Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 25, 1990 TAG: 9006230167
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jane E. Brody
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As a result, my neck is plagued by perpetual tension and occasional pain.
Now I've discovered a technique to shed muscle tension habits that helps people suffering from chronic pain. It's the Alexander Technique, a method of adjusting body postures to relieve damaging stresses.
Alexander teachers say the demands of modern life have fostered a virtual epidemic of neck, back and other problems related to misaligned posture and improperly tensed muscles. Their technique helps people shed long-established tension-producing habits and relearn how to use their bodies with ease and grace.
Judith Leibowitz, a leading trainer of Alexander teachers, notes that muscle tension habits begin early, often with first graders learning to write.
Leibowitz is the director of the teaching program at the American Center for the Alexander Technique in New York and is the co-author of "The Alexander Technique" (to be published in August by Harper & Row, $19.95).
While not construed as a therapy, the Alexander Technique has nonetheless proved therapeutic for countless people. "By teaching people better body mechanics," said Dr. Jack Stern, professor of neurosurgery at the New York Medical College, "it frequently enables patients to do away with pain - even the pain of a herniated disk - without having to undergo surgery."
The technique has long been appreciated by performing artists. But in the last few years the technique has gained the attention of a growing number of ordinary people. Randi Adler, for example, had been suffering from neck spasms for more than a decade.
No one, from masseuse to physiatrist, had been able to relieve for more than a day the pain that she said began when she worked as a typesetter.
"I couldn't sit through a movie, couldn't go out to dinner, couldn't play cards, I was so uncomfortable all the time," she recalled.
Then a friend recommended the Alexander Technique.
In the first session, she said, she began to see how her misuse of her muscles was contributing to her problem. Gradually, through weekly sessions, she gained a new awareness of her body and how she moved it.
Now, 10 months later, Adler has shed her old neck-crippling habits and adopted more balanced postures. She can now move without pain.
After listening to Alexander students, a critical consumer might be tempted to dismiss the technique as a panacea promoted by fringe therapists who subject desperate patients to unproved remedies.
And the technique has been all but ignored (although not denounced) by the medical profession.
It all started a hundred years ago, when a young Australian actor, F. Matthias Alexander, began losing his ability to speak on stage. Distraught by the failure of medical consultants to restore his voice, he took matters into his own hands.
Using mirrors, he analyzed his body movements as he recited Shakespeare. He found that his voice was poorest when he adopted certain postures that seemed right for the part but were not right for his vocal musculature.
Gradually he worked out a new stance, retraining the action of his muscles until he had regained control of his voice.
Encouraged by a physician familiar with his method, Alexander began teaching people how to use their musculature properly. He also wrote extensively about the technique and trained others to teach it.
Hundreds of therapists in North America have completed long courses to become certified Alexander teachers, and learning the technique is now required in a number of schools for performing artists, including the Juilliard School in New York and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
The focal point of Alexander therapy is the positioning of the head, 10 to 15 percent of the body's total weight perched atop a slender rod, the spinal column.
With two-thirds of the head's weight in front of the spine, it tends to fall forward (as it does when you doze off sitting up).
The muscles in the back of the neck must keep it balanced.
Some people adopt a military posture: chest out, shoulders back, chin in. Others tilt their heads back and lead with their chins. Still others bend their heads forward and hunch their shoulders.
All such abnormal postures create undue stress on the spine and its supporting tissues.
The Alexander method teaches a more relaxed and natural posture and movement patterns that balance the head while relaxing the neck muscles.
by CNB