What a Great Recommendation for the Alexander Technique!
I recently received this email from a pupil of mine who was asking to have some more Alexander lessons with me after taking a break for a couple of years. She has kindly given me permission to use her words, so that other people can hear how helpful the AT can be. I’ll call her Mary.
When Mary first came to me she was ‘fed up’ with continual back pain that she’d had from having a slight scoliosis and a prolapsed disc, which had been troubling her for 10 years despite seeing an osteopath and a physiotherapist.
Mary
” It has been a long time since I have been in
touch with you, and I hope that you are well. I spent this evening with my
friend who came to see you for quite a while, and
that reminded me that I should write you the email that I have been meaning to
write for a while. I am pregnant – in fact I am very pregnant – 39 weeks today.
My back has been giving remarkably few major problems during over the past nine
months.
I don’t know if you remember but when I came to see you I expressed
concern about the eventuality that were I ever to have a child I feared it
would do terrible things to my back. I think that, largely because of the
miracle that coming to see you worked on my back, in a long term way I have been
spared that which I feared – though I have not of course as yet started the
whole business of carrying a child around the whole time.
concern about the eventuality that were I ever to have a child I feared it
would do terrible things to my back. I think that, largely because of the
miracle that coming to see you worked on my back, in a long term way I have been
spared that which I feared – though I have not of course as yet started the
whole business of carrying a child around the whole time.
The pain that I have had during the pregnancy is a lot less bad than I had feared, and it has
not incapacitated me.
‘Something essential in the way I hold myself and move must have shifted’.
It is really good to hear how Mary has taken the AT work on board and has changed her body-use throughout her everyday activities, which has protected her vulnerable back. Returning to AT lessons at this point is a very good idea, so Mary will be able to think about how she can use the Alexander Technique to help her as she does the variety of new activities that having a baby entails and that challenge many women’s backs and arms, even if they didn’t have problems before pregnancy – of course childbirth itself, followed by lots of bending over, picking up, feeding and carrying her baby around with her.
Women’s bodies go through major changes and challenges when they have babies and the Alexander Technique can offer them a brilliant tool to use with which to help themselves, not just at this time but throughout their lives. Of course men can benefit from learning the Alexander Technique and it can help them too when, hopefully, they will also lift, feed and carry baby – but they don’t have the extra challenge of pregnancy and childbirth!