Expert: Stephen Cooper - 4/29/2009

Question
QUESTION: I have a website on bipolar disorder. I want to include a section on alternative medicine/holistic awareness. Where should I look to find professional and licensed individuals willing to propagate that section with valuable information for visitors while giving their own website, or contact information, or book, etc.

ANSWER: I am a teacher of the Alexander Technique. You are welcome to add details of my three main websites - www.hatso.com , www.alexcentre.com and www.therapylondon.co.uk - to your weblinks and if you send me details of your website I will include reciprocal links. Insofar as the Alexander Technique can help with bipolar disorder, you might also list my UK based professional association - www.stat.org.uk - and also the most comprehensive worldwide site on the AT which is www.alexandertechnique.com

Stephen Cooper

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: My site is brand new. It describes conventional treatment methods. I am adding a new section on alternative methods to heal bipolar symptoms. Anything that creates more peace in the body, mind or spirit will help balance moods in bipolar people. There are many alternative/healthy lifestyle choices that are effective. I'm sure your technique creates more self awareness, joint health and as a result encourages more peace of mind.
If you could provide maybe 400 to 600 of words describing your service and how it helps people, I can include it in my new "alternative methods" section. You can cut and paste parts on your site. I can also custom design your space. www.holisticbetter.com  

Answer
What is the Alexander Technique?
Some people move with grace and ease and seem to have good posture, freedom of movement and general well-being. Some of us, on the other hand, use ourselves very badly - collapsing, tensing, distorting ourselves in almost every moment of our lives.
We could call this ‘poor use’. Such poor use is a cause of much of our physical and mental unease. The Alexander Technique helps us to understand and change such bad habits and restore our natural good use.
The Alexander Technique improves the way we use ourselves in everyday activity. Unconsciously acquired habits in movements such as standing, walking or sitting distort the body and interfere with its natural functioning. We respond to stimuli by overtensing and/or collapsing - literally winding ourselves up (or down!). This 'mis-use' results in aches, pains, tension, fatigue or simply in feeling ill-at-ease in one's body. The Technique helps us to prevent these unnecessary reaction/habit patterns and to restore our natural 'good use' of ourselves.
The Alexander Technique is not a quick fix. It is a way of learning, and a way of changing, and these things take time and application.
The Alexander Technique can help you, and can help anyone who is willing to learn.
How can it help, and how much can it help?  This will be different for every individual. This is because the technique helps us to look at and understand the way that we use ourselves. Some people use themselves well, but most people use themselves badly, creating huge yet unnecessary strains and tensions throughout their bodies.
Watch the way that most people sit down, and think about the tension that this simple act causes in their necks and backs. Think about the way that you are sitting now.  Pain, illness or unfitness are often simply the result of the harmful way in which a person uses herself or himself.  With the Alexander Technique you will learn to use yourself well.
Back pain, neck pain and all other sorts of muscular and joint pain can obviously be caused by bad use, but many other conditions also have more to do with the way that we are using ourselves than with any other cause - and learning to use ourselves better is often more effective than any other cure.
Learn by working one-to-one with a good teacher. The teacher can communicate in words and through direction with his or her hands.
The experience can be a revelation, giving an immediate sense of well-being and a promise of consistent improvement to follow.
Recent research, published in the British Medical Journal in August 2008, has established that the Alexander Technique is effective (and cost-effective) in the treatment of chronic back pain.
Patients receiving 6 Alexander lessons were reporting, a year after the lessons, a drop of days per month in pain from 21 to 11. Patients receiving 24 lessons fared even better, reporting on average a fall from 21 days in pain to 3 days in pain. The control group showed no improvement.
A second article, containing an economic evaluation of this randomised controlled trial, has just been published in the bmj (December 08).