Alexander Technique is a mindful exercise practice that leverages the attention of the mind to allow different parts of your body to release unnecessarily held tension. The next three paragraphs will present AT from 3 different perspectives - meditation, physical therapy and Men's spiritual work.

Meditation

If you've done body scans in Vipassana or MBSR or on Headspace, think of it like a body scan but with the goal of releasing tension instead of observing equanimously. I believe it's a beneficial supplement to a meditation practice because allowing superficial physical tension to release can allow for deeper layers of bodily and subconscious tension to surface. Additionally, I also believe that most folx who managed to attain Enlightenment around 400 BC along with the Tathagata were already quite physically well-aligned courtesy of not being subject to 40h per week desk jobs and so the physical alignment

Physical Therapy

One of the end goals of AT is to allow the body to gain proper alignment and maintain that through all the activities that one subjects one's body to. This has thus far helped me with chronic hip and plantar fasciitis pain. Chronic pain can tend to arise out of systemic misalignments in the body or because of trauma memory storage in the musculature. In my experience, typical physical therapy is not focussed on fixing chronic pain at its root but on addressing it in a reactive manner. AT is the root cause fix for repeated physical therapy sessions.

Men’s Spiritual Work

I believe AT improves the health of the nervous system, since it fixes all the 'kinks' in your physical body which your nervous system extends through. It allows for the deepening of your bodily container of consciousness - allowing one to hold more discomfort and be equanimous with it. That latter aspect is a critical part of men's spiritual work. As such, I've found Alexander Technique to be the most systematic framework to embark upon the somatic aspects of men's spiritual work. What I experienced in David Deida's workshop or with Wim Hof's horse-stance training feels like a small, improperly taught subset of AT.

How to get started

It’s best to experience AT in an individual, in-person lesson with an experienced teacher.

If you are in NYC and would like to explore this, I highly recommend my teacher. If you are not in NYC, the AMSAT website will help you find a local teacher.

I’m happy to be a guide for you on this journey and answer any questions.