Wired a bit differently? How the Alexander technique can help

Working with the Alexander technique has positive benefits for those of us who are wired differently or neurodivergent:[30],[31],[32],[33],[34],[35]

• An Alexander lesson is a low-stress environment in which to learn how to stop automatic reactions to stimuli that put us wrong. We work with changing reactions to simple stimuli during a lesson. We begin by learning to stop or prevent habitual automatic responses, forms of movement, and unneeded tension. This same process is then applied to more diverse stimuli, both within the lesson and outside it. Over time, an Alexander technique client (or ‘pupil’) learns to change responses to difficult stimuli that previously put them wrong, and may have led to sensory overwhelm, emotional meltdowns, and/or panic attacks.

  • Stimuli come in a variety of forms. Stimuli can be external and related to our environment (eg, a loud grating noise, someone asking you a question). They can also be internal (eg, hunger pains, a habitual thought).

  • Stopping automatic reactions and sending anti-stress directions to the body gives us time to stop and think – and to choose more conscious responses. Conscious responses can include choosing alternative thoughts or actions or not choosing not to respond to stimulus at all instead.

  • Working with stopping automatic reactions to stimuli is particularly important for those of us who are wired differently. This is precisely because we do tend to be more sensitive, reactive, and ‘overexcitable’ in response to different stimuli than most.

  • This process of stopping automatic reactions and harmful habits can be applied across different areas of our lives. It can be applied wherever we have problems, including working with obsessive thinking, compulsive behaviours, and emotional reactivity. The important thing is to start small and to slowly build up to working with the more difficult stimuli.

• Learning to inhibit (or stop) automatic reactions and to send directions to the body leads to more considered responses, starts to moderate nervous system arousal and lower bodily stress and anxiety, and begins to both lessen and prevent fight–flight responses. This gives the likely overwrought nervous systems of those of us with neurological differences the chance to quieten. It also gives a chance for long-held anxiety to begin to calm. Reduced stress leads to fewer panic attacks or stress meltdowns from sensory overwhelm.

• The directions, together with the inhibiting of automatic physical reactions, improve our sensory appreciation (the entirety of the sensory information we receive) and re-coordinate the body. They lead to improved postural behaviour, bodily alignment, stability, and flexibility, and resolve issues with posture, coordination, or musculoskeletal pain. As part of this, together with an improved sensory awareness, they also help expand body awareness and increase bodily comfort.

• The Alexander technique helps with issues related to sensory processing. Sensory processing issues are common in those who are wired differently or neurodivergent. Please see my page on sensory processing issues where I go into detail about these problems and how the Alexander technique can help.

• The principles of stopping and directing provide tools for coping with sensitivities or overexcitabilities. Sensitivities and overexcitabilities can be channelled so these become strengths enabling increased sensory, bodily, and overall self-awareness and learning instead of weaknesses to be compensated for.

• Working with the Alexander technique increases our mindfulness. It allows us to be in the present moment – to be fully in the here and now – and can help us build self-acceptance. It uses feedback from our senses to anchor us in the present moment. (For example, a tight neck becomes a sign we need to stop and direct our body to allow the release of tension.) Being in the present moment increases our awareness. It leads to increasing insight and knowledge of our habits and our selves. Being in the moment also gets us away from the past and our fears and anxieties about the future. It is in the present moment that we can stop habits, make different choices, and create change to enable a different, more positive future. The Alexander technique also helps us to be where we are how we are, beyond our ideas of rightness and wrongness, without the need to control, or to be right or perfect.

  • Please see my page on mindfulness and personal growth for more information about how the Alexander technique works with mindfulness.

• The touch received in an Alexander technique lesson can make us feel more secure in our bodies and we become accustomed to receiving touch in a safe environment. Touch is used to teach the principles of the technique. It varies between light touch and deep pressure and is beneficial in itself. Receiving hands-on work, particularly from table work, tends to be soothing. The touch received helps the chronically stressed and those of us who may feel unsafe, whether this is from sensory overload or traumatic experiences.

• In the Alexander technique, touch becomes a two-way non-verbal communication that helps develop trust between the pupil and teacher. It provides a sense of being valued. This communication through touch can mirror early developmental and attachment processes.[31] It tends to help positively change the relationship we have with our physical bodies and our entire selves. Those of us who have had issues with our bodies can begin to treat them with more respect.

• The Alexander technique can help people tune into and feel more comfortable in their bodies. Its body-based mindfulness is calming and detriggering. It helps us return to and connect with our selves and grounds us in our physical bodies and our breathing. Our awareness increases from just our thoughts (eg, many of us experience ourselves as a ‘head on a stick’) to include our bodies and our entire selves, easing bodily alienation, and increasing body acceptance and mind–body integration over time, leading to optimal integrated overall functioning. We find that increased body acceptance leads to increased self-acceptance – and vice versa.

• The Alexander technique tends to reduce our emotional reactivity and to enable us to tolerate and accept a wider range of emotions. Through this, it tends to lead to improved relationships. Over time, working with stopping automatic reactions and harmful habits and directing our bodies reduces stress, calms overwrought nervous systems, and helps rebuild a friendly, accepting relationship with our bodies. From this, we get better at interpreting and accepting our internal signals (eg, muscular tension, fight–flight stress response, etc) and the emotions linked to these physical responses. We become increasingly able to be present to the full range of human emotions and experiences, rather than only those we see as constructive and acceptable. The increased awareness of our internal signals and acceptance of our emotions further improve our reactions to stressful stimuli and situations. This has the flow-on effect of bettering our relationships with others – something of benefit to all of us.

  • This increased ability to accept the range of human emotions is helpful for everyone, but may be particularly useful where there is a tendency to punish the self, including in conditions such as OCD.

• The Alexander technique can change our thinking indirectly through changing our habitual bodily sensations/sensory feelings.[32] Our habitual thinking patterns are bound up with our accompanying habitual sensory feelings and with our postural use and the habitual way we use our whole mind–body selves. Working with inhibition and direction sending to the body changes the habitual way we use our selves and improves our sensory appreciation (the information we get from our senses) resulting in changed sensory feelings/bodily sensations. As our habitual sensory feelings change and our habitual thinking patterns also change.

  • The change to sensory feelings and bodily sensations perceived as unbearable and their associated thinking patterns is useful for many with post-traumatic stress or OCD in helping to prevent triggering and compulsive and repetitive behaviours.

• The Alexander technique also changes our thinking to include a more holistic expanded body–mind awareness. It uses the concept of ‘thinking in activity’ to refer to thinking that includes an expanded body–mind awareness while responding to different stimuli in your daily-life activities.[32] This contrasts with relying on unconscious habit. Thinking in activity includes inhibition and direction-sending and your holistic psychophysical functioning while responding to stimuli and thinking, moving, and acting in your daily life.

• Working with inhibition and direction sending leads not only to increased physical flexibility, but also increases mental clarity and cognitive flexibility over time. Thinking tends to become clearer. Any black and white thinking tends to soften to allow shades of grey. As part of this, it becomes easier to adapt to change. Working with Alexander technique to change thinking, movement patterns, and habitual responses to stimuli helps build new neural pathways so thinking becomes less black and white and more flexible – with a variety of shades of grey.

  • A tendency towards black and white thinking can be seen in those with autism, but it can be seen in others of us as well. Those who have developed post-traumatic stress tend to develop rigid black and white thinking. Regardless of the cause, anything that makes your thinking more flexible is going to help how you respond to life.

• The Alexander technique works with attention and focus. It does this through looking at the use of the eyes, grounding in the body and in our breathing, and the integrated use of the whole mind–body self. The Alexander technique aims for a flexible general awareness. This type of awareness allows responsiveness to the environment and changes as needed, allowing appropriate responses to stimuli, both internal and external. This general awareness helps avoid obsessive rumination (negative overthinking) and the more harmful side of hyperfocus/overconcentrating where the ability to adequately respond to environmental demands is lost. This flexible, general awareness is able to change, zoom in and zoom out, and narrow and widen attentional focus, allowing appropriate attentional flow and focus on specific tasks as needed.

  • Obviously, those with ADHD and autism have different issues with focus. Yet in these days of constant electronic notifications and social media, we can all have problems with focus. It is worth looking at these.

• We can use the Alexander technique to work with goals and performance. These are often areas of difficulty. Sometimes, we may have no idea of where to start. We often misuse ourselves, or try too hard, or rush at goals unprepared, resulting in a less optimal result. Instead of focusing solely on our goals and forcing ourselves towards them at any cost (what we call ‘endgaining’ in the technique), we learn to inhibit our habitual harmful misuse and endgaining, and to consciously direct ourselves and our activity in a new, improved way while performing our selected task. This tends to result in improved outcomes. This improved means whereby also includes:

  • stopping to visualise a suitable course of action

  • breaking down larger goals into easy-to-perform small steps

  • focusing on one step at a time

  • completing each step at a slow, steady, and achievable pace.

  • In an Alexander lesson, we break down activities and movements into sequential, non-threatening, small steps. Each step is slowly worked with as individually needed to complete the overall activity.

  • Note: Sometimes in the process of considering how to achieve a goal, we may realise it is not healthy or helpful in its current form or timeframe. We may then need to adjust it to achieve a healthy result.

• The Alexander technique can also help us with boundaries. It helps us determine who is responsible for what. We become more aware of our physical boundaries (eg, starting with our skin). The Alexander technique helps us balance what is happening in our inner world with what is happening outside of us in our external environment. Feedback from our senses takes us out of our heads and any obsessive internal rumination and grounds us in our environment. We become more aware of the world around us (the ground beneath our feet, the view) and what is happening in it (the events occurring around us) and also demands from our environment (particularly interactions with others). This balance and tension between our inner and outer worlds makes us more aware of the boundaries between us and others and who is responsible for what. Paradoxically, it also helps us engage in life without as much identification and reactivity, particularly as we work with our responses to stimuli.

  • The Alexander technique uses the idea of opposition and polarities. This is generally in relation to opposing forces, parts of our bodies going in opposing directions (eg, the head going forward and up in relation to the back going back), or how our bodies are positioned in relation to those of others. (These opposing directions and forces are also seen throughout the martial arts.) However, oppositions can go beyond the physical and can help us become aware of the need for boundaries. We can think of opposition in terms of awareness of the balance, tension, and dynamics between ourselves and others or between ourselves and our environment. Sometimes these oppositions are beneficial but at other times, not so much. Opposing forces tend to work best when they are balanced.

• The Alexander technique can help those with hypervigilance and post-traumatic stress. Hypervigilance and post-traumatic stress tend to be common amongst those with neurological differences for a variety of reasons. Please see my page on trauma and the body. There is also information on hypervigilance on my page on sensory processing issues.

• The one-on-one hands-on work received in the Alexander technique can also help us cope better with bullying and other difficult situations. As already noted, it works to calm the nervous system and relieve stress. Also, hands-on work that helps us get back into our backs and spines (the core of our nervous systems) helps us more fully inhabit and stay present with our whole mind–body selves. Such hands-on work helps build a psychophysical strength, confidence, and ‘grit’. This supports us in adverse circumstances, when asserting boundaries, and helps us endure without collapsing in on our selves under pressure. This is valuable when coping with any bullying or other difficult situations that come our way.