Work smarter | Alexander Technique New York | BetteratBeing
Work smarter, not harder
- We all need to work smarter if we don't want to work in a state of continual pain and discomfort. And Alexander Technique (AT) is the perfect partner for better performance and workplace comfort, safety and sanity.
- Most jobs involve upright activities (either standing or sitting). Being upright for extended periods of time is physically challenging, especially in stillness. So you are already working hard just maintaining a standing or seated posture—before you even begin doing the work you are being paid for.
- In response to workplace pain, fatigue and repetitive stress, a great deal of ergonomic furniture is sold every year to employers (and employees) striving to make work in the upright bearable. But for the most part, furniture will not change things very much. Because the equipment that is malfunctioning is not just the furniture. It's our selves. How we do what we do is 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 it doesn't have to be this way.
- When you're working hard, Alexander Technique (AT) can stop you from being hard on yourself. It can also help you enhance your performance on the job. How? By making you more aware of the unnecessary tension and unhelpful postures you may be assuming unconsciously and teaching you how to support yourself more efficiently for healthful, well-coordinated movement. Because AT was created to make upright posture work for us, not against us.
Don't specialize in suffering
- Certain callings are likely to provoke on-the-job distress because they require long hours in unusually difficult postures that leave many different types of professionals them sore and stiff at the end of the day. 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.
- Alexander Technique can be especially helpful to people in these and many other particularly challenging lines of work. Even though the specific activities involved differ widely, specialists can use what they learn in Alexander Technique lessons to adapt the underlying principles of good upright self-use to each task, in ways that improve their work life immeasurably.
- 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 experience at work.