Tag: habits

Your Question Answered!

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

How can I get good posture?

Step #1 – It’s about the habits you carry around, both physically and mentally. You are not aware of what you are doing but you feel the consequences – discomfort from your body and sometime ‘comments’ from the mirrored windows you pass on the street. Your neck feels tight and stiff. Since a young age, we all have been slowly building up neck tightening, shoulder grabbing and shallower breathing. It is that we are human and have advanced brains that are beyond the simple instincts of animals.

Step #2 – Accept without judgement what habits are causing you problems. They are not ‘bad’ habits. They are inefficient and they are your habits, and in their own way comfortable and familiar.

Step #3 – Give yourself time to recognize extra tension in your neck, back or shoulders, without judgement. When you do, pause for a moment, and applaud yourself for recognizing that you are doing this and that it is your habit.

Step #4 – Breathe. Let go of this extra tension by thinking of ease. Because you have become aware of what you are doing, you are now in a position to lessen this tension.

Step #5 – Take a series of Alexander Technique lessons with me. I’ve been working with performers, athletes, musicians, people with back and joint pain for 20 years. They have benefited from my help and guidance utilizing the above steps.

Take a look at what my students have experienced in our work together. Scroll down on the home page here to read what they have to say. You may find some familiar stories.

You can contact me by submitting this form or by calling 973 432 5815.

 

(image credit: google-images )

The Three Truths of our Design

Posted on | by bettechamberlin
  1. We are designed as a uniquely coordinated, organized structure.
  2. We acquire interferences with our design through habits.
  3. We can become aware of these interferences and learn to think ourselves back to our inherent design.

The question is what do we think?  What thinking allows us to effect our design in an efficient manner.  Conversely, should we do something?

Cues & Habits in Posture Correction

It comes a slippery slope when we decide to use our already habituated self in a physical manner to make positive change.  What are the cues that we often utilize to attempt to modify our habit that is already interfering?  HINT:  The cues are our habits.  Bummer.

So back to the dilemma: How to change our inefficient habits into something that reflects our inherent design without using those same familiar, but clearly ineffective habits

In the course of learning, for example, a cha cha routine I was still struggling with the cha cha style. There was so much going on, one (hip action), two (hip action), cha cha cha (thank God no hip action on this one)! 

It was so easy to forget that my most important action, in this complex endeavor , was to maintain my WHOLE body as an organizing element.  If I stopped tightening the parts of my body that did not contribute to a good cha cha, I could manage the various hip actions/non hip action components that created the rhythm and physical movements required to produce a coordinated cha cha.

I noticed that facing challenges, (i.e. cha cha), provoked an insidious invitation to tighten in places that don’t contribute one bit to a free expression of what I was doing.

I’ve learned that the way around this is to think of what I want instead of my tightening habit, e.g. let my neck be easy, my breathing to continue and my attention to be expansive.

Creating New Signals

Sending those signals is effectively reducing the tightening habits and viola!, a new foundation is leading the way towards less extraneous tension and more ease .  AND strength. 

I often think about the simple analogy; a building is not structurally sound without a good foundation. 

Our bodies are marvels of design and the most talented, hard working, facilitated dancers among us have issues of interference that can be addressed by learning new thinking skills.

Marjorie Barstow, a student of F. M. Alexander aptly said; “ You have to do the brainwork”.

As a ‘hard working” dancer, what a relief it was to stop doing so much and start thinking more.

If you would like to hear more about improving your ballroom experience, sign up for my weekly blog on the home page  and get your free copy of “10 Steps to Competition Greatness”.