How a Technique that seems to be about Posture can help with Stress and Anxiety

If you have ever experienced stress or anxiety (there won’t be many of us who haven’t), you will probably recall a feeling that came with this. Even thinking about this now you may notice somewhere in your body that tells you that you are feeling stressed or anxious. Maybe your shoulders have become tense or your breathing has changed. Perhaps you notice your heart rate increase or a feeling or ‘butterflies’ or discomfort in your digestive system. In extreme states of stress you might become irrational, angry, feel unable to breathe or think straight, feel faint, nauseous or unable to sleep.

The Alexander Technique will teach you some simple tools to help change some of these symptoms of stress and anxiety. Changing these symptoms can allow your mind and body to return to a calm and balanced state so that you can begin to break the cycle and change your reaction to the stressful situation.

The Alexander Technique can never take away the stressful situations of life, however what it can do is give you tools to change your reaction to the stress. So you can have a real choice about how you can be in these situations.

This can be really empowering. The situation might be stressful but you don’t have to be.

Photo by Yosi Prihantoro on Unsplash

Stress and back pain

My pupils often tell me that their back pain (or knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain), gets worse when they are stressed.

Its the way they tell me that interests me like, often it's a surprise that there is even this connection. It's like they kind of know it but don't know it and don't quite understand it and certainly don't know what to do about it. Which of course is why they have come to see me.

However what they usually want is to just get rid of the pain; and the stress well that's about "my busy job", "my boss", "my kids"...

Of course there are many things that life throws our way. Some things we can change to make our lives easier, others not. You can change your job but it's not so easy to get your kids adopted!!

There is however another option, that the stress is in fact is your response to the situation and you can therefore learn to change it. And if the pain is worse when you are stressed then maybe you will change that too.

So that is what we work with with The Alexander Technique. We learn a tool to help us react in a different way and that is what can change the pain.

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl - Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.