Before I trained as an Alexander Technique teacher, I thought there were only two options:
I was either concentrating well or I was unconcentrated (which meant that I was distracted by something).

Now I know that in both cases, I was actually concentrating hard or hyper focussing.
I was either zooming in on my activity, or I was over-focussing on my busy mind.
In both cases my focus would be exclusive, narrow, and limited to only a detail or part of myself.
And in both cases, I was excluding the awareness of the space around me. 

Once I started training as an Alexander Technique teacher, I began to see that there is another way of giving attention to something.
I learned that there is a much more useful focus, which I later started calling ‘all-inclusive awareness’.

All-inclusive awareness is a focus that is relaxed yet alert, open, curious, and calm.
It is inclusive, meaning that you are simultaneously aware of your whole body and self, your activity, ánd the world around you.

If this sounds like it’s hard work, I can assure you it’s the opposite; it’s completely effortless.
It feels easy, as if you’re in a state of flow, as if things are happening without you trying hard.
Your senses are receiving information without you needing to make them receive.
All there is to hear, see, or feel is simply and gently coming to you. You feel connected, calm and easy.

I believe that all-inclusive awareness is a natural form of focus for all human beings, but it has been lost in our present-day society. I think that we naturally used this kind of focus much more when we were living as hunters and gatherers for thousands of years.

For a very long time in our evolution, we needed to scan the horizon and look into the distance. We were much less focused on things close to us. Even when we were looking closely, for instance while carving wood or picking berries, we had to maintain a relaxed-alert open focus, so that we could be simultaneously aware of our activity, our surroundings and our loved ones close to us.

Also, when hunting, in order to work together and successfully catch an animal, we needed to be aware of the animal, each other, and the space around us at the same time; otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to successfully catch it.
So this all-inclusive, open focus was very natural to us back then and crucial for our survival. 

But what a contrast to our present civilized society! Now we can walk down the street with our earphones in, looking at the ground, disconnected from our bodies and the world. Now we can be zoomed into our computer screens or phones without any immediate consequence.

Somehow we’ve come to believe that concentrating hard means we need to hyperfocus on a detail at the expense of everything else. We started to believe that good concentration requires us to zoom in on our activity, and that as a consequence, we can’t be aware of ourselves and our surroundings too.

Lees meer > “All-Inclusive Awareness: The 2nd Alexander Technique skill”

With the second AT skill of directing, you take advantage of the fact that your brain is able to rewire and change. This is called brain plasticity. 

When you direct, you send constructive conscious messages from your brain to your body to learn how to sit and stand soft and tall, and to free up movement and breathing.

By thinking your directions, you’re thinking differently, enabling you to reprogram your brain and create new, healthier habits of coordination that will eventually become automatic.

Let’s come back to the story of the car.
Suppose you want to go for a drive.
Before driving away, you practice the skill of stopping:
you pause for a moment so that you can prevent driving with unwanted habits. 

Next, you tune into all-inclusive awareness so that you become aware of your whole body, the space around you and the car.

But you don’t want to stand still and do nothing!
After you’ve said ‘no’ to what you don’t want, there needs to come a ‘yes’ to what you dó want.
You need something that energizes you, shows you the way; a plan, a wish to go somewhere.

This is exactly what the skill of directing will give you;
it will help you fill up your tank with gas, drive away in any direction, turn the steering wheel with ease, and go faster or slower as you please.

Let me give you another metaphor.

Imagine you want to start growing vegetables in your garden, but your garden has grown full of weeds and there is nowhere to plant your veggies.

The skill of stopping will help you release your garden of unwanted weeds so that the ground is clear.
After that, the skill of directing will help you plant the seeds and water them so that the seeds can grow into beautiful, tasty veggies.

This is why the skill of stopping needs to come before directing;
you cannot plant your veggies in a garden full of weeds, and you cannot drive away while the handbrake is still on.

In a way, directing is not something new: your brain is already sending messages to your body and organizing your coordination and behavior all the time, but then without you realizing it.
Let me give you a few examples.

Suppose your habit is to collapse.
This means that your brain is sending messages to your body to go downwards, forwards, and inwards. Otherwise, it wouldn’t happen, right?

Or, suppose you have the habit of lifting your shoulders while working at the computer.
Without you realizing it, your brain is unconsciously sending messages to your shoulder muscles to shorten and pull up.

Lees meer > “The 2nd Alexander Technique skill: ‘directing’”

All-inclusive awareness is a focus that is relaxed yet alert, open, curious, and calm. It is inclusive, meaning that you are simultaneously aware of your whole body, your activity, and the world around you.

All-inclusive awareness offers us the golden mean between two polarities/extremes: it brings us focus level 5, right in the middle between sleeping, which has focus level 0, and overfocusing, which has focus level 10.

When you’re sleeping, you’re obviously not focused at all. You’re dreaming, recovering, and processing; your muscles become heavily relaxed, your muscle tone is lower, and your heart rate, breathing, and digestive systems slow down.
Let’s say that the more your focus moves towards levels 1 or 2, the dreamier, sleepier, and more deeply relaxed you become.

Obviously focus levels 0, 1, and 2 are very important. Many people sleep too little or have trouble falling asleep. Also, many people take too little time daydreaming and hardly ever sit around doing nothing. 

People can help themselves tune into focus levels 1,2, 3 or 4 during the day by practising various kinds of meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, mindfulness or by lying down in active rest. These activities can be very valuable in our lives, bringing various levels of relaxation and reduced stress. 

However, there can be a downside if you spend too much time in low focus levels during the day, as your body can become heavily relaxed, which puts pressure on your spine, organs, and joints.
Additionally, you might accomplish less than you would like because you’re daydreaming, dozing, and lounging more than you would like.

The Alexander Technique can help you rediscover all-inclusive awareness, but can also help you tune into low focus levels without becoming heavy and sinking downwards in your body so that you’ll be able to daydream without collapsing, but instead in effortless expansion. 

Next, let’s talk about the opposite side of the spectrum, which is hyperfocusing, zooming in or concentrating hard. 

Lees meer > “All-Inclusive Awareness: The Art of Effortless Focus”

The first Alexander Technique skill is called ‘stopping’, ‘pausing’, or ‘inhibition’. 

Stopping is the first basic principle of the Alexander Technique (AT). It is a practical skill you will learn from any AT teacher during your AT lessons.

In short, ‘stopping’ helps you create a pause between a stimulus and your response to that stimulus, so that you can choose your reaction more consciously.
You pause to give yourself time and space to prevent engaging in an unwanted habit, such as tensing your neck and shoulders.

But there’s more to it than this.
I have come to see that there are two more slightly different aspects to the skill of stopping.
To clarify them, let’s discuss all three, and let’s call the first one Stopping 1.

Stopping 1 is the definition I just gave you at the beginning: it means that you briefly pause before starting your next activity.
You temporarily give up your goal, decide to do nothing, release stress, become calm, and tune into a feeling of inner peace before going into action.
In this way, you create a moment of space so that you can give yourself the freedom to choose how you want to perform the activity you’re about to do.

Imagine you’re standing at a crossroads in your brain.
If you turn right, you turn into the street of your unhelpful habit.
For instance, suppose you habitually crane your neck forward when working at your computer. If you start to work immediately like you always do, you will automatically enter the highway of this unhelpful habit.
But by pausing a moment before working at your computer, you can decide to turn left, into the street of your new healthier habit.
You have a chance to let go of excess tension in your neck, allow it to become soft and long, and prevent working with your neck jutted forward.

Basically, briefly pausing before you do something gives you freedom of choice, because when you pause, you allow yourself time to become more aware of yourself.
This way, you not only have an opportunity to choose how you want to sit, stand, bend or walk, but you also give yourself a chance to tune in with your needs before responding to a request.
In this way, stopping can also help you prevent doing something you actually don’t want to do and can help you avoid saying yes too quickly and habitually. 

Next, Let’s talk about Stopping 2. This is about choosing your focus, choosing the kind of attention that is most appropriate for your activity.
Maybe you notice you’re completely zoomed into your computer screen?

Lees meer > “The 1st Alexander Technique Skill: ‘stopping’, or ‘pausing’”

The ‘head-neck-back’ is your unity of power and coordination. From the crown of your head down to your sitting bones this unity is designed to be balanced, free and strong, with full natural breathing. A good functioning head-neck-back gives you confidence, grounds you to the floor, and at the same time gives you uprightness and coordination.

The most important joint in your head-neck-back is the atlanto-occipital joint. This joint connects your skull to your spine at the first vertebra, called the atlas. The atlas is located on a line between your earlobes. 

In reaction to the big amount of stimuli in our lives (traffic, phones, computers, to do lists, worries etc.) many light fear reflexes or stress reactions can be fired off during the day. These reactions are called the fight/flight/freeze reflex manifestations, or the startle response, and exist in all animals.The startle pattern causes us to stiffen our neck a little. Our eyes start to stare, our whole body’s musculature becomes more tense and we hold our breath.

During the day it is very helpful to have the tools to briefly release tension in this area of the neck, around this very important atlanto-occipital joint. As these moments of recuperation are spread throughout the day you will experience several small moments of calm and easier breathing. The Alexander Technique gives you the means to create these short moments of recovery for yourself. 

Lees meer > “The benefits of lying down in active-rest”

Seven reasons why Spatial Awareness should be part of any learning process (learning to drive a car, at school, learning a musical instrument, sport, at the computer) and why it is part of Alexander Technique Teaching.

During my Alexander Technique lessons and workshops I put a lot of emphasis on spatial awareness, or, all- inclusive awareness. Why is it so important?

1. Spatial awareness prevents us from shrinking, collapsing and stiffening. If we are concentrating or focussing only on a small part of ourselves (our computer screen, the music notes, a specific place in our body, or our to-do list running through our mind), we narrow not only our awareness, but also our bodies. We literally get a physical effect of shortening and shrinking. When we shrink, we will start to create unnecessary tension and our breathing will become restricted. All this generally happens unconsciously. Spatial awareness gives us inner volume. We become long, wide and deep from within, because the space helps us to release unnecessary tension. The space helps us to connect the awareness of the whole of us ánd the space around ánd a detail or aspect (like the computer screen) all together, simultaneously. This doesn’t require making an effort at all. Instead, allowing yourself the expansion of your awareness, effortlessly. This is a very natural state to be in, for any human being.
   
   
2. Spatial awareness helps us to increase the chances of flow. When we are aware of ourselves, the space and others in an all-inclusive awareness, all these elements will merge together. This is what happens when we are in flow. There is no “hard working you”, focussing on a small thing, separated from the rest. Instead you become one with the music, your heart, others and the space. Spatial awareness helps us to be in the present moment, giving us a feeling of calm, easy movements and connectedness.

Lees meer > “Spatial Awareness”

Everyone knows the saying: ‘it’s the little things that bring happiness’.

Since becoming an Alexander Technique teacher, I have come to grasp the truth of this better than ever before. I used to think that happiness came from ‘doing as many enjoyable things as possible, working as hard as possible and achieving as much as possible’. Everyday activities (washing-up, doing the shopping) were things that I rushed through as quickly as possible, because they got in the way of all the things that I considered far more important and much preferred doing. Nowadays working hard still makes me happy, but I also experience much happiness when doing everyday activities. Does that sound boring? Well it isn’t at all!

Lees meer > “Happiness”

The best weapon against performance anxiety is to totally immerse yourself in the music. Most musicians can remember their most fantastic concert: how effortlessly they played, enjoying every note and feeling the music in every fibre of their being. Psychologists call this flow.

Is it possible to increase the chances of experiencing this flow? Fortunately: YES!

Traditionally, musicians have always concentrated on improving their performance by studying hard. However you can also benefit greatly from focusing on preventing underperformance by releasing unnecessary tension, and improving your coordination and breathing. This involves learning to gradually change thoughts that make you nervous or block your coordination, into more helpful thoughts that make movement easy, make you feel more confident, and more aware of yourself and others in all inclusive awareness.

Lees meer > “Flow and Freedom for musicians 1”