An ongoing dialogue in which I attempt to answer FAQs for those curious about this work while digging deeper into my own knowledge and understanding of it.
How does one start learning this work?
The initial goal when starting to train is to learn how to quiet down our habitual patterns of tension and mental busyness, restore some length to the postural system, and experience what it means for the system to integrate and work as a unified whole.
Often we first begin our self-study by using a position of mechanical advantage, which is a position that offers support to our bones in such a way that our muscles don’t have to work to keep us upright, but have the opportunity to let go into length between their bony attachments.
When doing this work we have to practice staying aware of our surroundings while simultaneously being aware of ourselves, and by practicing this state of attention in a position such as semi-supine we lay the foundation for doing more advanced work using our awareness and thinking to restore muscle length and coordination.
How does this work relate to meditation practices?
Many meditative traditions can be framed as disciplines in which you use your thinking, awareness, and perception in structured ways that over time can allow you to quiet down nervous mental activity and gain greater awareness of and conscious control over your habits of mind and overall mental state. This work is similar, but relates not only to the mind but to the body, and the inseparable nature of mental activity with muscular tone, activity, and postural support. As such the practice of this discipline results in greater awareness and control over muscular habits and postural coordination, a quieting of both mental and muscular overactivity, and a restored overall state of functioning of the reflexive system of postural support.
Is this work therapeutic, educational, or both?
This work is therapeutic in the sense that it helps to resolve unhealthy conditions and chronic pain that are the result of poor coordination, habitually tight muscle tissue, and larger patterns of tightness or collapse. It is educational in the sense that in order to improve your state of function and coordination independently, and in order to maintain this within skilled movement and daily activities, you must engage in meaningful self-study, become skilled in a variety of competencies, and develop a basic theoretical understanding of what you’re doing and why.
In brief, what is psycho-physical education?
Psycho-physical education is a field of study that explores the inseparable nature of body and mind and consequently how our thinking, awareness, and attention are crucial factors within our seemingly physical habits and actions, and how by working with this more holistic model of the human system we can re-establish the automatic functioning of the postural reflex system at a conscious level.
It is also one way of referring to this work that I find more representative of the nature of it as a discipline and a broad field of investigation into human reaction and physiology, compared to the very narrow-sounding “Alexander Technique”.