The ‘me’ problem – why people start Alexander Technique

recorder

Last week I told you how the beginnings of the Alexander Technique were to be found in threatened passion. FM had a passion for acting and reciting, and when he was threatened with the loss of the career that he loved, he decided to take the bold step of solving his problems for himself.

I was pretty similar to FM, in that the thing that got me started on my Alexander Technique journey was threatened passion.

I was 22, newly married, starting a postgrad degree in a new country, discovering cooking and new groups of recorder enthusiasts to play with, and finding a whole new world of knitting yarns and patterns. I was also a long way from home and everything that had been familiar and supportive, and trying to make the best of the tremendous career opportunities I had been given. Life was both incredibly exciting and astonishingly stressful.

When my arms and wrists started hurting when I used the computer or knitted, at first I ignored it. But when the discomfort increased, I went to the doctor for help. That was the beginning of my journey to doctors, specialists, physiotherapists, osteopaths and goodness knows how many other health practitioners. None of them solved the issue. Sometimes I got some temporary relief, but then I’d do more research on the computer, or play another concert, and it would be back worse than ever.

I stopped playing recorder. It hurt too much. Then I stopped knitting. Same reason. Then I got told to rest my arms completely for six weeks. No computer (while writing a thesis!) and no cooking. Not even tying shoelaces was allowed.

My life was getting smaller and smaller. And somehow I knew that the reason why medical solutions weren’t helping me was because I didn’t have a medical problem. I had a Me problem. There was something about the way I was doing the things I was doing that was causing my problems.

And that was where FM Alexander began. He asked exactly that question of his doctor:

 

‘Is it not fair, then,’ I asked him, ‘to conclude that it was something I was doing that evening in using my voice that was the cause of the trouble?’ *

 

FM suspected that there was something about the way he was using his voice that was problematic. I suspected there was something about the way I was using my arms that was problematic. He studied himself in a mirror to work out what he was doing and how to stop it. I found an Alexander Technique teacher and started having lessons.

Is there something about the way that you are going about the activities you love that is causing you problems? What one step can you take today to begin change?

* FM Alexander, The Use of the Self in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.412.
Image by Steve Ford