Telling yourself to relax is useless.
Just as dogs don’t understand English automatically, your body doesn’t know what your instructions to yourself mean, unless you teach them properly.
Dogs learn what words mean well, despite us often being fuzzy, imprecise trainers. But it’s amazing how many people will repeat ‘Come here Bella!’ in the park again and again, and expect Bella to understand the words, with zero training.
From Bella’s point of view the words are background music to running around like a lunatic. “Come here” doesn’t have a clear association with running back to their owner for a reward. So, they carry on having their own fun. “Come here” is not a cue with value or meaning.
We often do the same to our bodies.
You notice that you are tense. You command yourself to relax, but this has very little meaning to your body. You are like an untrained Bella: if you haven’t a practised brain/body pathway for relaxation on the go, saying ‘relax!’ is just background noise to being wound up.
You might have brief moment where you let go of the worst of your tension, and that’s good. You might take a breath. That’s incredibly useful. But often you have to maintain a posture. You can’t just let go because you will collapse into a slump. So what then?
You probably haven’t got a clear way of asking your body for a useful kind of relaxation. Maybe “Sit up, but not too tensely?” That’s better, but, does your body really know what to do with that? Probably not, which is why you yo-yo between being tense and slumping.
Then an even bigger challenge: staying ‘relaxed’ while moving about? When doing surgery, leaning over the examination table, reaching up to a shelf? Going floppy is no good, so what would “relax!” mean to your body on the move?
In Alexander technique, we take the time to train the body what we mean when we give it cues like “relax” .
Just like training your dog, we break down learning into smaller pieces your body can ‘get’. We train where its is easy, with few distractions, and then begin to use it in more and more challenging situations.
We link the small details back up again to a general cue that has real meaning to your body. You then have a cue you can give to yourself that has a reliable effect on your body.
Then you have the power to change what’s going on in your body with just some thought.
Powerful huh?
We teach the simple first steps to meaningful self-cues, in an easy, low challenge place in the Constructive Rest Club.
In the Pain Freedom Pathway course and in lessons I teach from these fundamentals, all the way up to keeping ease and poise on the go, in a highly personalised, but structured way.
Pictured – my dog running about like a lunatic, yes, but with excellent recall in almost all situations!
I teach Alexander Technique online and in-person in Norwich, UK. You can book a chat about your needs here.