My new book How to Sit: Your body at Work is now out and ready to go.

It is a guide to sitting at your workstation. Here is the first chapter so you can get an idea of what it covers. Thanks to all who have helped put this together!

The Basics – Overview of Elements

An overview of the elements who, what, where, how, when, why, is useful so you can immediately see how you are working with your whole being. These basics will be given more attention in the following pages.

You will not learn a set of “exercises” or “postures” that you can do and then forget about for the rest of the day. You will learn a balanced way of working and an awareness that you can use for a long time and in many settings.

WHO: You–The Human Factor

The human element is the factor that is most frequently left out of the ergonomic equation. You are an integral factor in the ergonomic setup and its functioning. You could have the best, most expensive setup available and yet still have aches and pains from working at your workstation. By refining how you move and how you think about moving, you can make a difference in the outcome of your workday.

You will discover that you have more choices in how you work than you might have thought. You will find that your active participation in the process will make an enormous difference in your well-being.

WHAT: The Physical Setup

Having a setup that allows you to work optimally is extremely helpful in maintaining good health and a pain-free body.

Each of us has a unique body with our own proportions, so we need to tailor our equipment setup to fit our own needs. You may spend quite a bit of time working, so making the appropriate adjustments to your setup will substantially increase your level of comfort and productivity. The more options you have to adjust your setup, the better. The variables in a work setup include desk and chair heights as well as placement of monitor, key- board, mouse, and other objects you use frequently.

Would you ride a bicycle or drive a car that was misaligned so you had to compensate constantly just to keep the bike or car going straight down the road? Not likely. The same thing should be true at your desk. It doesn’t make sense to work in a situation that requires you to adjust and adapt constantly in ways that pull you off balance and pull your focus off your work.

WHERE: At Your Desk or Workstation

The ideas presented here are specifically related to the activities you perform at your workstation. You will learn to find ways of sitting that will help with typing, handwriting, answering the phone, working with files, and so on.

The principles presented relate to and apply to all the actions you perform throughout the day. Use your work activities and setup as a laboratory for discovering how to improve all of your activities.

HOW: Attention–Change Your Habits

You are going to learn to pay attention in a way that will change your work habits for the better. This process of learning and building awareness requires focusing on yourself. As you become aware of the various activities and stimuli that are in your sitting environment, you will be able to attend to them in a way that gives you more choice in your response. You will learn to recognize the choices you are making currently that may be detrimental and direct yourself to make new choices. Often the current choices are unconscious and need to be brought forward into your awareness. Some- times seemingly small unconscious habits have a very large effect on the outcome of your day.

Learning to pay attention to your habitual movements and patterns will not take your attention or time away from your work. You will see very shortly that even a few new ideas can result in changes in how you feel and work.

WHEN: Often

The more you pay attention to the ideas presented in this book the more quickly you will improve and discover the benefits of this new way of working. You will find that noticing what you do and giving yourself directions will become an integral and integrated part of your work routine. At first it might seem to you that you could drive yourself crazy by constantly paying attention to these ideas. If that is the case, incorporate the process slowly into your work routine. Sticking with the process at whatever pace you choose will be well worth it.

WHY: To Feel Better and Be More Productive

The freer and more balanced you are in your body, the better you think and feel. The better you think and feel the more focused you can be. And the more focused and clear you are, the more productive you will be without accumulating new tensions. As you acquire new habits you will enhance your thinking and productivity. You will find yourself on an upward spiral toward ease and lightness.

You are learning a process that helps prevent stress and injury. This is a process of refined balance and can result in new habitual ways of moving and being. It will lead you to thinking that is creative and movement that is coordinated and easy.

Space Between the Bones

There IS space between all of our bones even if it is minimal space. That space, even when filled with fluid, allows for movement and cushioning between the bones. It means that bones don’t actually sit on bones – they float and balance in relation to each other. The bones are held together by the tension throughout the muscles, tendons, and ligaments – guide wires, if you will. This makes our bodies’ tensegrity systems (a la Buckminster Fuller and the geodesic dome) where the struts don’t touch each other but suspend inside the system.

Considering this model for the structure of the body is a paradigm shift for many of us. Instead of thinking of our body as bones piled up and resting on top of each other (the post and beam or stack of plates system), the body is seen as a fluid and mobile structure capable of free and easy movement.

As we consciously lengthen our bodies and allow for the spaces between our bones, we can maintain the integrity of the tensegrity system.

Entertaining this way of understanding the body can change the way you experience your body.

Try this experiment:

First, as you sit or stand, think of your bones as supporting your body by resting on each other and thus compressing your body weight into the floor – how do you sense yourself?

Now conscious allow for space between your bones. Think of space between every bone, even between the bones of your head.

Add to that the thought of your body lengthen up out through your head, rebounding from gravity, and see how you sense yourself.

This is a good way to see how much our thinking changes how we move. Working with new ideas can reveal what we have been thinking in the past. Even if those previous thoughts have been unconscious we have been functioning from those principles.

At the recent AGM (Annual General Meeting of AmSAT American Society of the Alexander Technique) Carol Boggs gave a presentation where she quoted Dr. Stephen Levin who said that “all bones are sesamoid bones.” We played with this concept during Carol’s workshop and found that it significantly changed our experience of own body and balance.

Wikipedia says that in anatomy, a sesamoid bone is a bone embedded within a tendon. Basically our tissues thin and thicken into tendons, ligaments, and muscles. Fibers from one density flow into fibers with another density or elasticity. Our structure is continuous and fluid.

We suspend, we float, and we balance AND you can experience it!!!!

Freedom to Move

One of the interesting aspects of the Alexander Technique is that it helps one to consider new possibilities for ways of thinking in action. As one consciously works to allow for new concepts and choices, one is led to deeper understandings and more fundamental embodiments of the Alexander Technique. At Freedom to Move, the conference on Dance and the Alexander Technique, we saw the principles of the Technique being applied to various different forms of dance, and it was evident that the principles of the Technique apply to all movement. This is what was shared last month at the conference, which was sponsored by the Balance Arts Center. And everyone, accomplished dancers, non-dancers, teachers, and AT and movement teachers could learn side-by-side in the same movement situation and all come out with new awareness of their movement and themselves.

The most wonderful aspect of the conference was everyone’s willingness to explore and listen with openness, curiosity and utmost respect for each others' ideas and points of view. This created an atmosphere of exploration and support for our various areas of interest.

Most of the presenters have been living and working with the principles of the Alexander Technique for many years and their understanding of the work has permeated their entire beings. We had a lively time playing with how we are using the concepts of the AT in relationship to all the many sides of the field of dance: choreographing, teaching dance, improving our own movement and performance, etc. Everyone, presenters and participants, was generous with their teaching and learning. It was fascinating to see how working with the principles of the work lead each of us to discoveries, new awareness, and ways of thinking about our own movement, and how to communicate that to others. The AT has profoundly shaped the way we approach, see, talk about, and create movement.

The conference was a good reminder that the Alexander Technique is a Technique that is fundamental to all the various forms of movement we do, whether or not we are in the field of dance.

There is so much more to explore and to share. We plan to hold another conference again next year.

Photos of the conference are posted at www.balanceartscenter.com

You can also hear a podcast of the panel discussion “The Alexander Technique and Creativity”. The Conference schedule is still posted on the website as well.

It was extremely inspiring to see how people are utilizing the concepts and how they are creatively applying them to their own areas of interest. It was a good reminder that we all need to make the AT principles our own and that they can be applied to every aspect of our life making, each thing we do a creative act.

The Inhale

The Inhale

It is useful to focus on an aspect of the breathing process that is often unconscious and goes unnoticed: the inhale. A good inhale is triggered after air has been expelled from the body up and out behind the tongue. Most of us don’t breathe out enough.

Spend a few moments each day (even a breathing cycle or two will help build awareness) consciously allowing your body to provide the cues to exhale and inhale. At the top and bottom of the exhale/inhale wait (probably longer than you usually do) until you sense the internal kinesthetic signals to change the direction of the air.

Notice how you use your tongue and jaw while inhaling. Monitoring this will help keep you from sucking of gulping the air in. Make sure there is an easy space between your teeth and that your tongue is high and wide at the back of your mouth by your upper teeth. Let the tip of your tongue touch the back of your lower teeth. Let the air come up into your head, behind your nose and eyes, to come down into your lungs. The air will automatically go down into your lungs. No need to pull or suck the air down into your body.

When you can, keep your lips closed as you inhale. This will clean and warm the air.

Think of your air tube or column as coming all the way up your throat to the top of your tongue as it is high in the back of your mouth.

Cultivating a good inhale will help enhance your upward direction and help you find your three-dimensionality from the inside of your body. There is no need to feel any resistance to the air coming in. When the air is moving freely you will probably “feel” less.

When you breathe in well, you are ready to speak, sing, or exhale without doing anything extra or changing anything.

Clues:

1. If you are hearing sound on your inhale, your throat is tight!

2. There is no need to try to open your throat on the inhale!

go back to the Balance Arts Center website: www.balanceartscenter.com

Inhibition

I missed the opportunity to write about inhibition before the holidays when I could use the obvious example of keeping one’s hands tightly pinned at one’s side when the plate of cookies and chocolate went around the table. Even so, inhibition is also a good topic for the New Year. I have already had several discussions with students about how inhibition plays a big part of their thinking as they “refresh” their goals and make resolutions.

Resolving to be better at something, or to change in some way, comes down to changing a habit of thinking and doing. Most often that all boils down to inhibition, which means not doing one’s familiar pattern. This applies to physical activities like reaching for the cookie jar, and it also applies to thought processes like “This isn’t going to happen” or “I’ll never get it together to do such and such.” Thought and movement patterns go hand in hand. Basically one has to stop the habitual reaction, no matter how strong the impulse, to do whatever it is that one wants to change.

One student is already busily working on his whole body balance by preventing his foot from slapping the floor so his shoe doesn’t wear out on that side. The pattern he wants to change seems to stem from an injury he had many years ago. Over time, his compensations have accumulated into passivity in the leg and foot when his foot meets the floor each time he takes a step. His recent attention and resolve have already paid off in terms of better stability and balance. He is inhibiting the urge to release and go almost limp with his foot. Instead, he is energetically staying with the leg and foot, allowing him to give his leg a conscious direction each time he steps. He has recently been able to walk a mile while paying attention to what he is doing and holding a conversation at the same time. That is progress!

Another student is contemplating how to approach a habit of interrupting people and talking too much when she is anxious. We discussed what to notice with her breath as she prepares to jump in to the conversation. We discovered that she might be stopping her air flow and holding her breath as she prepares to talk. Consciously focusing on the physical act of continuing to breathe, instead of getting drawn in to responding verbally, will help her consciously control her anxious feelings. This might also lead her to participate differently in the conversation by being able to listen more fully and respond at the end of someone else’s thought. In any case, she now has a tool to help her inhibit the urge to insert herself when she feels uncomfortable.

A third student has decided it is time to be more present in her communications, so she must stop shrinking back and trying to disappear. This shrinkage physically manifests for her in the form of pulling her chin back in a retreating fashion, thereby cutting off her neck and throat from the rest of her body. This also restricts her breathing. She agrees that she needs to inhibit the urge to shrink away from situations, to stay with whatever is going on both physically and emotionally and see what happens. Continuing to breathe is important here too. She will notice that the urge to pull back probably coincides with a change in the breathing. With this awareness, she can make a conscious choice as to how to proceed.

In all of these cases it will take attention and inhibition to change the habit. It will take conscious thought to catch the familiar response before it happens and not to fall back into the familiar reaction, or to recognize when one has already started that reaction and then make the decision to change course in the middle of the situation.

As you change patterns and enter new unfamiliar territory you will have different sensations that lead to new understandings. Take the time to respond in new ways to familiar stimuli. Allow yourself to pause and inhibit your old patterns of response and behavior.

When I talk with people about stopping a habit, they often get very concerned about what they are “going to do” instead of their normal response. They often feel they have to actively “do” something else. Often the appropriate thing to “do “ is to wait a moment and “not do” anything and see what happens! See what possibilities open up with the new choices.

When we don’t react in our habitual way, the mind and body are allowed to register what is really happening. Then we often find that choices are available that have never before occurred to us.

The bottom line is that to enact changes, something has to be different. In order for something to be different, one has to inhibit one’s response somewhere along the line. One can then have a different experience. Once you identify what needs to change:

· Start paying attention to the moments before you have the response you want to change.

· Direct yourself to stay with your breath and inhibit your normal response.

· See what happens and what options are available to you.

· Choose an appropriate response.

Once you start to play with inhibition, you will become fascinated by how many choices are available to you.

Let me know what happens!

Happy New Year!

Dance and the Alexander Technique Panel Discussion: a report

The panel discussion Dance and the Alexander Technique: Addressing Longevity in a Dancer’s Career, was co-produced by the Balance Arts Center and Movement Research (a part of Movement Research's Studies Project program). It was held at Dance Theater Workshop in NYC on October 15th from 6-8pm. Panel members included June Ekman, Eva Karzag, Shelley Senter, Jennifer Grove, and Katherine Mitchell. Ann Rodiger moderated the conversation.

This event provided clear evidence of how the Alexander Technique works over the long term and how it can affect people’s lives at a very fundamental level.

In preparation for the panel discussion potential questions were circulated among panel members so we would have ideas to contemplate before the conversation and be able to prepare beginning remarks. A few days before the event I started to get worried that we had collected a group of people who were so totally converted to the Alexander Technique way of thinking and that after about 5 minutes of discussion we would fall silent in a collective “Yes, the Alexander Technique is great” and have no where to go from there!

And there was, in fact, an agreement about how great and useful the Alexander Technique is. However, instead of landing on silence, the conversation evolved into something very inspiring and full. There was a shared sense of the power from the process of thoughtful whole mind/body awareness.

It became evident that the Alexander Technique is and has been the basic process, essence, and central core of each of the panelist’s unique dance experience. And the experience of that process had been guiding and informing the choices the panelists have made with technique, teaching, and choreography for a long time.

What emerged is that each person on the panel, all of whom have had quite different experiences of the Alexander Technique, dance training, performance experience, in various geographical locations, had an understanding and shared experience of the movement/energetic flow that is fundamental and underlies all movement we do. Through that understanding they have been able to dance and explore movement for a long time. And they continue to explore dance and movement in creatively satisfying situations.

One might say that if the Alexander Technique helps the dancer dance better and longer, it must really work for those of us who don’t jump around quite so much. It could even be more effective in helping us stay balanced if we aren’t using our body in such a seemingly extreme manner, challenging our balance, going upside down, and hanging out on one leg for so long, as dancers do. The dancer actually puts the Alexander Technique to the test in many ways as they are constantly learning and inventing new movements, movement sequences, and refining their use.

We are all dancers in our own way even if our range of movement and movement vocabulary may be considerably less extensive than that of a professional dancer. Though we don’t spend a huge portion of our lives focusing on sophisticated movement in the way dancers do, we can definitely benefit from the Technique. Thinking of our daily, work, and play movements as movement that can be played with, explored, and improved (no matter what the range of motion) can lead to longevity in everyone’s movement options and life in general!

What that means is that we can each discover a dance of balance and flow of movement/energy, wherever our lives lead us: painting the living room, playing golf, sitting at the computer, or leading meetings, for example. Study of the Alexander Technique gives us freedom and longevity in our activities, so we can fully explore our pursuits.

I also understood from the panelist is that the principles F. M. articulated are so fundamental that they sustain the interest and curiosity of intelligent and thoughtful people dedicated to movement as a profession for many years.

Movement Research posted a podcast and video of the discussion.
Check out the podcast here
Check out a short video excerpt here
Check out Movement Research's website here

The Balance Arts Center will be sponsoring a conference on Dance and the Alexander Technique in New York City in May. Stay tuned!

University of Oregon Commencement Talk

Ann Rodiger was honored to speak at the University of Oregon commencement ceremony for the School of Music and Dance on June 13, 2009, having received a Distinguished Alumni Award. Several colleagues, students, and friends have requested that we post the talk on the Balance Arts Center blog, so here it is!

Thank you and congratulations to the graduates and your families. I am very honored to be invited to speak with you today. It is wonderful to be back on the U. of O. campus and see all of the growth and expansion that has been going on here.

So, what’s next? I’m sure the question is on the table for many of you. Some of you may be clear about your plan of action and some of you may giving yourself some time before you make definite plans.

I would like to use a short article written by FM Alexander entitled “About Golf” as a jumping off point for some thoughts that may be of help to you no matter where you are at the moment. Alexander, who was a movement educator, talks about how, frequently, golfers are told to “keep their eyes on the ball,” and even though they know how important it is to keep their eyes on the ball, they still seem to loose eye contact with the ball at critical moments during a swing. Although none of you will be receiving a degree in golf today, our task is really the same: to keep our eyes on the ball as much as we can.

Our ball, the ball for us as dancers and musicians, takes many forms and comes in many sizes, from the small ball of developing and refining our skills to the much larger ball of our overall purpose.

A small ball, for instance, might be:
1. feeling the weight of the violin bow and then using the right amount of effort to move it across the string
2. working on the initial movement of the foot in a tendu and following through the metatarsals to pointed foot
3. or finding the suspension of your breath before you sing a phrase

A middle sized ball might be:
1. expanding your field of awareness and
2. understand how to connect with the other players in a string quartet or the other dancers in your piece of choreography.

And a very large ball, which is the most important ball, is to keep our overall global purpose in mind and remember what we have to offer as performing artists.

In looking at this largest ball I think we are all very fortunate to have found a profession that we ourselves are passionate about and enjoy participating in. And, we have found a profession that has the direct potential to be uplifting and life changing for many other people. We are involved in providing opportunities for people to step away from their daily lives to gain a different perspective on whatever is happening in their lives at that moment.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. This event was comprised of four evenings of opera, sometimes up to six hours each night, within one week. As we, the audience, were taken on a journey through this long tale, I felt myself and saw others around me being washed again and again by the sounds of the orchestra and voices. Everyone around me was moved and touched very deeply by the experience, at all levels - the physical, emotional, intellectual and the spiritual. That is the potential that each of us in the performing arts has to offer to others.

In order to offer this transforming experience to others we have to be clear and honest with ourselves as to our individual focus and motivation. We have to know what our ball is, so we can keep our eyes on it! We need to find out what is important to us as composers, choreographers, performers, and educators, what motivates and inspires us. Where is the juice? What is essential? What is it about operating in the non-verbal, aural and kinesthetic senses that is attractive to us and is so vital?

I invite you to look underneath your immediate response to that question and to explore what is at the core of your personal ball. There is no doubt that there is something underneath your initial response that is a driving force. Steadfastly pursuing this understanding is what is going to lead you to whatever comes next. It will allow you to take what you have learned and experienced here at the University of Oregon and guide you to something very satisfying.

Let’s return to the golfer. The golfer’s aim is to get the ball onto the green and into the hole, ultimately in one stroke. The strong stimulus of this goal can sometimes become a trap, in that the desire to achieve the goal creates habits that limit the choices the golfer makes. Taking his eyes off the ball happens again and again because the golfer doesn’t recognize that there are other choices he or she can make to accomplish the goal. Perhaps he repeats his habitual actions more forcefully and in a more entrenched way as he thinks that is the only way it is going to work. This is what gets the golfer in to trouble. He doesn’t realize that he has to be available to make new choices as he sets up the shot, addresses the ball and takes the swing, choices that might even feel wrong or unfamiliar or unknown.

This same principle applies to us. We need to allow ourselves to be flexible, creative, and open to new approaches, to our desires and aspirations. Alexander is asking us to suspend for a moment our knee jerk responses to what we want to do. Stop the automatic pilot. In other words, don’t just whack the ball. Pause and take a moment to notice what you are about to do and see your various choices and possibilities.

I didn’t know what the Alexander Technique was, or even that it existed, when I left the University of Oregon, and I had no idea I would be practicing it now in New York City. By following what I love to do and sticking with that, I found my way to a profession that incorporates all the things that I find to be juicy: movement and dance, sound, vibration, the “ah ha” moment of understanding, discovery, and expansion. I now work with dancers, singers, musicians as well as others, including golfers, with their awareness in action. I work with their whole being to refine their thinking and movement coordination so they can best express themselves and accomplish their goals with more ease, balance, and fluidity.

In closing, let’s look again at what we offer as performing artists: our largest ball.

We create the space and time for people to learn, grow and connect with themselves at the deepest levels, to understand at that unspoken essential, vibrational place where we all connect as a whole. As we stay in touch with and hold that field of awareness, we create situations where others can find that flow and experience the field it creates for them. This is the field of possibility and creativity, and the field where one can experience his or her essential being-ness. This awareness is invaluable. You have a wonderful stance from which to start and the skills to make a difference in your own life and the lives of many others.

Keep going. Keep learning, keep practicing and going to class. Keep reflecting, recommitting, and reconnecting with the essence of what you do and what you want to achieve. Keep your eyes on the ball as you take you next swing, and remember your purpose for doing so, as that will sustain you through whatever comes your way.