Category: Self Awareness

How Active Body Awareness in the Alexander Technique Transforms Your Life

9/11/2025

Have you heard of the Alexander Technique? It's a most beautiful method that teaches how improving awareness of your own body can be a profound tool for creating lasting positive changes in your life.

This growing awareness is, in fact, one of the most valuable outcomes of the practice. At first glance it might seem overly simple: noticing how you stand, shift into walking, sit, type, reach and move throughout the day.

The deeper you go into observing yourself though, the more you realize what's so amazing about your body: Not only how connected every part of your body is to your overall wellbeing but also how important the smallest parts of you are for everything to work harmoniously.

For me, the opening up into this active self-awareness has been deeply transformative, showing me solutions and insights to problems I did not even know existed!

Take for example the connection of my persistent neck pain to how I was using my attention while working at the computer. I learned that the root cause of that pain and discomfort was the way I overextended and stiffened my neck, held my breath and contorted my spine each time I tried to read a smaller font in a scientific paper.

And I had absolutely no idea that I was doing that!

But once I knew it to be true I could not unsee or un-feel it, which was the beginning of changing and adjusting how I looked at my screen by way of using alternative, less stressful ways of sitting and reading.

I used reason and emotion - a powerful combination for breakthroughs to be truly possible. This kind of awareness does take practice, and trouble shooting skills don't develop overnight.

It’s a practice just like learning to play an instrument which also requires an ongoing relationship with your own body. Each day brings new opportunities to tune in, ask questions, and explore how you're moving through the world and how that in fact affects your everyday wellbeing.

This is what these explorations could be like: "How am I standing right now, and can I balance with a little bit more ease?" "As I can see my raised shoulders in the mirror, what have I been thinking about, and can I let go of that thought?" "If my right hip is aching, what might I be doing elsewhere that's supporting that discomfort?"

These are powerful, transformative questions.

They are the beginning of inquiries that can lead to profound shifts in how you feel and function. It’s like running continuous diagnostics on your body. It's like checking in with yourself, not in a obsessive or anxious way but in a gentle, curious and supportive manner.

These small moments of awareness offer us a choice: To re-adjust, and to find better comfort and balance, time and time again. The truth is, life will always throw things at us. We will react, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not so much. We’re all on autopilot much of the time just trying to get through the day.

But the difference comes when you bring conscious, guided awareness into the equation. Instead of being swept away by unconscious habits and tension you have the ability to step back, reassess, and make confident choices.

This is the essence of the Alexander Technique: helping you to notice your body’s signals so you can unravel the tension and discomfort that inevitably accumulates throughout the day, and kick it in the butt before it causes pain and decline in your body's daily function.

Whether it’s adjusting your posture at your desk, or releasing tension in your shoulders after a stressful conversation, this new awareness allows you to reset and realign yourself with intention that makes sense to your body.

But one of the most powerful aspects of this practice is that it shifts your relationship with yourself. Instead of feeling like your body is something you need to battle against because it seems like it's betraying you with pain or discomfort, you start to see your body as ally.

And boy, this shift in perception is liberating!

It transforms how we move through our day, both physically and emotionally. Suddenly, we’re not just reacting to life’s challenges; we’re responding with awareness and choice.

Ultimately, the Alexander Technique offers a way to navigate life with more ease, grace, and awareness that matters.

Over time, this amazing work creates a ripple effect of transformation not only in your physical experience but also your emotional and mental well-being.

In a world that keeps pushing us to move faster, do more, and ignore our own needs, the Alexander Technique offers a refreshing alternative. It invites us to slow down, tune in, and become more mindful of how we’re going about living in our bodies.

And in doing so it gives us the tools to create a life that feels balanced, comfortable and aligned with who we truly are.

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.

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.

How Active Body Awareness in the Alexander Technique Transforms Your Life

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

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

Walk In Balance Center Blog

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Tel: +49 (0)160-3728007

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

Tai Chi / Qi Gong Berlin

Alexander Technique

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How Active Body Awareness in the Alexander Technique Transforms Your Life

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

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

Walk In Balance Center Blog

Archives

Categories

BerlinTel: +49 (0)160-3728007

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

Tai Chi / Qi Gong Berlin

Alexander Technique

Study with me online

Testimonials​

Contact

Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)160-3728007

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

Testimonials