AT skills - an occupational asset
Work smarter
- Alexander Technique (AT) addresses one of the great unsolved problems of modern society: how to work smarter. Because we all need to work smarter if we don't want to work in a state of continual pain and discomfort. Unless you are a professional mattress tester, you probably work in an upright position (either standing or sitting).
- Only human beings, of all the animals on earth, spend most of their time in the upright. And it's a difficult posture to maintain, particularly in stillness. In response to this predicament, a great deal of ergonomic furniture is bought and sold every year with the promise of making work in the upright bearable. But for the most part, furniture will not change things very much. Or not enough. Because the equipment that is malfunctioning is not the furniture. We, ourselves, are the problem.
- If you spend many of your working hours in front of a computer, your arms and eyes are probably pulling you forward and downward. You hunch over, forget to take breaks, and forget to breathe. And the discomfort you feel affects the way you feel about your work.
- But there is a way to work smarter, and do better. When you're working hard, Alexander Technique (AT) can stop you from being hard on yourself. It can also help you enhance your performance at work. How? By making you more aware of the unnecessary tension and unhelpful postures you may be assuming unconsciously. Because AT was created to make upright posture work for us, not against us.
Don't specialize in suffering
- Many professionals, in all different kinds of specialized fields, find their routines leave them sore and stiff at the end of the day. Alexander Technique can be especially helpful to them. Certain callings are likely to provoke on-the-job distress because they require long hours in difficult postures.
- Dentists, surgeons, videographers, hair stylists and plumbers all have their own particular kinds of aches and pains. And concert musicians suffer for their art in a very literal sense.
Whatever you do professionally, Alexander Technique offers strategic alternatives for working smarter. Using AT, you can maintain mindfulness in activity – minimizing or eliminating pain and enhancing the quality of your performance on the job.