Getting help with chronic lower back pain with the Alexander Technique

Chronic lower back pain is certainly difficult to live with. You are not necessarily sure why you get it or even exactly what makes it more painful nevertheless it continues returning.

Your doctor has given you various assessments and scans and there’s not much obviously wrong with your back - but it still bothers you!

You may have tried physiotherapy however the exercises are painful and hard to keep up. You really feel you can’t keep using pain killers. You may try a chiropractor or even an osteopath who gives back pain relief however the back pain comes back eventually.

How can this be? Can it be that there are things you are doing that are causing the backache?

Think you are spending a long time sitting down at a computer? Quite possibly both sitting and standing is painful and you feel like your posture could possibly be improved but you do not know what to do about it?

What’s most probably taking place is that you simply are making too much effort to complete daily activities that is generating muscular tension. Many people actually produce an excessive amount of effort to accomplish even the simplest of things without even realising it.

Too much muscular effort is unproductive and pulls your whole body out of alignment, takes you off balance and particularly tightens up your lower back. This is often the reason why treatments don’t have an enduring effect, unless you modify the way you do everyday activities like sitting, standing and walking.

It is easy to tighten up but just how simple is it stop tightening?

The solution for a lot of people is the Alexander Technique. It's a straightforward but sophisticated way that one can discover from a qualified teacher.

Usually it has been utilised for the previous hundred years by musicians, actors and sports professionals to increase their performance but nowadays more people are enjoying the benefits.

It shows you methods to do everything with much less effort, far more comfort and freedom.

It is unique because it recognises your own personal habits of muscular tension. An Alexander Technique teacher shows you the way to unlearn these bad habits of tightening and stiffening your body.

You can learn to move with expansion and release as opposed to tensing and contraction. After you have learnt the fundamentals you have a skill for all of your life - a refined method of carrying out anything you choose, using poise and skill.

In contrast to a great many other back pain solutions the Alexander Technique has been scientifically verified. A significant trial, backed by the NHS, has been published in the British Medical Journal in 2008. It demonstrated the effectiveness of Alexander Technique lessons in relieving chronic lower back pain compared with exercise and massage.

In the United Kingdom ensure your teacher is a member of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT). They'll have completed the required three year training program.

Alexander Technique and back pain help in London