Page 86 - Total War on PTSD

Similarly, once you’ve experienced the delicate balance of your head on top of your spine (often with the well-trained guiding hands of an Alexander Teacher), and the movement that results, you are likely to gain insight into the potential of this work to help you make a positive change in your life. You may experience lightness in your body, and a sense of overall calm; you may feel more present in the room, experience less pain in your body and become less reactive to the stimuli in your environment that cause anxiety; “I feel more stable when I walk” (Veteran). These experiences will remain as long as you can maintain or continually renew the thinking of “non-doing,” the stopping of the interference you are creating and holding. With time, the changes you experience will become the norm. The chatter in your head may quiet, and solutions you are struggling to find may become apparent. “Because of this work I can do all the things I’m learning to help my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) better.” “In the AT classroom I’ve learned practical things like how to get off my bed and how to get in and out of a car more easily” (Veteran’s comments paraphrased).
Repeated experience is necessary to learn this work for your habits to change. Walk the same pathway on the grass, and you will wear away the grass. Change your pathway, and you will create a new path leaving the old one to regrow.
With movement and the Alexander Technique, you are creating new “neurological” pathways and allowing old ones to fade. The former pathway is still in your memory; however, you can make a choice to use and reinforce the new one, thus allowing the old pathway to fade. You learn to bring intention to your movement in the same way a baby is motivated by their environment to roll over and crawl. Babies become curious about something they see and want to touch, which motivates them to move in that direction. Their desire to move has a purpose and a motivation.
Even without purposeful practice, research tells us the experience from lessons will find their way into your thinking, and you are likely to experience change. “After one year the results of this work remain effective. Six lessons followed by exercise prescription were as effective as 24 lessons.” You may think of the process of learning the Alexander
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