How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live : Learning the Alexander Technique to Explore Your Mind-Body Connection and Achieve Self-Mastery

"Vineyard, founder and director of the Alexander Technique School of New England, presents a thorough introduction and guide to the posture and movement method that's been used for more than a century to improve performance, reduce chronic pain and heal injuries. In this volume, 'the first authoritative, comprehensive and all-new guide' to the technique in 20 years, Vineyard shows readers how understanding and improving habits of movement like 'head-neck coordination' and even sitting 'help you achieve self-mastery,' here defined as the 'self-understanding' and 'bodily control' needed to 'identify and release our harmful reactions to pain, fear, and anxiety.' The upshot: a healthier, more resilient mind and body. Through numerous case studies and a handful of exercises, Vineyard teaches self-awareness and the primary Alexander Technique skills: conscious inhibition-'quieting your inner conversation'-and 'directing,' a heightened sense of space and the body's place in it. Vineyard details the internal processes which govern movement, and the factors that lead to 'maladaptive change in muscle activity'; she also has tips for troubleshooting common problems like pain and weakness."--Publisher's Weekly. "The Alexander Technique (AT) is a remarkably simple but powerful method for learning to skillfully control how your brain and body interact, allowing you to better coordinate your movements while increasing the accuracy of your mind’s thoughts and perceptions. Now, in How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live, leading Alexander Technique master teacher Missy Vineyard sheds a completely fresh light on this revolutionary method and, in the process, offers path-breaking insight into the mind-body connection. Vineyard thoroughly explains and teaches the central skills of the AT through simple self-experiments, and she offers engaging stories of students in their lessons to show its effective application across a range of disciplines, including the performing arts, athletics, health, psychology, and education. How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live introduces us to a world within ourselves that we know surprisingly little about–and thereby helps us to understand why we often cannot do what we should be able to do, why we harm ourselves with chronic tension and anxiety, and why our thoughts often seem beyond our control. Vineyard is also the first AT teacher to draw on cutting-edge research in neuroscience and to synthesize those findings with AT theories and techniques. She fully illuminates the benefits to be reaped by mastery of the Alexander Technique, which include : Release from acute or chronic physical pain ; Enhanced mental attention and focus ; Reduced anxiety Improved balance and coordination ; Relief from tension and stress ; Increased ease and efficiency performing precise movement skills". -- Page 4 de la couverture

The Alexander Technique (AT) is a remarkably simple but powerful method for learning to skillfully control how your brain and body interact, allowing you to better coordinate your movements while increasing the accuracy of your mind’s thoughts and perceptions. Now, in How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live, leading Alexander Technique master teacher Missy Vineyard sheds a completely fresh light on this revolutionary method and, in the process, offers path-breaking insight into the mind-body connection. Vineyard thoroughly explains and teaches the central skills of the AT through simple self-experiments, and she offers engaging stories of students in their lessons to show its effective application across a range of disciplines, including the performing arts, athletics, health, psychology, and education. How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live introduces us to a world within ourselves that we know surprisingly little about—and thereby helps us to understand why we often cannot do what we should be able to do, why we harm ourselves with chronic tension and anxiety, and why our thoughts often seem beyond our control. Vineyard is also the first AT teacher to draw on cutting-edge research in neuroscience and to synthesize those findings with AT theories and techniques. She fully illuminates the benefits to be reaped by mastery of the Alexander Technique, which include: Release from acute or chronic physical pain Enhanced mental attention and focus Reduced anxiety Improved balance and coordination Relief from tension and stress Increased ease and efficiency performing precise movement skills

I. Introduction -- II. Introduction to the Alexander technique -- III. Introduction to the self-experiments -- Part 1. How do you move? : tales from the beginning. 1. Surprising observations 2. A malfunctioning locomotor system 3. How did we get this way? : from fish to horse to biped 4. Standing on two legs : the biped's challenge Self-experiments -- Part 2. How do you feel? : the mind-body link. 5. A sense of feeling 6. Feelings gone wrong 7. The feeling of fear 8. Fear's body-mind 9. Anxiety and performance 10. Attention, awareness, and conscious inhibition -- Part 3. How do you think? : the mind changes everything. 11. A fine day in London with nothing to feel 12. Discovering the thinking mind 13. Believing is not seeing 14. The difference that inhibition makes 15. You have a helper Self-experiments -- Part 4. Space and direction : our hidden sense. 16. Fewer words, more space 17. More problems with feelings 18. Balance and coordination 19. A new way of moving Self-experiments -- Part 5. Touch : our forgotten sense. 20. Touching the heart 21. The teacher's hands -- Part 6. Consciousness : our newest sense. 22. Pain free and moving again 23. An incredible lightness of being 24. Speaking from my self 25. Self-mastery : connection Self-experiments -- Appendix : how to find a teacher. Book annotation not available for this How You Stand, How You Move, How You Vineyard, Missy/ Mitchell, Matthew (ILT) Perseus Books GroupPublication 2007/06/03Number of 322Binding PAPERBACKLibrary of 2007000878 How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live: Learning the Alexander Technique to Explore Your Mind-Body Connection and Achieve Self-Mastery