Lighten up! Thinking might reduce your risk of falls

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Look up, think up, lighten up!

Look up, think up, lighten up!

Think, “Allow my head to float up at the top of my spine. Allow my bones to send me up.” What happens to you? Do you feel a little taller and lighter? As it turns out, this simple wish, the first in the Alexander Technique lexicon, was powerful enough to improve balance and stability in elder adults in ways that are consistent with fall prevention. How safe do you feel in the shower? Falling is the top cause of accidental death in adults older than 60.

In a preliminary study (October, 2015), led by Dr. Rajal G. Cohen at the Mind in Movement Laboratory, University of Idaho, 20 adults between ages 60 and 80 had their stature and balance measured while employing three different mental strategies for changing posture.

(1) In the Relaxed condition, participants were asked to imagine that they were tired and lazy, and to stand as if no one could see them.

(2) In the Effort condition, participants were asked to use muscular effort to pull themselves up to their greatest height.

(3). In the Lighten up condition, participants were asked to imagine their head floating up off the top of the spine and their bones supporting them in an upwards direction.

Participants performed two movements, a) 30 seconds of rhythmic weight shifting from side-to-side at the rate of 72 beats per minute, and b) raising one foot rapidly. Three measurements were taken: 1) neck length, measured as the distance between the first and 7th cervical vertebrae, 2) movement of the center of mass (forward/backwards and side to side), and 3) both height and rhythm of movement.

Step aside from your screen for a second and try shifting your weight quickly from side to side for 30 seconds. Try each movement strategy. Which is easiest for you? Can you keep a steady rhythm? Which approach makes you feel most coordinated and balanced? Test a friend, and maybe get a baseline (i.e. no strategy) measurement first. Then vary the order of conditions. What are your findings?

Cohen et al. found that neck length was significantly longer in the Lighten up condition than the relaxed condition. This finding suggests that directed thinking with no muscular effort can enhance upright stance and reduce compression of cervical vertebrae. Both the Effort condition and the Relaxed condition caused the center of mass to sway significantly more during movement. This suggests that the Effort and Relax conditions worsened balance and coordination, whereas the Lighten up condition improved postural control and stability. Finally, the self report feedback from participants confirmed that the Lighten up instructions were easier to use, and led to movement that felt more balanced and secure. The latter finding is important, because fear of falling can often lead elders to restrict activity. Over time, this leads to further weakness and worsening of motor control. Could a sense of ease and balance in movement lead elders to move more? How do these findings compare to your self experiment?

It’s important to note that this was a preliminary study, with a small sample size, so results must be taken with a grain of salt. Further research is needed to measure the impact of Lighten up instruction on fall risk.

The beauty of the Lighten up intervention is that it’s just a thought. Our thinking is completely portable, requires no money and very little time. Mindfulness is sweeping the nation as a positive strategy for health and well-being. This is one of the first studies that shows that a mindfulness approach based on the Alexander Technique might improve balance and coordination in ways that could significantly decrease risk of accidental falls.

For further information, or to get a copy of the poster session, visit The Mind in Movement Laboratory
Rajal G. Cohen, Ph.D. @ rcohen@uidaho.edu

Body Project Blog: Where Thought is the Active Ingredient!

Eyes up!

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Eyes up!

photo on the right by Lindsay Newitter

Dear Friends,

Happy Autumn! Having just returned from the International Congress of Alexander Technique in Ireland, I am newly inspired. In light of this, you are invited to two Fall Workshops. Each can be taken on its own, or paired together.

Stand Tall & Speak with Presence
Saturday, October 3, 1–4pm · 10/3 · $45
Berkeley Rep School of Theatre

Eyes Up! Prevent “Text Neck” & Restore Spinal Length
Saturday, October 10,  1–4pm · 10/10 · $45
Berkeley Rep School of Theatre

Visit Berkeley Rep School of Theatre website to register. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions. Please share with anyone you think will benefit!

Let your neck be free and lift your eyes to see the world!

Practice tip: 3-D Breathing for Back Pain

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A student emailed me this morning to say, “I just wanted to let you know that the three-dimensional breathing technique you taught me saved my back yesterday.”

3-D breathing, adapted from Betsy Polatin’s wonderful new book, The Actors Secret, helps you experience optimal movement of the ribs and torso during breath.

Try 3-D breathing:

1. Front to back dimension: Place a hand on your belly and a hand on your low back. You will naturally feel your belly expand and deflate as you breathe. You can also feel more subtle movement in your low back. Visualize more of the breath movement happening in your back. This will help widen and relax the back muscles. Do you feel more movement in your back after visualizing?

Next, bring a hand on your sternum and a hand on your back near your shoulder blades. If your shoulders are too tight to easily reach your back, you can place a hand on a friend’s back to feel their breath movement. Yours will be similar.  Remove your hands and sense your own breath movement. Did you know that most of your lung tissue is in the back of your body?

2. Side to side dimension: Place your hands as comfortably as you can on your side ribs. Feel the horizontal expansion of your ribs as you inhale. Feel the deflation of your ribs as you exhale. Stay for a few breaths. Remove your hands and sense your rib motion.

3. Bottom to top dimension: Place a hand above your collar bone on your uppermost rib (yes, there’s a rib above your collar bone!). Place a hand below your sit bone or at your perineum. Feel the rise of the upper ribs, and the fall of your pelvic floor as you inhale. As you exhale, you may feel the pelvic floor rise and the spine lengthen upwards. If you can’t sense anything at first, take a few big breaths as if you were at the doctor’s office. Once you get the feeling, breathe normally. Then remove your hands and sense the movement.

Which dimensions of breathing are familiar to you? Which do you use rarely?

Does the act of noticing your breathing automatically improve the quality? Is your breath smoother, deeper, or easier in any way?

In your day-to-day life, start by sensing one breath dimension at a time. Can you sense your breath while talking on the phone, eating, or texting?

 

Body Project Blog: Where Thought is the Active Ingredient.

Spotted—Pedestrian employing Alexander Technique while carrying her daughter

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I don’t ordinarily talk to strangers. Maybe Dan Hoyle’s play, “Each and Every Thing” got under my skin. The play introduces the concept of “open time.” That is, no smart phone fourth wall. No screens. Face-to-face conversation with people on the street becomes possible.

I saw a tall woman on a steep hill with her small daughter perched on her shoulders. The woman was leaning down to remove a Frisbee from her dog’s mouth. These are common activities that are to perform gracefully. The hill was slanted steeply. The woman and her daughter’s backs formed elegant parallel lines. As she bent to reach her dog, the women’s knees flowed away from her hip joints neatly countering the angle of her torso. The beagle’s head flowed up to her hand to complete the euclidean ideal. There were no broken lines. No crouched spines. All heads were up. All eyes were bright and observant.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think people should have good posture. But the dancer in me is attracted to line and fluid motion. And I miss the time when people’s faces and eyes were regularly up and out. The “look” of posture is just a side effect of alert engagement and knowing how to move with ease.

So I piped up, “I couldn’t help noticing your amazing form.”
“It’s not easy negotiating daughter and dog,” she said. And with that, we struck up a conversation. She had just returned from an afternoon with her friend and Alexander Technique teacher Anne Bluethenthal.

Thumbs up for the Alexander Technique conspiracy of surprising grace in everyday activities.

Body Project Blog: Where Thought is the Active Ingredient.

Inverted pendulum

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We lean back as a culture. To compensate, we stick our necks out and push our hips forward. The stance is both physical and metaphorical. This posture reads as cool and relaxed, but the cost is low back pain (including sciatica), and irksome neck and shoulder tension.

I wrote these exercises down for a student who leans back. I thought you might also find them useful. They are inspired by Feldenkrais (who was also was inspired by Alexander).

These experiments will help you feel what your habitual movement patterns are. They will also help you move with better coordination and balance. You can do the whole series, or incorporate a little bit into your gym routine, or other daily activities.

1. Stand on both feet and sway side to side. Pay attention to the shifting contact across the feet, then the movements in the hips, and then the chest. Notice which parts of your body move easily, and which parts take effort. Maybe the hips are moving like a hula dancer. That’s OK for loosening up and breathing, but to enhance coordination and balance, you want to move from the top of the head. To do this, bring attention to the top of your head. Imagine moving your whole body from your crown, swaying at the ankle joints, like an inverted pendulum.

2. Try the same exercise forward and backwards.

3. Circle in both directions.

4. Do the same exercise but stand on one leg, using the other one as a “kickstand” to help keep balance.

5. Then practice walking leading the movement from the top of the head. To aid this sensation, you can pull a little bit on the hair on top of your head. The crown should project upwards as though you had eyes on the top of your head and were looking at the ceiling. Notice that if you typically hold your chin up, projecting the top of your head upwards might feel like you are looking down.

You can try the same sequence getting out of a chair.

1. Rock forward and back from the hip joints. Notice where you feel some effort. Like a lever, the farther away from the base that you generate movement, the easier the movement will feel. You might find that it feels hard to move the torso forward and backwards near the hip joint, but feels effortless if you move from the top of the head.

2. Rock side to side.

3. Circle in both directions

4. Try standing up leading from the top of the head. You will know you are on the right track if you can stand without pushing hard with your legs. It might feel effortless.

Here’s a caveat: never hold your body into a position (even one that seems like a good idea). Holding just causes more discomfort. Even the helpful idea of leading from the crown of the head should not be “done.”  It’s just a thought. It’s just a wish — a whisper of an intention to go somewhere in space.

In general, as you go about your life activities, you will move more efficiently if the top of the head is projecting upwards. This should correct the tendency to lean back and push the hips forward when walking and standing. If the head is balanced, the torso and legs will be inclined to hang like a plumb line. Your might feel like one big inverted pendulum.

Here a final note: I promised myself I would never write this sort of “how to” post. The Alexander Technique is not a series of exercises. But after doing the work to write this out for a student, I thought I might as well post it in my blog. Credit to FM Alexander for the theory and Moshe Feldenkrais for the practice.

Postscript: Six months after writing this, I came across a 2002, NY times article, Improving the Way Humans Walk the Walk that supports the inverted pendulum metaphor.

 

Body Project Blog: Where Thought is the Active Ingredient.

 

expectations automatically affect actions

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“Knowledge and expectations automatically affect action. Changing habits to produce more efficient coordination requires addressing its underlying mechanisms, which depend on our ideas. … This is markedly different from using ones existing ideas to simply perform different movements.”
—
Science and Alexander Technique, by Tim Cacciatore,
Direction. Vol 2, No. 10, August, 2005

This is where the Alexander Technique differs from a method of postural correction. We are not about re-aligning our bodies. We are about re-aligning our beliefs and expectations about how much effort it takes to perform movements, and how much effort it takes to live.

This is also where the technique can suddenly spark to life. We are not so much dealing with moving this bone here, and releasing this tense muscle there, but examining our entire approach to life. Suddenly we see who we are, and all the extra work we add on to the already difficult prospect of being human.

The solution becomes marvelously simple — although not necessarily easy. We are released from the specifics of trying to figure out our coordination. We can leave all that complicated work to the various motor control systems in our brains.

Our concern is noticing and choosing.

That is, noticing our beliefs about what it takes to get from here to there, and noticing our anticipatory tension.  We get to pick and choose what we want to take on. Suddenly we have a range of options, and one of them includes less anxiety and less work.  Then we have the happy prospect of allowing events to unfold without our interference.

This is where all the surprises are.

This is where the joy lies.

Perfect Furniture

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“Boy! I wish I had met you before I bought all my furniture,” said my new student, a high powered trial attorney suffering from back pain. “I thought I was buying really good sofas and chairs, but I realize that the headrests push my neck forward, and that the seats are too deep. They are probably perfect for really big men, my son loves them.

Also I bought a really expensive chair for my office. I could have saved a lot of money…”

“In just three Alexander Technique lessons,” she continued, “I’ve learned how to sit on my sit-bones. That takes away so much pain because I’m not collapsing backwards on my spine. I notice all the time now when I am crunching my body into unusual shapes, and I understand how to use myself better.

“Use” is a term in the Alexander Technique that refers to our choices, conscious or unconscious, about how we arrange our bodies in life. Most of us, by the time we are adults, have spent years squishing our bodies into painful positions. We seek the relief of perfect furniture, but find that even the most expensive items do not properly support our spines. Nor are they portable in our everyday lives.

The good news is that you already have a perfect and priceless piece of furniture, one that always travels with you, and can always make you feel comfortable — your skeleton. All you need is a mind that has learned how to balance your bones. The results is much less pain, and possibly big savings on furniture.

After Alexander Technique lessons, my students often prefer a $25 wooden chair from Ikea to a $1,181 Aeron chair.

Or, they learn to work standing.

Or I teach them how to lie down and work.

Try the Alexander Technique and learn how to depend on your skeleton for support, not your furniture.

 

 

 

 

 

Metta Meditation & Alexander Technique

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As an Alexander Technique student, learning the Buddhist practice of Metta (Loving kindness) Meditation, gave me, for the first time ever, enough self-compassion to look at my habits without shame. When I learned to watch my thoughts in Buddhist Vipassana (Insight) meditation, I gained an understanding of what it might mean to “allow.” Meditation gave me the skill to work with my thoughts and emotions. Alexander Technique helps me explore the embodiment of thought.

I believe that practicing Metta meditation can help you free your neck and expand your body –  in addition to expanding your capacity for compassion.

Here’s the Metta practice:

May I be safe and protected from inner and outer harm
May I be peaceful and happy
May I be healthy and strong
May I be at ease with the conditions of my life

Traditionally you direct these thoughts to yourself, then a mentor or benefactor, then a dear friend, then a neutral person, then a difficult person, and then the circle can be expanded out to all beings everywhere.

Metta creates the inner climate that allows the neck muscles to release – although please note this is my idea, and has nothing to do with traditional Alexander Technique teachings.

The Metta phrases and the Alexander Technique directions can reinforce each other when thought one after the other. For example:

Metta (M): May I be safe and protected from inner and outer harm
Alexander Technique (AT): Allow my neck to be free

Isn’t neck tension the first thing that happens when we feel threatened? A free neck is almost synonymous with safety.

(M): May I be peaceful and happy
(AT): Allow my head to balance forward and up

Isn’t a poised head the physical expression of peace? I’m imagining a Buddha statue.

(M): May I be healthy and strong
(AT): Allow my back to lengthen and widen

Isn’t an open back that allows the free movement of breath and the decompression of organ systems the expression of “health?”

(M): May I be at ease with the conditions in my life
(AT): Allow my legs to release away from my hip joints, and my shoulders to expand to the sides

Isn’t physical expansion the gesture of ease?

You don’t need to say all the words in the Metta phrases. You can generate the feeling of Metta and project the Alexander Technique directions simultaneously. I encourage you to experiment.

There’s a bi-directional loop between body positions and emotions. We can create the feeling tone of safety, peace, health and ease, from the mind down and from the body up.

 

 

 

 

hone the mind body connection and discover the power of thought

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Recently, someone asked me to come up with a few, “one-liners” that describe my work as an Alexander Technique Teacher.

Here’s the one that is true for me, and connects to my passion in the work:

“I help people hone the mind body connection and discover the power of thought to instantly free the body.”

However, if I’m lazy, I’ll say:

“I’m a movement coach for actors.”

Or, if I’m feeling really lazy, I say:

“I help people learn how to relax their necks.”

The latter two usually start a conversation.  Most people are secretly interested in the lives of actors, and almost everyone has neck tension!

I don’t worry about being too accurate. If we have a real conversation, I might go on to talk a bit about habit and choice, and try and tie these concepts in to who they are and what they do. For example, if I’m talking to a tango dancer who works as a computer programmer, I might discuss what it’s like to carry the habits of sitting crouched at a computer into a tango embrace. I might show them how I can help them out.

Often people will say to me, “You have such good posture, are you a Pilates teacher?”

That also gets a discussion going.

Yes We Can Sit – Comfortably on hard marble floors

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Alexander Technique on the Left, Feldenkrais on the Right, yoga all around

Alexander Technique on the Left, Feldenkrais on the Right, yoga all around

Last Thursday I ventured out the the Asian Art Museum in SF to meet some friends. I didn’t know that I was going to spend an hour sitting on cold marble floors chanting, “Om Namah Shivaya.”

Luckily, I have the Alexander Technique up my sleeve. In other words, I have the secret power to make myself comfortable in any situation. My friend to my left is a Feldenkrais practitioner. He’s also sitting easily. Somatic disciplines, like the Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais give you the skills to be aligned and relaxed whenever you want. All you have to do is think about it.

And yes, despite the cold, the Asian Art Museum – housed in a gorgeous Beaux Arts style building that was once the SF Main Library – is one of the best places to practice Alexander Technique in the City.

For added fun, try imitating/embodying the statues

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