To the Blogssss!!!

A few weeks ago, I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger in the post, How to Lengthen and Widen the Back. In that post, I gave you some drawings for the directions of the torso and everything was drawn from the front view. Take a minute to go back and check it out as I’ll expand a bit more on that concept today!

In the photo above, the right side of the torso shows the outermost layer of musculature. On the left side, I’ve removed the two largest muscles (the trapezius covering the neck and the latissimus dorsi covering the middle and lower back). I’m doing this so that you can see how interwoven our musculature is.

In a sense, we can view the organization of these muscles like the lattice network used to make a Chinese Finger Trap! If we start pulling on our backs or heads or necks to make things free up, the lattice network of muscles will very likely stiffen up like crazy. When we STOP and allow every fiber of our being to simply NOT LOCK, we will slowly feel this network release.

There’s a school of thought that so fears this temptation to push and pull that some people will just encourage you to contemplate stillness and expansion via poetic imagery. Personally, I have no objection to such imagery, but if you find yourself STUCK these directions may add some much needed clarity to why the Coke can is crushed.

Anatomical Imagery

I think the image of the whole head, neck, and torso organizing like a Chinese finger trap is pretty apt. The more time you spend looking at our interwoven structure, the more it just makes sense at a high level. And just like releasing a finger trap, we want to think about releasing a little bit everywhere, all at once and altogether.

But in order to help you refine such a high level image, I’m going to give you a few more localized examples of expansion. These examples tend to work best when you quietly think about them one at a time in an additive way. That is, you think about the neck softening and as you feel the neck soften you ADD a thought of the jaw softening; you don’t want to stiffen your neck the instant you think about softening your jaw!

An Expansive Trapezius

The full length and breadth of the trapezius stretches from your head down to you mid back and from shoulder to shoulder. I see a lot of people complaining that their trapezius is tight or that one part of their trapezius is more developed than another. If you allow your head to balance forward and up, that will give you a slight sense that the top of the trapezius is going up. That’s a terrific start to alleviating neck and back tension, but adding in a gentle thought of the widening across the upper back (marked with the two big black arrows) can help build the feeling that the whole trapezius is beginning to expand like a kite catching wind along your back.

Looking at the layers beneath the trapezius, you’ll see some muscles expanding in length and some expanding into width. I’m not sure it’s necessary to feel these muscles at an individual level. Your best bang-for-your-buck is to simply allow yourself to experience the whole lot of the upper back thick, soft, and expansive.

Don’t let these images create neck tension!

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A Softening and Expanding Ribcage

In between each rib, you have muscles. Without them, we couldn’t have a summer BBQ featuring PORK or COW ribs! As you have a sense of the upper back expanding, you can include a sensation of the inner lining of the entire rib cage. Part of allowing the back to widen is the sensation that the ribs can expand away from the spine.

It is particularly nice to sense the upper ribs expanding away from the spine so that you can sense the full rings of the ribs through to the breast bone.

A Widening Chest

See those big purply chest muscles? Just as your upper back has an expanding kite, your chest can follow suit and expand wide through to the upper arms. You can see this expansion on the left side of the image above. Along the outside of the front of the ribs (seen above along the right side of the image), the pectoralis minor expands from the base of the breast bone (ish) to the upper arm (ish) in a diagonal line.

Incorporating the 3 images above can help you get a sense of the whole finger trap releasing. You’ll want to include a sense of the lower back expanding and the stomach coming into its full volume, but I think that’s enough imagery to serve for one blog!

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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For those of you that don’t live in New York City, let me tell you… this town went NUTS on Saturday night when the Knicks played the Spurs in the NBA Finals. I’m not the biggest basketball fan, but when the hometown team hasn’t won anything for 53 years you kinda feel compelled to check out the scene. And when New York is in the mood, it delivers a real scene!

I went out for a walk expecting to see every bar absolutely packed and of course they were. What I wasn’t ready for was the mass viewing party happening at every single open business. The closest thing I’ve scene to this kind of scene was being in Italy in 2002 during the World Cup where EVERY SINGLE PERSON was out and watching at EVERY RANDOM PLACE.

The fried chicken shop had the game on a big screen tv on the sidewalk. Paolina’s falafel had their lawn chairs on the sidewalk, sound system blaring1, and was packed with folks inside and outside the shop. All of Bedford between Grand and South 2nd St had basically turned into a block party before tip off.

So when the Knick’s actually did the deed, this happened:

To the Bloggssss!

This week I’ll have the pleasure of introducing the Alexander Technique to a group of office workers. I thought I would take the time to share how I will approach the topic. Hopefully it will reinforce some ideas for you or give you a slightly new way of thinking about this whole Alexander Technique business.

So You’d Like to Improve How You Feel?

We all have a lot of things going on in our lives. We have to juggle our limited time between our jobs and families and it leaves us without much time for ourselves. These moments where we get to do something just for us are precious. When we use these moments to enrich our lives we feel more complete - more US - and more capable of doing our jobs with grace and appreciating our families without wanting to pull our hair out and run away to a mountain spa retreat for a month so we can just stare out a window in silence while dreading the ever quickening march towards our inevitable demise.

Some people choose to take this time to start a hobby. They begin painting or learning an instrument. Maybe they take up running, dance, or volunteering. Whatever the choice, the simple act of engaging your imagination and taking the time to improve yourself can have tremendous benefits for your life.

The wonderful thing about this time is that it cannot be a waste if you find it fun and enriching!

Yet something curious happens when we begin to invest in our personal health. Many of us feel the aches and pains of getting older and rather than taking a moment to STOP and ask, “What’s happening to me?”, we dismiss these aches and pains as a normal part of life and press on. Before we know it, discomfort is our normal way of living.

These aches and pains are commonly associated with Desk Life.

It’s not like we don’t TRY and do something to change these aches and pains, it’s that we try to get rid of these discomforts and they just stick to us. In some cases, we’ll go online and find a neck massage device or we’ll lie on a heating pad. Maybe we gone to see a doctor, physical therapist, massage therapist, or chiropractor and try to get help that way. But it’s rare that we find something that gets at the root cause of our aches and gives us tools to alleviate tension and start reliably feeling better.

The Alexander Technique and ME

Before becoming an Alexander Technique teacher, I worked in the corporate world using statistics to solve problems for a technology company; these days, the job is called Data Science. The problems I worked on were fun and engaging, but the hours were quite long and my company could not provide me with a proper chair for budget reasons. As a result, I sat quite low while working.

Even though this period of sitting too low in a chair was “only” 6 months, my arms eventually stopped working. I had pinched a nerve from improper sitting and was unable to type. Oops!

After reporting my injury, the company got the office new chairs and life went on. I found that my hands could work enough to get through a 40 hour work week if I made some lifestyle changes:

• Strict 10-6 schedule

• Walk when I was uncomfortable

• No devices outside of working hours

I went to a doctor and was prescribed some anti-inflammatory pills and told to do PT. I was very reluctant to do physical therapy because I had had a long course of PT to heal from an ACL injury. And while I thought PT was terrific for healing from a specific injury, most of the exercises boiled down to stretching, calisthenics, and weight lifting. This injury felt very different to me.

The thing that I felt was that even though I was using a new and “ergonomic” chair, my body felt like it was stuck in the broken chair. I didn’t want to just throw exercises on top of exercises. I wanted to sit down with someone, talk about how I was sitting and typing and get to the bottom of how things could change for the better.

Eventually, I was told by someone that I should really get to the bottom of this issue and I should seek out help from a specialist physical therapist that exclusively deals with musician injuries or I should study the Alexander Technique2. I was intrigued by idea and reached out to about 10 professionals across both fields. One person returned my call and that was my Alexander Technique teacher, Beret Arcaya3.

My first lesson was a fairly classical Alexander Technique lesson. I stood in front of a mirror and had some seemingly innocuous remarks made about my posture. Beret then placed hands on my head, neck, back, and arms and made almost no adjustments to me. Yet somehow, I could feel years of tension melting away and sensation and range of motion returning to my whole self.

I felt wonderful, but it left me with a few questions:

• How was this possible?

• How could I have this melting sensation on my own?

• Would this sensation carry into my daily life?

• and WHY wasn’t everyone talking about how GREAT this all feels?

I had just stumbled my way into a brave new world…

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A Novel Approach to Understanding Balance

Let’s return to my favorite picture from Seán Carey’s book:

After my injury, I definitely never sat like the man on the right. My back tended to be stuck in the middle position, but boy you’d better believe I knew how to slump like the guy on the left!

As I worked with my Alexander Technique teacher, I was slowly shown how to feel and name how my head, neck, and back were stiff. These conversations were not centered around fixing a position that I was sitting in but were instead centered around the sensation of balance in my head and softness (or lack thereof) in my neck and back. By slowly learning to play a little balancing game with my head while I typed at work, I felt less and less tension during the day and began to feel calmer overall.

These sensations occurred because my head was slowly putting less and less downward pressure onto my spine. This slowly alleviated my back pain and helped take pressure off of the pinched nerve in my neck.

The only “homework” I was given by Beret was to lie down each day for 15-20 minutes. During my regular life, I was asked to notice if things made me stiffen my neck - like drinking from a glass or ordering that coffee in a rushed manner - and then see if I could simply not stiffen my neck when doing those activities. I was asked to turn the normal - seemingly boring - daily tasks into a little game of balance, tension, and release and it slowly helped over time.

Is the Alexander Technique Right for YOU!?

If practicing the Alexander Technique feels fun and good, then the answer is resoundingly YES!

Other folks than find themselves studying the Alexander Technique are:

• musicians

• actors

• office workers

• folks looking to improve their confidence in public speaking

• therapists of all sorts

• teachers

Basically anybody that has to work long hours and mysteriously feels tight or just feels like something is “off”.

Without the hands-on guidance of a teacher, it can be a bit mysterious to figure out how the balance mechanism of the body functions best and it can really be a struggle to work out how tension can release. It’s called the Alexander Technique because there are ways that we can reliably release tension and balance better. But if it’s not something you’ve worked out for yourself, then Alexander Technique “exercises4” with the aid of a teacher can help you identify how tension is being held and how to release it.

If this sounds like YOU, then a lesson is the best way to learn more!

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment

We’ll see what happens!

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Relaxin’ with Lee

In the spirit of all of the SPORTS that can be viewed lately (NYC has gone Knicks crazy in a way I’ve never witnessed), I thought I’d share some thoughts on sitting on the couch.

Sitting on the couch for prolonged periods of time can absolutely lead folks to collapsing in the back and crunching their necks up something fierce. This doesn’t mean that we should burn our couches, but it does mean that we should take the time to listen to what our head, neck, backs are telling us. If they’re saying, “please do something different as I’m a bit uncomfortable with all of this slouched doom-scrolling!”, then maybe we should change how we do all of that!

One of my personal pet peeves is watching folks work for long hours on their laptops while sitting on the couch. I personally don’t see how someone can sit, type, look at such a low screen, AND keep their sense of balance flowing. It seems like the only option is for that person to stiffen up something fierce.

But this doesn’t mean that you can’t sit very comfortably on a couch! In fact, it can be a terrific way to get a little rest and even experience some passive neck length. I’ll do my best to describe what I mean, but bear in mind that every couch is designed differently and some couches are just inherently uncomfortable by design.

Uncomfortable Couch Features

• Ultra deep seat

• Very low seat

• Cushions that swallow you whole

Those are my personal hates in a couch because it can be very difficult to get out of them without stiffening your back! Assuming that’s not happening, let’s go over a little couch constructive rest description.

Couch Constructive Rest

A couch can be a useful tool for helping the middle back to release in the event that a person has a tendency to arch the back habitually. Some of my students have tendency to arch the middle back in standing and collapse the middle back in sitting. If you’re not sure what your tendency is, it can be helpful to sit on a stool with a mirror to the side of you. You can look at your profile in the mirror (no need to tense your neck to do this!) and have a check. Maybe one of these images is you!

If you tend to sit like the middle picture above, then the couch can help this tension ease.

If you tend to sit like the left picture, then you might feel more comfortable with a cushion on the lower back to prevent a full collapse.

When in doubt, if you feel supported by the chair or couch and not collapsed or stiffened, you have a good setup to begin constructive rest in a chair/couch.

Arranging the Arms

Ideally, we would like the arms to feel light and free of tension. After a long day of working, our arms can build up excess tension and feel very heavy/stiff/tired. You can help the arms release tension by creating a pillow fort so that the forearms are supported by your sides.

Everyone will have a pillow height particular to them, but a good rule of thumb is to have the hands level with the elbows (ish). There really are lots of options here when it comes to the height. The absolute main objective is that we don’t want the pillows giving us the feeling that the shoulders are being forced down1.

Let the Middle Back Rest on the Couch Back

If the pelvis is towards the back of the couch seat (but not shoved into the crevice), you should be able to sit on the couch and sense the middle back having a bit of a rest. Ideally, it should feel like your back is in a slight hammock shape. If this part of the process seems obvious to you, I’ve seen some folks sit towards the front of the cushions and keep their backs off of the couch. This won’t give you the type of rest I’m talking about!

Allow the Head to Tip Back

This step must be done carefully. Depending upon the height of your couch back, your height, and your bum placement, you should be able to have a soft back and allow the head to tip back so that your head is resting on the top of the couch back and you are looking up. If this is done correctly, you will not feel any tension build in the neck nor will you feel a big stretch; you’ll just feel like you are gently looking up.

If this is done in a particular manner, you will sense the skull slide backwards on top of the atlas. I animated this in my older post: How to Pitch the Head. The idea behind constructive rest on the couch is that you can use the couch to support the head and allow yourself the time and space to feel the rectus capitii release (muscles between the skull and the neck). These muscles will only release if you are feeling the hat line of the skull (dashed line in the animation on my older post) in a balanced trust fall on the top of the couch back.

Long story short: Sit on a couch. Let the back be on the couch back. Slowly let your head tilt back and rest looking up.

Caution: Your neck might be sensitive and locked and be unable to look up very far. Do not force your neck to do ANYTHING that it isn’t comfortable doing.

When performed with comfort, you can then allow your whole self to melt into a trust fall. Do nothing, leave every part of you alone, and allow release to find you!

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Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment

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To the Bloggsss!

One of the most frequently asked questions I’ll see on the internet is “How do I fix my posture?”. There’s a whole host of folks out there that feel like they have fallen into the trap of slumping while working and they want OUT. They’ve tried sitting upright. They’ve tried doing some stretches and exercises. But somehow, something feels off and they want this posture problem SORTED.

Recently, a gentleman on the internet asked me if I could tell him figure out what’s going on with his posture and help him get to the bottom of this problem. It might seem odd that I haven’t written a post on postural assessment before, but this is partially because the Alexander Technique addresses postural issues indirectly and partially because most people who find the Alexander Technique don’t ask the question, “How do I fix my posture?”; they instead ask, “How can I feel better?”.

This might seem like an odd distinction. Afterall, isn’t posture somehow related to how we feel? But I think it’s a critical distinction to make because people looking to fix their posture are typically looking to make an exercise program NOW whereas people asking, “how can I feel better”, are more likely to be in a place where they just want to understand why they hurt and if there’s any hope that the pain can change.

By the time someone has walked into my studio, they have typically hit a wall. They’ve tried lots of exercise and massage. They’ve tried yoga, pilates, and physical therapy. And these things just didn’t quite work. We’ll have a little chat about their background, and then I’ll ask them to stand in front of my mirror and tell me what they see.

So for today, let’s use our Gentleman from the Internet’s (GI) photo and pretend that he’s standing before the mirror.

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If you’ve never looked at a back before (or front), you might not have ANY idea what you’re looking for. So please, take a minute to look at the photo without looking ahead to my “answers” and see if you can see anything that strikes you as being out of the ordinary. As you look, do bear in mind that this person has done a fairly brave thing and asked for help.

Please have some humility and respect about someone who takes the time to do this.

Still lost? One way you can look at the photo is to look for symmetry. It may be tricky for you to see something asymmetrical around the spine, so take a minute to look at the negative space in the photo. When I look at the negative space, I can see differences in the left and right spaces under the arms and on either side of the neck.

I think something is off balance!

In the photo above, I’ve highlighted the spine and the muscular twist present at the back of the neck. You can go back to the original photo to see a little more clearly. I think that this asymmetry is caused by the head twisting down and to the left (notice how the left ear is more present than the right?).

There is a chance that this asymmetry is caused by the way the camera has been angled and how the person is making a shape to try and get in frame for the photo. With that in mind, please don’t take this assessment as anything resembling a TRUTH. In a real lesson, I have the benefit of making a 3D observation over the course of an hour.

In real life, our postures also change over time so it’s really not a good idea to take any snapshot of a person and say that we definitely know what is happening.

With those caveats in mind, let’s take another view of this back…

We balance from the head down. As such, I’m going to make the following observations in a top-down manner.

There is a corkscrew action of the head, I think I see the top of the head drifting over the right shoulder and pulling the right shoulder back and up. There appears to be a corresponding lowering and pressing forward of the left shoulder.

Really, the shoulders are drifting in this way because the ribcage is twisted off center. The right upper ribs are pulling back and up and the left upper ribs are pressing forward and down; the shoulders simply follow the ribs. This is a critical distinction to make because many people want to fix their postures by stretch their shoulders.

If you stretch your shoulders but your head neck and ribs stay static, you will never get a real stretch and the shoulders will always fall back to their original place on top of the ribs.

Based on the twist in the head and ribcage, you can see that there is some compression between the left side of the ribs and the left hip. I thiiink I see a little twist in the pelvis as well but this is where an in-person 3D view helps a lot.

Ugghhh So What Do I Do About This?!?

Have some patience! I see a lot of things that are all twisted up in a very unique manner. Every muscle and bone seems to have gotten into a tiny bind and if we just try and push things into a correct shape, we will likely feel the neck stiffen up and the binding around the spine increase. Let’s see if we can avoid that!

There’s Power In Doing Nothing

One of my first posts described how to lie down. It is THE first thing that I ask anyone to do and I’ve written about 6 additional posts on the matter in this series. When we lie down, we have the opportunity to stop holding ourselves upright and allow gravity to give us a passive sense of expansion. From there, you can walk slowly and see if your sense of balance has shifted.

So if you are the GI that submitted today’s photo or if you’re in a similar boat and want to change your posture NOW, I’d kindly ask that you just take a few weeks to try a daily lie down and see if you feel even the tiniest bit of change happen. If you do, take heart! Small daily changes can add up to BIG THINGS over time.

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Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment

I may or may not have been extremely distracted by the Arsenal’s big win this past week. It’s been over 20 years since I saw my first match in London and it’s a bit surreal that it’s taken this long for them to win the league. Hopefully I won’t have to wait another 20 years to see this happen again!

Lengthening and Widening the Back

I purposefully write F.M. Alexander’s directions a little differently every time. This is not to confuse you but to hopefully help you make the leap from words to kinaesthetic meaning. Remember that no joint should feel locked and no bit of muscle should feel like is frozen in place; allowing the sense of feeling and balance to be general is always a good idea.

With that in mind, I’ll share a few drawings of the front of the back. I’ll do my best to explain what they mean and how they all add up…

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In the figure above, I have drawn 2 directional black arrows along the length of the muscles. When we allow ourselves to release extraneous tension, muscles will lengthen along these avenues. The resulting sensation is a general inflation of our whole structure and a release of pressure on our joints.

You can’t actually think all of these arrows lengthening. The image is massively complicated and any time we visualize something this complex we have a big tendency to grip up like crazy. It can be a much more effective strategy to stay simple and general with our imagination.

When you think about lengthening the spine, you can add in the idea that the whole front of the back can lengthen as well. Sensing the front and back of the torso at the same time along the midline can really help you sense the relationship between the head and the sitting bones. This “first step” in lengthening and widening the back is critical as it gives you time to wonder if you are sitting 50:50 on your sitting bones. If you are lying down, you might notice some discrepancy between the weight on the left/right sides of the torso. If you are standing, you’ll need to sense all the way down to the feet to have a nice sense of balance.

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The two images above are not given in a specific order. As long as you are simply, quietly, and additively incorporating these directions, all should be well.

When I imagine lengthening the flanks (fig 3), I think about the volume of the torso and not the 2D lines pictured above. I either start by picturing a big shoulder pad on top of the left/right side or I’ll wonder if I can feel the whole left/right bucket of the hip. If you feel the entire flank in soft volume (and include the internal space of the internal organs), you’re getting the idea of directing the flanks.

When I imagine widening the torso (fig 4), I typically start with the ribs and take the time to feel them (in volume) expand away from the spine. I’ve heard that FM Alexander would say something along the lines of, “If I could, I would place my hands inside the rib cage and massage in between them.”. You can extend this idea down to the abdomen and the base of the pelvis.

The cross patterns of the torso (fig 5) are perhaps the best “bang for your buck” torso direction around. You should think about the volume from left shoulder to right hip and right shoulder to left hip one at a time and additively. This means that if you think along one axis and feel things expand, you don’t want to immediately let it grip up when you begin to think about the other axis. This little trick of adding volume feels terrific and is a skill that takes a bit of time!

But Wait! There’s More!!!

With all of these directions, you’ll want to have a sense of the back and front at the same time!!! I’m hoping that by giving you the image above, it will suffice as a reminder for you to take the time to feel as much of you as possible at the lightest, most general level you can muster. Sometimes you might feel some fine kinesthetic details (which is great), but it’s not something you should try to force.

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment

This week has been an interesting mixture of lessons. At this point, I’ve got roughly 15 unique students coming in for lessons. Each one comes in accordance with their own needs and has their own evolving understanding of themselves and the Alexander Technique.

Naively, you might think that this would mean that some students are “advanced” so they do more complex feats of movement while the “beginners” are doing rudimentary exercises. While that might be true for learning certain things like language and science, learning the Alexander Technique is more like learning to make fresh pasta; the ingredients are simple but the technique takes a lifetime of skill to refine. For most of my students this week, the main theme of the week was learning to sense your relationship with the earth.

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AKA How Does Gravity Feel?

Asking someone how gravity feels is a bit of an insane question… at first. It’s extremely open ended and can leave a person feeling lost. At best, someone will report that they feel heavy or stiff when they first meet me, but oftentimes it’s just not even in a person’s awareness.

I’m interested in talking and sensing gravity because that is a fundamental ingredient in how we balance. If all we ever do is try to sense the feeling of tension in our muscles and figure out what is too strong and too weak we will quickly fall down a rabbit hole of bodily micromanagement. Learning to balance with gravity can bring a great sense of simplicity to this whole business of learning poise and feeling better.

One Down One Up

As an experiment, I’d like you to take a hand and gently press it into a hard surface (like a table top). If you have a relatively soft wrist and elbow, you will feel some force traveling through your arm and up into the shoulder (you might even feel this in the neck). This press from the hand will feel like the table top is pressing back into your arm with equal force.

This equal opposition is happening all the time as we stand, sit, lie down, and do all of our normal daily activities. When we begin to exert extraneous force upon ourselves, we will sense this in various ways. In past posts, I have described this as stiff weight, dead weight, and buoyant weight, but I thought it would be fun to share a few other insights from my students.

Swimming Salmon Vs Hot Garbage

The other day, I asked a new student to lie down quietly. I placed hands on his ribs and did nothing. After a few moments, I asked him how he felt. He told me that he felt like he had salmon swimming all inside him.

It was an astute observation. From my perspective, it felt as if he was jumping about internally; constantly and subtly squirming. Those salmon were definitely trying to go upstream!

I asked him to just ask for a little calm and have a rest. It was Friday and most folks are pretty spent by the end of the week. Within a minute, the salmon stopped swimming, his eyes got heavy, and he released a big yawn. His torso was no longer trying to jump off of the table and he found some balance.

Shortly after that, I had another student come in. We went through a similar activity. She was fairly tired from the end of the week and when she lay down I recounted the story of the swimming salmon to her. Her take was that everything internally felt like hot garbage; which we decided is either a punk band or a Garbage cover band.

In the case of hot garbage, the weight of the head, ribs, hips, and legs felt as if they were all pressing quite heavily into the table. I gave her the following image and we got to work:

In the image above, the green arrows represent the weight making contact with the floor and the yellow arrows represent the natural upwards force that you get from the floor pressing back up into you. If you are allowing your neck to be free of tension, it will not feel like it is pressing down towards the floor at all and will instead feel like it is suspended between the head and upper back.

While this is a nice idea, we can all find ourselves out of balance in some way. In the case of the swimming salmon, there were parts of the back that were subtly and perpetually attempting to lift off of the table. In the case of HOT GARBAGE, the head and back were pressing down extra. I think this extra press happens when something in the person says, “I’m DONE!!!” and collapses to force rest.

Do the Wrong Thing

One of the simplest ways we can figure out if we are in balance or not is to purposefully and gently press ourselves into the table during a lie down. If you do this on your own, I’d like you to first press your head into the book a bit and see if this grips up your neck and upper back (heck the head press might even force the hip to grip). Then, I would like you to press your upper back into the table and see what that does to your head and neck.

If you tend to be full of swimming salmon, you likely just need to let yourself have a big dose of quiet, calm stopping. That can be tricky for some folks but stopping is the answer most of the time.

If you tend to be full of HOT GARBAGE, you likely need to draw attention to the small yellow arrows drawn along the front of the body above. When we feel extra heavy, we can gently stop and draw attention to how our back relates to our front. This effectively is a way to allow yourself to feel how gravity is pushing back up into you…and flowing all the way through your whole structure.

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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No longer am I confined to just having chicken or beef or shrimp or vegetable. Want a carrot and cabbage dumpling? No problem. Curried pork, beef, and chive? Of course! And worst of all it’s not even unhealthy unless you eat 30 of them. And I couldn’t possibly pull that off, could I?

Whiplash

Two weeks ago, one of my long time students, Becca Berlind, was hit by a car while biking in Brooklyn. While biking to her lesson with me, a car failed to stop at an intersection and hit her. She remembers flying over the handlebars, landing on her bum first, and then hitting the ground - somehow - with the rest of her body. She is alive and has no broken bones, torn ligaments, or brain injury. The EMTs and doctors have no idea why the damage is as minimal as it is. They consider this miraculous.

This is a traumatic event. She has whiplash, staples in her head, and bone bruising in the tailbone. When we first spoke on the phone after the accident, she was quite distraught and said that her head felt very heavy and immobile. She attempted to do a lie down and allow her neck to release but she could not get comfortable and nothing happened.

This is because her entire system is in a state of shock. The muscles throughout the entire body have either partially or entirely frozen. And with such rampant pain information constantly flowing about her system, she had absolutely no way of finding comfort and relaxing. After a few visits to the doctor, they discovered that she had an infection around the staples in her head and they treated this appropriately.

I’m sharing this information with you because:

1. It is important to ask for help from physicians

2. It is important to voice and re-voice an issue if something feels wrong (infections are not necessarily caught immediately).

3. It is important to do the appropriate paper work with doctors, insurance companies, the police, and lawyers in such events.

All of this might amount to common sense to you, but when you are injured you are in a state of shock and do not necessarily grasp the importance of it all. Becca has checked all of these boxes and the unfortunate news is that since her injuries have been classified as minor and since her lost wages from employment are not exactly at the level of a corporate attorney, her lawyer(s) have advised her that there’s not enough money at stake to sue the driver and get compensation.

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Plotting a Course of Action

Traditionally, someone like Becca would go to physical therapy 2-3 times per week for a few months. Some folks respond well enough to this approach and will report decreased pain symptoms and return to work/normal activities. Other folks don’t get better and complain of pain for their entire lives. In Becca’s case, she’s already had about 100 Alexander Technique lessons with me. She understands the system fairly well, trusts my hands, and doesn’t want to try and adapt to the system of physical therapy.

The question that is of interest to me is, “What course of action will maximize Becca’s chances of recovering from whiplash?”.

The only way I could help her with this was to have her come in and give her an Alexander Technique lesson. Fortunately, the technique is so non-invasive and conservative that the risk of me injuring her is practically zero. Alexander Technique teachers should never move someone without feeling release/consent and never try to force a stretch reflex1.

Table Work + Whiplash

When Becca came in for her lesson, she was unable to lie flat on her back due to the bruising in the tailbone and stitches in the back of the head. We took a little time to find the right level of cushions to enable her to be as nearly on her back as possible without sensing anything in pain. It was a bit of a trial and error process, but once she was marginally comfortable we could begin to work.

Taking advisement from Beret Arcaya (I will take any advice I can get to be a better teacher), I almost exclusively worked with Becca’s head, neck, and upper back at a very slow tempo. This work began in my case by simply placing my hands on the back of the neck so that I could feel the degree of bracing. I absolutely did not attempt to massage anything, anywhere. Very slowly, Becca showed me where the cuts and staples in her head were and I did my best not to touch the affected areas.

I would say that the entire first lesson was an exercise in learning how to not aggravate the wound while finding a way to place my fingertips on the base of the skull. Once my hands could safely touch the base of the skull, I was able to feel the muscles of the neck soften and release. With this release, I was able to help open up some space in the atlanto-occipital joint and help the head feel lighter.

After helping Becca come up off of the table, she could feel much more lightness and mobility in the head, but she could also feel how the head wanted to crash heavy again into the neck. For me, the sensation of temporary lightness is a great indicator that Alexander Technique lessons will help encourage release and restore a calm sense of mobility. As far as I can tell, she will slowly make a full recovery if she maintains a consistently high frequency of lessons for the next 2-3 months.

Ideally, I would work with her 5-6 days per week.

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Next Steps

At the end of the first lesson, Becca wanted to know what stretches she should do on her own to help the neck feel better. I told her she should absolutely not make any attempt to stretch her neck. If you go through the blog archives, you will find several drawings on the musculature of the neck. Even a cursory glance will show you that there’s a very complex weave of musculature going through that area. Stretching a neck is waaaayyy more complex than stretching your calf or hamstring and can exacerbate an injury in a flash. I told Becca what I would tell anyone:

1. don’t push and pull on yourself

2. do a lie down

3. walk slowly.

One of the other things she did upon getting up from the table was to immediately attempt to “test” the range of motion in her neck by moving her head from left to right. She did not think of this a forcing a stretch in the neck, but it essentially amount to the same thing. I see folks do these types of “mobility tests” often after a table turn and I do my best to stop them from happening.

WTF is a Mobility Test?!?!

Essentially, there are two ways we can move our head: we can either do normal activities and let the body do whatever it does without manipulating it or we can feel like we are in rehab/mobility test mode and attempt to puzzle out what’s happening with our bodies by moving in various manners. When we are injured, it is EXTREMELY tempting to live in the mobility test mode and constantly finagle our bodies to hopefully pop them into feeling better. This mode blocks the injured areas from feeling calm; it’s like having a helicopter parent hover over a child 24/7.

After explaining this to Becca, I had her slowly walk around the room. As she turned, she kept her head, neck, and shoulders frozen and turned her body exclusively with her feet. It’s almost as if she had taken a massive insurance policy out on her head and neck and was going to protect it from harm no matter the cost.

This is not a “normal” balanced way of articulating the head and neck during a turn. I drew this to her attention to the insurance policy and asked her if she could allow the head to turn left/right in some small manner as part of her turn. This is how basically every healthy/uninjured person turns left/right. Almost immediately, Becca could feel a difference between the two types of turns.

Moving On

Over the next few months, I plan on working with Becca as often as her schedule will allow. She has so far had about 10 lessons post injury and things are improving significantly. My lessons have always been charged on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis to anyone willing to do the work and in Becca’s case I’m allowing her to pay her normal weekly rate and come in as often as she can.

This is the type of pricing policy that I have had from the beginning as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. I cannot in good conscience deny someone help if they have the right attitude and need help. So as Mikel Arteta would say, “We go again”.

If you would like to support this effort in any way, you can do something as simple as give a like to this post, share it with someone you think might find it interesting, or even consider upgrading to a paid membership of this blog. Every paid membership not only gets access to the full archive, but effectively gives financial aid to my pay-what-you-can-afford pricing scheme.

However you choose to support is GREAT. There is ZERO judgement from me; only gratitude for your continued choice to read these posts.

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Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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Happy Saturday!

Have you ever started a project that initially seemed super simple and then kinda BLEW UP in your face and took way longer than expected? Well… let me tell you… today’s DUMB DRAWING is one of those dastardly culprits. I must have started and restarted this drawing 3 times before I got something halfway presentable to share with you. So I do apologies for the hiatus but we’re officially BACK into the swing of things.

So without further ado…

To the Blogsss

I’ve been writing little posts these past few months to help expand on the meaning of Alexander’s directions1. Memorizing the words is important. From the memorization, we want to quietly have a growing sense of feeling that follows the words. These thoughts may at first be experienced as a “body scan” but ultimately we are choosing to engage the kinesthetic sense while we live. This kinesthetic choice is akin to choosing to listen to others when you walk into a meeting or a class.

If we can choose to listen, we can choose to feel and balance.

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Enter the Cage

Below the head and neck is the thoracic cage of the ribs, thoracic spine, sternum, and clavicles. Check out the drawing below that took an unexpectedly long time to make!

I’ve colored the spine in grey, the sternum and clavicles in yellow, and the ribs in shades of red. I’d like you to take note of a few things here:

1. The innermost circular portion of the spine is where our weight should load. The three-pronged grey shape is the part of the vertebra used for back muscle attachments.

2. The ribs join to the spine, wrap around, and attach to the breast bone.

3. The location of the rib joint may be deeper into the back than you expect.

When things go awry…

When we have tension in the upper back, we can lose mobility in our ribs. Typically, I experience this as a locking of the thoracic spine and a heaviness along the front of the top 2-3 ribs. It’s almost as if the helicopter of the head is crash landing onto the neck and creating a depression in these upper ribs.

If this is you, I would call that a slump!

For many folks, this slump does not happen along the midline. In addition to the downward force of a heavy head, we can also crash land our helicopter in a corkscrew type of manner. This spiralling crash land can flow through the ribs in unexpected ways.

For some folks, the sternum will feel stuck pointing off to the right… Almost like they’ve spent all day sitting with a computer monitor off to the right or they play an instrument like the saxophone… This off center twist should be detected!

If you suspect your sternum is stuck off center, you can lie on your back and ask yourself if you feel even contact with the ground where the ribs attach to the spine (roughly 2-3 inches along either side of the spine). Slight differences in pressure between the left and right are a good clue that you have twist in there! Notice this and don’t bully yourself into a forced midline shape2.

For other folks, they may have individual ribs that are twisted out of alignment. I typically check for this on others by feeling along the front or sides of the rib cage (particularly the top 2-3). You can generally find some very slight differences in height between the right and left sides that are not related to the whole rib cage turning left of right. Gentle manual manipulation at these points can typically be felt all the way along the rib and into the spine. It can feel quite good to have these locked ribs moved and the act of feeling these ribs free up gives the person a visceral experience of soft/expanding volume in the torso.

These discoveries can be made on your own over time. If FM Alexander could do it, anyone can!

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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I’ll admit that I had no idea how bad airport security has gotten due to the recent government shutdown. I made it back to NYC without any issues whatsoever, but all of my travel buds had significant issues getting through security in New Orleans. 5 hour TSA lines are possible out there folks!

Fortunately, there are some great forums on Reddit where folks share live updates of the lines at the airports. If anyone in the USA is travelling this week, I’d check there to see if anyone is posting an update on their wait times.

PSA Over!!!!

How Do I Get Better?

Most people who come to me for Alexander Technique lessons are looking to improve how they feel. They might have some form of back pain or they might have a long term injury that they are trying to manage, but they all have one thing in common. They want to move and live a healthy life and ultimately not see me and be able to take care of themselves.

It can be a bit of a shock that during their first lesson I ask them to STOP, think, and resist the temptation to automatically DO something. The particular type of stopping we practice in the Alexander Technique can do wonders to alleviate pain and create expansion around the joints, but it doesn’t feel like something you should do 24/7. And it really flies in the face of every bit of advice folks have heard for the majority of their lives.

Surely, if one wants to feel better, one MUST exercise and get stronger and fitter.

My stock answer for folks is that if they want exercise, they should walk. Some folks can walk longer than others, but as of this publication date I haven’t had a student that cannot walk1. And while I stand by this advice, I am inevitably asked things like:

• Are push ups ok?

• I’ve heard hanging is good for posture. Is it?

• My PT taught me to hold my head back to train my neck. Does that help?

• I just want to do some planks to strengthen my core.

So I feel like I should address some of these concerns in a more specific way so that it might at least seem like there is a method behind my madness.

Grinding through Rehab vs. Having Fun

A lot of my students do things like play sports, dance, or do martial arts. I tell each and every one of them to continue with their sports and have fun. They should stop if things feel off (particularly if their neck is bothering them) but I trust that they won’t do anything particularly stupid on purpose to exacerbate an injury.

I think it’s important to keep as much “normal” activity in one’s life as possible so long as we are adding a good dose of rest and thinking into the mix. Sports in particular are a good idea in my mind because they are sociable and fun. This can take a lot of the pressure of “doing a good job at rehab” off of us and let us LIVE A LITTLE.

Living is good.

It is very rare that I meet someone who does push ups and planks for pleasure. The vast majority of gym culture revolves around doing strenuous activities to build strength, stamina, flexibility, and shed those damn lbs from all that crawfish and gumbo. At least in my experience, this means that there’s a lot less FUN going on in the gym and a lot more GRIND. Once we’re in a “grind” mentality, we’re not exactly taking the time to think if something is going to benefit us or if we can actually kinaesthetically feel our necks freeing during an activity. The result is that we end up repetitively doing things that shove pressure onto our joints and exacerbate our injuries.

So there you are doing your gym routine. Maybe you’ve set a fitness goal for yourself and you have fun hitting your goals on your exercise checklist. But is your neck stiff? Is your back hurting? If so, you haven’t gotten the real results you want.

At least for me, this is the definition of NOT fun.

If you’re socializing while working out then you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing and are unable to confidently assess if your neck is free while exercising. So yes, you can be having a fun chat with your friend after work, but you could have had that chat while going on a walk with them and NOT stiffening your neck.

This does not mean that you should not ever do a push or a plank or lift weights. It simply means that until you have the confidence to feel what a somewhat free neck feels like you won’t really be able to do an exercise is a healthy and FUN manner.

OK, but are planks and push ups good?

The majority of folks that come to me for lessons will perform a plank/push up with a very tight neck, an arch in the back, and shoulders that are locked fairly narrow onto the ribs. When we are starting with such a position, a healthy push up is not possible. Not only that, but the tight neck, arched back, and narrow shoulders are still present in walking and sitting.

It is far better to do the less strenuous activity of walking and sitting and figure out how to allow the neck to free during that moment than it is to do the more challenging push up.

But what about hanging my head off of my bed to stretch my neck?!?

When we feel tight, we want to stretch. It’s oftentimes our first instinct and the rehab world is filled with stretching activities that are designed to help you get out of that tight jam. Unfortunately, just because we pull our head to the left doesn’t mean that we stretch our muscles into a state of length. Maybe all we’re really doing is pulling on tendons and getting partial/constipated stretches…

Yaaarrrgghh SO WHAT CAN I DO!!!

Stop. Slow down. Feel your balance.

It takes time to build up the foundation of directions and the sense of kinesthesia to the point where you can confidently self assess what an exercise is and evaluate how you are doing it. I want each and every one to have that kind of confidence if they wish it for themselves, but the process cannot be rushed.

That’s why the Alexander Technique is a process of learning!

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment

I’m in New Orleans this weekend for a nice little gathering of friends. It’s great way to get out of the New York winter for a bit and honestly, could you begrudge a man a cocktail or two and a saunter? No. No you can’t.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some thoughts on how to take breaks while working. I think for the average person, this topic seems a little bizarre. After all, if you need a work break you just take one, right? But for anyone that is really trying to develop themselves to the best of their potential (and especially for someone with an injury), this information can really help.

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Why Breaks Matter

Once we hit adulthood, our time can feel very limited. There can be an endless amount of tasks to complete for a job and regardless of time and pay, there’s only so much energy we can devote to a moment. This can create the feeling that we are under pressure and NEED to be EXTRA EFFICIENT and KNOCK SH*T OUT NOW.

This is a rather intense attitude. And while it may be true that you have these demands on yourself, you have a choice in your attitude towards the situation. If you’re the typical New Yorker, it’ll be tough to change that attitude overnight. Taking breaks can be a very effective way of walking out of an intense situation and resetting your attitude.

Why Breaks Matter If You Have an Injury

Most of my students are working with some level of chronic tension or pain. In many cases these are the result of severe injury or illness. In these cases there can be EXTRA pressure to not only get your tasks done, but to COMPETE WITH THE HEALTHY FOLKS. Having worked myself in the NY tech scene for 10 years, I completely get it. Your boss is too damn busy to understand that a slow work pace is more efficient and less prone to error. So how can you - as someone with an injury - possibly take a break and be perceived as lazy?

The sociological and political risks for taking breaks are BIG. But the punishment for skipping breaks is BIGGER.

When we SKIP Breaks:

• Errors increase in our work

• Pain builds to unmanageable levels

• Writer’s block becomes frequent

I would expect all of this to come with a shortening of the breath and stiffening of the neck and back.

How Often Should You Take A Break?

Ideally, if you plan on working for 2-8 hours you should take a break every 10-15 minutes. This is not an exact science, but most folks only really have that much focus in them before they start to mind wander. Once you’re mind wandering, you need to be honest with yourself and admit that you have actually stopped working and are now just trying to force something productive out of yourself.

Introducing the Pomodori Technique

One very popular “productivity hack” is the Pomodori technique. The name for the system is derived from a kitchen tomato timer thingy I think. I first heard about it from a musician ages ago and decided to give it a go. I’ll outline the system for you.

Before you sit down to work, set aside 5-10 minutes to outline your tasks for the day. Your intention is to work for 15 minutes and take a break for 5 minutes. This cycle will repeat for the duration of your work session.

For your 15 minute tasks, you are going to STOP your task when the timer goes off. No cheating.

If your tasks are centered around learning or research, you may have 4 skills that you want to learn over the course of your work session. This may be scales, rhythm, phrases in a song, geometry, algebra, Italian grammar, whatever. In this case, you should use each 15 minute tasks for a DIFFERENT skill. This keeps the mind fresh and builds breadth and depth over time.

If your tasks are more singular like, “write chapter one of the book”, then you just take the break as a break from the bigger task at hand.

For your 5 minute breaks, you will have 3 breaks every hour. One of these should be a 5 minute lie down for sure. Of the other two, I would suggest a 5 minute walk for one. The other could be an Alexander game like Hands on Back of the Chair, Windmills, Squats, or going up on toes.

Why This Technique is HARD

F.M. Alexander had some rather famous students in his time. One of them was a successful writer who would suffer from pain due to rather long writing sessions. F.M.’s advise was basically the same as mine today: in order to prevent pain, you must take a break before things get too intense.

In the case of this writer - an outright genius by all accounts - he found it impossible to risk losing his train of thought once he got into the flow of things. FM suggested that any train of thought that you leave can be found again. The implication of his advise is that leaving and finding a train of thought is a valuable skill in and of itself.

When we become attached to holding onto an idea, we typically grip up in ourselves and hold our breath.

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Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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Allow the neck to be free

So that the head balances forward and up (relative to the top of the spine)

So that the spine may lengthen and the back widen

So that the knees go away from the hips

So that the shoulders rest apart from one another…

Plus the elbows, wrists, hands, ankles, and feet!!!!

I’ve been writing more detailed info on FM Alexander’s directions lately. In last week’s article, I wrote about how you can imagine the musculature of the spine softening and lengthening. It’s an important concept to revisit so do take a minute to look at that before going on to today’s latest and greatest adventure!

What Does Good Alignment Look Like?

Honestly, this is a tricky topic. Good alignment can look like a LOT of things because we’re incredibly mobile creatures. I’ll try and give you a few examples of shapes we can take to illustrate my point. We as HU-MANS (said with an alien accent) can:

• Sit and type

• Do backbends

• Bend over to tie our shoes

• Do a triple jump in athletics1

For each one of these things, we can either feel fluid balance throughout our whole self or a crunching compression of crap. For the untrained eye, there is no difference between the look of fluidity and compression outside of the fact that brilliant fluidity in motion and expression will make everyone stop in their tracks, drop their jaw, and applaud unwittingly.

Fluid balance - POISE - comes with a presence of being.

I give you that lecture before showing you the following picture because all too often, people with see an image of alignment and begin to automatically STIFFEN to try and force the position upon themselves. People will react this way without ANY engagement of the kinesthetic sense or any sense of curiosity. This is a pity because the reaction - the impulse to stiffen - happens so fast that we don’t even realise we have done it until it is too late.

With that in mind, I’d like to prepare you for this image by asking that you stop for a moment. Tell yourself that no matter what you see, you will refuse to try and copy the image. Tell yourself that you will refuse to even feel your spine as you look at the image to figure out if you are right or wrong. Let yourself just be curious about the image so that the image and ONLY the image can permeate your imagination.

This preparation is F.M. Alexander’s use of the word inhibition.

Are you ready?

…

…

…

…

In the image above, I’ve done my best to draw some straight red lines along the back portion of the spine. The image itself comes from my anatomy book and you should bear in mind that the degrees of curvature in the spine vary from person to person. But while the degree of curvature may vary, the relationship between the back of the head, mid back, and tail bone should be oriented along a very delicate forward and up trajectory.

Remember, there are no ribs, shoulders, arms, legs, or muscles present in this drawing. If I were to add all of these in, the torso would fill out and look much more erect than in the drawing above. Here is the same side view with more stuff:

At least to my eye, this looks less slanty with more musculature filled in…

How to Use these Drawings

Most of my students sit and type for extended periods of time. As we get tired, we find ways of stiffening or collapsing to compensate for fatigue. This typically comes with the head dropping down on top of the spine and either pressing too far backward or forward. I can’t really say that one of these compensations is more prevalent than others because once fatigue hits, we start to oscillate between the two or just totally collapse into dead weight.

Assuming that you have a moderately soft neck, we can use these drawings to help better understand how the mid back and hips can align while sitting.

Hips and Rib Cage

When we talk about the alignment of the torso in sitting, we have to talk about the alignment of the hips AND the alignment of the ribs. If the head, ribs, and hips come into better alignment, we will feel pressure coming off of the spine, weight loading into the front portion of the spine, and muscular tension release globally. If you’re trying these experiments on your own and you don’t feel anything changing, BLAME ME AND MY ARTICLES and/or BE PATIENT AND SLOW DOWN2. There’s just something that hasn’t come across yet and an in person demonstration typically helps clear things up.

As I describe the following experiments, remember to feel the balance of your head continuously (or at least semi-continuously). If you forget, everything will feel like concrete.

Do the Wrong Thing

If you sit with a good upright chair, you can align the back of the hips with the chair back. This can serve as a helpful reference point because we absolutely do not want to feel our mid back pressing back into the chair with force. We also do not want to feel our lumbar pressing backwards into a vertical chair.

A very rounded back will have the hips touching the chair back with a little force, the lumbar pressing a bit backward into the chair, and the rib cage slumped forward.

A collapsed lumbar will have the hips touching the chair back with a little force, the lumbar pressing a bit backward into the chair, and the rib cage hoisted upright and pressing into the chair back. Many people would think this type of back is sitting upright, but it is being accomplished with a lot of heaviness.

An arching back will have only a small portion of the hip touching the chair back, a large lumbar gap as the lower back is pressed too far forward and a very rigid rib cage with may or may not be pressing into the chair back.

Typically, I will ask my students to sit in a chair and knowingly press their backs into these various shapes so that they can feel how their necks stiffen up. I have them do this in front of a mirror and with a mirror in profile so that they can see and feel what is happening. We go through these iterations slowly and without jerking the back about so that we have the time to feel changes and not injure ourselves.

This would not be a recommended exercise is you have nerve pain in the spine!

When Things Go Well

When none of these extreme things are happening in the chair, you will feel weight begin to load along the front of the spine. It will feel like the head and the rib cage are floating above the hips and that the tailbone is free of tension. Weight will be evenly distributed on the sitting bones AND you’ll feel like you can gently move.

I do not expect things to feel smashingly awesome as we haven’t talked about the widening of the ribs, the knees, or the softening around the shoulder girdle. So bear that in mind if things still feel mighty stuck on you!!!

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment

Allow the neck to be free

So that the head may balance forward and up

So that the spine may lengthen and the torso widens

So that the knees are forward and away from the hips…

Today’s article is yet another expansion upon the meaning of F.M. Alexander’s directions. It is highly related to last week’s article on the length of the spine. If you haven’t read those articles, I’ll do my best to summarise things for you but please take the time to go back and check things out!

Feelin’ Like a Crushed Coke Can

Back pain kinda sucks. When we have mild forms of it, the pain tends to go away in a day or two with a bit of time and rest. But when it lingers about, it can get worse over time.

When people come to me for lessons in the Alexander Technique, I’ll ask them how they’re feeling and where their pain points are. Rarely does anyone respond with, “I don’t know I just want to feel better”, they tend to have a damn good idea about a few points that are in mild to screaming agony.

From there, I begin to ask questions:

• Ok, so your lower back hurts. Do you feel any tension at the back of your neck?

• I can see that your right shoulder is lifted up a bit. How does your left side feel?

• Yes I can see that the left knee is in pain. Do you feel like you have any weight on your right foot?

As I draw attention to the parts that don’t have pain, a bigger and bigger picture begins to form in the mind of the student. Over time, they begin to feel like a crushed can of coke rather than a perfectly fine coke can with a hole in it. For me, this is a HUGE win and sign of terrific progress.

Before you even THINK about lengthening your spine or freeing your neck, you should have some sense of your whole crushed coke can1.

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A Crushed Example

We are massively mobile creatures. At one extreme end, we can move like ninjas, ballerinas, or contortionists. At the end extreme, we can find ourselves in a state of severe scoliosis. This is worth bearing in mind as I share with you a simple drawing of someone collapsing forward and down.

In the drawing above, I have superimposed a red outline of someone dropping their head forward and down. This is causing their chest to pitch up and their pelvis to push forward and droop down. This individual may or may not also have a twist in their spine.

In the case of the red outline above, some of the muscles of the spine will contract and eventually learn to perpetually hold tension to maintain the exaggerated curves in the spine. Other muscles will be slack or little used and feel like a black hole of nothingness. The imbalance will also be marked by weight loading onto the back portion of the vertebrae rather than along the furthest forward portion of the spine.

Is there anything that our red outline can do to rebalance along the upright midline?

The answer to this question is theoretically YES2!

Uncrushing the Coke Can

Before you can change anything, you should first take a minute to lie down and look at the clouds. While you look at the clouds, you should give yourself the gentlest reminder that the neck can be soft and the head balances forward and up above it. If you cannot feel anything in the neck faintly thawing or the muscles around your head easing up off of the skull, you’ll likely struggle with allowing length in the spine.

But if you have some success with the above, then check out the dumb drawing below!

In the drawing above, I’ve marked off 12 yellow zones. At top and bottom there are 4 red arrows. As you sit, stand, or lie down you might be able to imagine the purple muscles of the spine thawing. You can help the thawing along if you allow your sense of feeling to touch both the top red arrows and bottom red arrows AND wonder if you can feel those directions.

The sense of release may be very small but it is possible if the head is marginally forward and up3.

You may not be able to feel the whole lot of the purple muscles all at once. That’s pretty normal. It’s also why I have drawn the 12 yellow zones!

You are free to slowly allow your sense of feeling to go from the top zones to the bottom. There’s no need to rush as your sense of feeling scans down the back and you don’t want to block the feeling of the arms, ribs, or legs. Remember the cafe analogy when in doubt!

I have divided the yellow zones along the midline because people tend to have very different ways of holding tension from left to right. Some of my students work at computers a lot and tend to lean onto their right. The yellow zones along the right tend to be quite tight and painful while the zones on the left are in a bit of atrophy. This also tends to come with a twist of the rib cage towards the right.

By feeling the left relative to the right as you lie down on a flat surface, you can get a better sense of how your back is twisting and turning. If you notice a twist, that’s great! Just don’t try and force your back flat onto the midline as you will likely stiffen your neck like crazy. Keep imagining a gentle, glacial thawing and you will eventually find more center.

Also bear in mind that without a sense of the whole rest of you expanding, there will be a bit of tension that refuses to let go. You’ll eventually need to be able to thaw a little bit everywhere to get that nice sense of ‘Ahhhhh’. And that takes time and practice.

When you feel the whole length of the spinal musculature, you might gently imagine the top lengthening up and following the head while the bottom lengthens away. It will feel like you’re gently growing in stature by being stretched out from head to butt. It feels quite terrific when it happens, but bear in mind that the spine will always have curves to it. You should NEVER attempt to flatten out your spine.

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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I’m not sure what’s in the air these days, but I’ve been feeling bone tired this weekend. It could be the weather, but I have a feeling it’s the result of allowing a greater depth of quiet in myself. This sensation of fatigue was preceded by a full day of the munchies.

In my experience, such things are pretty normal when you practice the Alexander Technique. I’m sure that from the outside, I just look like a guy that’s sitting in a chair and walking around, but loads of stuff (and things) are feeling VERY different these days. If I had to guess, I’d say this wave of weirdness will pass in a day or so and then things will feel normal for a while.

If something like this happens to you, that’s perfectly normal and an expected part of the process of change from learning the Alexander Technique. Don’t freak out!

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Lengthening the Spine

I’m back with a little drawing to help you better understand the meaning of FM Alexander’s directions. Today, I’m sharing an image I think about when kinesthetically sensing the length of my spine. Rather than thinking about the outside of my spine, this drawing should help you think about the Inner Space of your torso.

Drawing Notes

The yellow arrows mark the release of the top and bottom of the spine. I don’t want you to actively try and pull your spine in these directions, but you may be able to sense the top and bottom releasing tension if you quietly think about these areas. I’ve written pieces on the release of the top of the spine in the past. For the base of the spine, this post has a good reference image. Try them one at a time.

The green dome around the top of the skull is there to remind you of the alignment and balance of the head. If the head is too far forward or shoved backwards, you will find it tricky to release the spine. You don’t need your head to balance atop the spine perfectly in the beginning, but care should be taken that the right ear isn’t dropping in to the shoulder like you’re living on your 80s phone. A reasonable midline balance will help and a mirror is your friend here.

The red lines mark the inner space of the torso. In order to help you lengthen the spine, it can be very helpful to feel this middle space. The largest of the red spaces can help you feel the support at the front of the spine. When this space feels like a crushed coke can we tend to feel pretty poo. I would suggest during your next lie down that you imagine softening running the channel of this red zone.

Experiment Time

When imagining the softening of the red zone, a reasonable sense of width is required. Sometimes The red zone should be as wide as your spine is. For fun, I will sometimes imagine my spine being 4-6 inches wide. With this unrealistic width, I feel my entire rib cage lock up instantly. Something in the 1-2 inch range tends to feel like it gives my spine a nice release. I suggest that you try these two widths out for yourself and see if they give you a similar result.

I have left out the widening of the torso in today’s article, so do forgive me for not guiding you further. Stay tuned for more on that front in the coming weeks!

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Thanks for reading “The Use of the Mirror“! If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Have a Lie Down

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write a lot about the importance of a lie down practice. It’s not that I think that a sedentary life is superior or that exercise is bad, it’s just that when you lie down you get a chance to experience REST. And while this chance to rest is great, I want to help you maximize your chance of success.

So what can we do to help ease ourselves out of our busy lives and into a state of rest?

Look at the ceiling…

When I lie down in my teaching studio, I tend to keep my eyes open. I look out and see my terrifically awesome ceiling.

It’s the type of ceiling tile we’ve all seen. At first glance there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about it, and this leaves me with a choice. I can either let my mind wander and think about my TODO list or that sh*tty email I need to send later today OR I can look at the ceiling with interest and imagine that I’m looking at a great painting.

When the TODO list is stuck in your head or you’re having an argument with yourself, you can’t honestly say that you are purely having a rest. I would expect that your neck and head feel stiff as heck and your breathing is quite held. You’ve gone to lie down to alleviate these symptoms and yet that noggin’ is distracted and taking you away from the task at hand.

ARRRGGHHHH!

Before we get too frustrated by this, I’d like you to ask yourself if you actually can feel how your head and neck are stiff while you’re distracted and running through that TODO list. Most of us will only sense that we have this chattering going on in our minds and completely shut off how we brace during these moments. Many people will notice a stiffness in the chest (which is great to notice), but there are a few other markers that I think will really help you better know what a concentrated brace feels like.

Some of these markers are:

• holding the breath

• stiffness in the chest

• a deadening of the muscles around the whole skull (check behind your ears)

• a gripping of the jaw

• pressing the head into the book/pillow

I’d like you to take a bit of time to see if you can sense these for yourself. Do not purposefully make yourself grip up in the way I have described above as that might not be your particular version of CONCENTRATION. Instead, I’d like you to imagine that you are in an annoying or stressful situation. I’d like you to imagine that damn email you got from Jodie in accounts that really gave you a dose of worry/anger.

If you can really imagine this scenario, you’ll feel yourself grip in a specific way IMMEDIATELY. When you feel those pockets of muscular tension build up, you can then simply let that specific pattern of tension thaw. Things should feel marginally better.

Look at the clouds…

As you return to looking at the ceiling, I’d like you to imagine that you are lying in a field on a warm day and looking up at the clouds.

When you look at the clouds, you want to allow your eyes and head to gently wander about. This doesn’t mean that you roll your head like a maniac on the book. It means you allow your eyes to slowly move from one place to another. Your head should always feel that it is free to follow the eyes. The head does not need to move per se, but it should not feel rooted to a spot.

If this looking game goes well, I begin to see colors get warmer and more vivid as the blood flows into the eyes differently.

It’s a terrific sensation and I hope you can find something similar for yourself during your lie downs this week.

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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For those of y’all in Brooklyn, I’ll give a plug to Have & Meyer. Anytime I’m in an Italian restaurant with a nice grappa selection I’m pretty happy. Having some ridiculous pasta never hurt either!

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Why Do Things Fail?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the dreaded “Snap Back”. Sometimes when we’re learning the Alexander Technique we can have experiences that feel like an injury but are really a normal part of recovery after muscles have been exercised or stretched. It can be a very confusing experience because it can feel like so little actually happens in a lesson.

While the snap back is an example of what can happen after tension is released, there are also just days or moments in our lives when we feel our muscles and joints lock, our breathing get shallow, and our stress levels go through the roof. These moments could happen because we slipped on the ice, or had a family reunion with ALL THE PEOPLE, or because we had a nightmare after seeing Alien Romulus and dreamt that we had to run through David Rumph’s house while holding a facehugger in a death grip - desperately trying to shove it into the freezer.1 These moments can leave us feeling like:

• we have to get EVEN BETTER at the Alexander Technique

• we haven’t learned ANYTHING

• we’ve completely regressed and have to start at the beginning!!!

These “setbacks” are just called LIFE; there’s no way that we can prevent them from happening. There may be some minor things we can do to prevent them (like not watching scary movies late at night and staying in when the weather is horrible), but we can’t control the world. It’s perhaps better to talk about what you can do AFTER sh*t happens.

After the Fall

After life has thrown a little curve ball our way, it’s important to NOT PANIC. It’s intelligent to go to a doctor if you think you’ve broken a bone, but - assuming you haven’t - it’s MOST important to not pull on yourself to force that strain out with aggressive stretching or try to vigorously exercise. Slow walking is almost always cool, but a lie down and a STOP is always a damn good idea.

At first glance, it can look to an outsider like you are lying down and being lazy. But these are really opportunities for you to STOP and allow yourself to rest. I think it’s important to remember that the Alexander Technique is NOT about living life free all the time. That would imply that you have destroyed the concept of stress.

Instead, the practice of the Alexander Technique allows you to tend to have less strain on your joints and an ability to more rapidly shed the stresses of life and cultivate more quiet. In the best of times, it allows you to come very upright in stature. With time and dedication you can sustain the upright for greater periods of time. But falling along the way will happen.

So take all the time you need to get back up! If you rush and try to force things to be right, you will only stiffen yourself up and make matters worse!

Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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**Bezos is always the problem…

So pardon this week’s post if it’s a bit short! I need to get my hands back into my pockets while I make a hot whiskey!1

Breadth and Depth

The above is a brief reminder of the beginning of the directions in the Alexander Technique. These are not words that you are supposed to say in your head, but rather a kinesthetic guide towards release. With practice and patience, you will find that you can allow the thoughts above, feel a reaction taking place, and slowly change how you carry your own weight2.

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But what happens if you can’t actually sense your head, your neck, or your spine? How can you begin to kinesthetically feel something that you’ve never thought about before? If I ask you to feel the whole column of your spine as you sit here and read this sentence, can you actually do it?

For most people, the answer is neither a perfectly resounding YES or NO. When I quiz my students, they normally respond that they have a sense of the spine in their neck and near the lower back/pelvis but that everything in between is a bit of a foggy unknown. This is an honest starting point, but if it’s at all possible we would like to be able to lift the fog and feel more of the spine.

Because if you can’t feel it3, it won’t move.

One thing that might help you better feel your spine is to look at an MRI!

This is an image taken from the midline of a person. I’ve left this image fairly unmarked so that you can refer back to it and check out whatever you like without my marks getting in the way. Most folks don’t know what they’re looking at, so I’m including a little legend below:

At the back of the person, you will see a tiny pink arrow pointing to the back of a vertebra. In front of that, you will see the spinal cord (you can trace that grey channel down from the brain. And in front of that, you will see the front portion of the same vertebra.

So basically, you’re looking at each vertebra as if it has been cut in half.

The front and back of each vertebra is bone. The front portion is a solid cylindrical shape that is designed for supporting weight. Along the front of the spine there are ligaments that help support the structure.

The back portion of the spine has pointy prongs for muscle attachments and is where a lot of the spine is held together. These muscles help us stay upright and move in all sorts of ways.

The Blue Zones

At the top of the spine, you will see that the front of the spine begins to curve back and up away. In front of this curve, I have highlighted a light blue zone at the back of the throat. This is not a bone, it’s flesh, and when we feel tight this blue zone feels like concrete. It would be very nice for this front blue zone inside your mouth to feel lively and resonant.

At the base of the skull towards the back I have highlighted another blue zone. This is a big bad of muscle that we would like to be free of tension. When the weight of the skull fails to balance on top of the neck, these two blue zones freeze and the neck locks. Yikes!

Ideally, our weight should flow through the highlighted green portion of the torso. Take a minute and check out how deep the spine is within YOU!

In the image above, I have drawn some red cross sections from front to back. Notice at the neck how HUGE the spine is. I’ve labeled it as 70% of the depth of the neck, 40% of the depth of the ribcage, and 60% of the lower back4. That’s a pretty fast and lose eyeball estimate. I do not want you walking around calculating percentages in your head.

Percentages Matter

When we habitually hold tension in our head, neck, and back, our muscles brace and weight begins to load onto places other than the dead center of the front of the vertebra. Typically, this weight starts loading onto the back portion of the front of the vertebra. As our backs get tighter and tighter, they begin to feel thinner and thinner.

Oftentimes after I show this image to a student, they take a minute and say something like, “Oh yeah, when I think of my spine I only really feel the back portion of the vertebrae. I had no idea how deep things went.”. I think this is a critical realisation and can dramatically help a student better feel what their back actually is.

My ask for you during your next lie down is to take a little time and imagine this depth. See if you can feel the whole depth of the spinal column. Make sure you don’t think that the spine is as wide as your whole back or you’ll find the ribcage gets locked. You want to imagine the full depth of the spine where the spine actually is as inaccurate anatomical mental images will create stiffening5.

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If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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This “basic” announcement is also the theme for this week’s article. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of comfort, I thought I’d share a little story…

Chem 101

Going into my freshman year at Tulane, my dad - a college professor - took the time to heavily advise me on what courses to take during my first semester. Given that I didn’t know what major I was going to pursue, he wanted me to have a basic course selection that would allow me to either pursue medicine or business. After about an hour of research, we landed on a smattering of STEM intro classes… including chemistry. 🤯

On my mom’s side of the family, chemistry was the one class that everyone struggled with in college. Hearing the word “chemistry” was known to cause dinner time screeches of, “Not Chemistry! Ahhhhhh”. This was accompanied with a Kevin McAlister double cheek slap obviously.

So when I got to Tulane and attended my first lecture, I was determined to get an A in the course. As I sat down with the book, I did something that I had never done before with a text book. I read each sentence - one at a time - and refused to move on to the next sentence until I had fully understood the concept.

What a novel idea, eh?

On the second page of the textbook, I came across a curious paragraph. In 3 sentences, we were given a very high level description of how the periodic table worked - specifically with regards to the classification of metals. Something about this paragraph made me stop.

I didn’t really understand why this information was being mentioned, so normally I would skim such a paragraph and tell myself that I’d return to it later if needed. But instead of doing that, I read the paragraph again - gasp! I didn’t understand something on the first try! - and decided to commit the information to memory. This information would later prove to be the foundation of basically everything in the entire course.

If you’re curious, you can read about oxidation reduction reactions here. You’ll see in this page that the information is put in a huge bold grey block right at the top of the page. In my chemistry textbook, it appeared almost as a footnote. So not only is it important to read everything in a book, but maybe…just maybe… the editors of the book should consider making the most critical bits of information as BIG, BOLD, and BEAUTIFUL as possible.

Had I missed this one little paragraph, I would have been lost. I probably would have muddled through the course, fallen behind, and not recognized that the best course of action to catch up with class would have been to start over from the beginning. Starting over is something we are all reluctant to do at one stage or another… that’s ego talking and learning and ego do not mix well!

As I’ve gone on to study the Alexander Technique, I have found that there are two types of lessons out there; the ones where the teacher tries to meet my “current” level of knowledge and the ones where the teacher assumes I know NOTHING. We all need to progress in our studies, so I don’t want to dismiss a lesson on “the feet” for example, but the lessons that assume nothing and start at the beginning in the most foundational ways are ALWAYS the best. Finding the right balance is a tricky art.

Back to the Beginning

I have poor vision. My prescription strength is -13 in both eyes with a little astigmatism in the left. It means that I’m right eye dominant and have a life long relationship with wearing glasses.

When I get a new pair, I spare no expense because I’m freakin’ blind and wear this things all the time. As a kid, my prescription strength was much weaker and I could get light metal frames that have nose grips to secure the glasses. I liked these very much and never really felt any feeling of discomfort from them.

But by the time I was 24, my lenses became so thick that the spec shop couldn’t cut the lenses thin enough to go into a metal frame. It was time for me to “upgrade” to a thicker plastic frame. When I got these frames, I reluctantly put them on and was shocked at how heavy the frames felt on my nose1.

I immediately complained to the shop that something was off here and I was told that given my poor vision, this weight was unavoidable and I would have to just get used to the frame. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, so I took their advice. Within about an hour I had a headache but by the next day the headache was gone and things felt fine2.

Fast forward 8 Years…

When I began my Alexander Technique lessons, I decided to switch to contact lenses. After feeling tension leave my neck from my lessons, I felt how the glasses would causing me to grip up. This decision had little to do with the weight of the frames and the pressure on my nose and more to do with the fact that my glasses were constantly slipping down my nose.

This slip gave me the sensation that my glasses were falling and I would instantly stiffen my neck to try and keep the glasses up. Switching to contacts felt TERRIFIC and I found it much easier to balance my head on top of my neck. I stuck with contacts for years but unfortunately, there’s an increase in dry eyes and - at least from what eye doctors have told me - an increase in risk of retinal detachment as the eyes are deprived of oxygen.

Uggghhhh. Getting old is GARBAGE sometimes.

It’s been several years now that I’ve been back to wearing heavy plastic frames. I’ve noticed that when I buy a new frame they fit my face and do not slip. But with wear, the plastic will slightly change shape and the slip down the nose returns.

Lately, the slip has increased to the point where the frames fall off my face when I look down. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I’M UNCOMFORTABLE AND IT’S STOOOOPID TO CONTINUE WITH THIS.

ummm. sorry about that….

So what should I do? I’m clearly not comfortable and this is clearly stiffening up my neck and face. Should I buy a new frame? And spend $1000 every 6 months?!?

Nah… Let’s just do a quick search on Amazon…

Hrmmm…

This seems easier…

TA DA!!!

These little rubber do-dads solve the problem of slippage. They don’t solve the problem of weight on my face, but man oh man it’s just easier to walk around now. And with this adjustment, I feel less of a need to brace in the neck.

And that’s a very welcome change.

Comfort Comes First

One of the first things I am asked in a good Alexander Technique lesson is, “Are you comfortable?”. This question is tricky to answer for people in pain because they are absolutely NOT comfortable EVER, but it still should be asked. These little niggling bits of discomfort will block us from releasing tension and can create issues over time.

I will leave you with a few things to consider:

• Does it feel like you will slip out of your chair?

• Is your keyboard slightly out of reach?

• Can you actually read the print in your book?

• Do your shoes ever so slightly pinch your feet?

• Are those jeans just a liiiiittle tight?

• Is your pillow just a little too tall?

• Are your feet slipping during your lie down?

• Is your head unable to rest on the book during the lie down?

• If you have pillows under your arm during a lie down, do your elbows feel like they are slipping?

Basically, Does your environment feel like it is fighting you?

If you feel this and it is something that happens persistently. FIX IT!

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If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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Do you cower in fear?

Do you make sure your pipes don’t freeze?

Do you regret not owning cashmere?

Or do you buy ingredients to make french onion soup, bolognese, and escarole?

…

I think you can guess what I’ll be up to during the mini blizzard…

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This Week…

The head leads and the body follows1. It’s a phrase that we use again and again in the Alexander Technique. It is used to convey the principle of efficient movement2 but it does beg the questions:

Rather than focus on the phrase the head leads and the body follows, this week I took the time with one of my students to demonstrate what it means to lead and follow in a partner dance context. During a lesson in the Alexander Technique, I will always place hands on my students and guide them through simple movements. It is their job to follow the movements of my hands and it is my job to teach them HOW to follow.

So to demonstrate leading and following with my student, I first wrote down the 3 types of timing that can exist in partner dance:

1. Lead + Follow in time

2. Lead + Anticipate/Rush the leader

3. Lead + Drag behind the leader

My student looked at me with a bit of a puzzled look, so I asked her to take my hands in her own and guide my arms through space (we didn’t move our feet or do anything other than simple, slow movements). She was going to lead all of my movement and I was going to follow her and demonstrate the 3 types of timing above.

At first, I followed her timing and she noted that my arms felt very light and quiet.

Then, I decided to RUSH her movements. If she moved my hands a little bit up, I would start pushing my hands up even further than her hands had taken me AND I would start to slightly move my hands at a faster velocity than hers. This involved me giving my arms a slight jerk as I increased my acceleration.

When I asked her if she could feel the difference, it was very obvious to her.

Then, I decided to DRAG her movements. As she moved her hands about, I let my arms be very heavy; like stones. I still followed her movements, but I was always very late in my response. To do this, I kind of turned myself into an obstinate zombie; half drunk and fully lazy.

She was shocked at how heavy I could make myself feel.

What I observed as the follower was that my student could lead reasonably well when she was quietly observing me. However, the faster and more randomly she moved, the harder it was for me to follow her. I felt myself getting stiff and confused and the whole dance aspect was killed. This disconnect happened when my student was leading but no longer listening/observing me; she spaced out and just did what felt fun to her.3

Three Types of Head / Body Interactions

After the exercise, I remarked that during her normal movements her upper back was dragging behind the movement of her head (and her hip was dragging behind her upper back). The result was a feeling of heaviness in the torso and stiffness in the neck. This drag in the upper back typically results in a slump.

On the other hand, I have students whose chests lead the movements of their lives. When the chest is leading we typically get a very arched back and the look of someone really puffing their chest out. This is the result of anticipation; almost as if the chest thinks it has to do all of the work for the whole body and force the person forward through life. I would suspect that the neck and mid back get an almighty jerk as a result.

How we actually achieve fluid timing between the head, neck, and all the other bits and bobs boils down to a matter of prevention. First, we must have an idea of what rushing and dragging are. Then we must start to catch ourselves doing these things in our daily lives. And finally, we must make the decision to slow down and wonder if we can change that timing.

I think it’s a bit much for today for me to try and write out HOW to get the chest out of a slump or how to get the chest to not puff out and rush. Instead, trust that it’s a HUGE DEAL if you can observe dragging or rushing within yourself. This could be in any of the examples I’ve listed above, but it could also happen when the legs rush to move and the head, neck, and torso are stuck in place when you initiate walking. The varieties are endless!

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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When people with injury have their first lesson, it can be a bit of an overwhelming experience. I’ll regularly meet people who have been stuck with their injury for 10 years. They go through periods where they meet lots of doctors and try various methods of physical therapy/yoga/pilates. They do all the things everyone says you should do to recover and they hit a wall and get stuck. Understandably, they get frustrated and become stressed that their entire life will be nothing but injury1.

After their first lesson, these folks are typically a bit surprised that something actually helped them feel better. It can create a sense of hope and a very practical concern that they will only ever feel better if I walk around behind them with a hand of their head, neck, and back all day. Naturally, their first question is, “How often do I need to see you”?

These folks are typically shocked when I tell them that I need to see them 3 times per week. I normally explain to them that learning something like the Alexander Technique takes time and repeated experiences. Martial artists train at least 3 times per week. College lecture courses are 2-3 times per week for a full semester (over a 4 year period).

But aside from the practicalities of how we learn and absorb information, using the Alexander Technique as a method of injury recovery also comes with a degree of pain management and I think it’s high time that I share with you my own experiences with recovery, pain management, and lesson frequency.

Early Days

I began my studies of the Alexander Technique in 2011 after hitting rock bottom with my injury recovery. I had had enough physical therapy post ACL surgery to know that the standard physical therapy method would not be appropriate for my particular injury. My particular injury was a type of repetitive strain injury from working out of a broken chair (an employer mandate to save money). I had whiplash from head to toe, threw my back out once per month, and had electric shocks of pain down my right arm if I typed too much on a given day.

Eventually, my saxophone teacher gave me an ultimatum; “Study the Alexander Technique or find a physical therapist that exclusively deals with musician injuries and sort this out or I’ll fire you as a student”. It was a moment of deeply human leadership and empathy from an incredible musician and it’s how I eventually found Beret Arcaya as an Alexander Technique teacher.

The result of my first lesson was dumbfounding. I felt every ounce of pain go away and had a tremendous feeling of poise and balance. My head was balancing on the midline for the first time in 3 years and I knew I needed to continue studying. The next thing I knew, I had my next 3 lesson times in Beret’s calendar for the following week and we got to work.

There were so many wonderful moments during that time. The ability to confidently show up to work and know that I could get through the day without pain was a real game changer for me, but it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. After a few lessons, Beret warned me that I was going to start experiencing a new kind of pain and man oh man was she RIGHT.

In a lesson, a student can experience a lot of increased length in their spine. This happens as the musculature releases its habitual hold the head finds a better balance atop the spine. The more crunched up your spine is at the start of the lesson, the more potential length you can gain by the end.

While it can feel great to have a ton of increased length in the spine, it asks the back muscles to support your weight in a new - more balanced way. This new balance is a form of muscular training. And just like you’ve felt fatigue and soreness from physical exercise, you will likely feel the same thing just from walking around slowly after an Alexander Technique lesson.

I can vividly remember walking the 2 blocks from Beret’s studio to the N train at Union Square after one of these early lessons. The first block felt incredible. Time seemed to move slowly and everything seemed to moved with such supple ease.

By the time I reached the second block though, I started to feel this incredible force crushing me down. My back started to ache more than it ever had before and I was beginning to get scared that I was just going to collapse on the ground. The sensation was completely bizarre and felt nothing like a muscle pull or spasm.

What I was experiencing was a reversion to my habitual poor posture (for lack of a better word) as my weaker back muscles hit fatigue and could no longer support my weight with upright balance. I sometimes call this a snap-back. Snap-backs are a normal part of learning the Alexander Technique for those of us with more severe injuries and learning to manage them is a very real part of the recovery process.

Fortunately, I made it to the subway that evening and found a seat. But the pain continued as I sat down on the train. I texted Beret in a panic about what was happening and she gently assured me that I just needed to slowly get home and immediately do a lie down.

The 15 minute walk from the train station to my apartment was absolute hell that day. But I did as I was told and lay down in constructive rest. After about 30 minutes, I felt fine and didn’t have any adverse feelings of being pulled down the next morning.

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Snap-Backs and Lesson Frequency

It was a damn good thing that I had 3 lessons per week during this early period. One of the benefits to having lessons that frequently is that you’re only ever 2 days away from your next lesson. The hands-on work from a good teacher gives you repeated experiences of not pulling down on yourself and you get more and more experiences of the right muscles supporting the right weight in the right way2.

Over the following 15 years, I had all sorts of different frequencies. Sometimes I’ve had wonderful walks where I’ve had all sorts of things open up in my head, neck, and back. It feels terrifically rewarding - and good - to experience these things without the aid of a teacher, but it does come with a price. Things will snap-back from fatigue at some point and without the help of another teacher, those snap-backs can linger for 2-3 days.

For some people, this kind of snap-back can be debilitating and keep them away from work. For others, it’s just a matter of tolerating a bit of pain and being grumpy. There’s really no way to predict what will happen to you or how you will handle it but I think it’s extremely important that you know that this is normal and manageable.

In fact, it’s a sign that you’re slowly gaining strength and stamina with your balance.

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Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

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I’ve returned to NYC and discovered the most amazing invention. It’s called the 4pm New Year’s Eve Party and I think I’ll never go back to the late night stay up past your bed time just because the last digit on the calendar changed and a bunch of people think it’s a good idea to talk and drink for 6 hours party concept again.

I may have failed to mention that this 4pm party included home made cinnamon rolls. You’re really going to have to work hard to get me off of this new concept.

This week I’ve been getting back into the swing of teaching in person. It’s always interesting to see how students are doing when they’ve been away from hands on work for a stretch of time. One of my students in particular had a very interesting change that I think illuminates how the Alexander Technique can create glacial changes in a person.

Mr. V has been working with me for about 60 lessons over the course of a year. I think this is important information because it reveals that the student has experience with all of the concepts of the Alexander Technique. It’s also worth noting that Mr. V thinks and practices the technique A LOT.

He is not toe dipping into this work. When he walks through the airport, he thinks about his helicopter. He does a lie down nearly daily (basically only missing lie downs if he’s traveling and can’t find a good setup/gets too busy in vacation mode…completely reasonable imho) and he’s come up out of a postural collapse in a visibly noticeable manner. Mr. V is incorporating this work into his being.

One of the things we have been working on in our recent lessons has been the ankles and feet. Mr. V does not have the full range of motion in his ankles and his feet do not have the soft/supple quality of musculature that enable them to function as shock absorbers for the weight of the body. As a consequence, he cannot perform a sufficiently deep squat without losing balance at some point in the journey and stiffening up1.

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In the beginning of our ankle/foot work, I asked Mr. V to do some basic mobility exercises with his feet. These exercises consisted of sitting cross legged at the movie theater and slowly moving the suspended foot and feeling the muscles from knee to toe softly move about. I think this is a helpful place to start2.

From there, I guided Mr. V through the more subtle directions of the ankle/foot (without skipping the head, neck, back, leg). I used my hands to touch the heel and the top of the foot. In the case of most people, the muscles of the toes and heels contract towards the ankles. This creates a lot of stiffening in the foot and will reduce ankle mobility. Most people will feel tension in their feet, but cannot name this relationship between the heel and toe tension as the reason for their cramped foot; they just say the foot hurts.

With my hands on the heel and the top of the foot, I asked Mr. V to just think about the heel lengthening away from the ankle and the toes lengthening away from the ankle3. My hands are there to monitor how the foot responds to Mr. V’s thinking and very gently encourage the process. This is a fairly common way to teach the Alexander Technique in my experience.

At first, this thought of expansion triggered an automatic twitch of the ankle. Mr. V doesn’t intend to move the foot, but since this is a relatively new thought for him, such involuntary twitches are expected as his kinesthetic sense is beginning to fill the foot. These initial reactions can feel surprising because it can feel wrong to have parts of your body twitch in an involuntary way.

As we continue to work, these twitches stop. Mr. V’s sense of feeling becomes more familiar with navigating the foot and without “doing” a movement, the muscles of the foot release tension. When this happens, the foot feels more lively and the ankle feels softer; almost as if a spring comes into the structure.

After the structure opened, I asked Mr. V to feel how this foot felt in comparison with the one that I had not touched yet. He noted the differences and then we repeated the process with the other foot. We work one leg/knee/ankle/foot at a time in this way and also make note of how his total self feels during the process (head to toe structure + quality of thinking/being).

When the lesson was over, Mr. V noted that he would incorporate these thoughts into his lie downs and that these thoughts seemed to help him release excess tension in the legs and feel more balance. We wished each other happy holidays and off I went to the land of chocolate…

When I returned from holidays it had been roughly a month since our last lesson. Mr. V confirmed he’d been thinking about his feet and we got to work. I started with his head, neck, and back as always and we slowly worked our way through his structure in the usual manner. But when I arrived at the feet, something had changed.

I could see that the feet were holding the usual pattern of tension more or less. But this time, instead of talking through the story of the heel and the foot I just touched the heel and the top of the foot. Almost instantly, the feet spread into a mushy spring and the ankle opened.

Why did this happen? Could lying down, stopping, feeling, and thinking really make the foot more responsive? Is this particular type of “doing nothing” actually doing something?!?

Clearly something had happened. And something quite different from physical exercise or a warm up (at least as far as the average person on the street is concerned). In the parlance of the Alexander Technique, we would say that Mr. V had learned to direct through to his feet.

This sense of direction builds a conscious kinesthetic connection from the brain to the toes (and everything in between). The seemingly passive physical activity actually requires a good deal of quiet thinking AND a gentle sense of balance. This psychophysical way of working looks like almost nothing from the outside but I would argue that it is an exercise and that it is foundational to your development.

But… What Exercise Should I Do To Feel Better?!?

Whether it be your neck or your hip, or your sense of anxiety or depression, people are told all the time that if they want to feel better they need to exercise and move more. And you know what? The science pretty much overwhelmingly supports that advice (with some obvious caveats for injuries and other medical conditions). But there are many times when we rush to force ourselves to feel better and we do not STOP and consider what we are really sensing.

I am often asked what exercise will help free the neck or the back. Ideally, I would be able to spend time one on one with a person and demonstrate how the head balances on top of the neck. This balancing story is really all of the pre-exercise that you need.

If you can sense this balancing action, the muscles of the neck and back will begin to redistribute effort as your sense of feeling glacially infects the head, neck, and upper back. This activity of rebalancing gets certain muscles to do more work while others release and do less work. There is absolutely no need to strap weights to your head or practice turning your head left and right 30 times a day4.

ARRGGGHHH

I WANT TO DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!

Go for a walk. Think about your helicopter. And when all else fails, go to the land of chocolate!

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Does This Resonate With You?

These blogs are hopefully a way of helping you better understand yourself, how you function, and why things sometimes feel off in a general way. If these posts are helpful, I encourage you to subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question, or check out the archives for my previous articles. I like hearing from everyone and I’ll do my best to respond as I can.

Get In Touch

If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.

If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.

Leave a comment