The Alexander Technique and Sleep     

Breathing means life.  It is an essential function of the body which, most of the time, happens automatically but over which we can have control.   We can choose to hold our breath, for instance, in order to avoid taking in thick smoke or obnoxious fumes.  We should normally be breathing through the nose, since this allows the air to be warmed and filtered before it enters the lungs but, if we have a heavy cold, we can still breathe through the mouth.  In addition, there are different movements which can be brought into play in the process of taking a breath. 

Normal breathing combines movement in the ribs and diaphragm but this is varied according to our position.  Try leaning forward, right over, and as the movement of your diaphragm is restricted in front, so the ribs move more at the sides and back.  If the ribs and diaphragm are severely restricted then the muscles of the neck can still raise and lower the chest.  This type of breathing is often seen in asthmatics.

 Although we can control our breathing it is far better that we don’t.  Many people interfere with their breathing without realising it.  You may find yourself holding your breath as you concentrate, or you may have learned to breathe in a particular way as a part of using your voice to sing or act, or in playing a wind instrument.  Most of us will have done some singing at school, probably from a young age where we may have learned to begin by “taking a deep breath”.  Often this involves lifting or depressing the chest, tensing the shoulders, tilting back the head and sucking or gasping in air, none of which actually helps us to breathe!  Someone with this way of breathing who was required to use their voice in their career (a teacher, lecturer, singer or actor, say) may eventually suffer vocal difficulties.

 This is how the Alexander Technique came about, when actor Frederick Matthias Alexander kept losing his voice during performances.  Using mirrors to see exactly what he was doing, he observed that in the act of projecting his voice he tilted his head back, depressed his larynx and gasped in his breath.  In addition, he noticed patterns of tension throughout his body which resulted in an overall shortening of himself.  He realised that the patterns of tension were causing his voice problem and, eventually, he was able to break these habits.  As his Technique became better known he was called “the breathing man”.  He wrote that “It is not that a person breathes badly, but that he is badly co-ordinated”.  We need to see breathing in the context of the whole person - their posture, patterns of tension and way of being.

 Patterns of tension can distort the structure of the body.  Muscles space out the bones of the skeleton and, if shortened through excessive tension or lack of tone, can significantly decrease the space available for breathing.  The ribcage should be springy and elastic, but may end up rigid and lacking the flexibility to allow free and full breaths.  Poor posture, especially when sitting, often involves collapsing the chest and shoulders forward and down, which squashes the abdomen and restricts expansion of the ribs.  So, even when breathing difficulties have a medical cause, attention to posture can make a difference.

In the Alexander Technique we see that breathing improves as the pupil changes their psycho-physical habits.  Breathing more freely is a by-product of working on the whole self.