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The Alexander Technique is a mind/body method which is used to get the optimum performance from the body while preventing injury. Learning the Technique can help alleviate those physical problems which are due to poor movement and postural habits. All kinds of problems can be created in the body simply by how one moves and holds tension in the muscles. These maladies and diseases are wide ranging and include everything from digestive disorders to sciatica to repetitive strain injury.
What Can the Alexander Technique Do for Me?
Specifically, The Technique helps to control pain, alleviate stress, improve posture, optimize movement and to make more efficient use of the breath. Many of Katherine's clients see her to alleviate discomfort and pain due to office work. Some use it to perfect their performing art form or sport. Lessons can greatly improve public speaking. Many people find they become more physically comfortable and more confident. People seem taller, slimmer and more poised when applying The Technique. Some actually do become taller when they learn to lengthen their spine. Often people have some amazing results.
After I had taken a few Alexander lessons I taught myself how to do a back flip off a diving board, something I had always wanted to do but never had the guts to try. I was able to do this easily because I could tell where my body was in space with a degree of accuracy that was completely new to me. In Alexander terms what I had done was improve my "kinaesthetic awareness" enough to perform the activity. I was able to do most things with more self assurance, greater ease and with much less discomfort - so much so that I became a teacher of this technique so I could share it with the world and I have never looked back!
The Technique is taught in private 45-minute lessons. It is not a series of treatments or exercises but is an educational process for the mind and body. During a lesson you will be asked to do some everyday movements like sitting and standing and walking. These movements allow the teacher to analyze what your habits of movement and breathing are. The teacher also will gently place his/her hands on the student's body, particularly on the head, neck and back.
The hands-on part of the technique is used for three main reasons: to determine where tensions lie in the body, to guide the student in movement and so that the teacher can assist the release of muscles as the student learns to do this for themselves. Part of the lesson also takes place with the student lying face-up on a table in order to take gravity out of the picture while learning to release the muscles more fully with the hands-on help of the teacher.
Katherine is the only Alexander Teacher in NYC to utilize a Migun acupressure massage machine. In certain Alexander Technique lessons she uses the machine to help align the spine and to help the paraspinal muscles to release, enabling the student to progress faster. Migun massage combines Traditional Chinese Medicine acupressure and Western chiropractic therapy. For more information see the Healing Modalities page of this site.
Photographs by Rosa Amarante |
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"Many types of underperformance and even ailments, both mental and physical, can be alleviated...by teaching the body musculature to function differently." -Nikolaas Tinbergen (Discussion of the Alexander Technique in his Nobel Prize address) |
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Alexander Technique
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