Slowly Collapsing To The Right
My first problems with tendinitis started in high school - in my right wrist, from playing the piano. Since then, every time I’ve had trouble with pain it has been on my right side. Right forearm, two years ago…I think I strained it and then it just got worse for a month or so, and it didn’t help that I went to an intensive weeklong glassblowing workshop during that month. At the moment it’s my right hip and IT band, which seems linked to my right lower back. I’ve been working on my lower back since 1997 as it desperately wants to arch forward no matter what I’m doing, and I think I have finally sorted some things out but it means that my right hip is picking up some slack that my lower back has decided not to do anymore and it’s cranky. Doesn’t everyone anthropomorphize their body parts? Is that an oxymoron???
Speaking of hips and backs, these two love to lay on me for hours at night, and with about 21 pounds of cat distributed on my legs and torso, things tend to cramp up after a while 😕
I notice myself leaning to the right whenever I’m sitting in the driver’s seat in a car - resting my left arm on the window feels wrong but leaning on the (much lower) console to the right is perfect. I’m sitting in a sort of modern armchair while typing this and noticing a general trend to the right. I think humans like to believe that we’re symmetrical and it’s very rarely the case in my experience. The problem, at least from an Alexander point of view, is that it’s not as simple as just leaning to the other side. Collapsing to the left will just create new issues - it might be an interesting case study, but it won’t solve anything.
For me, the answer lies in the right side of my torso, and please note that I have not and am currently not having any pain at all there. The right side, between my hip and my shoulder, just seems to want to curve and shorten a little. Not a lot! But I believe that the initial wrist problem came from pushing down my right shoulder…pianists are sometimes told to “get into the keys” for a bigger sound and I probably took that a bit too literally. Pushing down the shoulder increased pressure on the wrist. Just as curving to the left is not the answer, lifting the right shoulder isn’t the answer either. I try to catch myself when I lean to the right and then I think about having a nice expanded torso (on both sides!), and encourage that expansion with some conscious breathing, and keep the thought of expansion going through the exhale so that there isn’t another round of collapse as the air goes out. NOT bracing and holding the shape of the ribs - enjoying the thought of having all the space I need to let all the organs do their job. Thinking up and wide and forward, in Alexander-speak.
Just a note to say that this is NOT what I mean when I say up and wide and forward!
This is a somewhat complicated and advanced look at how Alexander Technique works, in this case, for me. It’s meant to give some insight at how I am working on solving some issues and I am not expecting everything I said to make sense immediately to a casual reader. That said, this is the sort of thing that drew me into the Technique in the first place - the idea that bodies are complicated and there’s a lot going on but discovering how all the connections work can be *fascinating* and worthy of lifelong study. There are no quick fixes here but if this sounds interesting, I can almost guarantee that it will be worth the journey.
