All too often we don’t notice signals of excessive tension and ignore them till pain or illness develops. The habit of concentrating on achieving what we want or on doing what we think we have to, without taking our well-being into account, is particularly harmful. Alexander wrote: ‘No matter how many specific ends you may gain, you are worse off than before (…) if in the getting of them you destroy the integrity of the organism’. The good news is that we can do something about it – we can change our unhelpful habits, even the ones we have cultivated for many years.

With the Alexander Technique we learn to pay attention to the way we do things and to our integrity in whatever we do. Nature, which aims at regaining balance, is on our side. Often all we need is to learn to stop getting in our own way. Alexander said ‘If you can stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing does itself”. We can rediscover the effortless poise and balance most of us had as small children. No matter what our starting point is, we can learn to move in more easy and free way, we can be calmer and more energetic at the same time. In short, we can make the most of what we have and feel better.