Transforming Tension into Ease
by Bob Bradley • East Setauket, NY

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but
the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I was raised with the mindset that if something is wrong you should ignore the problem until it goes away.

Largely, that strategy seemed to work. If I was injured playing sports or from some random accident my body would heal itself over time and before long I’d be back to my regular activities. But because I never really paid much attention to myself, I couldn’t tell how I felt before as compared to after an injury, since I had no conscious reference point. I only knew how I felt in the moment. Once any pain subsided I figured I was back to normal. In fact, what happened was that the standard for normal was lowered, and not knowing any better I accepted it as the new standard.

A crucial accident happened when I was 12 years old. I dove into a pool and hit my head on the bottom and cracked the top two vertebra of my spine, fracturing them. I was x-rayed and told to stay in bed for a couple of days. There was nothing else they could do and I seemed fine afterwards. After the two days I was back to normal. The new normal, which included undiagnosed locked in muscular tensions in my neck, back and hip, which caused systemic stressors that affected me.

As I’ve come to understand, ignoring problems only blunts our ability to address them. To withdraw from pain is an early lesson, well learned. But if mental, emotional or physical insults, traumas and impositions are not addressed in an intelligent way we become a storehouse for the resulting stresses and strains. And in my case, I had tendons in my ankles rupture years apart due to the whole body tensions brought on by this prior injury.

At some point I decided that I would disregard my early philosophy and not ignore the spasms in my lower back.

In 1995 I began training at the American Center for the Alexander Technique in New York. One of the key things I learned was that I couldn’t trust my perceptions: what felt right was based on old compensatory patterns. If you repeat something enough times, even if it’s false, it seems to be true. I noticed that this was also true in regard to my behavior and beliefs. Past patterns condition perceptions. If we don’t acknowledge and process our movement patterns and beliefs consciously they’ll be repeated indefinitely, to our detriment.

We replay our habit patterns blindly, until the time comes when we become curious or are forced to learn to uncover and discard them and replace them with new energy, intentions, and conscious instructions; or a neutralizing awareness. When you bring organization and integration to a system it works better, fewer mistakes are made, energy is conserved, pain and problems dissolve, and you can trust that your perceptions are more accurate because unconscious habits and behaviors that interfere with proper body/mind use have been revealed and processed consciously.

The Alexander Technique is unlike any other modality. It teaches in very practical terms how to go about eliminating habits that cause all kinds of pain and distress. It strengthens your awareness by showing you how to direct and manipulate your attention. Is there anything you do well without having given it your fullest attention? Have you ever considered that attention is a tool that you can strengthen and manipulate? Developing the power of your attention can help to improve your vision, hearing and other senses, as well as any skill, like playing an instrument, sports or yoga, or even typing at the computer. Without it you cannot affect positive change in yourself or the world around you. It is one of the keys, along with intention, energy and imagination, to transforming tensions and pain back into understanding, awareness and ease.

Pain has a threshold. It distorts and fragments the body and mind. We can keep it suppressed for only so long. The more we hold onto our pain the more there is of it and the more it de-sensitizes us and distorts our perceptions, because the muscular adaptations we make to avoid addressing the pain causes more and more tension which consequently cause more pain, making it even more difficult to ignore. At some point a muscle tears, inexplicable anxieties arise, the body suffers and thinking becomes chronic in order to escape the pain, our emotions become short, any number of symptoms arise. It’s only because the body and brain are extremely resilient that I was able to ignore the pain signals for years and get on with my life as if nothing happened. But the pain was only stored and ignored. It was never forgotten.

With a commitment to the principles of the technique comes greater self-awareness and discovery. In my case, layers of tension have melted away and in the place of that muscular gripping and stagnation there’s movement, energy, awareness and ease. When choice takes the place of habit there’s more freedom, less rote behavior, muscular confusion, and sensory amnesia.

Like anything that really works, the Alexander Technique is a process; it builds on itself and unlike a drug it requires something from you. What you give to it returns to you tenfold, or a hundredfold.

Robert Bradley graduated in 1998 from The American Center for the Alexander Technique in NYC after a three year training program of 1,600 hours. He lives in East Setauket, NY. xanderteacher@aol.com.