The problem with trying
F.M. Alexander — “Trying is only emphasising the thing we already know”
We live in a culture that tells us that if we aren’t slogging away, straining, or constantly improving ourselves, we are failing.
So, when we try to improve our health, our posture, or our mental state, we apply that same mindset and willpower. We try so hard to relax. We try so hard to sit right. We try so hard to meet expectations in whatever form they arise.
However, trying can:
Reinforce our stiffening habits
When we "try" to do something, our brain sends a signal to our muscles to contract. We literally tense up.
Trigger our threat response
Trying hard feels like a battle. Our jaw clenches, our breath shallows, our focus narrows, and our field of awareness narrows (forcing our muscles into a state of tension and bracing). Our body registers this high effort as stress and a low-grade fight-or-flight state, an ancient, hardwired survival reflex called the Startle Pattern.
The first physical reaction to any threat (physical or emotional) is the tightening of the neck muscles. This pulls the head backwards and downwards onto the spine. It is an evolutionary reflex designed to protect our throat and jugular vein from a predator. We stay anxious because our compressed neck is physically telling our brain to remain anxious.
Why does this matter?
Once the head is pulled down into the neck, the spine either stiffens into a rigid brace or collapses into a heavy slouch. This squeezes the ribcage, compresses the lungs, and forces short, shallow chest breathing, distorts the curves of the spine, compresses our joints and restricts the movement of our limbs.
Many of us get so habituated to this way of being that it feels totally normal, and we have no awareness of it at all. However, these unconscious patterns of muscular tension can cause damage to our musculo-skeletal system and over time can result in pain, stress and mental tension.
How can the Alexander Technique help?
The Alexander Technique enables us to get more sensitised to when we are over-efforting. We begin to notice when mental determination or stress turns into physical tension—such as tightening our neck, and our jaw when focusing, gripping a pen too hard, or bracing ourselves to meet a deadline or expectation or to do something we don’t really want to do. We start to develop a heightened state of awareness whereby we can interrupt our habitual, over-strained muscular patterns and learn to substitute something less strained and more natural – even in more difficult circumstances.
Trying less is not lazy. It is highly intelligent. With less energy wasted in excessive muscular tension, we can actually be more efficient and operate with greater mental clarity. We cannot think clearly or breathe properly if our level of muscular tension is communicating to our body that stress is afoot.
The bear trap of trying to release muscle tension
In The Voice Book by Michael McCallion, he described that if you connect a muscle to a bio-feedback device and you tell that muscle to relax, you will see the machine register an increase of tension. This happens because as soon as you draw attention to a muscle it tightens; the muscle doesn’t have an active releaser, only an active doer. The person connected to the bio-feedback machine in trying to relax the muscles is trying to do something with it and that is why the muscle tenses. This of course illustrates the very same point about the physical effects of trying. After watching the needle on the dial a couple of times, he realises that he can’t relax the muscle directly and he makes, as it were, a translation of the thought ‘muscle relax’ and does something else which produces the relax effect. What he does is stop tightening the muscle. In other words, to achieve the desired effect he had to subtract something rather than do something additional to what he is already doing.
This is not something we know automatically; we have to learn it and experiment with it a bit. However, the good news is that it gets easier with practice - and with it can come feeling better within ourselves.
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