What is a feeling of well-being? Why it is sometimes a very elusive thing to have well-being? How are we actually involved with its presence in our day to day lives, and how can the Alexander Technique make well-being a new habit of life? I would say a feeling of well-being is the very opposite […]
Continue to Full Post...Author: Beret Arcaya
I believe that many of us have had the experience of being in a conversation or social situation in which we lacked self-possession. When after it was over we thought to ourselves, darn it! Why didn’t I think to say this…or that…. Why didn’t I make this point? I should have said…. So what has […]
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Doing Nothing
“Doing nothing” is a fundamental principle in teaching the Alexander Technique. This odd idea about DOING NOTHING confuses many pupils; it is in fact a habit that the Alexander Technique can help one to develop. In our physicality and movement, “doing nothing” can result in buoyancy. What F.M. Alexander says about this is that in […]
Continue to Full Post...This is Part I of an ongoing series on “Directions,” one of the basic premises of the Alexander Technique. Ah yes quite a wonderful topic. This will span several blog posts I am sure but let me start with this: We are always directing ourselves all the time, but it is all done unconsciously or […]
Continue to Full Post...This is Part II of an ongoing series on “Directions,” one of the basic premises of the Alexander Technique. Everything we get in the Alexander Technique and in life is the result of a process of direction. There is no result without a process behind it. If there could be such a thing we would […]
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Coping Well: The Path to Poise
Coping well. This is what we can do easily when we are feeling well with ourselves, and what the Alexander Technique can teach us. When I think about well-being I think about being in a frame of mind and state of being where no matter what I am dealing with, no matter how sudden or […]
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Worrying and the Habits Based on Fear
One of the aims of the Alexander Technique is to bring our unconscious habits into our awareness, so that choice may enter in. Over excited Fear Reflexes and the state of what we call “nerves” afflict the majority of humans. In greater and greater numbers, people are taking drugs to calm their nerves and medicate their anxieties. There are […]
Continue to Full Post...Making a change for the better? You will have to stop and think and self-observe—what were my means before? How was I trying to get what I wanted? What was not working in that way I was going about it? These are questions you will have to ask yourself. The answers may not be very […]
Continue to Full Post...In learning to do anything there is always an amount of worry and fear about doing it “right.” In F.M. Alexander’s teachings that question never comes up. In fact Alexander Technique teachers want you to be wrong. Alexander Technique teachers want you to not strive and to not work at things in your habitual ways […]
Continue to Full Post...A new means whereby we may become masters of ourselves. This is the fourth in a series of posts on “directions.” To recap here, first, to really become wonderful at doing anything, we have stop the self-sabotage and subconscious and semi-conscious habits (of thought and action) that derail us. Therefore, we have to see clearly […]
Continue to Full Post...“There is a constant conflict between the subconscious and conscious which is only sometimes vaguely recognized as a struggle between instinct or intuition, and the reasoning power of the mind.” F.M. Alexander According to F.M. Alexander, man must first learn to see that this struggle between the subconscious and conscious exists inside him; after that […]
Continue to Full Post...One of the chief aims of the Alexander Technique is heightened consciousness. (F.M. said of his work, “It is quickening the conscious mind.”) Consciousness in what we are doing and how we are doing it in life, unfailingly leads a person to a state of prevention of disease, mental and physical malformations, and loss of […]
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Living in the Moment
By Stella Weigel We are constantly tossed about in a sea of forward-planning, meeting deadlines and commitments, that we invariably lose sight of what it means to live “in the moment,” to really stop and allow things to unfold in their own time. We prefer, instead, to be in control, to hold onto things. The […]
Continue to Full Post...“I do not claim to have discovered any new method of breathing, but to understand the only true one- Nature’s” – F. M. Alexander Asthma gives a feeling that you cannot inhale air. In reality, the sufferer cannot exhale. But it does not feel that way (unreliable kinesthesia). For asthmatics, the ease of air in […]
Continue to Full Post...According to Nemours, asthma affects about 1 or 2 kids out of 10, making it the most common chronic disorder in childhood, currently affecting an estimated 7.0 million children under 18 years. While most common in school age kids, asthma can start at any age — even in a little baby or an adult. Over […]
Continue to Full Post...Look up in any dictionary (in any language) the word “posture” and the definition is attitude. That means that if you think you have “bad” posture your attitude about yourself and yourself out in the world could be vastly improved with Alexander Technique lessons. Alexander Technique lessons will help you change deeply within yourself. This […]
Continue to Full Post...We all get stressed. And often, it seems as though this stress is imposed on us from the outside. But the Alexander Technique helps us see that this is not the case. Stress is really not something outside ourselves. It actually is all about how we are reacting to conditions, whether the conditions are created […]
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Going Up
By Stella Weigel In Thinking Aloud [Mornum Time Press, 1994] Walter Carrington describes what was probably the last lesson between Alexander and an old lady who had been a pupil of his for some years. At the end of the lesson, Alexander “patted her on the shoulder and said, “Now, my dear, see that […]
Continue to Full Post...Many people come to the Alexander Technique because of lower back pain. It’s not surprising. Our lives have become very sedentary and most of us will spend many hours a day in service related jobs sitting at desks looking at computers. Working pain free in our stressful world is becoming very difficult. According to the […]
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New Eyes
By Stella Weigel I recently attended the Alexander Technique Workshops International in Tuscany, organized by Michael Frederick. I had not attended since 2007, the summer after I began my lessons, and I knew this would be an entirely different experience. The place had not changed (I had even been given the same room), yet everywhere […]
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