Page 93 - Total War on PTSD

interacting with them may change. This is what the practice of the Alexander Technique provides. A Veteran expressed his discomfort with being touched prior to coming to Alexander lessons. “If someone bumped into me I would get angry and want to yell at them. Now, I just let it go. It’s no big deal.”
How one teaches the Alexander Technique may vary, although the principals of what we teach remain the same. Barbara and William Conable developed “Body Mapping.” It is 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
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