Learning to slow down leads to a healthier, happier, more fulfilling life. It also leads to a greater clarity of thinking. Your instinct may be to say that this is ridiculous – that modern life is now all about speed. But this thinking is simply a result of habit, and the Alexander Technique can help you to break this habit.
A big problem today is general “busyness” – that uncomfortable feeling you have of being rushed, distracted and a bit unfocussed and preoccupied. Although you may be accomplishing tasks, you wish you could do better. You know you can. But in spite of your best intentions, you find it difficult to create a state of mind that is calm rather than reactionary.
When life is too fast, our sympathetic nervous system (which controls the fight-flight response) is permanently activated, pumping our bodies with adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormones. The Alexander Technique stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for rest, recovery and repair. This lowers blood pressure and reduces physical symptoms of stress and anxiety such as headaches, shortness of breath, and racing heart.
To do things better takes a different mindset, and it takes time and space away from “busyness”.
Learning the Alexander Technique can provide you with this time and space. Every day.
Very much so. Mindfulness is concerned with the here and now – with having awareness of this particular moment, rather than the past or future. True mindfulness is not easy to obtain because there are so many things on our mind and so many worries. Worries are the worst things of all because they are always about the past or the future – two things that do not exist in the present.
