Page 72 - Total War on PTSD

a room where everyone is tense, and you are not welcome; chances are you will feel this tension. Walk into a room full of loving people happy to see you, and that too will be tangible. The scientific work to describe this phenomenon that we all know is still young. Science is still catching up with the Alexander Technique.
An Alexander teacher’s thinking is shared with their student. You connect with your teacher through your senses. The teacher must think in their body in a way they want their student to feel in theirs. The work is experiential, much like learning to ride a bicycle. Few can read a book on how to ride a bike and be successful in their first endeavor. Instead, repeated tries are more likely to lead you to success. Once you’ve experienced the sense of balance required to ride, it will likely stay with you.
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.
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