Page 74 - Total War on PTSD

based on the theory that if you don’t know how you are put together, you won't know how to move. Instead, you will move the way you think you are designed. For example, understanding the location of the atlanto-occipital joint where the head and neck connect and how it functions changes the way your head balances and moves on your spine. Knowing that your hip socket is near your groin and not on the outside of your upper leg allows your legs to move more freely from the joint, changing the way you walk. Experiencing that your shoulder blades do not connect to each other in your back and that the clavicle (the horizontal bone you can feel beginning below your throat and follow out towards your shoulder), connects at the sternum (the cartilage connecting your ribs in front), will grant you freedom of movement in your arms, shoulders, and fingers.
There have been new developments in how this work is presented. Recently the Alexander Technique has even been taught over the Internet and without physical touch. With or without touch, the teacher is not actually doing something to you. You must allow the release of your tense musculature and your joints will free. You work with the teacher; one is guiding, and one is allowing. For this reason, the Alexander Technique is a unique process. It is different from massage, yoga, Tai Chi, acupuncture and other “doing” (exercise), or “being done to you” disciplines. You are the doer, or “non-doer.” Only you can change your thinking. It cannot be forced. The teacher awaits your release and guides you through a new movement pattern. Your ability to move with less effort as a result of releasing the interference you have created in your body over time is a personal journey. The teacher and student are engaged in a learning experiment together. “I don’t know why I always looked at the ground when I walked. I can look ahead and still see the ground”. (Veteran)
The interferences in your musculature, once released, allow you to become more present and intentional about your life. You become more stable and less fearful. A Veteran experienced less severity in his vertigo. He stopped trying to hold himself “still.” You discover the “stimuli” that causes your “startle response” just as Alexander discovered that the act of speaking was a stimulus to suck in his air loudly, lift his chest and tighten his feet. Another Veteran realized in a lesson how he held onto his anger from a recent
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