Concept Spotlight: Tension

Ever gone to open a door that looked heavy, given it a good heave-ho, and nearly been yanked off your feet as it turned out to be exceptionally light? You have witnessed first-hand how much unnecessary tension we all carry around with us every day. Try this experiment: go get yourself a cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever hot beverage you prefer). Lift the mug to your mouth, but before you take a sip, look at where your arm is in relation to your body. Most of us will have our elbow at least slightly out to the side; some of you may even have it out so far that your arm is parallel to the floor. Now put down the mug and simply raise your hand to your mouth, as if you were a lovely ingénue in an old movie and you’ve just been surprised. Now look at where your arm ended up. In most cases, your elbow will be down by your side, your arm having moved solely from the forearm down. That is the smallest amount of tension required for the activity of raising the hand to the mouth. So why does the arm go out so far when there’s coffee in it?

There are a multitude of reasons why we might hold excess tension while completing various actions. Many actions are connected with emotions, anxieties, or fears in our brains, and when they are performed, all those anxieties subconsciously act on our bodies, causing them to tense up. Perhaps you have a cup of coffee in the afternoon to soothe your midday jitters. The simple knowledge that you are drinking the coffee in order to calm down may cause you to tense up extra hard until you’ve had those first few sips. After all, if you weren’t tense, why would you need to calm down? If you’re afraid of an action that you must perform, or you’re not confident in your own ability to perform it, you may hold excess tension in an attempt to “get it right” (as we’ve discussed before). In any case, once an action has been associated with a certain level of tension, it can be very difficult to let go of those associations and move with ease.

The Alexander Technique gets around this by having the teacher be responsible for moving the student, thus removing the student’s desire to “do” an action they recognize as habitual. In this way, the student is free to simply experience the new ways of moving (and how they differ from the old ones) and in time will be able to allow their body to move in this new way without interfering.