stress

Meeting Stress Without Strain

The Alexander Technique

Are you interested in discovering how to better manage the levels of stress in your life?

Life can be stressful. Even the simple act of sitting in a chair and working at a computer is, to a varying degree, stressful. The same can be said of a whole range of activities in any workplace.

Meeting Stress Constructively.

Few of us have the possibility of determining how much stress we have in our lives. It just happens. Fortunately there remains an element of conscious choice in the way we deal with stress.

Taking this view the problem is not so much one of stress - it is always there in some form or another - but in how we choose to deal with it.

As a student of the Alexander Technique you learn how to respond to stress without incurring inappropriate levels of muscular tension. You develop the ability to allow your body to remain well aligned and balanced as you meet the demands of your life.

Frequently the way in which we deal with stress in our life can lead us down a path to chronic pain. The presence of this pain - or fear of its recurrence - can then become an added stress in our lives.

On the other hand, we may choose to meet stress with a constructive, creative solution. It all depends on the 'how' of our response.

Response or Reaction?

Stress management requires active involvement. The Alexander Technique helps us recognise the significant difference between reacting and responding. Do you simply 'react' to stresses or do you make conscious decisions about the nature of your 'response'?

Learning how to 'respond' rather than to continually 'react' in an habitual way can help us to move with greater ease, raise our enjoyment in what we do and enhance our ability to do it well.

'Re - acting' describes a way of doing something which leans heavily upon what has been learnt in the past. To a large degree it is an unconscious process.
'Responding' requires an awareness of what is happening "right now" together with a conscious choice to allow yourself to act in a way appropriate to the moment and the task at hand.

The Alexander Technique.

Individual sessions in the Alexander Technique help you reorganise your total pattern of body movement. You are encouraged into new possibilities of movement and response. This does not involve manipulation, massage - or a radical change in lifestyle.

Using simple, everyday movements such as sitting, bending and walking you experience the difference between "reaction" and "response". Of itself this "rebalancing" of your system helps generally in your ability to deal with stress.

More importantly learning to apply the Technique to these simple tasks provides you with a practical template of how you may choose to respond to a wider range of stimuli - working at a computer station, communicating with an irate client, performing in front of an audience, working in a physically demanding environment - without escalating the levels of tension in your system in an unnecessary way.

top