"Inhibiting the Habit"

(originally published on ReWire Me in 2013.)

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Nelson (not his real name) is a musician, and was a lifelong smoker who had tried unsuccessfully to quit many times. He’s also struggled with a tendency to overeat, along with some attendant blood sugar issues. He had tried so many diets that he said he was pretty sure he could write a book about nutrition. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what to do to improve his life; he just couldn’t find it in himself to develop the new habits that would really effect change.

And then, last summer, he had neck surgery for an old injury, and as part of his rehabilitation, a friend suggested the Alexander technique. Today, “Nothing I have ever done has had such a global impact on my health. It is on the order of learning to read,” Nelson said. “I learned to inhibit my habits.”

Inhibiting the habit is a bit of Alexander Technique jargon that bears explaining. The word “inhibition” has taken on some pretty negative connotations, especially since the freewheeling 1960s. But in terms of our old, bad habits, we want to inhibit them.

  The Alexander Technique was developed in the 1890s in Australia by F. M. Alexander, a professional reciter who had lost his voice. Through a lengthy course of trial and error, Alexander discovered some unconscious habits in his body, breath, and mind that were causing him to inhale hoarsely and tighten his neck, affecting his vocal production. As he unwound his habits, over time his voice recovered. His teaching methods continued to evolve over the course of his life, and the scope of the Technique has widened. In addition to being a great method for reducing chronic pain, it is in the curricula of many prestigious arts training programs. Most actors have studied it, as well as violinists, opera singers—the list is long.

The Alexander technique is definitely great for the voice, for posture, for unraveling old habits. But its effect isn’t merely physical. We become aware, for example, of how we inhale—and how we might direct ourselves to create new habits around how we breathe. Or stand. Or move. Or think.

This might be a new concept for some: that a person can direct his or herself. If “I” tell my “self” to lift my arm in a certain way, or to relax my neck, or to notice my sensations after I’ve told myself to inhale, who exactly is doing the telling?  

If we’re paying attention, we all have an inner voice. The craving for a sandwich, for example, is part of it; so is the series of decisions around making it (turkey or peanut butter? Whole or half?); and so is the self-punishment (the chastisement if we eat too much of it, or drop it on the floor). It may not speak in whole sentences, but your inner voice is powerful—so learning to cue yourself is a great tool that can be used to break habits, and to develop new ones.

This can work on a minute level. If I’m sitting down, and I get the impulse to stand up, it can happen quickly—suddenly I’m out of the chair, and maybe I feel an old injury act up in my back, and I go through my day unconsciously compensating for my old habitual tensions. But if I can develop a process of attentiveness in my actions, my whole self becomes more integrated.

Here’s what it might look like: I can train myself to become aware of my impulse to stand—begin to notice my tension patterns before I’ve even gotten out of the chair—slow down my thinking to the point that I feel myself begin to tighten—ask myself not to (inhibiting the habit of tension once I’ve caught it)—ask myself for an easy neck and a wide, long back—and get out of the chair without giving over to my old tension patterns. This thought process doesn’t have to take longer than a breath, and because of that moment I’m less at the mercy of my old back injury.

  Of course, this is easier to practice with a teacher. A large component of a lesson is the teacher guiding you and giving you feedback gently with their hands and their voice. More often than not in an Alexander Technique lesson, the emphasis will be on the relationship between the skull and spine, where most adult humans carry excess tension—the release of which has a global effect on the body.

Of his experience with the Alexander Technique, Nelson reported, “Before, I was ignorant of my body except for its injury and how it felt bad. Now, as I’ve learned to release some old patterns, my balance is better, I have more energy, I feel lighter and I carry myself differently, and people I haven’t seen in a while notice right away.”

But for Nelson, and for many practitioners, the profound awareness the Alexander Technique began to awaken in him was not limited to the physical realm. It gave him access to greater emotional awareness as well, which was what really let him make headway in changing some ingrained habits around eating and smoking.

  “I began to watch myself smoking,” he explained. “Was I bringing my head to the cigarette, or the cigarette to my head?” And as he became more aware of what his body was doing, he was increasingly attuned to his sensations as well. “Suddenly I could feel the effects of what I was doing to my body.” His craving for cigarettes abated over the course of two months. “It didn’t taste good any more, but it also didn’t feel good.”

He had a similar set of experiences around food. “I became aware of a level of satiety, as I got more in tune with my body. The Alexander Technique helped me make a connection between my mind and my body. Now, there’s a different quality to the cue to eat. I’m no longer eating from an emotional place.”

Whatever F. M. Alexander’s intentions were when he started experimenting with his own habits of voice, he unlocked a set of distinctions that let us analyze how it is that we learn anything. Creating a new, efficient, well-coordinated habit is at the heart of gathering new skill, whether it’s a new way to sit or stand, or recite, or play the violin, or type, or eat. Our degree of awareness of how we use ourselves is directly linked to the minute choices we make in every moment of our lives, and attending to them—rather than surrendering to unconscious habits—improves those choices exponentially.