What is the cause of your problem?

Yesterday I was having lunch with colleagues at work. One of them started having cramp in her hand whilst using her fork. She said it was a regular occurrence for her. She stretched her fingers for a little bit and then carried on eating.

A little while ago I was working with another work colleague at a computer and he said he probably needed to visit a chiropractor. When I enquired why, he said that he had a problem with his back that needed looking at. So I asked him whether the problem he had was at a particular point that I pointed at, he was surprised and said yes it was.

Both these incidents have something in common. Both people had problems that were causing them discomfort. Both of them knew they had a problem that came up regularly, neither were aware why it was happening.

From my perspective both problems had immediate, observable causes that could be resolved if they stopped creating the problem. In the first case, how much effort does it take to hold a fork? If you use a lot of muscular effort to hold a fork, your hand is going to get tired very quickly and if held for long periods could, just as any muscles would, cause cramp. In the second example, it was also observable that the person I was talking to was moving in a way that pivoted around the point that was the problem. My back would hurt too if I did that to myself!

The key thing I am reminded about in both these cases is that there is a cause. Even if the cause isn't obvious to the person there still is one and the cause of the problem can be analysed and stopped (if it isn't caused by an injury or disease). This would result in someone being free of that problem. Sounds good to me!!

This gets interesting because this was the same as Alexander himself. He had a problem with losing his voice whilst reciting on stage and while in his case he had got help from his doctor it still didn't solve his problem. He made an important leap to realise that there was a cause of his problem and because his doctor couldn't tell him what it was he decided to find out what it was for himself.

This is great news for us, because of his hard work he worked out how to analyse the relationship between cause and effect within ourselves and how we could overcome it ourselves.

It would just take one question from these two people to open up the possibility of finding freedom from their problem. What do you think that question would be? (Answer in the next blog post!). Let me know what you think: barbara@unlockyourmindandbody.co.uk

Rushing Past Your Achievements...

I was teaching earlier in the week and this lesson was looking at walking. Just your average everyday walking. As can happen often in Alexander Technique lessons as we were working and talking about walking the student suddenly realised that as she walked the movement would be a lot easier if she moved with everything together in the same direction. Whilst this may seem obvious now from the perspective of this discussion it wasn't for her at the time.

The wonderful outcome was that she was able to walk in a far easier and less effortful way sustainably within the lesson on her own. Once she had realised this she was understandably pleased and excited.

It was the next bit that took me a bit by surprised. From my point of view she had just had a major breakthrough that deserved celebrating and enjoying. A reward for the work she had put in previously. What did she want to do? Within about 10 seconds she wanted to work on about three other activities and solve this, that and another difficulty. It took a good 5-10 minutes to get her to pull back from trying to solve every problem under the sun there and then and to just be happy with what she had achieved and to just enjoy it. Saying that she did and came back at her next lesson more energetic and ready to improve.

It is easy to want to solve everything at once when you have achieved so much but usually this ends up just making someone more miserable since they realise they can't and they lose the enjoyment of what has just happened. It is so exciting when having been faced with something that isn't ideal you work out how to change it so you stop having the difficulty. It becomes so easy to forget how much you have just achieved.

Remember, celebrate your achievements and value how far you've come!

Barbara

Out Partying Last Night!

Last night was a friend's birthday and she had a big party where lots of her friends and work colleagues went to. We all dressed up and spent the evening chatting away. Eventually after we had eaten and drunk enough the music started getting more upbeat to persuade people to get up and dance.

I must admit I do love dancing, it is something that I really enjoy and I spent lots of time in my early twenties dancing. But it all came to an end back then because I got to the point where I would go up on the dance floor and dance but only be able to for about half an hour. After that I would then have to go and sit back down and watch everyone else because my knees really hurt. I used to find that really frustrating so I stopped going, understandable I think!

I've been learning and teaching the Alexander Technique for 7 years now and finally last night my little miracle took place - I danced for a good hour/hour and half without a problem. Even a couple of years ago I could dance but still not dance how I wanted to or for as long as I wanted. But last night was great, boogie-ing away to new and old songs being as energetic or calm as I wanted to be. Considering I am getting older and I gave up dancing in my early twenties, now in my early thirties I've gone back to dancing successfully with more energy and fun than I did in my twenties. Fantastic!!!

What do I work on?

At the beginning of a lesson I usually ask a student what activity they want to work on. And normally, after some discussion the student decides what it is they want to work on and improve. Yesterday I was teaching a student and it was different. The student didn't have something they wanted to choose even with suggestions from items we had discussed before. I took the unusual step of actively choosing their activity and asking them to do it. This is very rare because a student has to be interested in what they were doing but I considered it was the best next step for the student to take.

The reason I'm writing about this is because there was a significant outcome. The student had never considered the simple activity I suggested (walking) to be one that they needed to work on or one that could be improved. But, by picking on the obvious, the result of the lesson was a whole new area for them to improve and work on came out as well as significant improvement in the performance of walking during the lesson. Sometimes, you do just have to work on the obvious as well as the difficult!

Getting lost on the internet...

I've spent the last few days working on an ecourse of mine so I can get it ready for people to use it. Every now and then I have had to surf on the internet to find out some relevant information for it. I have been amazed at how easy it is to follow links and recommendations from different people and end up being some where else entirely on something new.

This means that over the last few days I have spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer. I have been noticing that my upper back has been getting sore and I've started thinking about what is causing this. My experience up to now tells me that I am doing something I don't need to when I'm typing and surfing and this is the root cause of my problem. Since I have had many hours working on this I have come up with a number of observations! If I try to "sit up straight" it gets worse and a lot faster too and the higher up I have my keyboard I notice it gets worse too.

I was trying to think about what would be the reasons for these things happening and I came to the conclusion that I am using the muscles across the top of my back (because there are the muscles that are getting sore) and somehow I must be using those muscles to do these actions I observed above even though I don't think I am or I don't think I need to. (These sensations of tension and irritation I'm getting don't come from nowhere!!)

I realised that I am trying to sit up straight by tensing the top of my back (to pull my shoulders back) and that is just a complete waste of time. It isn't having the outcome I want - it doesn't help me sit up straight and I just end up having sore muscles. I also worked out that when my keyboard is higher I am lifting my arms by using my shoulders rather than just raising my hands higher to get them to the keyboard. No wonder I've noticed my upper back complaining about what I have been doing.

Since I realised all of this I have stopped trying to sit up straight and that has already started to help my muscles. I have also lowered the keyboard so I am not having to lift my shoulders and I am now analysing how I am moving my arms so I can simplify the movement even further.

Whilst it might sound a bit bizarre, I love being able to respond to what I am noticing about myself and activately improve the situation as I am doing it. I feel really empowered to make a different in what I do and how I do it!