These columns, written by Carolyn Nicholls, first appeared in the Brighton Evening Argus Women’s section 'Body and Soul' and are reproduced by permission.

Most of us enjoy the hustle of going out to the shops and choosing presents for family and friends. We load up with bags from all sorts of different places till we are like a packhorse. My pupil Alex finds the whole process a painful experience. Alex suffers from Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and back pain, she finds lifting and carrying very difficult. Shopping for her is a nightmare.

Many computer users experience some degree of physical discomfort in their upper limbs and back and our modern technology of texting, computer use, and games consuls does little to encourage good use of the hands and fingers and instead can cause painful thumbs, wrists elbows and shoulders. When people are young they may not notice the damage being done, but RSI can start insidiously and then escalate into a crippling condition.

When she first came for lessons Alex was in considerable pain from her problems. She had pain and weakness in her hands and wrists, sore elbows and shoulder joints and stiffness in her back and neck. She insisted on keeping doing things in the belief if she stopped she would collapse and never get going again.

During her lessons Alex began to realise that her conviction that she must keep going was working against her. She gritted her teeth and was determined to do as much as she could. This meant she did every movement with so much tension and effort that her own muscles almost paralysed her and she tired herself out. This excessive tension made her condition worse. When I pointed out to her that her neck muscles were excessively tight she said ‘But it’s my wrists that are the problem’. Using my hands on her during her lesson I helped her experience the link between neck tension and tension in the whole muscle suit, particularly round the shoulders and arms. Gradually she was able to monitor her own tension and release it expansively.

This year she has taken a much more sensible approach to her Christmas shopping and we experimented with holding laden shopping bags whilst she kept her elbows bent. This prevented her arms from being over stretched by the weight of shopping, dragging on her neck and shoulders. Alex planned several small trips instead of one large trip and thought ahead. She took coffee breaks and made sure she was warmly dressed.  She commented that the most important lesson she learnt was when to stop!

• If you have back pain make sure you distribute shopping evenly in both hands.
• Take your own bags with comfortable handles, plastic bags hurt!
• Don’t let the weight drag you down, keep your elbows bent and your head up.
• Ask Santa to bring you good warm gloves that cover your wrists. Particularly important for RSI sufferers!

Published September 2005

Pianists with poise

Late summer is full of music courses, where people go to study singing, string quartets, all sorts of musical performances. I spend this part of my summer in Ardingly at the Summer Music School teaching the Alexander Technique to singers and pianists. It’s the pianists who were the focus this year.

Posture is of particular interest to pianists because it influences the free movement of the arms and fingers so much. Take Ross, a pupil of mine who was getting cramp in his forearms and muscle pain in his upper arms after periods of playing. He had always been told that his posture was poor, but had no way to improve it apart from trying to sit up straight. He couldn’t maintain himself in this position for very long and inevitably slumped down after a few minutes.

When he was younger he didn’t notice any affects of his posture and thought his teachers nagged him just for the sake of appearance. In recent months, the pain started and got worse and now he is having lessons to help him.

Many pianists have difficulty with their breathing, particularly if they are accompanying a singer and need to listen closely to the performance. While they are listening, they often forget to breathe and so end up stiff and tense.

In our lessons we worked with balanced sitting and Ross began to realize the importance of getting the back muscles to support him whilst sitting. This meant knowing where his head was aiming, rather than letting it drop towards his music. He soon discovered for himself the Alexander principle of the head leads and the body follows. Most people think this is just to do with movement, but it is also to do with the orientation of the whole body whilst being relatively still.

This orientation of the body upwards encourages the ribcage to be nicely poised. This in turn provides a proper platform for the shoulder girdle to rest on. This is crucial to any fee movement of the arms and fingers because if the ribs do not support the shoulder girdle from below, then we hang on to it from above with the neck muscles and give ourselves all sorts of problems.

Ross found he could release excess tension in his upper arms too, once his sitting was better organized. We are working on more subtle applications of piano technique from and Alexander perspective in our current lessons. Ross is pain free now and delighted to have survived the grueling demand of playing for a summer school, a full 8 days of intensive work.

• Tense shoulders always mean a tense neck
• Get balanced over your sitting bones for ease of movement
• Good posture demands attention to breathing and balance.

Published August 2005

Balance in climbing

THE BEST thing about being an Alexander Teacher is that you meet all kinds of people doing all kinds of activities. My pupil Keith is a rock climber and at this time of year he is to be found climbing in Tunbridge Wells.

Keith also plays the guitar and sings and these two activities can cause conflict. When climbing Keith needs to grip on to tiny pieces of rock face and with the tips of his fingers tightly curled, both pull himself up to the next hand hold whilst pushing with his feet from below.
A few hours of climbing leaves him with stiff, tight fingers which are difficult to straighten, not supple and flexible as he needs for playing his guitar.

Although Keith began lessons because back pain was interfering with his climbing and his work, he was very excited when he learned Alexander's ideas about balance being connected with breathing and co-ordination.

In our lessons we work on balance with simple movements such as getting in and out of a chair. Keith soon realised the things he did when carrying out this movement, such as stiffening his neck muscles and contacting his back muscles so that he pulled his body in on itself, he also did when climbing.

Gradually he learned to let his neck muscles unlock so his head could lead all his movements, both small and large, and his back, instead of contracting, could literally spread out to support his body. He learned the value of taking time and not allowing the desire to move set off a chain reaction of tension in his body.

Keith was able to transfer his new awareness and skill to his passion for climbing and found that as he organised himself better, his back hurt less and his fingers remained more free. He described himself as flowing over the rock face whereas he felt he had been dragging himself over it before.

This in turn meant his hands did not get so tight and he could continue to play. The same balance that allowed him to climb better also allowed him to play better. By spreading his climbing and his playing apart from each other he continues to enjoy both.

Head balance is crucial to all activities:

• The Alexander Technique can help any activity that involves balance
• The biggest interference with balance is poor breathing
• Taking your time to release excess tension helps you maintain a better balance
• Head balance is crucial to the whole body

Published July 2005

A day at the sea-side

Summer is apparently here and my pupil Sophie is complaining that her bikini days are over. She blames two children and a love of chocolate. Sophie came for Alexander lessons because she felt squashed. She told me she was short, wore heals all day and stood up demonstrating kitchens to prospective buyers. At just over 5 foot tall, Sophie felt she needed to wear heals to make her presence felt. Over the years she has become increasingly uncomfortable through her lower back and shoulders and when she hasn’t got her shoes on her legs ache.

What has happened is Sophie’s hamstrings have become so tight that when she is bare foot the muscles complain. She has compensated for the high heals to the extent she now has significant problems. Her pelvis is thrown forward and her lower back very compressed. In a bikini her stomach sticks out, not because she is overweight-Sophie is a pocket Venus-but because her posture is appalling!

The thing about posture is it’s not just the way you stand, or sit, it’s about the way you move and breathe. If you let yourself press down into the ground your posture will reflect that in tension and you’ll probably stick your stomach out as a result. But it doesn’t help to then suck your stomach in because you won’t be able to keep the effort up and your stomach sticks out in the first place because you’re squashing your whole body down.

In her lessons Sophie has learnt to allow her whole body to lengthen upwards. On my advise she is gradually reducing the height of her shoes to give her legs time to adjust to the new dynamics. As she changes the way she uses her body she has become more confident about her height. Now she doesn’t come over as a short person at all. When she wore her high shoes and pulled her back in-she looked like a short person trying to be tall. Now she looks like a person with good presence and her height is not an issue. She still can’t reach the top cupboards when demonstrating kitchens-but she couldn’t anyway!

Sophie and her two gorgeous teenage daughters are off on holiday soon, and Sophie is packing a bikini. Her daughters keep asking her if she has lost weight but she hasn’t. “It’s the Alexander Technique” she told them.

• Make the most of your shape, let your body lengthen up and allow your shoulders to balance on your ribcage
• If you are overweight, pulling yourself down will make you look and feel worse!
• Even a skinny person looks unbalanced if they pull their back in

Published June 2005

International Alexander Awareness Week

Today sees the start of world-wide Alexander awareness week and teachers around the world will be mounting exhibitions, giving lectures and workshops. It’s 101 years since F. M. Alexander landed in England and was immediately in demand from people suffering from various ails. He gave lessons to George Bernard Shaw and Aldous Huxley as well as a local greengrocer who used to write to Alexander on the back of his brown paper bags!

In 1931 Alexander established a training course, now there are teachers and training courses across the world, including ours in Hove. If I look at my teaching diary for this week, my pupils include teenagers with scoliosis and back pain, an elderly gentleman with osteoporosis, an aspiring clarinettist, an established opera singer and a young man with flat feet. In addition to my private teaching, I have run my training course (with my teaching team), held a week long exhibition in Hove library and given a lecture on how to handle exam stress to a 6th form college.

What these people have in common is the way they use themselves in daily life, the way they walk, talk, eat their dinner, play their music or run up the stairs, they do with tension rather than release. In their lessons they become aware of this and choose not to do it. That’s why we are educational rather than medical-we don’t treat-we teach.

As part of awareness week, the college is having an open morning on Thursday 16th June from 10.00am-12.00pm and you are welcome to come and see us, talk to teachers, have a go on our saddle horse and find out what the Alexander Technique can do for you. Use the voucher below and have your first lesson for £15.

Ah yes, and for those of you still doing exams, try the following to calm your nerves, teach it to yourself and use it anytime, it takes about 30 seconds but the effects last a long time.

• Place your feet flat on the floor, close your eyes if you wish.
• Keep your mouth closed. Use your imagination and breathe in through the soles of your feet (yes you can!), imagine that breathtravelling up your shins to your knees.
• Allow the breath to travel down your legs and out your feet
• Breathe in through your feet again and imagine the breath going right up your legs to your pelvis. Let it out as before
• Breathe in again and let the breath travel all the way up to your chest. Let it flow back down your body and out your feet
• Breath in through the feet, draw the breath up through the legs, pelvis and chest and on up to the throat and mouth. Open your lips and let the breath out through your mouth in a soft sigh, ahh…Feel better?
  

Published May 2005

When posture really counts

Most people are conscious of their posture, for some it’s a matter of appearance, for others their posture can contribute to back pain or digestive problems. For a small number of people, posture can be a serious health issue. 15 yr old Karen was diagnosed with scoliosis at the beginning of this year. Scoliosis is a sideways twist of the spine, it is variable in severity and many people have a small degree of it without any problems.

For Karen, the twist distorts her whole torso, her right shoulder is two inches in front of her left and tugged down into her waist. Her pelvis is twisted so that when she stands, one foot is in front of the other, and she suffers hip pain as a result of the uneven load on her leg joints. Teenage scoliosis is measured in degrees. An Xray of the spine is taken and the angle of ‘tilt’ is calculated. Anything over 48O deviation from normal is serious enough for surgery to be considered. The distorted torso can press on internal organs, restricting the heart and lungs, which can be affected by the increased internal pressure. Karen’s spine was 44O, a significant problem.

In the Alexander lessons, Karen is learning how to let her ribs move flexibly when she breathes, how to maintain a good tone through her back muscles so that she uses her body in a coordinated way. This is slow work, but it can pay dividends. The last time Karen was measured, the distortion was 28O. This was very good news but Karen will have to work at her postural support continuously. Like many teenage girls with scoliosis, Karen is tall, very slender and she has somewhat lax ligaments, and a growth spurt! The Alexander lessons can help her manage all that in a positive way. She still needs monitoring by her orthopaedic specialist and she wears the corset specially designed for her. She is very fit and active and has little pain. The important thing for Karen is as she moves, she does so in a coordinated way, otherwise her activity will make her distortion worse by reinforcing the ‘muscle memory’ her body holds. During the next few years, while she grows and her bones approach adult density it is vital that she keeps this in mind. This gives her the best chance of avoiding surgery.

• Most scoliosis is not painful and only picked up in examinations, perhaps by a school nurse
• There is an element of hereditary, if it’s in your family-watch out for it!
• Good management is the key to coping
• Don’t ignore it-you will not ‘grow out of it’ and it will not ‘go away’ without skilled help

Published March 2005

Stressed? Moi? Well a bit…

So much is said about stress these days, people get confused. Stress makes people perform better according to some researchers; too much stress is bad for you according to others. So what is stress and do we need it? It might be easier to think of stress as a stimulus. We need stimulus of all kinds to react to in order to function, but if the stress is unrelieved and constant, then we stop functioning and start to break down. Each of us has a stress level at which we really work well-we are happy and stimulated, but just a little extra pressure can turn us into harassed overworked miserable people who never catch up with themselves.
Mike is a typical example; he has a high stress graphic design job with tight deadlines and equally tight neck and shoulders. He was constantly ‘on edge’ and unable to relax, although only in his early 30’s he was already feeling burned out and bad tempered. He used to work off his stress by thrashing around the squash court, but recently he had suffered a series of minor injuries whilst playing and finally had to admit this remedy wasn’t working-he couldn’t drop the stress and couldn’t work it off. “I feel as if it’s with me all the time, why can’t I just relax?” he said.

When Mike started having a glass or two of wine to aid his relaxation he realised he had to change something, but didn’t know what or how. He came for Alexander lessons following friends advise, although he wasn’t sure what the Alexander Technique could do for him.
Through his lessons Mike realised he responded to almost everything in his work and life by creating a wave of compressed tension through his whole body. This revealed itself in his poor posture; it wasn’t just his neck and shoulders but his lowerback, his legs, even his feet and toes, all held in a deadly grip. He became aware of how much he held his breath too and what problems that caused him. Mike learnt to maintain a sense of lengthening through his back and he practised lying down with his knees bent and his head supported by books the way I showed him in lessons. This helped rebalance the tension in his back and he began to feel more comfortable. He told me that the most useful thing he leant was how to say ‘no’ to the excessive work load that had previously been piled on him, because he was now more in touch with his own body and knew when enough was enough.

• Everyone is different, one persons challenge is another persons overload.
• Tell tale signs of too much stress include poor sleep, inability to ‘switch off’, forgetting details and irritability.
• Allow yourself to take time just for you.
• If your shoulders live permanently round your ears and feel tight, chances are you are overstressed!

Published Feb 2005

Happy Feet

My sister is complaining about her son David’s shoes. “Look at this.” she says waving his size 11’s under my nose, “worn right down on the outside again. He’s so heavy on his feet.”

She’s right, he is heavy on his feet and it’s not just the shoes that suffer, his ankles, knees and hips and back are all subjected to extra pressure by the way he holds himself and walks. It’s as if he hangs on to the ground with his feet and pulls himself down into it. David is tall and gangly, a skinny teenage stick, so perhaps he thinks the wind might blow him away.

As a teenager he is king of cool, which seems to involve a slouching amble of a walk. He is already paying the price in back pain and sore feet, particularly when he rollerblades, which is his passion.

Teenagers are not the easiest of creatures to persuade to try anything that might affect their outward appearance but the back pain was bad enough to stop him rollerblading and so he agreed to come for some Alexander lessons. His first revelation was how much tension he was using to adopt his slouch; he thought he was relaxing, but soon realised he was doing exactly the opposite. When David discovered the lessons gave him better balance he was hooked. He soon understood the principle of ‘the head leads and the body follows’ and was able to apply it to negotiating the wonders of the skate park, with it’s half pipes and ramps. Now when he is about to ‘drop in’ down the almost vertical side of the ramps, he not only gets into position, but makes sure he keeps his neck free from tension and knows exactly where is head is going.

Although he was delighted with his newfound ease in rollerblading, the lessons made a difference to his everyday walking too. Instead of crunching himself down, he allowed himself to lengthen up. His new sense of balance literally helped take the weight off his feet and so my sister is delighted that the new school shoes have lasted longer than usual and are not completely worn down at the sides. His back pain is gone and he is skating more than ever.

David also sings in a band and came in one lesson demanding to know if the Alexander Technique could be the reason why his singing had improved. He’d experimented with the same process of freeing his neck muscles when thinking about singing as he did when preparing to ‘drop-in’. He found this made his voice stronger and less easily tired. ‘Of course’ I told him, ‘the Alexander Technique is about your balance and that affects every activity. ‘Cool’ said David.

• Walk freely, without gripping your neck or lower back muscles
• Allow your ankles to release so your feet make proper contact with the ground.
• Let your head ‘lead you upwards’
• Think up!
  

Published 31st Jan 2005

Fighting with vegetables - a sideways glance at repetitive strain injury (RSI)

My student Sara has been going to vegetarian cookery classes for weeks now. Thirty different ways to disembowel your pumpkin. The thing is her wrists ache. Carrying a pan of water to the stove and chopping veggies is hurting her. Chopping is a repetitive movement that requires a precision she’s not sure she’s got, especially with things like carrots that seem to deliberately roll away from people. When Delia chops it looks so easy. What is Sara doing wrong? A new knife perhaps? No-I think its Sara herself! She gets into such a stew (ha!) that she doesn’t just chop veggies, she clamps her jaw shut and doesn’t breathe. “Why are you grunting?” asks her son as repressed breath sneaks out of her tortured lungs.

Sara has also been doing a lot of computer work lately, tap tap tap on her lap top, tongue sticking out through her teeth, the hissing of self encouragement accompanies her typing and she’s had such a lot of it to do. She kept wriggling her fingers but it didn’t seem to help. She told me she thinks she’s getting Repetitive Strain Injury in her hand. A net search reveals over half a million workers in the UK who have reported an RSI condition-that’s not counting those who can’t or won’t say anything for fear of losing their job. Every day, six people in the UK do leave their jobs due to RSI and a massive 5.4 million working days were lost last year to the dreaded stiff fingers, sore wrists, shoulder and neck pain and headaches associated with RSI. It can be so severe people can’t lift their children, or even a cup of tea, and everyday use of the hands becomes painful-think of the state you’d be in if both your hands were out of action!

That’s a road Sara doesn’t wish to travel. So with my help she learns to undo the jaw clamping and the neck stiffening and asks herself to lengthen gently upwards. As her body uncurls she can breath. She takes more time for her computer typing and her cooking, because she has realised she approaches both in a great hurry thus creating more tension. Now when she reaches for the spring onions, they cooperate peacefully and don’t roll away, and she chops with a gentle touch. Recognising the amount of excessive tension she used for such a simple activity helped Sara avoid RSI and to take more care of herself.

Top tips for avoiding RSI

• Take frequent breaks from computer work
• Drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration
• Sit back in your chair for a moment, let your hands rest flat on your desk beside your keypad, lift your head to look up above your computer and take a few quiet full breaths
• Don’t grip knives too tightly when chopping!
• Mix tasks so that you change activity frequently
• Keep your shoulders and neck free from tension
• Release your clamped jaw muscles

Published 4th Jan 2005

Baby it’s cold outside

My sister Jean is grumbling that her back pain is always worse in the cold wet weather. Her scientific husband Rob has loftily informed her that this is all in her mind and that the evidence is purely anecdotal and not proven.
Jean is unimpressed-she’s cold and her back hurts-that is the problem. The thing is Jean is a devoted Mum who watches her dearly beloved play football every chilly Saturday morning. There she is, huddled in her layers of scarves, the tip of her nose peeping out and her hands shoved deep into pockets. “Did you see that Mum-I nearly scored that time!”
Rob is half right, if you look for evidence the cold makes back pain (or any pains) worse you’ll find differing opinions. But the word on the street-or round the edge of the playing field is definite about it. There is plenty of evidence that wet conditions causes you to loose body heat more rapidly than dry and then hyperthermia becomes a problem too. So what’s going on and how can you help yourself?
If the weather is cold and you don’t have the right clothes on (layers is the look!) then you will tense all the muscles of your entire body, squeezing your self in the process-rather like someone else giving you an overenthusiastic hug. This tension will be reflected particularly in your neck muscles and will drag your head down into your shoulders as you go into hibernation mode. Unfortunately using your body like this creates compressions down your back and so your own tension is loading your body with potentially damaging pressure and your back might well complain.
Tension also interferes with your physical balance and the tenser you are, the more you are likely to slip over in wet conditions. What Jean does now is first of all go for a walk before driving her offspring to the football match, that way she arrives with warm muscles. She walks up and down instead of standing in one place on the side line-wearing a bright red scarf so that little Kevin can spot her wherever she is, and she deliberately keeps her shoulders down and wide, not crunched up round her ears-and she yells like a demon “Go on my son!”

Beating the cold

• Don’t tense up-you’ll make things worse
• Be properly dressed; particularly keep head, hands and feet warm
• Keep moving! And warm up before you go out
• Be sensible-keep dry if you can
• Keep your head to keep your balance

Published Dec 2004

The Alexander Technique

A light-hearted look at posture in our lives

Is your neck a pain in the neck? Try the Alexander Technique.

Party season is here, and whenever I answer that ‘so what do you do?’ question with ‘I’m an Alexander Technique teacher’, I’m met with guilty shuffling of feet. If we’re sitting down my new acquaintance straightens their back and apologies for their terrible posture-usually blaming some long past teenage growth spurt or their sedentary job.

The thing is you can’t escape posture-it’s part of every thing you do. We are never actually still; our balance is adjusted from moment to moment, even if we’re only waiting for the bus. We balance above the tiny platform of our two feet and must make the right amount of muscular effort to stay upright, there’s mental awareness too-after all most people find their balance affected when drunk! Every time we breathe and with each heartbeat, we move slightly and make minute adjustments.

The question is how? Do we just leave it to chance or could we be a bit more intelligent about it?

The good news is that we are designed to respond to the pull of gravity in a springy and expansive way. We should naturally walk, move and breathe freely. But stress and tension make us stiff and pulls us down towards the ground. This can make us shorten our spines, create compression in our back and interfere with circulation, digestion and breathing. We drag on ourselves and make life hard work! The slouch we adopted as a cool teenager becomes an ingrained habit that feels normal to us. Repetitive movements such as me typing this article can make things worse.

The Alexander Technique offers a constructive way out of the puzzle of posture. It is a subtle and powerful way to become more aware of what you might be doing to yourself that contributes to your woes.

In this column I am going to explore the issues that my clients bring to me and everyday activities that we could all do a little better if we knew how. The fact is the way you use your self affects everything you do, so people come for Alexander Technique lessons for many different reasons. Some come in search of ways to help with back, neck or shoulder pain. Others find that the stresses of their busy lives are more manageable when they learn not to tie themselves up in knots. The founder, F.M. Alexander himself was an actor and today’s actors and performers value his technique as a method for helping them perform with freedom and poise. Musicians, singers and those whose profession includes using their voice also benefit from lessons. So whether you play the fiddle, suffer from back pain, want to improve your acting or just want to cope with life better, the Alexander Technique is there to help you realise that the way you think can influence your posture and breathing for good-remember-mind moves, muscles follow!