You Can Change the Pain in Your Life

by Shirley Hanson

(Reprinted from The Chestnut Hill Local, Thursday, July 13, 1989, p. 17+.)

As a writer, Aldous Huxley is noted for his arduous intellectual quests. As a man, he was viewed for many years as awkward, vulnerable, tired, and depressed. While working on the emotionally and intellectually demanding Eyeless in Gaza, he so exhausted himself that he could write only while lying on his back with a typewriter on his chest. At that time he began taking lessons with F.M. Alexander, who, wrote Huxley’s wife, “made a new and unrecognizable person of Aldous, not only physically but mentally….”

If a young Tasmanian actor with a love for Shakespeare, FM Alexander, hadn’t lost his voice while performing and hadn’t experimented on himself with the greatest scientific rigor until he developed a path to recovery, Huxley would never have learned how to take responsibility for his own well-being.

And Doris Ferleger’s existence might remain one of increasing pain. Ferleger, an individual and family therapist, came to Alexander lessons for a back problem so severe she was able to see patients only while lying on her office floor.

Always physically active, she had danced three hours the night before cleaning out the attic. It was then that her back gave out. She tried many routes, each one unsuccessful. “Nobody seemed to know what to do with me.” Once she began Alexander lessons, she found her teacher, Jeff Tessler, “Knew about the kind of pain I was experiencing, understood its cause, and believed that I would get better.”

“It is clear to me that I can prevent my pain from recurring through continued awareness of the most efficient way to wash the kitchen floor or to bend down to reach for something. One of the things I am most excited about is that I thought I would never be able to lift my son again. I can do it with optimal body usage.”

What is the technique Alexander discovered? Aldous Huxley called it a “total training of the use of the self.” It is “training people in the art of getting out of their own light.” It is a way of “freeing ourselves from our eclipsing bad habits.” Then, the “indwelling intelligence of the body,” he said, “can be relied upon to perform miracles.”

From Alexander’s experimentation came several overriding principles. One is the concept of primary control: the relationship of the head to the neck and back and, also, to the activity of the moment. He wrote of the “indivisible unity of the human organism.” He concluded, “It was impossible to separate mental and physical processes in any form of activity.”

Alexander grasped the “close connection that exists between use and functioning.” A better use of the self leads to improved functioning at all levels of being.

Jeff Tessler, for eight years a teacher of the Alexander Technique and for the past year a Chestnut Hill resident, came to Alexander lessons because “I wanted to stop hurting. I was experiencing almost a total body breakdown.” His problems began with athletic injuries in high school and grew more intense through misusing himself.

While in college he started Alexander lessons. The philosophy and methodology to which he was introduced, he said, “applied common sense to my problems.” The lessons were not about “someone else fixing my problems,” but about “teaching me to stop doing things that stood in my way.”

Through lessons from a trained Alexander teacher, Tessler achieved gradual relief from his knee, back, and neck problems. The most important change was “my loss of the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, which were replaced by a sense that I was the one who was going to change my harmful patterns. The idea of the use of the self is very much overlooked. People do not think about how they are creating their own problems.”

At the heart of the technique is inhibition: that is, “pausing to give yourself a gap in which expanding awareness is possible–time to realize what you are doing and what you are choosing to do.” Once awareness and acceptance of responsibility are brought into the process, change is possible. Not accepting responsibility for yourself, good or bad, is often identical with feeling a loss of control over your life and problems. Applying Alexander’s technique of conscious control provides an edge of pleasurable dispassion and helps to bring you out of the situation.

“The technique is not about getting it right but about seeing where you are going wrong and beginning to deal with it. It’s about upgrading your standards of functioning. A more skillful use of yourself as you grow older can prevent many of the degenerative problems associated with aging.”

The Alexander Technique is not a panacea. Lessons, usually on a one-to-one basis, are “hard work, taking in new information, and processing, adapting, and expanding it.”

“More and more,” Tessler said, “I am amazed at the complexity of our problems and how dearly and tightly we hold our habits, even the harmful ones.” Alexander lessons provide a way to return to a “child’s state of constant discovery and to increase our ability for self-discovery.”

Tessler’s preparation for teaching included three years of training with Joan and Alexander Murray in Urbana, Illinois. Their course is affiliated with the American Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique.

In his years of teaching, students of ages ranging from 6 to 93 have sought him for reasons as varied as stage fright, breathing problems, bad posture, stroke recovery, neck, arm, leg, or back pain, tendinitis from playing the cello or hitting a tennis ball, and the desire to be more at ease with clients.

Results gained by students often are unanticipated. A tympanist with a bad back alleviated this symptom through lessons. In the process of helping himself, he dropped his preconceived ideas about teaching music and became more accessible to his students’ needs. He also heard music in a new way and changed his playing techniques.

Doris Ferleger’s husband, Steven Halpert, M.D., board certified in internal medicine, observed his wife’s progress and took lessons to relieve his own back pain from playing basketball. Within about two months, he said, “My posture began to change in a way that was non-forced. I was standing upright without strain. I was most struck by how strong my back became.” He found, also, that lessons were relaxing, producing “a sense of well-being.”

Halpert suggests Alexander lessons for a number of patients with chronic low-back pain. Ferleger, too, refers patients to Tessler. “Alexander lessons enable people to take better care of themselves emotionally and physically,” she said.

Another student of Tessler’s, Lisa Bardarson, a dancer and muscular therapist living in Mt. Airy, first participated in Alexander lessons as a part of her training in muscular therapy. “Muscular therapists use their bodies to make other people feel more comfortable in their own bodies. If the practitioner’s body uses shows greater ease and openness, that individual can deliver a more effective treatment. The Alexander Technique has also helped me see more clearly body patterns that may be affecting a client’s muscular tension.”

“Alexander lessons revise the way we think about ourselves. I came to the lessons from a lifetime of debilitating physical problems, pain, and despair. Now I understand I have, in some measure, created my own problems, and at last I am discovering how to help myself.”

How to bring constructive rest into your life.

WHY?

If you could learn and utilize a daily, 20-minute activity that would gain you renewed energy, easier balance, increased efficiency in mental and physical activities, and lessened pain and stress … would you be interested? In an average day of 12 to 16 hours of uprightness, you will ask your body to expend a great deal of energy. Your muscles, tendons, and ligaments not only use energy to provide the force to move you through space, they are also in constant demand to stabilize and maintain your vertical (upright) posture. A brief, 20-minute period of horizontal rest allows overused, fatigued, and painful muscles to release, the natural curves in your spine to balance their forces, and a respite from any stresses in your day. The Alexander Technique “lie-down” is a powerful tool of self-care that, when included in your health and well-being regimen, can bring profound improvements in your daily functioning.

WHEN?

The Alexander Technique lie-down is intended as a tool of prevention. Used consistently, it can deter future misuses of your structure that lead to painful imbalances. Although back pain can often be alleviated during a lie-down, your 20-minute time will yield a longer term health investment if you use it regularly, rather than choosing to lie down only _after_ your pain has made you aware of yourself.

It’s recommended that you lie down in the “position of mechanical advantage” at least once a day for 20 minutes; preferably in the middle of the day. All of us have had to search for extra time in the day to use for ourselves and often have difficulty finding it! Try remembering your true motivation: “when practicing my ability to stop and be present to myself, I can be truly present to others and to my environment.” Include the lie-down time as part of your daily routine — if you don’t have 20 minutes, but you do have 10, then lie down for 10 minutes. If you can fit in more than one 20-minute lie-down, by all means, lie down more than once in the course of your day. However, do not lie down for longer than 20 minutes at a time. After 20 minutes, your body/mind will begin to recognize the additional minutes as a cue that this is sleeptime, rather than a short rest period.

If you are a musician, you will get more value out of practice time if you lie down five minutes out of every half-hour of playing time. If you do physical fitness training, lie down before you work out to help prevent injury to over-fatigued muscles. Or lie down after working out in order to rest and re-balance before dashing back to work. If you do a lot of desk/computer work, set your timer for a five minute lie-down every 1-1/2 to 2 hours. You’ll probably find your aching shoulders and neck releasing, as well as a refreshed outlook on your work tasks. Having some trouble sleeping at night? You may want to lie down just before getting into bed, although this should be in addition to another lie-down time during the day.

HOW?

1. Find a quiet, draft-free place on the floor or a large flat table (conference tables work well!). Lie on a carpet, a blanket, or an exercise mat–do not use a bed. (It is the even and firm stimulus of the floor that will help your back rebalance; beds will compress at the heavier parts of your torso, such as your shoulders and hips.) You will also need a small pile of paperback books to rest your head on. Start by sitting on your sit bones with your legs extended in front of you. They can be bent, but do not cross them. You arms are in your lap or released with your hands by your sides.
2. Lean forward easily over your legs by moving from your hip joints. Think of the crown of your head extending out over your feet. Your arms should be relaxed at your sides. Your spine will be lengthening. (Check to make sure you are not aiming your nose for your knees; you will probably feel this as a crunching of your spine.) When you feel that your lower back has lengthened slightly, let your head drop forward from the top of your neck and begin to roll back to lie down. Your hips will go down first, then your back, then your shoulders and head. This movement is done smoothly and easily. It is not a test of the strength of your abdominal muscles; just let your stomach muscles release as you roll back. Reach back and move the pile of books so that the base of your skull rests on them. The books should not touch your neck; rather your neck hangs freely. You may want to use a folded washcloth as a pad if you have a bumpy ridge at the base of your skull.
3. The pile of books under your head should be high enough to fill the space made by the natural curve in your neck. There is a slight forward rotation of your head in relation to your neck. If you feel your jaw is pressing on your throat, you have too many books under your head. If your eyes seem to be looking behind you or your head is rotating backward on your neck, you have too few books under your head. Experiment with the height of the book pile; it will change over time and may even change within the 20 minutes you are lying there. Using a number of thinner books allows you to easily change the height of the pile.
4. After a few seconds of letting your entire body weight settle into the floor, bring your forearms up so that your elbows are directed away from your sides and your hands are resting on your lower ribs. Let your hands lay rested on your torso with fingers extended. Think about letting the full weight of your arms rest on the floor.
5. Bring your legs up one at a time so that your knee is pointing up to the ceiling and your foot is flat on the floor. Your legs should be about shoulder-width apart and your feet are as close to your rear as is comfortable. Rather than “holding” the legs up by squeezing in the groin and pulling the knees together, let them point up to the ceiling the same distance apart as your feet. If you like, you can turn your feet out slightly.
6. After you bring your legs up, your spine will lengthen slightly. You may wish to push the pile of books back a bit. They should be under your head and not touching your neck, which hangs free.
7. Bring your mind to allowing your body weight to settle into the floor. Let the full weight of your head rest on the pile of books. Notice where you are holding onto the muscles of your body and think about letting them release their unnecessary work. Let your breathing be easy and regular. During the 20 minutes, let your mind regularly return to these observations; when you notice yourself “holding on,” think about letting your head’s weight rest completely on the pile of books once again and release yoru full body weight onto the floor.
8. After 20 minutes, get up by rolling your head to the side, followed by your arms and shoulders, then hips and legs. Bring yourself onto hands and knees and slowly bring yourself to standing. Remember to breathe easily during this sequence, holding your breath will lock up your newly released and balanced torso and will make movement more difficult.

(Text written by Beth Stein.)

A TECHNIQUE FOR MUSICIANS

By Frank Pierce Jones

There are musicians — some say there were more of them in the past — who get as much pleasure from a performance as they give, who always perform easily and well, and who use themselves so efficiently that their professional lives and their natural lives coincide. There are others, however, with equal talent and training, to whom performance and even practice are exhausting, and whose professional lives are cut short because they lose the mastery of the skills they have acquired. They put forth more effort in solving technical problems than the results warrant, and ultimately discover that they have used up their reserves of energy. If they understood the use of themselves as well as they understand the use of their instruments, such breakdowns would be far less frequent.

In practice and performance, however, a musician’s attention is given almost exclusively to what he is doing with his hands or his feet or his vocal organs, and to the sounds they are producing. Of what he is doing with the rest of his body, he usually knows very little. In attacking a difficult problem of technique, the average performer uses two approaches: He “tries hard” to master it, using all the skill at his command; and if his trying builds up too much tension and fatigues him, he “relaxes.” In both cases he is working on a trial-and-error basis. He has no way of knowing exactly how much tension is needed, or how to limit it to the time and place where it is wanted.

To take a concrete example, a double-bass player, in order to get the force and control he wanted for finishing the downstroke of his bow, habitually built up so much misdirected tension in his arm that he could not start the upstroke smoothly. Furthermore, he built up a corresponding overtension in other parts of his body — his back, neck and legs. Since he concentrated his attention upon his arms and hands, he was unaware what was happening elsewhere until it showed up in the form of pain and fatigue.

Any performer who continues in this way runs the risk of becoming progressively more muscle-bound, and of losing his freedom of movement. If he recognizes the trouble and attempts to remedy it by relaxing, he runs into the danger in reverse. Either he becomes limp and relatively incompetent, or in achieving relaxation in one part he pays for it by becoming overtense somewhere else. I know a pianist who succeeded in getting almost complete freedom in her arms, so that her fingers showed a remarkable sensitivity and power of fluent movement. But in the process she developed an extraordinary amount of tension in her neck and an aching heaviness in her back and legs. Her attention was given exclusively to her arms and hands, and she did not realize that what she was doing with the rest of her body exhausted her.

It has often been said that our senses deceive us. This statement is especially true of the sense of muscular movement, or kinaesthesia. Often it can be shown that a person is doing something quite different from what he things he is doing. A pianist, for example, once complained to me that in playing he had a sense of great weakness in his hands, which increased whenever he struck certain chords, until it seemed as though he scarcely had the strength to push down the keys. I discovered that just at the moment of attack he was tightening the muscles of his lower arms in such a way that his hands were actually drawn back from the keys. To overcome this backward pull and strike the chord, he had to exert a tremendous amount of force. What he sensed was resistance in the keys and weakness in his hands. The cause, which he failed to recognize, was misdirected strength. As in the other examples which I have cited, the muscular misuse was not confined to his arms and hands. He “got set” all over, with an increase of tension through his neck, shoulders and back, so that the tension in his lower arms was literally “locked in” from above. The amount of tension and the pattern of its distribution were determined by his past experiences in using his arms, both in playing the piano and in other activities, and he did not know that there was any other way of using them.

In most cases, I am convinced that it is futile to attack these problems directly, because the use of the hand or any other part of the body is so closely linked to the manner in which the body as a whole is used. But if a person can be made aware of his muscular movements as a whole, and learn to distinguish their general, overall pattern, he can make constructive changes and corrections on the basis of knowledge rather than of trial and error. Armed with this knowledge, a musician can become, in effect, his own “expert.”

This new approach to the problem of change has been made possible by an important discovery F. Matthias Alexander, of London, made about the nature of reflex action. To my knowledge, Alexander was the first expert, working with human beings in ordinary activities of life, to show and prove that there is what he called the “primary control” within each individual. He defines the primary control as “a certain use of the head and neck in relation to the rest of the body.” By observation and experiment upon himself, “using,” as John Dewey said, “the strictest scientific method,” he learned that the mechanism that determines the character of all reflex action lies in the reflexes governing the relation of the head to the neck. When the primary control is functioning as it should, it is sensed as an integrating force that preserves freedom of movement throughout the system, so that energy can be directed to the place where it is wanted without developing strain either there or elsewhere. Misuse of the primary control, on the other hand, is always reflected by misuse somewhere else; this appears in the form of awkwardness, fatigue and what Wilfred Barlow, a London physician and a pupil of Alexander, calls “maldistributed muscle tension,” or overtension at one place accompanied by undertension (lack of tone) at another.

G.E. Coghill, the American biologist, has pointed out that Alexander’s findings agree with what is known of animal movement in general. The importance of the head in animal movement is well known, and the dominance of the head-neck reflexes in the reflex pattern was established experimentally by Rudolph Magnus and his co-workers.

Alexander showed that in human beings under civilized conditions the head-neck relationship is unconsciously interfered with, to a greater or less degree. His great contribution to education was the discovery of a means by which a person can become aware of this interference and regain the normal use of the primary control. From this discovery and the deductions he made from it, Alexander established, as Bernard Shaw said in the introduction to the volume entitled London Music, “the beginnings of a far-reaching science of the apparently involuntary movements we call reflexes.” John Dewey, who introduced Alexander’s work in this country, said that the discovery was “as important as any principle that has ever been discovered in the domain of external nature.”

The principal is general in its application, and not confined to the problems of musicians. In my experience, however, musicians have been unusually quick to grasp its significance and put it to practical use. Perhaps this is because musicians as a class are keenly aware of the kinaesthetic side of experience. In this article I have directed attention to the problems of instrumentalists; but the principle can be used equally effectively by singers and conductors. Sire Adrian Boult studied with Alexander in London, and many singers have made use of his teaching. The value to singers lies in the fact that the primary control, when it is functioning as it should, prevents interference in the reflexes that control the vocal organs and the breathing mechanism. In this connection, it should be noted that Alexander made his original discovery when he was seeking to find the cause of his own loss of voice in speaking. An account of his procedure is given in The Use of the Self (1932).

In teaching the principle to a musician (or to anyone else, for that matter), the aim is to increase the pupil’s awareness of himself as a whole, until he can detect the interference in the head-neck relationship, which is the first link in the reflex chain of “getting set” to do something — to sit down, to pick up a bow or to strike a chord. In order to accomplish this, the teacher helps the pupil to carry out the activity without the habitual interference, and to realize by actual experience the lightness and freedom of movement that come when the primary control operates normally. Through repeated experience of this kind, the pupil gradually builds a new standard of kinaesthetic judgement. With this standard he has the power at any time to know whether he is obtaining the maximum of freedom and control in what he is doing. If he is not obtaining it he learns how to find the cause of the trouble and eliminate it.

Because the principle is general in its application, a musician is learning something he can use to advantage in whatever he is doing. And conversely, his improved use of himself in everyday life will be reflected in his music. The double-bass player of my first illustration reported, as the first tangible results of his lessons, that he had mowed the lawn without tiring his back, and had kept his equanimity while asking trespassers to leave his property. The same kind of conscious control appeared in his playing and in the ease with which he learned to adapt himself to the demands of his instrument.

I have not meant to suggest that a primary knowledge of the primary control can take the place of natural talent or eliminate the need for technical training and practice. But as a complement to professional study, the musician will find the knowledge invaluable. Over a period of years I have watched the progress of musicians who have learned to use this new approach to their problems, and have witnessed the increasing gain it has brought them in ease of performance, lessened fatigue, and the confidence that comes with a true self-knowledge.

From the book Freedom to Change: The Development and Science of The Alexander Technique, by Frank Pierce Jones <Mouritz Press, 1997>. Originally published in Musical America, January 1, 1949.