Alexander Technique can help you restore your sense of balance, calm your nerves, and increase your energy.
It helped me overcome decades of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Alexander Technique makes no claims about curing anything. It just gives you the tools to make the most of your life.
Marta Curbelo tells Robert Rickover: “I [still] need to take good care of myself.
“When I have nerve-ending pain on my left side, if I am over-tired or stressed, the nerve ending pains come back. I come back to myself and the Technique and I calm the nervous system down and the pain goes away. If I stay with my whole self, it’s nothing. Alexander gives me more energy. I feel freer. Calmer.”
“For people with Parkinson’s, it helps the kinesthesia calm down. With spasticity and spinal cord injury, it opens things up and you’re able to move. Your hand is not grabbing. It’s just open. Neurological diseases become similar.”
Before I could enroll at ACAT, I became paralyzed with what was much later diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis, the neurological disease. It took many months before I fully recovered and could begin my AT education. I graduated from ACAT in 1987 and had my second MS episode involving double vision soon after. (Nothing is known to cure MS.) My AT education helped me reduce stress and quiet my nervous system. By the daily application of my AT learned skills, I have been able to keep my MS symptoms at bay. My neurologist was so impressed with my progress that he asked me to speak about AT at a major MS symposium in New York City. So you can see why I am so sold on the benefits of AT!
One of the most important AT lessons is training to heighten your kinesthetic awareness, something not ordinarily taught us. Kinesthetic awareness allows you to be more in touch with your body so that you can be conscious of a subtle ache or pain before it progresses into a major problem. This awareness permits a minor discomfort to become a positive catalyst for mobilizing your AT skills to stop its progression. If your awareness is only of a major pain affecting your activities, it is much more difficult to correct. In my case, when I experience the subtle beginnings of my MS symptoms (which most people would not even notice), I am able to consciously use my AT skills to quiet my nervous system to reduce or eliminate the symptoms and have a greater sense of well-being.
Everyone has something. In my case, it is a major neurological disease. The AT has given me the tools to minimize the symptoms and effects of this disease. I am very grateful. I know, from my two decades of teaching, that the personal growth and practical skills available from the study of AT can help everyone. It should be part of everyone’s education.
Hear my interview on the Alexander Technique and neurological diseases.
