Mark Josefsberg- Nationally Certified Alexander Technique Teacher offering Alexander Technique lessons in New York City. Fix your posture, reduce your back pain, neck pain, stress and more with the Alexander Technique.
For locations and fees please see the ‘FAQ’s’ page (on top.)
“With good humor, specificity, and charm, Mark makes a challenging technique accessible and fun!” -Kyra Sedgwick
“I really enjoyed our Alexander Technique sessions, learned a lot, felt lighter, more balanced and my neck pain is better. You have a true healing presence and great knowledge and skill.”
-Martin Ehrlich M.D., M.P.H. Medical Director, Beth Israel Continuum Center for Health and Healing.
To schedule a session call Mark: (917) 709-4648 or email: Mark@MarkJosefsberg.com
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The Alexander Technique and Back Pain, Neck Pain.
The Alexander Technique can have a huge, positive impact on pain, and I know this from personal experience. The Alexander Technique got me out of the severe neck pain I was in, and now I see the same results over and over as I teach Alexander Technique lessons in NYC to people suffering from back pain, neck and shoulder pain, hand pain. We don’t realize that we’re causing our own pain by the way we use our bodies (poor posture, added stress). The good news is that the Alexander Technique shows us a way out from this pain. It puts us back in control.
Here’s a brilliant description of how unawareness can play a role in our pain or discomfort. This is from “Coming To Our Senses”, by Jon Kabat-Zinn:
“In teaching about the importance of attention in health and well-being, I have found it useful and illuminating to feature a model first articulated by psychologist Gary Schwartz that emphasizes attention’s pivotal role in health and disease. Consider the effects of not paying attention to what our bodies and minds are constantly telling us. For long stretches of time, of course, especially if we are fairly healthy to begin with, we can get away with not paying attention to anything. Or at least it seems that way on the surface. But if various signs and symptoms, even subtle ones, are ignored, left unattended for too long, and if the condition you find yourself in is too much of a burden on the body or the mind, this dis-attention can lead to dis-connection, the atrophying or disruption of specific pathways whose finely tuned integrity is necessary to maintain the dynamic processes that underlie health. This dis-connection can in turn lead to dis-regulation, where things actually start to go wrong, swing grossly away from the natural homeostatic balance. Dis-regulation can in turn lead to outright dis-order on the cellular, tissue, organ or systems level a breakdown into dis-regulated, chaotic processes. This dis-order in turn leads to or manifests as outright disease, or put otherwise, to dis-ease.
A simple example would be not paying attention to, say, neck pain that might first appear as sensations of stiffness or muscle tightness. That would be the first sign, or indication, especially if it persisted, of something that needed attending to, either in the form of seeing a doctor, or beginning a physical therapy or yoga program, or both. Ignored, it might gradually become more frequent and severe, turning into a chronic complaint, a symptom perhaps of something deeper going on. By that time, we might have gotten kind of used to it, and if the pain is not too bad, and if we are very busy, we might just write it off to tension or stress, and continue to ignore it. Over weeks, months, even years, if not attended to, such a condition will either go away on it’s own, or tend to worsen, especially in response to stress, and it might make us more prone to injury, say if we turn our head too quickly while driving, or even lie in bed ‘the wrong way’. By that time, it may have become something of a syndrome that we have gotten so used to that we have learned to ignore it completely or tolerate it, perhaps denying the potential importance of doing something about it. This disconnection on our part can lead to a gradual disregulation of the muscles and nerves in the neck in the form of chronic tension and even postural compensations that, in turn, can affect the bones and connective tissue over time to compound the condition. …Our neck no longer functions normally, and the pain and discomfort and physical limitations in range of motion and posture worsen. This in turn can predispose us to inflammation in response to irritation or injury, a further disordering of things, followed perhaps by an increased likliness of arthritis, a more serious condition that brings with it a great deal of dis-ease or discomfort.”
That can sound a little depressing, until we realize the Alexander Technique starts with awareness, taught in a very systematic, sympathetic, logical way. You start to feel better because you’re learning and applying the Alexander Technique to your life, lessening the time you’re unknowingly hurting yourself, while increasing the time for healing.
Mark Josefsberg-Alexander Technique NYC
(269) P-O-S-T-U-R-E
or (917) 709-4648
Alexander Technique Directions
I wish to free my neck … so that
My head can move forward and up…so that
My torso can lengthen and widen and…
My legs can move away from my torso and…
My shoulders can release out the sides.
Alexander Technique directions act as verbal, or neuro-linguistc cues. They tell us where we want to go, which is often upward, outward, into expansion. Up, down, and out. Head up, feet or sit bones down, shoulders out, legs away…
“A correct position or posture indicates a fixed position, and a person held to a fixed position cannot grow, as we understand growth. The correct position today cannot be the correct position a week later for any person who is advancing in the work of reeducation and coordination.
F.M. Alexander- Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual
During Alexander Technique lessons, people frequently sit up straight or move their head around and ask: is this right?” I answer differently in different situations, but the real answer might be: No. I don’t say that because the…
The Alexander Technique has been described as a reeducation technique or psycho-physical reeducation. It is also a technique to be overlearned, and not only because you learn it over other things (bad habits of either movement or stillness), but when it comes to the Alexander Technique we need to be overeducated; we need to overlearn it so that we can use it under duress, much like a musician practices over and over to be able to execute music under stress…
On my subway ride to teach some Alexander Technique lessons at the American Center for the Alexander Technique in Mahattan, I noticed a man who could not have been more stooped over. As an Alexander Technique teacher I was particularly aware of how he was seated, reading the paper, his head not very far from his knees. His face was quite tense, and had a scowl I suspected was habitual. He seemed to ‘have the weight of the world on his shoulders…
More than most modalities, the word ‘and’ follows ‘Alexander Technique.’ There are thousands of examples, but I’ll list five:
1. The Alexander Technique and back pain.
2. The Alexander Technique and posture.
3. The Alexander Technique and neck pain.
4. The Alexander Technique and stress.
5. The Alexander Technique and computer use.
I could go on and on. I will…
…the Alexander Technique ‘inhabits’ your body through the cultivation of awareness. We realize, through Alexander Technique lessons, that we have control over this tension. I didn’t know that I had control over my overly-tensed painful neck until I started working with an Alexander Technique teacher. I just thought: my neck is tense and it hurts. I didn’t know…
Many Alexander Technique teachers are slumpers, or former slumpers. My name is Mark and I’m a slumper. Slumping was my habit before I became an Alexander Technique teacher, and it will be my habit forever. Although …
If you’re looking looking to take Alexander Technique lessons in New York City, how would you search the web? The most direct path Alexander Technique classes NYC ” is another possibility, but that might lead you to group classes. Taking group Alexander Technique classes may be a good way to go, but not if you have bad back pain or neck pain…
New York Magazine asked me to write a few sentences on the Alexander Technique for the January 18, 2010 issue. The article is entitled: ‘50 Steps To Simple Happiness.’ Included in the few sentences I was to give instructions about the Alexander Technique, and when to ‘do’ the Alexander Technique. Yikes… When to do the Alexander Technique? When not to do the Alexander Technique would save words!
The Alexander Technique offers a different kind of posture training, a different kind of posture.You can apply the Alexander Technique to any situation. You can be more easeful, with less tension and compression. You will look like you have better posture.
I have a stiff neck. We say we have a stiff or sore neck, as if someone gave it to us and now it’s ours. In Alexander Technique terms it might be more accurate to say “I’m stiffening my neck.” Of course if you say it that way you sound insane…
One of the problems of trying to achieve ‘good posture’, or ‘perfect posture’ is that these terms imply rigidity. Some Alexander Technique teachers attempt to avoid the word posture altogether, calling it the ‘P’ word.
One could learn to have ‘good posture’ in a few minutes, especially if you think of military posture. Military posture is standing up as straight as possible, with your stomach in, chest out, chin tucked in, shoulders back…
1. Become aware, and then let go of the muscles in the back of your neck.
2. Think of your head moving up. (The crown of your head)
3. Slightly, slowly lower your nose.
4. Continue 1,2,3, and let your sit bones release down in your chair, but your torso moves up.
5. If you’re standing, let your feet release down while the rest of you moves up.
6. Let your jaw dangle open, even when you’re lips are closed. (Give it a try)…
