This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Massage Therapists and Rolfers Taking Care of Themselves, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical. It will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to do bodywork with ease, power, coordination, and sensitivity without injury.
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 bodyworker a tool to change any aspect of her bodywork technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the bodyworker identify what is interfering with the bodyworker creating the most user friendly bodywork technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.
INHIBITION ALLOWS THE BODYWORKER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HER BODYWORK.
Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your bodywork technique. Let me explain. By the time a bodyworker has discovered, after years of working on clients, that there are aspects of the bodyworker’s technique and posture that are interfering with the bodyworker’s ability to do whatever she would like without wear and tear, these destructive habits are as central to the bodyworker’s technique 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 bodywork, and you also make a second list of what it is that works in your bodywork technique, and you only keep the good list.
There are the typical big postural problems – slumped or over-arched posture, 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 bodyworker works, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the bodyworker works, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the bodyworker locks and narrows her shoulders as she works, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she works, 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 work on a client, just before you start, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.
Ex: Just as the bodyworker is about to work deeply into a client’s back, she notices she is locking a collapsed neck. The bodyworker stops – doesn’t start. She now chooses not to collapse and lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then works.
What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the bodyworker has chosen not to initiate her work with an unconscious bad habit.
She has chosen to do bodywork without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the bodyworker’s awareness is moving bodywork away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have done bodywork 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 BODYWORK TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR SPECIALTY, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.
