This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Running Effortlessly, 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 the running technique you want without sacrificing your body.
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 runner a tool to change any aspect of her running technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the runner identify what is interfering with the runner running with the most user friendly running technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.
INHIBITION ALLOWS THE RUNNER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HIS OR HER RUNNING TECHNIQUE.
Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your running technique. Let me explain. By the time a runner has discovered, after years of running, that there are aspects of the runner’s technique and posture that are interfering with the runner’s ability to run without wear and tear, these destructive habits are as central to the runner’s running 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 running, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you run, 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 runner runs, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the runner runs, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the runner locks and narrows her shoulders as she runs, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she runs, 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 run, 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 runner is about to run, she notices she locks a collapsed neck. The runner stops – doesn’t begin running yet. She now chooses not to collapse and lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then begins her run.
What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the runner has chosen not to start her run with an unconscious bad habit.
She has chosen to run without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the runner’s awareness is moving running away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have run 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 RUN TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR RUNNING TECHNIQUE, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.
