Robert Rickover on Towards Freedom

Taking the Pressure Off Your Body

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 17:37:02 -0800

“Stand up straight!” “Pull your shoulders back!” As children, we were told to have good posture. Yet we were seldom taught effective ways to accomplish this. Indeed, we were often not even told just what “good posture” is.

The consequences of this information gap can be seen all around us: stiff necks, shoulders hunched forward or pulled tightly back, restricted breathing, and tightness in the thighs, legs and ankles. Backaches, headaches, and other painful symptoms are often the unfortunate result.

By the time we’ve spent a year of two in school, sitting for hours on chairs and at desks chosen primarily for their economy and for the convenience of the custodial staff, we have learned tension patterns that interfere with our natural easiness, balance, support, and freedom of movement. These tension patterns - slumping or stiff ‘good posture’ patterns \ become so habitual that they start to feel normal despite the fact that they seriously restrict our breathing and freedom of movement.

The Alexander Technique is a time-tested method of teaching ways to restore our natural balance, flexibility and ease of movement. It teaches the use of the appropriate amount of effort for a particular activity, releasing more energy for all our activities. It is not a series of treatments or exercises, but rather a re-education of the mind and body that helps you discover a new balance in your body by releasing unnecessary tension. It can be applied to all of your daily activities.

The Alexander Technique places a great deal of emphasis on the relationship between your head and neck. The way we manage that relationship has huge implications for the way the rest of our body is organized. If, as is so often the case, we compress our heads down into our spines, a whole series of compensatory tensions is created. If, on the other hand, we can learn to allow our head to balance lightly on top of our spine as nature intended, our built in ‘anti-gravity’ reflex is activated and our body is encouraged to release previously held restrictions.

The Alexander Technique is above all an educational method. Alexander Teachers use a combination of verbal instruction and a light, guiding, touch to convey information to their students. Alexander Technique teaching is done in private lessons and in group classes. Private lessons are usually between 1/2 and 1 hour in length.

Most certified Alexander Technique teachers have completed a three-year full time training course recognized by one of several major professional societies. Typically, the training courses have a student teacher ratio of 5:1 or less, and provide a great deal of individual attention for each trainee.

A few teachers have trained more informally on an apprenticeship basis and some of them have become members of professional societies through a rigorous review process. Not all Alexander Technique teachers are certified and not all teachers eligible for certification are members of a professional society.

All of the major professional Alexander Technique societies publish a teachers’ list as well as on-line listings. Recommendations from friends and colleagues can be useful in choosing a teacher, but you will have to judge for yourself if a particular teacher is right for you.

Ask about his or her training and be prepared to take a few lessons before deciding whether to continue with a course of lessons. If you live in a community with several teachers, have a lesson or two with several before making a final decision.

The basic ideas of the Alexander Technique are not in any way complex or mystical, they do represent a new way of thinking about the functioning of your body and may take a little getting used to at first.

Excess tension in your body can cause a variety of unpleasant symptoms and it can interfere with your ability to perform activities well. Therefore it is not surprising that most people come to the Alexander Technique because they are in pain (backaches, sore necks and shoulders, carpal tunnel syndrome etc.) and/or because they are performers who want to improve the quality of their singing, playing, acting or dancing.

People of all ages and occupations have benefited from Alexander Technique lessons. The Technique also has its share of famous people who have publicly endorsed it - including two Nobel Prize winners and a great many celebrities like Paul Newman, John Cleese, William Hurt, Sting, James Galway and Yehudi Menuhun.

Robert Rickover is a teacher of the Alexander Technique living in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also teaches regularly in Toronto, Canada. Robert is the author of Fitness Without Stress - A Guide to the Alexander Technique and is the creator of The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique

A Stiffnecked People

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 17:36:54 -0800

The Lord said to Moses, “I see this is a stiffnecked people. Now let Me be, that my anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them” (Exodus, 32: 9, 10)

Moses had been up on the mountain top for awhile receiving God’s commandments. The people had lost faith in his return - and in God. They built a golden calf to worship and began sacrificing animals to it.

God had just led them out of Egypt, saved them from Pharoh’s army and provided for all their needs. Yet just a little delay in Moses’ return, and they reverted back to their old idol-worshiping ways.

It’s not surprising that God was angry when He saw what they had done. But why did He use the phrase ‘stiffnecked people’? And why is that same phrase (the Hebrew word is kashe-oref - kashe: hard; oref: scruff of the neck) repeated again in Deuteronomy 9: 13 and 14? After all, God didn’t rail against their stiff shoulders, stiff arms or stiff legs.

What’s so important about that particular part of our anatomy - that God should make specific mention of it in His anger?

Take a moment to think about where your neck is located and what function it plays in your life.

Your neck is the vital connecting corridor between the most important parts of your body, your head and your torso. These are two parts of you that are absolutely necessary for you to survive as a living human being.

A surgeon will tell you that there are as many distinct structures in your neck as in all the rest of your body. Air, food, nerve pathways and life- sustaining fluids such as blood and lymph have to pass through this narrow region of your body. And because the structures of your neck are packed so closely together, they require an absolute minimum of excess tension to function at their best.

Clearly its important for your general well being that your neck freely allows what might be called efficient ‘biological connections’ between your head and torso. But its condition also has a huge impact on the ‘mechanics’ of your functioning: your posture, coordination and your ability to move efficiently.

Your head weighs between 10-12 pounds and it is poised at the very top of your neck. I often hand my new Alexander Technique(1) students a sack filled with 12 pounds of sugar and ask them to hold it in their arms for a few moments to get an idea of what this feels like. Most are amazed that they’re carrying so much weight on top of the necks.

If your head is lightly balanced on top of your neck, very little muscular effort is needed to keep it there. But if that balance is compromised, you’re going to have to hold it up with a lot of muscular effort. In other words, you’ll have to stiffen your neck to keep it from falling forward, or to one side.

And if your neck is stiffened, that tightness will cause compensatory tightening throughout the rest of your body, harming your ability to move freely and efficiently - not to mention restricting your breathing, putting pressure on your internal organs, etc.

Think for a moment of people you know who have stiff necks. Watch how they sit, stand and move and you’ll see what I mean. Chances are they move comparatively stiffly and awkwardly.

And then think of how they adjust to changing circumstances in general and how flexible they are in their thinking. Very likely you?ll notice a certain mental rigidity that mirrors their physical stiffness. (It is for good reason that the word ‘stiffnecked’ is often translated in the Bible as ‘stubborn’.)

If we are indeed made in God’s image, then it stands to reason that He would be displeased when we would take poor care of ourselves. Stiffening our necks is one of the quickest and surest ways to do just that.

And learning how to release undue tension in our necks is one of the best things we can do to improve our overall functioning.