practice remarkable? Well, it gives you the best chance to release muscle tension and come back to your most coordinated self.

Like meditation, active rest is both simple and demanding at the same time. The good news is that I’ve now created a 16-minute free audio which will talk you through the process.

The question is, will you take the time in your busy day to experience it?

Last week I attended a Zoom talk, Mindfulness Made Easy, presented by Shamash Alidina. You can watch it again here. Shamash characterized mindfulness as being present with certain values such as kindness, curiousity, acceptance and openness. A helpful definition, I thought.

There are a number of ways in which mindfulness intersects with the Alexander Technique. Both rely on present-mindedness and particular forms of attention. Where I would say they diverge is that the Alexander Technique develops a specific way of working with the body – it’s a kind of mindfulness in action if you like. And one of the fascinating things for me has been the growing scientific evidence for the effects of the Alexander Technique on our bodies.

Two aspects of Shamash’s talk got me thinking about connections to the Alexander Technique. I hope you find them interesting.

1. Shamash referenced Stanford scientist BJ Fogg’s new book Tiny Habits on a number of occasions. The basic idea is that small actions are so much easier to make a start on, but can have cascading positive effects. For example, in my current state of mind, I may find the idea of a 20 minute meditation simply a burden. Well, no matter. Can I take one just mindful breath instead? Try it now, and you may find that you wish to take a few more. Many of us are perfectionists, but Shamash instead suggests progress over perfection. This reminded me of Olivia Remes’ quirky tip to do it badly. Likewise, the promise of the Alexander Technique involves taking the time to pause and look after ourselves in the present moment. We’re not being grandiose. We’re not beating ourselves up with could’ves and should’ves. We’re scattering seeds in the present, gently trusting that some of them will germinate.
2. Shamash also referenced what he termed BJ Fogg’s breakthrough discovery, his E=MC². This was that our behaviour is based on three things: motivation, ability and a prompt. FM Alexander might easily have used the word ‘stimulus’ instead of ‘prompt’. The valuable insight here is that we can use difficulties or challenging situations as the prompt for self-kindness. When do we most need mindfulness or the Alexander Technique? It’s when the going gets tough. So, can we have the presence of mind to see the challenging ‘prompt’ for what it is, pause and look after ourselves instead of being at the mercy of it?

On that note, why not give yourself permission to take a longer pause. It could be just what you need. Here’s a wonderful (and free) 15 minute audio for just that purpose.

Semi-supine (or Constructive Rest or Balanced Resting State) is a staple of the Alexander Technique. It entails lying down on your back for 10 to 20 minutes, with a book under your head and your knees pointing towards the ceiling.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it! It is indeed simple but it has profound effects. This is because, when entered into mindfully, it allows you to let go of habitual muscle tension and the thoughts that create it.

An Alexander Technique colleague of mine, Penny O’Connor, has created a 15 minute guided audio description for semi-supine. It’s free of charge to use, but she does suggest a donation to Alzheimer’s Research. You can listen to it here.

Penny’s audio guide is beautifully done. She helps the listener explore external and then internal space; firstly, the relationship between our bodies and the space around us, and then the spaces within the body, that is, the distances between parts of the body. In my view, this exploration is connected very much to the scientific understanding of body schema.

15 minutes flies by, yet we can feel very different by the end. A wonderful, positive experience that I encourage you to try!

A recent scientific model of the Alexander Technique proposes that its diverse effects – ranging from pain-reduction to changes in mood – are the result of changes to postural muscle tone. In particular, there is evidence that the Alexander Technique improves the adaptivity and distribution of postural muscle tone. This blog post takes a look at the latter: how the Alexander Technique alters the distribution of postural tone.

What does it mean to redistribute postural muscle tone?

To begin, it’s important to realise that the nervous system has an abundance of muscular strategies for achieving postural stability. Crucially, this applies most obviously to how it stabilizes our inherently unstable spines. It has been shown that the nervous system will stabilize the spine using a wide variety of combinations or distributions of muscular actions: for example, it can employ superficial muscle activity versus deep muscle activity, lateral versus medial muscle activity and so on.

Alexander Technique redistributes tone towards deeper muscles

There is growing evidence that the Alexander Technique improves the distribution of postural muscle tone along the central axis (neck and torso) by shifting activity from superficial muscles (such as sternocleidomastoid and trapezius) to deeper muscles (such as semispinalis and deep multifidus). One of the effects of this appears to be reduced spinal curvature in the thoracic and lumbar regions after Alexander Technique training.

Deeper muscles are shorter in range, cross fewer joints and can be counterbalanced locally. They can therefore control movement and position efficiently and precisely.

Conversely, superficial muscles cross multiple joints and can cause tension to spread across the body as more muscles are recruited to stabilize their activity. This can lead to stiffness in other parts of the body and interfere with balance, mobility and breathing.

Redistributing tone around the shoulder joints

In addition to changes along the central axis, other areas of the body can arguably benefit from a redistribution of muscle tone.

Movement of the upper arm (humerus) in the shoulder (glenohumeral) joint is a good example, since tension across the shoulders is a common problem. Activity in superficial muscles such as pectoralis major, deltoid and latissimus dorsi can be shifted towards activity in deeper muscles such as the rotator cuff muscles. It is commonly taught that the function of this latter group of muscles is to stabilize the shoulder joint. However, their function is also to rotate the upper arm – hence the name.

Below lists the muscles involved in the movement of the upper arm at the shoulder joint, and indicates that activity can shift from superficial to deep layers of muscles. The rotator cuff muscles (mentioned above) are marked with an asterisk (*):

Explore how to redistribute tone around your shoulder joint

Below is a guided exploration for shifting habitual muscle activity around the shoulder joint from superficial muscles to the deeper layers of muscles. This exploration is based on an idea described in Susan Bauer’s book The Embodied Teen.

1. Lie in the semi-supine position (above). Most adults should place a centimetre or two of books underneath their head.
2. Slowly reach the fingers of one hand to the ceiling until your shoulder blade comes off the floor. Then let your shoulder relax slowly downwards while keeping your fingers reaching up and your arm at 90 degrees to your torso.
3. Are you releasing the muscles around your shoulder joint? Let the earth support the weight of your arm in its vertical position.
4. Now imagine there’s a coloured pencil at the tip of your longest finger, and that it is actually touching the ceiling. ‘Draw’ a tiny circle on the ceiling by circling your arm at the shoulder joint only. Is your shoulder still as relaxed as possible and well supported by the floor? Use the least amount of effort to draw the circle.
5. Increase little by little the size of the circles you’re drawing on the ceiling. Keep drawing slow circles until you’re drawing the largest circle you can. Check in with yourself to see if you’re still using the least amount of effort possible.
6. Once you’ve drawn a few large circles, slowly make the circles smaller and smaller until your arm comes to rest vertically in the centre.
7. Slowly return your arm to its rest position by your side. Take a moment to notice how your arm feels, and compare it with your other arm.

You may well notice that at first your arm is unable to make smooth circles at the shoulder joint – the movement can feel ‘jerky’ or ‘rough’. This occurs as the superficial muscles around the shoulder joint learn to release and the deeper muscles at the shoulder joint learn to take over the role.

Google ‘Dr Andrew Huberman stress’ and you’ll come across a flurry of articles, podcasts and video interviews from the past couple of months.

Dr Huberman, based at Stanford University School of Medicine, is at the cutting edge of neuroscientific research into stress, and recently he has been sharing his lab’s findings with the wider public. This is great news. Not only is his research helpful on a practical level, he’s a great communicator too.

So what’s he been saying about the subject?

The arousal continuum

Dr. Huberman describes stress as one position along what is called the arousal continuum. At one end you would find someone having a panic attack and at the other end would be someone in a coma. In between these extremes are such physiological states as highly alert, alert and calm, drowsy and deeply asleep. Here’s what the continuum looks like:

For as long as we are alive, at any given moment we are somewhere along this continuum. We are either pulled towards alertness by our sympathetic nervous system or towards calmness by our parasympathetic nervous system. And when there’s balance between the two systems, we are both alert and calm, which is the optimal state for most waking activities.

At one extreme, deep sleep is vital for restoring mental and physical wellbeing, healing wounds and consolidating learning that has happened during the day. And towards the other extreme, high levels of alertness are also often essential and well-matched to the situation – for example, if you’re trying to avoid being involved in a road traffic accident. However, too much stress is harmful and will result in poor mental and physical outcomes such as impulsivity and an impaired immune system.

Vision and breathing: two levers for controlling stress

Dr Huberman and his team at Stanford have for some time been building a science-based framework for combating stress. Their aim has been to create tools which anyone can use to decrease alertness and increase calmness.

Rather than investigate practices such as meditation or massage, their focus has been on more immediate approaches which allow individuals to voluntarily make ‘real-time’ changes to their autonomic arousal, or in other words their position along the arousal continuum.

What Huberman’s laboratory has discovered is that making changes to vision and breathing are the fastest ways an individual can combat stress. When you see something exciting or stressful, your pupils dilate and your visual system goes into what could be described as the equivalent of portrait mode on a smartphone. Your field of vision narrows, the one thing in front of you is brought into sharp relief, and everything else in the background becomes blurred.

Conversely, the stress response can also be dampened by changing the way you view your environment. That is, by widening your gaze and seeing much further into the periphery – above, below and to the sides of you.

Changing your breathing also has immediate effects on stress because it influences your heart rate. When you exhale, your diaphragm rises and creates less space for the heart. This causes the blood to flow more quickly through the heart, and as a result the brain sends a signal to slow down the heart rate. The opposite is true for the inhale.

In short, extending your outbreath will slow down your heart rate and reduce your autonomic arousal.

One further insight into how breathing can reduce stress is the ‘physiological sigh’ which describes a double inhale followed by an exhale. This is a natural breathing pattern (animals will also breathe like this) and it offloads the maximum amount of carbon dioxide from the lungs.

The Alexander Technique and Stress

Most people would recognize in themselves the connection between stress and muscle tension. Unconnected to Dr Huberman’s work, scientists have established that the Alexander Technique improves both the adaptability and distribution of postural muscle tone in the body. These scientists also postulate that the modification of postural muscle tone is the likely mechanism through which the Alexander Technique can regulate the emotions. They give three possible explanations:

• adaptable or reduced tension in the chest, abdomen and back leads to deeper, slower breaths, which in turn downregulates the sympathetic nervous system;
• based on an embodied cognition model, activating postural patterns associated with being calm, alert, and confident facilitates these feelings;
• axial motor regions, central to the Alexander Technique, may have a strong influence on the regulation of the adrenal response to stress.

Whatever the precise mechanisms, the Alexander Technique trains individuals to interact in real-time with postural muscle tone, and this seems to have a calming effect. The Alexander Technique may therefore be of interest to Dr. Huberman’s lab in its quest for tools that help individuals combat stress in real time by changing their autonomic arousal.

When FM Alexander, the originator of the Alexander Technique, died in 1955, one of his pupils Walter Carrington started his own training course in the Technique.

Over subsequent decades, Carrington’s training course in London went on to become one of the most popular teacher training schools for the Alexander Technique.

This Advent, Tristan Pannatier is sketchnoting one of Walter Carrington’s talks every day in a kind of Advent Calendar of the Alexander Technique. You’ll come across some fun and visually interesting ways to refresh your thinking about the Alexander Technique, so why not take a look?

You can view each sketch as it appears over the next month here on Facebook.