Enjoy the Body You're In

Ever wished your body was 5 or 10 years younger? Feel today you can't do what you could yesterday?

Discovering how to move better can recover those 5 to 10 years!! Give yourself a new lease of life, do more this summer when you feel 5 years younger.

After teaching today I still get excited by the benefits that people can gain from learning this stuff. Today it was just making life easier for ourselves and taking back control of what is important. Very enjoyable for both of us!!

Ground Force Moment

Yesterday, I spent the day with my work colleagues converting the garden for a residential home for the blind and hard of seeing. We spent the day pulling up and re-laying paths, creating new flower beds and grass verges and planting.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, hot and sunny and very relaxing. I spent most of the day laying the path with my colleague and I have to say we were very pleased with the result. After my incident with cleaning and polishing the car (more later) I was a little concerned I might end up in the same difficulty.

The good news was I'd learnt my lesson and I spent the day working hard, levelling sand and gravel, lifting and laying paving slabs and planting whilst keeping some of my attention on my Alexander Technique stuff. I was really pleased with this: by lunchtime I was feeling really positive and enthusiastic and by the end of the day I was still feeling this way. No aches, no pains, no problems - given I spent the day crouching, lifting and bending forward I thought this was a very good outcome and a major turnaround after the cleaning the car incident (see next blog). And the garden looked fantastic afterwards, even if I do say so myself.

Today, I have a few minor muscle aches, not surprising since I work in an office normally and not in the garden but nowhere close to the levels I would have expected for the unusual work I did. It's days like this that make me very happy I know this work, it makes a huge difference to me to be able to do these activities easily so I can enjoy what I do.

Cleaning the car

Three weeks ago I had a bit of a nightmare cleaning and polishing the car. I washed the car, dried it off and then my other half and I polished it. This seems quite normal and the car did look lovely afterwards.

The problem was, did I spend anytime thinking about this AT stuff? Not this time. I wanted to get it all done as quickly as possible. I didn't think about me and I didn't think about how I was washing, drying or polishing the car. Guess what happened?

After about 20 mins I had the most horrendous headache. I haven't had a headache like it for a really long time. My neck was sore, the back of my head really hurt and my headache was intense. I had to go and lie down on the sofa it was so bad.

Only then did I realised that I hadn't thought about what I was doing to myself the whole time I was cleaning and polishing. This inattention eventually caught up with me and boy, did my body let me know about it then. It took me a good hour to sort myself out and relax enough to disperse most of the headache.

That wasn't all. I could feel I had put my neck out from my misuse: excessive muscle tension and poor use, so much so that I needed to go to the chiropractor to get it adjusted back. I went to the chiropractor a week later, got my adjustment and it was wonderful, back to normal!!

So, next time I wash and polish the car I will have to pay attention!! I hope you do too.

Man on his motorbike

I was driving into Horsham Town Centre last week when I came across a man on a motorbike. He was riding a motorbike with a side car in front of me. OK, so the sidecar is a bit unusual but it was how he was sitting on it that got my attention. So much so that I actually changed the route I was taking to carry on following him (sad but true).

He was sitting on his bike with all his weight on his right buttock and his left cheek and leg were completely clear of the bike seat. It isn't all that unusual to have moved your body weight across the seat for balance, you see it in motorbike racing.

The reason I felt the need to follow him is because while his body weight was to the right, his torso and head were still aligned with the centre of the bike. When you looked down his spine to his lower back there was a significant sideways movement to the left.

It was only by following him I could work out it was something he was doing all the time, not just when he was going around the round about!! I thought he could probably benefit from a few lessons of sitting on a motorbike...

Busy, busy, busy....

Managing my work-life balance has recently proved very challenging. I have actually had lots I wanted to write about on my blog but not had a chance to fit it in. The last two months have been busy with lots of students (wonderful and very enjoyable) and major upheaval at my part-time job (definitely not so wonderful or enjoyable).

It has been a period of time that has taught me not to be so attached to things. Change happens and since one of the joys we get in this modern life of email, blogs and global reach is that change is happening far more rapidly for all of us. This means I have been learning to deal with change that happens to me (rather than driven by me) and while it has been tough at times I know I will come out the other side in one piece eventually (I just don't exactly know what the piece will look like!).

I will now write up all those missing comments I wanted to jot down in here, starting with the man on the motorbike!!

Walking...

Do you ever fall over when you're out walking when you are tired? I've come across a couple of people recently who have this experience. They seem to just expect it, it is just part of the way of things for them even though they hurt themselves when it happens.

One of these people actually came to me for lessons and we worked on walking. We worked on changing his walking style so his style and whole experience was one with more security. By the end of the session he was confident that he wouldn't fall over again.

So the good news is, if this is you, you can do something about it!