What Is Pre Exercise?
What happens when you "just think"?
Happy 2026!
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.
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!
Does This Resonate With You?
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If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.
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I have a similar problem with my right ankle/foot so I completely empathize with the problem!
This type of movement exercise is essentially the first type of Elevator Game. It is helpful in building a very basic sense of feeling in a region.
The heels and toes lengthen away from one another.
Typically this type of exercise will do more harm than good as the old patterns of tension are simply reinforced and strengthened.
Thank you John.
I have never had a thought of heel lenghening away from ankle and toes through foot width away from ankles.
This immediately brought me a,sense of soft safety in relation to the floor but at the same time, as with your pupil brought a thought in my upper legs of knee - hip - pelvis length and letting go of interference. It also helped me find my bearings of thorax - top of neck at head and a sense of what up from the top might be. How very good. I remember an AT teacher once saying to me that the feet are a very important region in primary control.