Blog - Alexander Technique - Tanya Shoop

April 9, 2014

Housework – the dreaded hoovering

Hoovering can be uncomfortable and can make your back ache. What can happen is that you stand fairly still and overuse the arms – pushing and pulling with your arms, making loads of effort. This leads to bending forward, often putting strain on the lower back. Here are some ideas to experiment with:

Make the handle long enough so that you don’t need to bend as you hoover
As you hoover, step or rock forward and back – a bit like doing a dance – and the hoover handle will just move with you
Reduce your effort and let the hoover do the work. Make the suction right for the surface. If it’s too high, you have to make an effort to move the brush; if it’s too low, then you have to go over the surface more times.

Hoovering is my least favourite chore. And that’s worth noting because if you dread something, then you tend to tighten up before even starting it. So I have a little chat with myself to think that it might not be that bad. And I sometimes plug myself into some music to dance as I hoover. It’s so much better that way.

April 8, 2014

Success

Success can be something that is gentle. It doesn’t have to be huge. Most importantly, we don’t have to keep measuring ourselves up to bigger definitions of success and consequently feel like a failure.

This poem written by Ralph Waldo Emerson sums this up beautifully. It was recently read at my friend’s mum’s funeral and I found it deeply touching:

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

October 1, 2013

If there had been a pill that worked……

Here’s a video from a news interview in the States explaining the Alexander Technique. Karen Krueger was a senior lawyer for 25 years who had to stop work for a while due to the terrible pain in her neck and shoulders. She had Alexander Technique lessons which made a huge difference and she subsequently retrained to teach it after deciding it was time for a career change.

She explains things well and one of her clients, a poker player, even started winning more as he was more in control of his body reactions. I can’t promise this but you never know……

Click here for the video

September 11, 2013October 21, 2018

Mindfulness in the Morning

Are you on automatic pilot in the mornings? Do you have a morning routine, particularly on work days, that is completely mindless and habitual. Here are some things for you to think about:

When cleaning your teeth, are you bent over the sink, arching your back?
Are you gripping tightly onto the toothbrush?
When shaving, putting in contact lenses or painting on makeup, are you sticking your neck forward to see in the mirror?
When you put on your socks, are you doubled over, arching your back or over-twisting?

All these habits accumulate. And they are multiplied many times over with all the other habits we have during the day. And these can cause or add to back pain, neck and shoulder tension and general discomfort.

So it’s worth being more mindful. Starting from tomorrow, see if you can be more conscious about your morning habits. Here are some top tips:

Teeth cleaning: try gripping less tightly onto the toothbrush and pressing less hard on the teeth;
When bending over the sink, see if you can do so without arching the back. Bend the knees a bit and then hinge forwards from the hip joints. Keep the neck in line with the spine;
See if you really need to lean forward so much to look in the mirror. Consider if the mirror is at the right height.
When putting on socks, see if you can do so keeping the back in alignment. Maybe bend the legs more or keep the arms longer.

August 21, 2013February 22, 2019

The foot arch(es)

Drawing of the three arches of the feet. Plantar vault

It’s generally assumed that each foot just has one arch that runs along the inside of the foot. Actually, this is one of three arches.

Thinking of the base of the foot as a triangle, we can draw a line from the heel to the base knuckle of the big toe and then to the base knuckle of the little toe and back to the heel.

There is an arch between each line of the triangle. The biggest arch is the one we know about, along the inside of the foot. The other two are less obvious, partly due to muscular padding.

Combining all three arches is known as the “plantar vault”. Plantar meaning “bottom of the foot”.

When standing, I find it useful to think of this vault giving an upthrust to the foot. A sense of springiness.