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What is Alexander Technique for riders?
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"UP" is UP ! - the knees flow away from you - and away from each other. Alexander Technique is a process of psycho-physical re-education whose aim is to help us use ourselves better in the activities of daily life. This process takes place in a series of one-to-one lessons between pupil and teacher. The teacher using a combination of hands and words to give the pupil direct physical experience of better use of himself - if you like - a new, different and better way of both inhabiting and using the body. The activities of daily life, cover the entire gamut of human activity - and the more demanding and specialised the activities we undertake, for example dancing, acting, playing an instrument and so on - the more we come up against the limitations imposed by our less than perfect use of ourselves Riding is a very good example of an activity which - because it involves the interaction of two vertebrate animals - in movement - is particularly demanding and many riders quickly discover that their progress seems to come up against serious limitations imposed by their imperfect use. For example; a rider may be aware - at least on an intellectual level - that he rides with say, tense shoulders, stiff arms and elbows and an overarched lower back - but this knowledge is not in itself sufficient for him to understand how this state of affairs has come about. Nor does he understand how each of these faults connects with and affects the others - nor the effect they all have on the quality of his body and his riding - and on the carriage, comfort and balance of the horse. In reality he has little idea how to address these difficulties. In other words the average rider has no model of better use of himself with which to assess, understand or change his habitual patterns of poor use. To add to these difficulties we need to understand that the level of stimulus acting on the rider in movement is considerable. Consider a highly exaggerated worst case scenario - to illustrate the point: The student rider knows that he has difficulty working in rising trot. His experience is that his riding is uneven - that he cannot settle to a steady rhythm - he cannot ride a straight line easily - that he cannot bend the horse evenly or easily - that he is constantly struggling to regain his balance and that the whole things is incredibly hard work. He also knows that his riding teacher has explained - probably many times - that he is not sitting deeply in the saddle that his legs are stiff and tight and too far forward - his knees are tight and his ankles braced - that he is rising abnormally high - that he is collapsed to one side -that his arms and shoulders are stiff that he is jabbing the horse in the mouth at every stride. But the student cannot deal with any of this at that moment - he is far too busy trying to stay on board and achieve his most desired goal - which is to perform the given school movements extremely well. Meanwhile the horse - (who may have physical difficulties of his own) - is very busy surviving. He has a stiff and anxious rider on his back - he cannot carry himself freely and in balance - but he is being pushed to complete the school figures by his rider who, far from helping is making the whole thing more difficult and possibly even painful. Well - I exaggerate of course, but, we have probably all lived through some version of this scenario and we recognise how this combination of pressures can so easily make a bad situation worse. All of which, I hope, clearly illustrates the need for a process of psycho-physical re-education. In order to give the rider the tools with which to address his or her own habits of poor use we must first lower the level of stimulus. That means asking the rider to agree to spend some time off the horse. A course of Alexander lessons taken at the stables - preferably before each of his riding lessons - will give the rider a clear introduction to this very practical work - it it will certainly set him in a new direction with some new goals and new information with which to approach his future riding experience. The availability of a experienced Alexander teacher - giving one-to-one lessons - on the spot - can provide some very useful and stimulating support to the riding teacher in this difficult but rewarding task. Alexander Technique is a logical, intelligent and practical approach to the discovery and practice of improved use of the self. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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