Posted On: January 31, 2008

Pain Management

What happens when people are in pain?

The first thing you do is hold your breath. If you stub your toe, the first thing you do is gasp! And hold your breath.

And when we’re in pain the next thing we do is tighten up. Sometimes that’s a good thing; the body is protecting the injured part. But when pain itself is the problem, tightening up only makes it worse; one physician told me that it makes pain ten times worse when you tighten up.

Being in chronic pain is a problem in and of itself; whatever the underlying cause, the pain itself needs to be managed.

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If you tighten up and hold your breath, the pain is likely to hurt worse. And that creates a vicious cycle; pain hurts, tighten up, that makes it hurt more, tighten up some more.

When you want to break the cycle, medication is often the first place we look. But medicine has side effects and it can also lose its effectiveness, over time. The body becomes used to it and needs more and more to do the same job.

People often turn to alternative methods.

One way that has helped many people is the Alexander Technique. The Technique is a hands-on, educational method for neuro-muscular re-education.

OK, you ask, what does that mean in English? And since it’s an educational method, how does it help with pain management, anyway?

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Posted On: January 23, 2008

Original video of F.M. Alexander teaching a lesson.

Walter Carrington narrates this film of F.M. Alexander teaching a lesson. The film was taken in 1949.

This film is freely available on YouTube.

Posted On: January 22, 2008

Welcome to Applied Alexander

Welcome to my blog! I am so glad you dropped in for a visit.

Please pull up a chair and get a cup of tea – or coffee - and let’s have a chat.

I hope you have already heard about the Alexander Technique. * This blog is for another purpose than providing information. I will probably still do some explaining, as many visitors may not have previous experience of the Technique, but what I really want to do is to talk about the Alexander Technique and Life. That means applying the principles of the Technique in other ways than we do in lessons. I like to call it, “Applied Alexander.”

In lessons I look at the way a person moves; how they walk, sit, stand, and use a computer or perhaps, a musical instrument. We look at waking up a body sense that has gone dormant, and training ourselves to think in the body.

And in another way, we can look at the way our minds move, at the way our emotions flow through us.


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