Mike’s story

Mike is Chairman of a company, and originally came for lessons because of stress and anxiety.

‘Alexander Technique lessons have slowly helped me to become aware of how much unnecessary physical tension is constantly wound-tight in my body. We have it drummed into us as children that if we work hard we will succeed – but this doesn’t work for stress. I cannot try harder to be less tense. The harder I try, the more I ratchet up my already over-wound anxieties.

One of Alexander’s deceptively simple ideas is that the ‘right thing does itself’ if we release our habitual, tense, reflex-to-do. This letting-go requires a change in thinking and the inhibition of long-standing physical habits. This in turn takes time and patience and the ability to laugh at yourself.

Telling myself to ‘just do my best’ and ‘I won’t let it stress me’ never helped. Allowing the simple tools of the Alexander Technique to change the way I use my body and the way I attend to the world around me is starting to…

I thoroughly recommend the Alexander Technique, which in the hands of a good teacher is a common sense, practical, potentially life-changing discipline.’