reFORM’s resident Alexander Technique teacher Lyra Butler-Denman discusses how Alexander Technique works with psychological and emotional patterns.
Alexander Technique is the study of accessing the innate resources of our body. While it is not therapy in the conventional sense, it touches and helps create change and choice in how we “wear” our emotional and psychological patterns. Because it accesses our patterns through the body, it does not require talking, content, or telling the story (though you’re welcome to if you’d like). Often students find that by learning to change their somatic or physical experience, they discover they have more “wiggle room” in relation to their emotional or cognitive experience. Perhaps the feeling is more spacious, the voice in their head is not so loud, or they find it is easier to respond in non-habitual ways.
Contemporary Alexander Technique is not quite “self-care” as it’s often conceptualized – it is not a practice that is engaged with in addition to your work or real life. It’s a study that is designed to exist inside of your life. You don’t do Alexander Technique on its own, you practice it while you do what you do. Fundamentally, Alexander Technique helps you identify the habitual ways you get in the way of your own innate ease and brilliance. This is especially important in relation to mental health. When working with psychological and emotional patterns, the beauty of Alexander Technique is that it never asks you to add another thing to your long to-do list. This is not caring for yourself by taking a bath, meditating, or taking a walk (as wonderful and sustaining as those practices are), this is the study of how you give yourself care while you are with your child, as you walk into the room of a dying loved one, during a difficult meeting with co-workers, or while you are in a triggering situation.
As a Contemporary Alexander Technique teacher, I help bring awareness to the habitual ways you respond to stimulus. After all, we cannot change what we don’t notice. Then through language and touch (when consented to) I give your nervous system an actual experience of an alternative, an experience of a physical choice that is more easeful. Through repetition, we practice moving back and forth from the habitual way to the new way, myelinating the neural pathways of the new experience so that it become familiar to your body and your consciousness. Then together we find a way to describe the new experience so that you are able to use it as a tool on your own. I have not done my job if you don’t leave with at least one practical way to help yourself. Your body holds immense resources, it is my job to help you access them.
“Like therapy & counseling, it inspires me to remove my own limiting beliefs and change old habits.”
-reFORM client Malachi Graham on her Alexander Technique experience with Lyra