Posture and the Alexander Technique:
The truth about Posture

Good old-fashioned posture advice

Seeing your slumped posture, everybody, well-meaning, chips in with the same advice: Sit up! Stand straight!

It soon becomes obvious that this is a struggle. Hence the next juicy bit of advice.

“Do your back and shoulders feel too weak? Then strengthen them! Start a regime of exercises to strengthen your back and shoulder muscles!”

I hope you can now see what bad advice this really is. Your back muscles are already being worked too hard. That’s why they don’t feel strong enough.

Muscle is fighting muscle in a relentless tug-of-war. When you make the extra effort to be truly straight, the resulting appearance of good posture is a stiff, tiring and unnatural travesty — far less functional, even, than the slump you are trying to correct.

That’s why it ends in pain — often extremely severe pain. To get rid of the pain for good you need to sort this mess out.

Just building more muscle (so that it can stand more strain) may relieve the pain short-term, but it will also give you the strength to tighten yourself up even more.

The pain of permanently over-worked muscles is often unbearable. I’ve seen muscle pain officially labelled as nerve pain simply because the doctor could not believe that such intense pain could possibly be muscular. It can be and often is.

For instance, sorting all this out properly normally gets rid of frequent migraine headaches — for good. Often symptoms begin to respond quite quickly — as muscles are no longer forced to work quite so hard.

This article is included under the following categories:‒

• Posture

Further Resources

Here are some ways I can help you further.

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1. If you’re not already getting my free weekly article delivered to your inbox, then go here to get it.    (It’s free)
   When you subscribe you also get to download “The Hows & Whys of Semi-Supine”. This free e-booklet is indispensable to anyone serious about strengthening their bad back (or further strengthening an already-strong back).
2. Repoise is our membership site for people who are serious about improving themselves (and getting out of pain as they do that). When you join, you will:–
   1. Have daily access to me. Together we will work out what’s going wrong for you and how to fix it
   2. Learn from reading other Repoise members’ questions and following their progress as they work with me
   Find out more about joining Repoise here.
3. I’m writing a book about my work. It will come out on the 1st December 2010. If you're getting the free weekly articles, I'll send out more details about the up-coming book as soon as the information is available.

If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)

1. I’m also running Friday lunchtime group lessons. Go here for details.
2. There’s nothing better than individual lessons. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to talk to me about booking individual lessons. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).

If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool

1. There’s still nothing better than individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
2. I suggest you also do the things I listed above for everyone:–
   1. Read my weekly articles
   2. Get direct day-to-day guidance from me by joining Repoise.
   If you’re having plain Alexander Technique lessons from someone else, you still need to learn the Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique. You’ll get a lot more out of your lessons when you do.