Susana Schouller teaches the Alexander Technique in London.
She tells interviewer Robert Rickover: “Imagine you are a machine. Any machine can be used badly or used well. Every time you do anything, you can do it with tension and an inefficient use of balance or you can do it efficiently.”
Robert: “How we organize ourselves tend to carry across a wide range of activities. Someone who has a pattern of misuse in walking is likely to have some variant of it in speaking or chopping vegetables.”
Susana Schouller was diagnosed with MS in 1994. “Every MS sufferer I’ve spoken to has said that attacks are brought on by periods of great stress. The Alexander Technique can be calming, de-stressing, centering. It allows you to remain in the moment instead of the brain racing ahead to what’s next or being stuck in the past.”
“If my mind is busy about the past or the future and not paying attention to now, the physical tension, the tightening and shortening in my muscles is going to take over. The Alexander Technique brings me into the present moment. We stop and think. That’s calming for the entire neuro-muscular system.”
“Performance, improved use of the postural mechanism, walking, sitting and standing in a more poised and efficient way, any change in those activities when you learn the Alexander Technique has to start in the present moment. We can’t make those changes and improve on what we’re doing unless we’re aware of what we’re doing with ourselves, how we’re operating this machine that is us. We can’t be thinking of what we’re going to have for dinner or of that meeting that went badly at work yesterday.”
“Stress is pressure on the muscular-skeletal system. Stress is always a response to an outside stimulus. People don’t get stressed for no reason. People don’t get stressed lying on the beach in Hawaii reading a good book. Stress comes from worry about a stimulus. The muscular system reacts immediately to what we’re thinking. Any stressful thought, worry, we tend to translate that into muscular tension.”
F.M. Alexander said that everything you think translates into muscular tension. There’s a clear link between mental activity and physical response. It’s transferred by the nervous system.
Since taking Alexander lessons, Susan has had only a handful of episodes of double-vision and a tiny loss of facial muscle control. Each symptom has occurred every few years. “My MS is following a benign course. It hasn’t worsened. Symptoms have not increased in number or severity. My doctor is convinced that the Alexander Technique is largely responsible for my case of MS following this benign course.”
“I took up several other things [aside from Alexander lessons after being diagnosed with MS in 1994]. I took up yoga. I did some reflexology. Psycho-therapy. The Alexander Technique was the thing I stuck with and I found most powerful.”
“The functioning of the nervous system is helped by the improved use of the psycho-physical system and the more relaxed and loose quality of movement.”
Robert: “There’s not a lot different you would do with a student with MS than with a normal student?”
Susana: “I agree.”
“I was talking to a neurologist recently who said that the repetitive nature of the actions performed in Alexander Technique is useful because it fires the synapses in the nervous system… Anyone who’s had Alexander lessons knows that most lessons consist of simple movements like sitting and standing as well as lying down on the table. The lessons vary to some degree but you’re giving the muscular-skeletal system the same messages over and over again.”
“Chronic conditions related to the nervous system can only be helped by improved use of the self.”
Robert: “Not only the consistency of the lessons, but the self-help processes the Technique will teach you. The empowering nature of what you learn with Alexander Technique must be important for people who are used to being in the medical situation. That’s not empowering. You go to the doctor and he tells you what’s wrong with you. And you have no control.”
Susana: “We empower the individual to end a dependency on people fixing them. That’s where I was in 1994. I was dependent on osteopaths to relieve the pain. I now know that if I get muscle tension or headaches or neck pain, I know what to do about it. I can practice the Alexander Technique. I don’t have to apply to anyone else.”
Robert: “Apart from freeing people from medical processes, it also frees you from your Alexander teacher. If you take Alexander lessons, you’re not going to be taking them forever. Most Alexander teachers would discourage that.”
Susana: “You’re taught to fly and set free.”
