The one-point technique

Your day has been chugging along. You realize your thoughts are rushing a bit, and you maybe feel a little tired. You walk into a room to retrace your steps because you forgot what you were doing, and you stop. You let yourself pause, sense your feet on the floor, sense the weight of the head balancing at the top of your spine. You touch one object, with one finger, perhaps the countertop in your kitchen, perhaps the wall with your elbow, and you come ‘up and back’ from that object. You allow yourself to breathe and notice the room. Ok. Now you may feel some other choices open up.

What do you notice? You always have the up and the down - this is part of your elegant design as a human. So in any task, what happens if you let yourself make just one other point of contact, and release into your up and down from there. In the process of the Alexander Technique, one does not attempt to create perfect posture, but a more balanced one. In this way, you can meet each action or task with only the necessary amount of physical (and mental) effort, allowing for less stress on the body and more freedom in movement. Try this a couple of times for the rest of the day, perhaps when you are preparing a meal: pause, touch a surface, and come up and back (head/neck/back and heels) while you let yourself breathe and notice the room. What do you sense?