Tension comes by patterns.
Imagine a pillow. If you press on both sides with your hands, there will be compression in the middle, and it is not possible to release the middle unless you release both sides. Then everything else will follow. We cannot treat the body as separate parts. When there is too much tension in one part of the body, it affects the whole body. For example, right now, become aware of your thumbs. Don't change anything yet, just feel them, and notice if you have any tension there. You might want to look at them, or maybe not. Can you soften them a little? Let them be well curved. Did you notice a release of tension and ease around your wrist? Maybe your elbows changed a little too, helping your shoulders to be a little freer. If you can soften the lips and jaw a little, let the lips open a little (just a little, we don't want to look like a fish), and let the tongue rest touching behind the lower teeth. Then you are softening a whole pattern of tension. Playing our instrument can lead to very tense hands due to the large space between the finger holes and the pressure we need to apply to the lips. Part of the Alexander Technique is to recognize when, where and at what level we need tension while playing, and not to maintain it for the rest of the day. You can do the opposite experiment. Make a fist with one hand, and squeeze hard. Do you feel the tension in your whole arm? How is your shoulder? And your jaw? Okay, you can let go, but don't let your hand drop, just open it. Thumb soft, nicely curved. If we maintain that tension all the time, our wrists become stiff, which makes holding the cornetto and moving the fingers a very difficult task. As we have seen, this will affect the jaw and the tongue, possibly creating discomfort or pain in the temporomandibular joint with excessive tension, and causing chronic tension in the tongue, which will make our playing too loud, inflexible, and slow. It seems a good idea for me to sometimes bring our attention to our thumbs.
Primary control: the head-neck-back relationship.
But there is one primary pattern, or what Alexander called Primary Control: the head-neck-back relationship. Imagine the pillow again, and our head is one of the sides. We might feel tension or pain in our necks, shoulders, or back (all in between the pillow) but it's physically not possible to release that tension if the head is collapsed forwards or contracted backward, shortening the whole torso. If we free our neck of excesive tension and the head balances on the top of our spine, the whole torso lengthens and widens, spreading that expansion to the arms and legs. If we have excessive tension in the neck, compressing the head towards the spine and creating downward pressure on the body, none of that can happen. That is why the relationship between the head, neck, and back is so important.
This may lead one to think that the Alexander Technique is postural static work. However, it is possible to maintain this relationship in any movement and when carrying out any activity. To achieve this, with the help of the teacher, we learn to let the head lead the movement and the body follows the head. This can be done by moving through space, for example, walking, running, going on stage, or also without moving, bowing to the audience, or moving when playing. When the head leads the movement, it is possible to maintain the expansion of the body in any situation and we do not have to be always "upright", which would cause rigidity in the body.
But where exactly is that balance of the head? Where do you feel the weight of the head at this particular moment? Can you point to it with your hand? The answers in AT groups are always different. The head, if we allow it, balances on the atlanto-occipital joint. Where is that? You can put your fingers behind your ear, behind your jaw (if you press there it is painful). Imagine a line between the two fingers and another line going from the tip of your nose backward. Where they cross is where your head balances. How many kilos do you think your head weighs? It's between 5 and 8 kgs which, if properly distributed with head balance, will be supported effortless by the neck. If the head is collapsed forwards or backward, those 8 kgs will be supported by muscles that shouldn't have to make that effort, which can cause pain or discomfort.
The large neck muscles can perform a wide range of movements in the head, but they don't need to be in action all the time to hold the head on top of the spine. The muscles that keep the head constantly balanced without effort are the suboccipital muscles. When an AT teacher helps us to release the big neck muscles up achieving head balance, the suboccipital small muscles regain their original function (often causing the neck pain to disappear). That is what "Free your neck, or having a free neck" actually means.
What release means (and lengthening and widening)
But what is releasing? Most people, when they are told to relax, collapse the chest and bring the hips too forward. After a whole life doing this, the muscles change and become fixed, losing the reflexes against gravity and "postural muscle fibers". Then we need much more effort to perform any movement, and physical problems may appear because the whole body is distorted. In reaction to discomfort or pain, or under instructions like "sit up straight", we try too quickly to be up, holding ourselves, compressing even more the spine, and using too much tension and the wrong muscle fibers, which can be very strong, but get tired very soon. Of course, we can't maintain that very long, and the collapse comes again. But with the help of an Alexander teacher, we can learn to recover the postural fibers in our muscles, which are not that strong but can work for much longer periods. So the tension is released in the direction of the muscle fibers, and the muscle recovers its original volume.
Dr. David Garlick explains:
“There are two main types of muscle fibers, red and white, occurring in nearly all muscles. The red fibers are designed for posture and for slow and rhythmic movements and these are non-fatiguable; white fibers are for strength and for fast movements and are fatiguable. There are various implications - one is that using muscles appropriately in posture and slow movements need not be fatiguing. Another implication is that if red fibers are not used they may lose their non-fatiguing characteristics”
“The knowledge about red fibers provides a justification for the Technique's claim of appropriate muscle use in sitting and standing and not trying to avoid such muscle activity. Lengthening' is a mental instruction that will result in the appropriate use of extensor muscles, where 'appropriate' will mean the use of red, non-fatiguable fibers.
When a muscle biopsy is taken, cutting across the fibers and then staining them, the result is shown diagrammatically in Figure 3”
Now imagine all those fibers releasing in that direction. For example, in this image, we can see the fibers of the back muscles. If those fibers are released in the direction they naturally have, the muscles lengthen, and the back widens, and that indirectly causes the shoulders to release. When we learn AT, we often have to renew our wardrobe. This is mentioned several times in the literature, and in my case, it was obvious that there came a time when I had to buy new T-shirts because my old ones were too small for the new distance between my shoulders.
The spine and the body's center of gravity.
This muscle release also happens in the small muscles between the vertebrae. When the neck muscles are released and the head is balancing on the top of our spine, the entire vertebral column lengthens, from the head to the hips. Then it recovers its natural curvature, and the small muscles between the vertebral discs also release, helping to create space in the cushions between the vertebrae, which normally creates a feeling of lightness and ease of movement in the AT pupil. When that happens, the spine regains its natural shape, becoming flexible and mobile. We can help maintain that if we lead the movements with the head. Then the expansion is transferred to the whole body, and we can perform any activity encouraging the expansion in the body.
When the spine regains its maximum length with the head on top and the body is lengthening and widening, the center of gravity also changes. We can alter the center of gravity in many ways by collapsing the body or narrowing our head, neck, and back. We can put too much weight on the front of our feet, or our heels. This usually causes the body to compensate with excessive tension, simply to avoid falling. When we consciously help to bring the center of gravity to the center of the body, the muscles can act against gravity by themselves.
Hips, legs, and feet
If the hips are collapsed forwards or tense backward, creating excessive curvature in the lumbar region, it alters (shortens) the entire spine and weight cannot be transferred properly to the legs. If we lock the knees, which creates upward tension, the hips will also be locked, creating tension throughout the torso, negatively affecting sound resonance. This is easy to experience: while standing, lock your knees, and then unlock them, but don't bend them; lock them again to notice the difference, and unlock them, but don't bend them. Unnecessarily bending the knees means extra effort for the legs that we don't need to stand or play standing up. Furthermore, when we unlock the knees without bending them, the line of gravity from the head can go through the center of the body and the legs to the ankles, releasing the weight into the feet, which will act in the form of an arch to transfer the weight to the ground. This does not involve doing something with muscular effort, it is a release that in most cases creates the sensation of grounding in the AT pupil. The weight can then be transferred to the three points of support of the foot, which act like a tripod, creating stability throughout the body without collapsing or excessive tension. That sensation of grounding is amplified by the release of the leg muscles up and away from the firm floor (which does not mean locking up the knees). This change is clearly perceptible in the sound when we play the cornetto, resulting in a deeper sound.
For a cornetto player, this has another advantage: the psoas muscle is connected to the diaphragm and the hip and reacts together with the leg muscles. That release helps the psoas muscles to release up, which allows the diaphragm to move freely, what makes breathing easier. I will explore this further when I talk about breathing.
The arms
The arms are one of the first things that come up when we want to learn to play the cornetto, as the first thing we do is pick up the cornet and try to reach the fingerholes, which are very far apart. There is also a considerable distance between them and the mouthpiece, and we also need a certain amount of pressure against the lip. Understanding how the arms move and how they are affected by the relationship between the head, neck, and back can be of great help in achieving comfort.
The arm functions as a complete structure. As we have already seen, tension in the body does not happen in a localized way, it happens by patterns. Excessive tension or pressure in the hands or wrists tends to create excessive tension in the whole arm, restricting mobility throughout the structure. But what is the whole arm? As we can see in the image, the arm includes the collarbone and the shoulder blades. The whole arm is only joined to the rest of the skeleton through the sternoclavicular joint. Around the collarbone and shoulder blades, the pectoral area, and the back, the muscles need to be flexible to allow movement of the whole arm. When we collapse the torso forward or have excessive tension in the neck and the head cannot be balancing freely on the top of the spine, the back and chest muscles are under excessive pressure (remember the comparison with a pillow) and cannot release. If we allow the torso to lengthen and widen, we are allowing mobility of the collarbone and shoulder blade, recovering mobility throughout the structure up to the hands thanks to all the joints in between.
An easy way to notice this is by touching your collarbone with the opposite hand. Raise the arm corresponding to that collarbone by bending it at the elbow and then raising it upwards towards the ceiling and lowering it again. Do you notice the movement of the collarbone? All around the collarbone are the pectorals and the neck. If the neck and pectorals are too tense or collapsed, that movement is restricted. If you now move your arm forward as if you were going to have a cornetto, you will notice that the collarbone has to accompany that movement and that together with the collarbone the shoulder blades also need to move. If we learn to stand upright without effort, this movement is facilitated by all the muscles surrounding the collarbone and the shoulder blades, making us able to hold the biggest cornetto in the world.
It is also possible to learn to have light arms. When the upper arm is too heavy it creates downward pressure on the whole torso, collapsing the shoulders and the entire upper back, creating excessive pressure on the lower back. Light or heavy are just words to describe this, but it is easily demonstrable in person if someone tries to move your arms. In addition, this heavy arm pressure will restrict the movement of the ribs, also restricting breathing. Just as the head can lead the movement of the whole body, the movement of the arms can be led by the fingerprints. Leading the movement in this way changes the muscular tone of the whole arm structure, helping us to have a lighter upper torso. This will also facilitate the movement of the ribs in that region of the body for breathing, and will indirectly affect the neck and head. If the arms are too heavy, creating downward weight on the entire torso, it is impossible to have a free neck and a light head on the top of the spine.
Looking closer at the wrists we can see how they are made up of small bones that allow the hand to move in many different ways. If we fix our arms in a certain position with tension and the muscles shorten and fix themselves in that position we are restricting the mobility of the wrist, which can result in pain after hours and hours of practice. However, it is perfectly possible to play the cornet with mobile wrists. Just allow a little movement around while holding the instrument and playing. It will unlock the wrist joints, thus preventing fixed tension. Also learning some stretches that encourage the muscles to lengthen, we can thus prevent any kind of injury in that area.
Natural breathing with the Alexander Technique
When we allow the Primary Control to happen, many positive things happen to our breathing. With enough space in the released torso, the ribs can move in sync with the diaphragm, creating space in the lungs, and it is the difference in pressure between the lungs and the outside that causes air to enter them. We can observe this movement better with the following video.
As we can see, on the exhalation, the diaphragm releases upwards when the ribs relax downwards at the sides without collapsing the front chest. Alexander's direction of "thinking up" will prevent the chest from collapsing at the same time as the ribs move downwards articulating at the sternum. When the diaphragm is released upwards, the psoas must also lengthen and release from the hips. It is a release that occurs internally, but we need to facilitate it with a certain flexibility in the abdominal muscles, also allowing them to lengthen with the torso. This lengthening of the psoas is produced in connection with the hips, which should be centered in relation to the spine, and the leg muscles, which should also be releasing from the unlocked knees to allow the lengthening of the whole muscle group on the exhalation, that is to say, legs, hips, psoas and diaphragm. We can see how high the diaphragm is released in relation to the ribs (if we allow ourselves the full range of movement without interfering with that coordination).
When we exhale until the end of the breath, as well as helping the renewal of oxygen by releasing all the carbon dioxide in our lungs, we will notice a certain tension in the body that we can release so that the movement of the ribs occurs by itself, allowing air silently to enter again through the nose. The increase in volume in the lungs will push itself the diaphragm back down. This creates a certain movement and compression of the organs under the diaphragm towards the hip. When we have the hip centered in relation to the spine and the legs unlocked but not bent, this increase in pressure is transferred to the pelvic floor muscles, which regain their elasticity, thus aiding breathing.
This process is a reflex; we don't need to think about breathing to actually breathe. What we have to do to play the cornetto is to control the speed at which it happens and to help as much as possible for this process to happen.
Generating tension with the lips to produce the vibration produces a large retention of air. This retention means an increase in pressure in the lungs that is transferred to our body. That pressure has to go somewhere, and what at first may feel unpleasant can become a stimulus to generate an upward direction in our entire torso. We can achieve this by releasing the hips, transferring the pressure to the legs, and generating some tension in our abdominal muscles to contain that pressure, which does not mean shortening them but quite the opposite, it helps us to lengthen. To achieve this, we can learn to activate the muscles below the belly button in the direction of the spine. The activation is not up or down but in an imaginary line towards the spine. We can control the level of tension in that area depending on the instrument and the register we are playing in. This contains the pressure in the torso helping to release that pressure to the muscles of the legs and feet while keeping the upper torso, shoulders, and neck free of excessive tension.
Furthermore, our lungs are in fact quite high in our torso. Can you touch one of your collarbones with your opposite hand? The lung still has space above that. That doesn't mean we have to lift the chest, creating excessive curvature in the lower back. With the help of an Alexander teacher, we can learn to recover mobility in the upper part of the torso while the pectoral muscles recover their softness and elasticity. Elasticity is also recovered in the upper part of the back between the shoulder blades and in connection with the neck. Thus, everything around the lungs becomes flexible and mobile, which increases lung capacity, often restricted by each person's tension patterns.
Active rest
We can help to release excessive tension and encourage the torso to lengthen and widen and the spine to recover its natural length by doing nothing resting in a semi-supine position on a yoga mat or blanket. It is necessary to have the help of an Alexander teacher at the beginning to understand what "doing nothing" actually means, but then we can easily practice it at home. This may lead one to think that the AT is about relaxation, which is not true. However, in that position, we can learn to recognize the tensions we maintain during the day. And gravity, thanks to the firm surface, will soften them, encouraging the torso to lengthen and widen and the spine to have its full length, preventing also the tensions from reappearing. It takes a while for the tensions to release, the suggested time for practicing this every day is usually 15 to 20 minutes.
