This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Using a Computer, is published on this website in a PDF format. It will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create an effortless and accurate keyboard and mouse technique.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
The Alexander Technique makes it possible for computer users to type and use a mouse without pain and wear and tear to their bodies. An Alexander Technique teacher shows the computer user how to type with poise and ease.
What is it exactly that an Alexander Technique teacher does for the computer user that makes it unique? We teach the computer user how to find the most effortless way to type and use a mouse. We teach the computer user that her whole body is involved in using a computer. If the whole body is balanced, and the computer technique makes personal sense, the computer user will type and use a mouse without sacrificing her body.
Alexander Technique teachers believe the means will take care of the ends. This means if the computer user puts his awareness on his posture and technique and chooses to find the easiest way to use the computer with the least amount of work and with high energy, he will not wear his body out. He will not create compression in his joints trying to maintain poor posture and simultaneously use too much muscle to use the computer.
This combination of using too much muscle to hold up a body off balance and using too much muscle to maintain the inefficient parts of his technique, makes it nearly impossible to trust his body to use the computer without causing physical problems.
A computer user needs a set of tools to be able to type in the zone every day. What are these tools? They are conscious control, inhibition, orders, direction, renewing the thought, opposition, balance vs. position, and grounding.
Conscious control is what F. M. Alexander called regaining control over the voluntary musculature of the body. If a client comes to me and says his neck and trapezius are hurting, and I tell him to just release these muscles, he’ll look at me like I’m crazy. The truth is he has lost conscious control over these muscles, and it seems to him there is no way to get them to release. It is the ability to tell your body what you want, so that it happens, that F. M. Alexander helped his students regain in everyday and specialized activities.
Alexander called these instructions to the body orders. So, the student with the sore shoulder and neck says to himself, “My neck is free and my spine is lengthening, and my shoulders are widening, releasing, and floating on the ribcage”. This is an order given to the shoulder girdle and neck that invites the spine to lengthen and decompress. If you are patient and repeat these orders, your body will respond at a deeper and deeper level to these repeated thoughts of release, and you will have conscious control over your shoulder and neck.
