This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Competitive Archery, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create an extraordinarily accurate archery 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)
INHIBITION is one of the most powerful tools in the Alexander Technique. It gives the archer a tool to change any aspect of her archery technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the archer identify what is interfering with the archer shooting the arrow with the most user friendly archery technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.
INHIBITION ALLOWS THE ARCHER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HIS OR HER ARCHERY TECHNIQUE.
Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your archery technique. Let me explain. By the time a archer has discovered, after years of archery, that there are aspects of the archer’s technique and posture that are interfering with the archer’s ability to shoot arrows without wear and tear and with accuracy, these destructive habits are as central to the archer’s habits as the productive ones are.
So, how do you throw out the bath water, without throwing out the baby? You identify and list what is compromising your archery, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you shoot, and you only keep the good list.
There are the typical big postural problems – a slumped or over-arched back, obvious tension throughout the body, from hands to legs. Then there are the much more subtle problems, which may be a matter of degree. What I mean, is there may be postural and technique things that you do that are not obvious to anyone but an Alexander Technique teacher.
Ex: If right before the archer pulls the bowstring, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the archer releases the bowstring, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the archer locks and narrows her shoulders as she pulls the bowstring, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she sights the bull’s eye, this can put pressure on the nerves that originate at the spinal cord, and this can be hard to see.
So, what is the act of inhibition or inhibiting? If right before you do what you have always done when you pull the bow string, just before you draw the string, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.
Ex: Just as the archer is about to pull the bowstring, she notices she locks her neck. The archer stops – doesn’t pull the bowstring yet. She now chooses not to lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then draws the string on a released neck.
What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the archer has chosen not to lock her neck and draw the bowstring with an unconscious bad habit.
She has chosen to draw the bow without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the archer’s awareness is moving archery away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have shot arrows with. Now you have the tool, INHIBITION, that will allow you to perceive and choose which habits you want to keep or release.
THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS. IT TRULY RAISES YOUR AWARENESS OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOU DO ARCHERY TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR ARCHERY TECHNIQUE, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.
