“Jennifer Kellow, an Alexander Technique teacher and Registered Nurse in Jersey City, New Jersey, talks about her work with with premature and brain-injured babies.”
Jennifer: “When I was learning Alexander Technique, I was working as a nurse in newborn intensive care… I found that the infants having trouble moving forward and getting better suddenly started to change when I was holding them and directing my own use. They started to eat if they couldn’t eat before. They started to sleep if they weren’t sleeping before. Even the cardiac babies were staying pink instead of having trouble keeping their circulation going. That’s what motivated me to become an Alexander teacher.
“I discovered that the use of myself, my own tension and stress, was being translated through my hands to these infants. That’s what happens to anyone handling infants. There was such a difference when I was able to bring myself to a more coordinated easy calm use of myself while I was in contact with the infants.”
“I got this reputation. They would give me the babies who were the sickest to see if I could turn them around.”
“I gave the infants mini Alexander lessons.”
“What was remarkable about the brain-injured infants was that they were always trying to move forward developmentally.”
“An infant with cerebral palsy, for instance, they might have trouble sitting up because of muscle spasms. They would try harder and they would end up throwing up their feeding, which would trick them into something else. When I would put my hands on them, I could get their whole system to calm down. Whatever they were trying to do, they could do.”
Robert Rickover: “You’re consciously preventing harmful physical patterns within your own body using the Alexander Technique, and with your hands on the baby that gets transferred to the baby, in the same way that an Alexander Technique lesson takes place.”
Jennifer: “Infants are wired for social interaction. If an infant is not well regulated, they’ll even stop breathing to stay in interaction with you. Everything else will go by the wayside to stay in interaction with you.”
“If the infant is distressed, they will distress the caretaker, who will use more tension without realizing it, then the caretaker is hands-on with that infant is translating that back to the infant, saying yes, keep going in that direction. Soon you almost have a battle of wills.”
“A person who knows Alexander Technique can be conscious of the response they are having to the baby and they can alter that response and go back to letting their neck be free, their head to go forward and up, and their torso to lengthen and widen. The baby will respond to that. You have a different feedback loop.”
Jennifer writes: “F.M. Alexander (1869-1955), the technique’s originator, suffered residual respiratory issues from his premature birth. While attempting to solve his problem of severe hoarseness and gasping when reciting as an actor, he discovered universal principles governing our coordination. Once he mastered these principles, he wrote, “I also became free from the throat and vocal trouble and from the respiratory and nasal difficulties issues with which I had been beset from birth.” (F.M. Alexander, The Use of the Self, 1932).”
