As teachers or practitioners of yoga, we are constantly engaged in the interplay of effort and ease. As we challenge ourselves to move into new areas of strength, coordination or flexibility, we often bump into limiting assumptions and patterns of tension. F.M. Alexander, in solving his own vocal problem, created a method for unraveling unconscious movement habits. His insights and approach can be a valuable tool for us, at any level of practice.
Yoga and the Alexander Technique have some commonalities. Both promote inner connectedness and expanded consciousness through the body. Both relieve pain and improve breathing, posture and alignment in movement. Both improve overall health and raise the spirit. In order to achieve these benefits, both challenge our habitual ways of moving. The primary difference is that yoga is an ancient philosophy, a detailed and infinite set of postures and practices, and Alexander Technique is fundamental principle, a century-old approach to movement – a way of doing things that we can bring to any activity, from holding a child to singing an aria to sitting well at a desk. As a longtime student and teacher of both, I naturally integrate its principles into my yoga classes and see how the Technique can help build a satisfying practice.
Born in 1869, Alexander was a young Shakespearean actor who lost his voice. When no doctor could help him regain it, he studied his own movement pattern over a period of nine years. In a triumph of self-experiment, he solved his vocal problem and, in the process, created a method for encouraging poise and ease in effort of any kind. He observed – in himself and later in his many students – that the relationship between the head and spine is primary. When the neck is free and the head poises lightly at the top of the spine, the whole body becomes more resilient and responsive. Releasing tight muscles at the base of the skull allows a forward rotation of the head, prefiguring creator of Anusara Yoga John Friend’s,
perception of the skull loop. This rotation clears the way for the torso’s natural tendency
to flow up, away from the legs.
To communicate this idea to his students, Alexander developed a gentle hands-on method that encourages release and integration. Countless times I have seen that, when I use this light touch on my students, they are more easily able to balance, modulate muscular effort, or extend more fully in an asana.
Alexander articulated three interlocking skills he called awareness, inhibition and direction. Awareness is an endless cooperative venture for teacher and student. The teacher offers insights about areas that, when released, can awaken untapped reserves. The student can then build on that new kinesthetic experience.
Inhibition is the capacity to unravel excess tension, to pause in the process of striving. We all want to do well. As we try to capture the essence of a pose, we can often bring too much effort to the task. Excess effort interferes with the body’s natural flow. Reducing muscular effort can be the prelude to finding a new reservoir of flexibility, strength and steadiness.
Direction is envisioning directions of energy in the body. Sometimes, simply “thinking up” will produce lightness and ease, clarifying postures and bringing more pleasure to practice. Rather than forcing a movement, we can engage the mind to subtly guide the body from within.
The Alexander Technique is a useful lens through which to perceive asana practice, another tool for self-development to support our ongoing inquiry into the enlivening process of yoga.
For an article on Yoga and the Alexander Technique in Fit Yoga, go to www.joanarnold.com
