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