Chronic Pain
Alexander Technique can help you to manage and reduce chronic pain even if it has been ongoing for a long time.
I have successfully helped people with back, neck, shoulder, arm, wrist and leg pain.
How it helps:
Reduce tension
Learn to help your muscles to relax and take the stress out of your system. They will let go in a way you have not felt before and you will be able to do it for yourself whenever you like.
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Improve movement
Good posture is not what you might think - it is all about letting go so that your joints can move freely and you can maintain a more upright, lighter feeling and better balanced use of yourself. This will cause less strain on your body and help to reduce pain.
Stress Management
You will learn how stress can impact pain and what you can do about it. This might include looking at thought processes that can help you to manage your stress levels.
Calm nervous system
By calming your nervous system down you can reduce cortisol levels which will help your body to stop sending pain signals to your brain. You will learn thow to take control of your nervous system and quieten it down.
Self management
We will look at your self management strategies and explore thing you can do to help manage your pain. This may include looking at sleep, diet, exercise and movement habits..
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100% Hollistic
The Alexander Technique does not divide between the mind and the body, the person or their context.q We will explore your experience to find ways to manage that help you.
Research
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There have been a few studies made over the last 80 years into the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique for pain management. There was one large scale randomised trial that was very successful, but we need two to be included for the NHS to cover treatment. Alexander Technique is not scale-able to sell and offers no particular profit to any company wishing to sell it. Practitioners are generally not from the science fields and don't have the skills or knowledge to demonstrate it's effectiveness other than anecdotally so the research is sadly lacking. My tutor, Carolyn Nicholls begananother large scale trial into it's effectiveness for back pain which was disrupted by both Covid and her own ill health as she is an older lady now. The trials that exist have been successful in that it has been shown to be effective but there is more work to be done.
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The studies that exist show that Alexander Technique is effective for the management of chronic pain conditions. These include but are not exclusive to back pain, neck pain, general pain, improving balance and coordination, RSI and Parkinson’s disease.
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These studies can be found on the Society for Teacher of Alexander Technique website (STAT)
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I have outlined a couple of these studies below:​
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Back Pain
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The Medical Research Council & NHS funded trial (BMJ 19 Aug 2008) showed the Alexander Technique provides long term benefit for back pain sufferers.
24 Alexander Technique lessons led to a reduction from 21 days a month in pain to 3 days a month and to an improvement in functioning and quality of life.
Alexander Technique is included in the May 2009 NICE guidelines for low back pain.
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Neck Pain
The ATLAS trial (2015 Annals of Internal Medicine) on 517 people with non-specific chronic neck pain found that Alexander Technique significantly reduced neck pain and associated disability by 31% following 20 lessons. The pain relief was long term with the improvement lasting at least a year to the end of the trial.
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Musculoskeletal Pain
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Human Movement Science 2011 Feb;30(1):74-89. Cacciatore TW, Gurfinkel VS, Horak FB, Cordo PJ, Ames KE. Neurological Sciences Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Beaverton, OR, USA.
Study to show that AT changes muscular tone in response to gravity causing a more efficient muscular support. It also shows that AT increases dynamic tone, that is appropriate tone in response to requirements particularly in respect of rotation of the hips, neck and torso, rather than being fixed and stiff.
British Medical Journal 2008;337:a884. Little P, Lewith G, Webley F, et al.
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Helpful Links
Pain Is Volatile: Clear article includes a couple of well known links to a video and a TED talk which are worth watching.
I have also found Pain Reframed Facebook Group interesting.