The Alexander Technique and Focusing
be with what happens and describe it. How, when he relaxes and lets go, his jaw drops forward and down and becomes a heavy weight on his windpipe. This causes deep snoring and then a choking off the breathing sensation so that he wakes up and then the process starts all over again. The question is; can we stop this pattern without medical intervention?
These are the steps we follow:
I invite him to get a body felt sense of what happens and he is encouraged to embrace it, befriend it, get to know it well. We both know from other experiences that change happens out of our unconditional acceptance of what is there.
This is not easy as the survival pattern is essential to his breathing. We had to create a safe way to be with this pattern.
I asked him to stand and I placed a hand on his jaw so it wouldn't do what it normally does as soon as he relaxes. Now we could invite the windpipe to sense how it is and more.
What came was that the windpipe was very tense, waiting for the next blow.
Feeling heard in that, the windpipe relaxed a little knowing that my hand was preventing the expected from happening. And then more came; the windpipe began to remember how it would like to be if it could. In doing so it connected up with the neck and shoulders and there was a feeling of "assertive" which he liked. It is part of a new edge to his life that is unfolding, to become more self-assertive.
This seemed to be enough for now, although what also came was a sense of the larger story. How, from childhood he has always held himself in check this way. During waking hours he tightens his jaw to such an extent that when he relaxes, as in sleep, the muscles let go and collapse because of the tension that they have been under all day.
We both knew that this experience needed to be repeated and re-enforced and the story heard more fully. We were looking for a change in the way the windpipe functions as well as the way the jaw responds in daily life. As they come more into their own we hoped that the snoring will become less and less an issue and it did!
Here we have an example of a maladaptive survival skill becoming a destructive force in a
Latest Articles