Maximizing Our Personal Energy

All living things need energy to function; the ability to find, store and utilize energy is an essential survival skill.  But the fundamental importance of energy extends well beyond the bare minimum of survival itself.  The manner in which energy is used plays a major role in shaping the quality of life of each plant and animal.  Put another way, the energy efficiency of each living organism largely determines the well being and effectiveness of that organism.  Because of this fact, every living thing has a very strong incentive to maximize its personal energy efficiency.

These basic principles certainly apply to all human beings.  Without energy, we would be inert — more vegetable than human — we couldn’t even think, let alone take action or decline to act.  Given the fundamental importance of energy to our lives, we would be well advised to learn to use our energy as wisely as possible.  This is especially true as we age and maximizing our personal energy takes on greater importance than in our youth.

We all know through personal experience that our supply of energy is limited.  Noticing this, most of us can’t resist squeezing a little more activity out of a little less energy.  And because our activity is bound up with our egos, a lack of activity due to a lack of energy often leaves us dissatisfied.  Less energy equals less activity, and less activity in our culture is not an ego booster.  For people working in many professions, a lack of activity results in a lower quality of life.  This raises an important question: how can we improve our quality of life by utilizing our personal energy as efficiently as possible?  Fortunately, the Alexander Technique provides a clear answer to this question.

Redefining Efficiency to Focus on Energy, Not Speed

When people hear the word “efficiency,” they automatically define it as “do more, more quickly.”  Doing more – whether through accelerated activity or multitasking – receives a great deal of approval in our culture.  But if we become too depleted to actually do all of the “more” we want to do, then doing more becomes self defeating.  We’ve wasted precious energy and hit the proverbial wall.

The Alexander Technique defines efficiency quite differently from our cultural norm.  In Alexander work, we pay much more attention to the quality of our activity than its quantity.  We define “efficiency” as using the least amount of energy possible to perform a given action.  This may sound like a prescription for laziness, but that is not at all the case.  In fact, the Alexander concept of efficiency is based on a sophisticated understanding of the interplay between our structure, our posture and gravity.  A high-quality action wastes very little energy because our design, posture and gravity are working harmoniously together.

Interfering with Ourselves…

Our basic human design is a marvel of natural engineering.  Human beings have evolved to become one of the very few animals able to walk upright on two legs.  And because we walk upright on two legs, our arms are endowed with remarkable freedom, versatility and skill.  Without bipedal locomotion, these words would never have been written, nor would they ever have been read.

But our upright posture is highly complex and requires a level of coordination many people struggle to maintain.  Walking is not the simple activity people believe it to be, and many habits can interfere with proficient walking.  Those habits include leading our walking with the wrong part of our bodies, confusing our legs with our torso, and walking much more heavily than we need to.  But the biggest habit that interferes with our walking is not paying the slightest attention to our walking.

…and Why We Do It

A keen observer of human beings will notice an abundance of inefficient action in the world today.  Most people don’t realize it, but they waste lots of energy while sitting, standing and walking.  How can this possibly be true?  How do we waste energy performing such “simple” activities while remaining unaware of our tendency to interfere with those activities?

We learn to sit, stand and walk within the first two years of our lives.  Once we’ve learned these basic activities, most of us don’t pay attention to the way we perform them.  We don’t even realize their importance in determining our energy balance as a whole.  We just assume we “know how to walk,” for example, but that isn’t a valid assumption.  In fact, we waste significant amounts of energy when we walk.  Our inefficient way of walking feels right to us, so we don’t even suspect that our habits are leading us astray.  If we want to maximize our personal energy, we need to look very closely at what we are doing and think differently about it.

How We Interfere With Walking:  Two Examples

What, exactly, are the habits that prevent us from maximizing our personal energy?  To pick just one example, many people push their pelvis forward together with their legs while walking.  This habit arches the low back uncomfortably, and creates strain by throwing the torso backwards at the same time.  The torso must then be stabilized, requiring a lot of energy.  On top of that, the stabilizing induces muscular tension in the legs that makes walking much more laborious than would be the case with proper balance.  This imbalanced walking occurs because we spend all day sitting and misunderstand how the body is constructed.

Another counterproductive habit is throwing lots of weight into the feet while walking.  Almost anyone living in an apartment building will have noticed this habit, thanks to their upstairs neighbors.  People literally stomp around their homes and offices as if they were pressing down grapes into wine.  But there is no wine to be gotten from this oppressive stomping — only wasted energy with sore ankles, calloused feet and achy knees.

Surprisingly, these bodily atrocities feel “right” to those committing them; they are so accustomed to the way their habits feel that don’t notice their true cost.  Eventually, though, the imbalances and strain caused by interference with healthy walking will often cause back and/or leg pain.  It’s the pain that finally jolts us into some awareness of our problem, prompting us to seek relief by taking Alexander Technique lessons.

Learning to Lose Unhelpful Habits

Alexander Technique teachers are experts at identifying inefficient movement patterns that waste energy, hinder mobility and cause pain.  Students learn which patterns to avoid, and why they should avoid them.  Meanwhile, students experience new ways of moving that support their well being and that are easier than those to which they are accustomed.  These new ways may feel strange – even wrong – because they are so outside of habit.  This encourages students to rely on their thinking more than their faulty senses to guide their new ways of moving.  Students learn to think and choose their movements for themselves, providing them with a sense of confidence, pleasure and freedom.

If we want to find greater satisfaction in our lives, then we need to make thoughtful choices that maximize our personal energy so that we can comfortably do what we really wish to do.  This is particularly true as we age and energy becomes more scarce and valuable.

There is a lot to learn – and unlearn – in an Alexander Technique lesson.  Alexander Technique teachers work with students according to a simple and powerful set of principles:

• learn what’s going wrong in the student’s habitual movements (awareness);
• learn to stop doing the wrong thing (inhibition); and
• learn to apply constructive thinking to make well-balanced, easy and comfortable movement choices (direction).

You can learn these principles and experience the freedom and ease of the Alexander Technique.  Why not take an Alexander lesson today?