Chair Work

✦Chair work, and possibly other movement explorations directed towards the student’s specific concerns, typically occupies 20–30 minutes of a lesson. Chair work is the main psycho-physical method for applying the Alexander Technique to the activities of both skilled movement, such as running, tennis, golf, t’ai chi, playing an instrument, or dancing; and of daily life, such as walking, reaching, standing to wash dishes, carrying a child, or working at a computer.

✦When guided in and out of a chair to sitting and standing, the student has an opportunity to observe ingrained psycho-physical patterns that are interfering with coordination and breathing and causing pain or constriction, such as tightness in the neck or back. He/she is asked to use the thinking skills of inhibition and direction introduced during table work to cease interfering. The teacher’s touch and verbal instruction together with the student’s thinking allows these maladaptive patterns to fall away. The student thus gains access to a new sense of integration, well-being, skill and poise that can radically change his/her life and work.

✦As a result of repeated new experiences of psycho-physical coordination over a number of lessons (Alexander thought 20-30 were necessary, but it depends on the student’s goals), the student becomes able to take charge of his/her own well-being. The student may find that he/she enjoys the process itself, even after his/her immediate goal is met, and come back for refresher lessons.

********** Pictures and Explanations of Chair Work ************

✦The teacher guides the student to standing by encouraging him to inhibit tension in his head and neck and direct, so that his spine lengthens. When the teacher gently pivots him forward at the hip joints, and his weight comes over his feet, his feet connect to the ground and he springs upward to standing, in an energetic movement that seems to do itself.

✦The standing student has replaced gripping and holding with balance and poise. He is free for movement, or to continue standing without stress.

✦The teacher may place her hands elsewhere to assist the integration of the head, neck and back and the student’s coordination as a psycho-physical whole.

Copyrighted by Priscilla Hunt, Amherst MA.

✦The process of coordinated sitting is the reverse. The teacher encourages freeing of the neck and lengthening of the spine as she asks the student to use inhibition to release his hip, knee and ankle joints. As his knees bend and he comes lower in space, he retains his length while balanced over his feet until he arrives at the chair.

✦The sitting student is neither slumping nor holding himself upright, but balanced on his sit-bones, breathing easily, and free and mobile in his upper body.