Our body is shaped by how we use it over time. Bad postural habits that have developed over many years can feel normal until pain alerts us that something is not quite right.
For instance you might have heard of “forward head posture” or “computer-neck” as way of describing the habitual hunching in front of a computer screen.
The average adult head weighs 10 to 12 pounds when it is in the upright or neutral position. Because of physics — gravitational pull — the head becomes heavier the more you bend your neck forward.
Poking the head forward pulls on the neck, slopes the shoulders, and narrows the chest, and yet we use our body in this manner sometimes for years. This is what happens when we focus solely on what we are doing and we stop feeling how much we are tensing our body.
Fortunately, it is possible to stop and reverse this unhealthy process. The Alexander Technique can show you how to unlearn your bad habits of tightening and slumping to help restore the body’s natural reflexes.
The Alexander Technique works by re-organising the coordination of the head, neck and back to improve postural support, movement, and breathing. The natural and correct postural balance can then be restored.
Posture has a profound effect on our health, but most people worry mainly about the look of their posture and not always understand its far reaching implications.
Poor posture contributes to lots of our aches and pains as it directly affect the way we move, sit, and stand, walk, run, and bend.
Standing tall doesn’t just make us look better, it optimizes our health too because it positively influences our circulation, the way we breathe, digest our food.
When we regain our natural upright posture we feel better as described in the Alexander Technique as functioning with “maximum of efficiency and minimum of effort.
