Category: Daily Tension

How You Use Yourself Matters. But What Does This Mean For Your Life?

8/17/2025

Self-use is an interesting concept. Let me explain.

Imagine you're carrying a backpack full of groceries. If you sling it over one shoulder, let the straps dig into your skin or carry it unevenly, it quickly becomes uncomfortable and heavy. But if you adjust the straps properly, distribute the weight evenly and walk with awareness, the backpack feels lighter and moving becomes more easy.

You of course know, without being told, that how you carry your backpack changes how you perceive it.

But think for a moment of your body as a sort of backpack. “Use” is a word we often use in the Alexander Technique, and it means how you carry and move yourself in everyday life.

And how you use yourself matters greatly.

The word "Use" is not about how you look or whether you are strong or flexible, but how you do things with your body, how you sit, stand, walk, or use your breath.

Even how you think is an aspect of your "Use".

Most of us never really stop to consider how we're using ourselves.
Instead we focus on the objects around us: the chair, the desk, the phone.

But how we carry our body through space, how we respond to gravity and to the objects we encounter, how we hold our head, how we breathe and what we pay attention to: all of these aspects of BEING are part of our Use.

This is such a rich field of exploration; a fascinating and empowering study of YOURSELF because taking charge of how you are BEING TODAY affects everything about your body's future health and wellbeing,

Take typing on a computer for example. You might rest your wrists on the desk, pull your head forward into the screen and hold your breath.... often habitually and without even noticing.

But over time your neck starts to tighten, your shoulders rise up and your wrists feel stiff. The task (sitting and typing) is simple, but your "Use" is creating tension.

The same task done with different Use can feel effortless. Your body is beautifully adaptable; it's a living, moving system that responds to how you use it. If you use it with habits of tightness, tension, or compression, it will feel heavy and uncomfortable.

But if you use it with awareness, balance and ease, it will feel light and alive.

The great news is that Use can easily be changed. You can learn to stop pulling yourself into patterns that create tension, imbalances and compression, and instead learn to move and express yourself with more freedom and less effort.

This is what I teach in my private, 1:1 coaching programs. This is the essence of the Alexander Technique: To help you become consciously aware of how you use yourself in everyday life so you can choose different ways: with less effort less and more freedom.

In short, "Use" underlies everything you do. It's the missing piece that connects your structure with your movement and your feelings. When you understand and improve your Use, pain and tension release away and life becomes a little easier.

You then truly transform how you feel in your body.

Check out my posts on Instagram to learn more about the way I think and teach. Click here if you would like to speak with me to find out how I can help you improve your Use so you can let go of strain and tension and feel great in your body.

I Stretch Every Day. Why Am I Still Tense?

6/30/2025

If you’re still tense after taking yoga classes, you're not alone. The layers of everyday tension go deep, and feeling tense again soon after your class is not because you’re inflexible, or because you don’t “get” Yoga.

The real reason is that your body is doing something in the background that you’re not yet aware of.

And this is something to celebrate because it means that the problem is NOT your body. Rather it is the way your movement system is coordinating itself. And that can be changed! Your postural system relies on patterns of balance and movement that you have repeatedly practiced over years.

For example, if you tense your shoulders each time you reach for an object, you will also tense your shoulders each time you reach down to your yoga mat. Over time, your tense shoulders will affect your neck and spine, rib cage and pelvis, and mess with their balance. These are the kinds of “hidden” patterns that dictate your posture and ability to move.

The good news are that as soon as you learn how to redirect those hidden, unconscious patterns by making them conscious with the help of a highly trained embodied posture coach, things will start to shift without needing to stretch deeper, or you putting in more effort.

It’s about doing less: less effort, less “trying hard”, less going for an end and more enjoying the process, more awareness for the present moment experience of your body. It’s about creating less tension to begin with. It’s about understanding what set’s you up for tension, the origin of tension in your mind, your emotions, your muscles, your thinking.

Physical tension is not something that can be fixed with exercises because ultimately, it's a mental issue that needs the right kind of targeted self-awareness to prevent it from happening. And as soon as you become aware you have new choices that help your body to let go on its own.

When you learn to move with less effort, a whole new space opens up inside and around you, literally and figuratively. **That’s the root of true flexibility: not how much or how deep you can stretch but the choice to use less effort.

This is a process you can learn by joining my private 1x1 DISCOVER YOUR EFFORTLESS BODY program.** If you want to learn more click here.❤️

Why Popular Attempts To Fix Your Posture Don’t Work (And What To Do Instead)

3/6/2025

Have you ever spent countless of hours at a doctor’s therapy office or the gym repeating exercises aimed at relaxing or strengthening your aching muscles and joints, hoping it would get you out of pain and fix your posture?

But nothing made a lasting positive impact on your well-being...

Does it feel crazy that your body seems to always revert back to your old patterns of slouching, stiffening and tensing up? You correct yourself for a while, but soon enough, you’re right back where you started.

Consider this:

1. Posture cannot be improved by exercising ‘weak’ or relaxing “tense” muscles because there is a reason why they act the way they do. That reason are your whole-body, dysfunctional movement patterns.

2. Posture cannot be ‘fixed’ by forcing your body into a certain position and then holding it there, because it's unnatural and creates more tension and stiffness.

How posture works

Your posture works through a holistic set of processes that are happening in your sensory and nervous systems, and that are directly influenced by the way you move and think.

Imbalances in your musculoskeletal system are the result of the unconscious messages your muscles receive from your brain that cause dysfunction in how your body operates.

So the real million dollar question is this: How can you use your mind and thinking to develop movement patterns that promote a superb functioning for your body as a whole?

How can you develop a use of your musculoskeletal system that makes you feel balanced and empowered? How can you work more skillfully with your awareness so that your body is adaptive and free to do what you really want it to do, and not held back by dis-ease and limitations?

If you want to improve the way you move, look and feel (your posture!), pay attention to how you guide and direct your body into activity. Think of your body as one unified whole, not a bunch of isolated muscles that you somehow need to manipulate.

Muscular dysfunction must be addressed on the level of consciousness and thought because muscles are merely the 'actors' and 'responders' to the way you think - they're not the 'directors' who holds the whole vision.

It is never too early or too late to learn how to let your posture support you effortlessly for life!

All you need is a simple learning process that helps you to recognize & address the repetitive and dysfunctional patterns that shape how you move, stand, and sit every day so that they not only become functional but promote balance, lightness and ease for your body.

This is the foundation of the Alexander Technique—an educational discipline and body of work that helps your posture to become something you experience, map, guide and enjoy, not something you force.

If you want to learn more about holistic posture improvement go to walkinbalance.net or click here to set up a complimentary New Posture Consultation call and learn how I can help you improve your posture, now and forever.

Can Exercise Help You Let Go of Tension?

11/5/2024

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Yes and No.

Yes, exercising can provide a great release from the demands of a stressful day. After a good workout or yoga session, you’re likely to feel recharged, more relaxed, and mentally refreshed. Regular physical exercise builds strength, resilience, and can be a powerful mental reset. When we exercise, we get a moment to clear the mind, which sometimes allows us to recognize certain beliefs and thought patterns that are lodged in mind and emotions and hold tension in our muscles. But exercise alone doesn’t reach the deeper root causes of tension.

Where Exercise Falls Short

The challenges of modern life include stressors that are often long-term, mental, and deeply ingrained. They can’t be resolved by simply “burning off steam” at the gym. These mental stressors, such as unhelpful attitudes or beliefs, tend to show up physically in our bodies, manifesting as tension. Exercise may momentarily overpower these tensions, but as soon as you’re back in your usual routine, they come right back. This cycle – mental tension leading to physical tension, which in turn reinforces mental tension – can’t be truly disrupted with exercise alone. Instead, it needs an approach that works on a mental and emotional level to bring awareness to these patterns.

That’s where the Alexander Technique comes in. By developing awareness of habitual attitudes, thoughts, and physical reactions, we can begin to let go of the ones that produce chronic tension in both the mind and muscles. It’s about breaking the cycle by identifying those ingrained reactions and making conscious changes that lessen tension at its source.

An Overlooked Cause of Daily Tension

There’s another major root cause of stress that many people aren’t aware of: how we use our bodies in everyday actions. Your body’s tension patterns are often tied to how you sit, stand, walk, reach, and bend. These fundamental movement patterns are so habitual we don’t realize they’re creating strain. For example, modern furniture, extended hours at a desk, or computer-focused work all encourage certain postural habits that can gradually increase tension throughout the body.

In the Alexander Technique, we look at this “use of self” with a fresh perspective. By learning to move with greater ease and awareness, you’re not just managing stress in the moment but actually reducing the underlying physical patterns that contribute to it in the long run. This isn’t about avoiding exercise but rather supplementing it with an understanding of how our movement habits can either foster relaxation or perpetuate strain. In essence, it’s about moving with purpose and ease – an approach that benefits not only the body but also the mind.

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How You Use Yourself Matters. But What Does This Mean For Your Life?

I Stretch Every Day. Why Am I Still Tense?

Why Popular Attempts To Fix Your Posture Don’t Work (And What To Do Instead)

Can Exercise Help You Let Go of Tension?

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BerlinTel: +49 (0)160-3728007

​San francisco work with me virtually​FROM ANYWHERE!tel: 415-879-0038​

Testimonials​

Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)160-3728007

San francisco
work with me virtually
FROM ANYWHERE!
tel: 415-879-0038

Testimonials