I am sometimes asked to run a series of workshops in the Alexander Technique for M.E./CFS sufferers by the Irish ME Trust. While researching the topic, I came across an article in an old edition of ‘Interaction’ , no.21 Summer 1996. The client, Helen McCorry, describes how she thought applying the Alexander Technique helped her.
The Alexander Technique and CFS
by Helen C McCorry and Andrea McLaughlin
Part 1 The Pupil’s View
I first had Alexander lessons about four years ago, when I was suffering from pains and stiffness in my neck and shoulders. I found the technique very helpful, and my teacher was one of the first people to spot my breathing difficulties.
The Alexander technique enables you to use your body, your skeleton and muscles, in the way which puts least stress on them. Energy is released and tensions don’t accumulate. It then also releases tensions which may have built up in the mind and one is able to deal with things which previously seemed insurmountable.
The link between body and mind is opened up and the communication is very beneficial to both, providing a calming and strengthening effect. Having got myself very wound up, hunched over my keyboard with my chin on my chest. I would have an Alexander session and then simply float over the park to the bus stop: one step led to the next with the most fluid and irresistible dynamic, and one realised what a well-designed mechanism the body is when given the chance.
The Alexander way of climbing stairs, where you think of lifting your knees, not your feet, had me gliding smugly up the stairs to my office and I have found it helpful when I have been very weak with CFS.
I was diagnosed as having CFS in the middle of 1995, although I then realized that I had slowly been accumulating symptoms for about three or four years. I was also hyperventilating quite severely and between being so weak that sometimes I could not leave the flat, and being hardly able to breathe for the pains in my chest, I was in a very frightened and helpless state.
The consultant who diagnosed me emphasized the importance of relaxation as well as rest and I remembered how helpful and energizing I had found the Alexander technique before.
I tracked down a teacher, my original one having moved away, and went for my first session. At that time, Andrea had no experience of CFS and our preliminary chat consisted mostly of my trying to explain a) how it felt, b) what was probably going on and c) how it affected my muscles. I explained that since I couldn’t stand for any length of time, we wouldn’t be able to do any work initially with my back and posture. I tried to describe the awful sensation of unwieldy weakness which I had, where my joints seemed puffed up and semi-mobile, and how I felt like a great barrage balloon with unpredictable balance problems. I tried to give my understanding of how even when I was at rest, my muscles were metabolising as if I were tap-dancing. Andrea bore with all this patiently, although like many people meeting a CFS sufferer for the first time, she probably wondered just how much of it was in my muscles and how much in my head.
At the first session I lay on the table and Andrea worked her way around my limbs. Any improvement I expected to be very gradual and cumulative. However, when I rolled to the edge of the table and carefully got to my feet I was amazed at how much of the barrage-balloon feeling had gone, how much lighter I felt. No more feeling like Michelin woman. The sensation of gross heaviness which had been building up as I had become weaker and weaker over two or three years, disappeared that afternoon and hasn’t returned. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I felt stronger, certainly I didn’t feel so weak.
I have had another Alexander lesson every two or three weeks since then. While I was at my weakest, the effect was most noticeable; my body felt lighter and so the effort of moving around was correspondingly less. Sometimes I was even able to walk without my stick for a little while. As I have become stronger, I am less aware of this effect, presumably because I am not so near the end of my physical tether all the time. Between lessons, I have never done as much as I intended to do: the Rip Van Winkle effect of CFS has meant that the days drift by and I am just about to get round to lying with my back properly stretched when I realize it’s the day for my next lesson. The benefits do last much longer than just the day of the lesson in that I still have the ability to climb stairs with the minimum effort, to uncoil from the sofa without a lot of huffing and puffing and generally to move around in ways which put less stress on me. When I first resumed the lessons, I was sleeping sitting up because my breathing was so bad and my chest so painful and tight, but Andrea was able to help me find more comfortable ways of dealing with these problems. That, combined with physiotherapy for the hyperventilation, has meant that I am now better than I have been for a long time.
For me it has been an advantage that the lessons were one-to-one and were given in a warm, calm atmosphere where I knew I would not be asked to perform beyond my current level of ability. I don’t think I would have been able to cope with a group activity, and certainly not with a group of strangers who might have had unrealistic expectations of me.
I have had no muscle pain while I have been ill, and very little joint pain, so I cannot tell whether the technique is helpful for these symptoms.
I am now strong enough to do some sitting work at the end of each session. My legs are much stronger than they were six months ago but I am anxious not to do too much too soon and will continue to take things gently for some time. I still use a walking stick but expect to be able to give it up in the next month – I sometimes don’t need it when I first go out, but am glad of it on my return.
While I have been weak, however, I have found that the Alexander Technique has helped me by making me feel lighter and therefore able to move more freely, and by giving me approaches which enable me to do things I have to do at least cost to my sadly reduced strength.