What are the benefits of the Alexander Technique?
When people ask: “what are the benefits of the Alexander Technique?”, or “how will the Alexander Technique benefit me?”, I ask “what benefits do you want to derive from the Alexander Technique?” The list of benefits of the Alexander Technique is large, because the Alexander Technique involves the whole person.
The first, most important benefit of the Alexander Technique is that it works. The Alexander Technique works because it has lots of uses, and you use it all day. You get better at anything by practicing, and that’s just what you do with the Alexander Technique. You practice the Alexander Technique in your daily life. The two most known benefits of the Alexander Technique are:
1. Improved Posture
2. Back Pain Relief
Other reasons include musicians wanting to improve their performance, people wanting relief from stress, injured people wanting to speed their recovery, and people wanting help with their breathing problems or with voice resonance.
Improve Posture
People try to improve their posture on their own, but end up sitting and standing rigidly and uncomfortably straight, which is impossible to maintain and leads back to a familiar, habitual slump. The Alexander Technique benefits people by providing a clear, logical, practical way to improve their posture in an easeful, upright way. The Alexander Technique improves posture in a way that is sustainable over time.
Most people slump in front of the computer. Typical computer posture includes poking one’s neck towards the screen, which can compress the spine from top to bottom. By learning, through Alexander Technique lessons, how to release tension in your neck, your head will naturally move upwards. Let your head take your spine up as well. The exaggerated curves of your spine will be less so. You won’t be collapsed, and your shoulders will sit further back on your previously-collapsed ribcage without you having to ‘push your shoulders back’ military style.
Improved posture is a benefit of the Alexander Technique that does not stand alone. As people stop the postural habit of slumping hours per day, they often experience reduction or elimination of low back pain, upper back pain, and neck pain. Poor posture and back pain are intertwined.
Back Pain, Neck Pain
If you are lucky enough not to have neck pain or back pain, the Alexander Technique can help prevent it from occurring, which is a huge benefit of the Alexander Technique. The Alexander Technique benefits people by creating win, win, win situations.
Here are a few further benefits of the Alexander Technique:
Improved posture, improved breathing, decreased back pain and neck pain, increased poise, a stronger voice, better balance, a bigger presence, an overall sense of well-being, help with RSI, MS, TMJ, headache relief, enhanced performance, more ease, less tension.
Mark Josefsberg-Alexander Technique NYC
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Mark, I have had so many benefits from the Alexander Technique, which I started because of chronic neck pain and tension. It has not only dramatically helped with that, my posture and freedom of movement have also improved tremendously.
One unexpected benefit early on (after just a few months of lessons) was that a callous on one of my feet, which I’d had for a few years, completely disappeared. I can only attribute this to the fact that I was now balancing my whole body in a very different way, so the weight going into my feet was distributed more evenly. I bet you didn’t think callous-removal would be a benefit!
I could also add to your list of benefits that of improved confidence. I feel much more empowered to speak up when necessary, for instance, since learning AT.
Hi Imogen,
One of the main benefits of the Alexander technique is callous removal! I think that will be the tipping point for the Alexander Technique. Actually I like the idea that one of the benefits of the Alexander Technique is that you’ll be less callous towards yourself. I was just with a student who related to me that for decades, while pursuing her intellectual interests, she was callous towards her body. (Though she didn’t use that word) Now, she feels she’s paying the price with significant spinal problems. She’s just started with Alexander technique lessons; we’ll see what we can do. We both wish she had started a little sooner.
I didn’t mention in this post that the Alexander Technique benefited me by taking away severe pain in my neck and hand. I was a professional musician at the time, and I had to stop playing. Without being overly dramatic, the Alexander Technique gave me my life back. I guess that is dramatic!
But the takeaway is: One of the main benefits of the Alexander Technique-to be less callous towards yourself, and others!
Great post Mark! One of the benefits (completely unexpected) I got from Alexander Technique lessons was that I got almost an inch taller in the first month. At the same time, my chest got bigger. The downside was I had to buy a bunch of new clothes!
Hi Robert,
Sorry you had to buy all new clothes. I’ll take complete responsibility! A great benefit from the Alexander Technique is how you present yourself to the world, and the change in how you see yourself. People get taller, wider, and have a deeper chest even after twenty minutes on the table. I see it every day. And that inch you’re talking about-me too! I gained several inches, because I was so hunched over. It’s not only that the Alexander Technique can make you taller, but you are less shortened. In other words, one of the benefits of the Alexander technique is loss of spinal compression! And yes, I think a lot of the benefits of the Alexander Technique are unexpected.
Hi Mark,
Ah yes – Alexander Technique for callous removal and removal of callousness. I would certainly not consider that I was ever a callous person, but toward myself… now that’s a different story. And AT definitely helps with recognizing our habits, whatever they are…