Beyond Pain Management: Effective Techniques for Lasting Relief (Part 2 - Posture)
Introduction: Focus on Feeling
Information about good posture is too often reduced to making shapes with your body, like the military man's posture with shoulders back.Good posture quite simply allows movement with the least amount of strain and damage possible. In the second part of this series on pain management techniques, instead of focusing on what good posture looks like, to help us get out of pain we shift the emphasis toward what good posture feels like.
When you recognise how stress impacts your body and how to undo this as explored in section one on mindset, you’re moving closer towards embodied ease. This is a state of relaxed alignment, where the body is balanced and tension-free. One of my coachees, Gary, captured this well after one of his sessions:
“Alexander Technique is like a moving meditation, a whole different way of thinking about how I move. ”
Through continuous postural adaptation to small movements, called postural tone, you achieve this dynamic balance. The Alexander Technique teaches you to make this postural tone more adaptable¹, finding the middle ground between holding your muscles too tightly (which leads to stiffness) and too loosely (which leads to collapse).
Imagine floating in a pool, a lake, a jacuzzi or floating in space, where your arms stay buoyant without effort—this is the essence of embodied ease.
Recognising Posture Habits
The first step in improving posture is recognising what you are doing in the moment. We often carry out daily activities without conscious awareness of how we hold our bodies. Whether sitting, standing, or working, recognising harmful habits like slouching or holding tension in certain areas is crucial. These are a combination of structure, awareness and sensations.Structure
When I was in constant, debilitating pain, nothing seemed to work. Every treatment I tried only scratched the surface. Many of us deal with unresolved injuries, sedentary lifestyles, or repetitive daily movements that disrupt your structural harmony, creating imbalances that contribute to pain.
At its core, posture is supported by a balanced fascial network, where muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones work in harmony. This dynamic system allows your body to adapt to gravity and function efficiently.
Studies on the Alexander Technique support² standing tall yet soft, aligning your spine in a way that feels both natural and supported. This means you’re not just easing tension in your neck and back, but also promoting a smoother flow of movement into other parts of your body like knees and shoulders.
“One to one lessons in the Alexander technique from registered teachers have long term benefits for patients with chronic back pain. Six lessons followed by exercise prescription were nearly as effective as 24 lessons.”
For those dealing with chronic pain, we will talk more in section four on complementary therapies about addressing structural imbalances through hands-on treatments like osteopathy, massage, or chiropractic care, complemented by self-care exercises such as foam rolling, which can help restore the body’s structure. Physiotherapy, restorative pilates and yoga, and the right other physical activity can all help change come along.
Awareness
Structural work alone often isn't enough. When an injury is longstanding, pain often stems from more than just the physical structure. Hands-on treatments may offer temporary relief, but the results don’t last because awareness hasn’t been integrated into the process. Awareness—or the lack of it—is key to why structural issues become problematic.
Imagine being deeply absorbed in an activity like writing, problem-solving, or binge-watching a show. Hours pass, and your body’s quiet signals for movement go unnoticed until discomfort becomes too much to ignore. By then, tension has accumulated, and your mind fixates on the pain, intensifying it.
In fact, the more you fixate on the pain, the more it grows. As pain science shows, emotional responses—stress, fear, anxiety—are closely intertwined with the brain’s pain pathways. Fears about the future, like “Will this get worse?” or daily stressors like work and bills, intensify both emotional strain and the physical experience of pain. The more you try to resist, the more the pain persists.
Sensations
Your sensory perceptions can be unreliable, and shaped by old habits and patterns. Think of it as fake news to your awareness. You often fail to notice the early signs of discomfort because your senses can deceive you.
It’s a bit like how you might stay in a hot shower until you step out and suddenly feel cold. You don’t notice how stiff your body has become after hours of inactivity until you try to move. Your body gets used to normal, and normal isn’t always natural or healthy.
The good news is that hurt does not necessarily mean harm. Pain science teaches us that the experience of pain can often be disconnected from actual physical damage. This is a powerful realisation because it empowers you to approach pain differently—not as something to fear, but as a signal you can work with, through awareness, movement, and self-care.
Awareness not attention is key to habit change
Before you can change a habit, you need to stop doing the old one. You know how frustrating it is when you go through a round of physical therapies, and it feels great for a while, but then... you're right back where you started? It’s like that sense of progress just slips through your fingers. Here’s the thing—before you can really make lasting changes, you need to break the old habits first.
I know, easier said than done. But stay with me.
The trick is to shift your awareness in a very particular way. When you become more conscious of how to do this, you start to have real choices about it. Without that, you’re just on autopilot, stuck in those same patterns of your structure and sensations, even if you don’t realise it. It’s like you’re running old software in the background, which is why the benefits of therapy don’t always "stick."
But there’s hope! This is where the Alexander Technique comes in—it’s all about creating that awareness. It’s not just paying attention to how you move; it’s about learning to feel the freedom to move differently. That’s when the magic happens. Suddenly, other physical therapies, start to work even better. You’re no longer undoing all that good work—you’re building on it.
It’s like finding the key to unlock your body’s full potential. It’s the freedom to change.
“Awareness, as I conceive it, is a general unfocused condition in which a person is wide awake and alert to whatever may be going on without being concentrated on anything in particular. Attention, on the other hand, is focused on some particular aspect in the field. It has been compared to a spotlight on a dark stage.”
The Three Fundamentals of Embodied Ease
These simple awareness exercises focus on improving posture and reducing pain by aligning your body and calming your mind. By enhancing spacious awareness, balance, and breath, you can release tension and find greater embodied ease throughout the day. Start by practising one after the other and then in time all at the same time in a unified field of awareness.
Imagine opening up your vision beyond the screen or the task in front of you, taking in the full space around you—height, width, and depth. This spacious awareness not only encourages better posture but also helps to melt away tension. By training your eyes and mind to expand your perception, you reactivate brain pathways for balance, reconnecting with your body’s systems like proprioception and inner-ear balance.
This expanded awareness creates a sense of openness and ease. It allows you to observe discomfort without getting consumed by it. By cultivating spacious awareness, you can hold both calmness and discomfort simultaneously, reducing the emotional intensity of pain and finding more ease in every moment.
Balancing
Balance is not about staying still; it’s about moving in harmony with gravity. When you're in balance, your body works efficiently, maintaining a gentle postural tone that supports you without effort. Think of it as tuning into your body sense—your internal awareness of where you are in space.
By combining spacious awareness with body sense, you achieve true balance. Instead of shrinking into yourself or collapsing, you inhabit your full height, width, and depth. Your weight is distributed evenly, and your body aligns—hips, shoulders, and head all working together to support you. This dynamic balance allows you to feel light, strong, and supported as you move through your day, even while sitting or typing.
Breathing
Your breath is the key to releasing tension and finding balance. Let your breath flow naturally, expanding your belly, ribcage, head, neck, and shoulders with each inhale. On the exhale, gently release any tightness.
As you let the breath "breathe you," notice how it softens your posture, dissolving unnecessary tension. By integrating your breath with awareness, you maintain a state of calm and balance, helping you move through your day with greater ease and comfort.
Orienting Towards Ease
Once you stabilise this awareness of seeing, balancing and breathing, you can better notice the more subtle internal signals of your body.
Being attuned to how you feel—both internally and externally—provides vital feedback that helps you make conscious adjustments to your posture. This process involves learning to care about and appreciate the comfort available in your body. Yes, there may still be pain, but there's also room for more ease and relief. By truly listening to your sensations, you can shift toward greater comfort.
As you cultivate this sensory awareness, you develop sensitivity, attunement, and responsiveness to your body. These qualities allow you to recognise and correct faulty perceptions that may be keeping you stuck in poor postural habits or contributing to your pain. The more you connect with this awareness, the easier it becomes to orient yourself toward ease, making movement and posture less about strain and more about balance and comfort.
Primary Control
Primary Control is a concept in the Alexander Technique, which refers to the relationship between your head and the rest of your body. This connection has a profound influence on your overall coordination and can play a significant role in managing pain.“Research in the British Medical Journal has shown that the Alexander Technique leads to an average 48% reduction in pain within just six sessions, and by 86% after 24 lessons.”
The head is designed to rebalance many times every second. When you fix your head in a static position—such as pulling it towards your screen—this rebalancing is disrupted, leading to increased tension, discomfort, and eventually, pain. Instead, you work to recalibrate the relationship between your head, neck, and back, reducing tension and promoting a lengthened supported spine.
The ideal state is one of free, dynamic balance, where your head moves forward and up, allowing for constant, natural rebalancing. By keeping your head in a fluid, supported position, rather than holding it rigidly, you reduce the strain on your body and lower the risk of pain.
This dynamic relationship between your head, neck, and back helps you maintain ease and prevent discomfort throughout the day, especially when performing repetitive tasks like typing.
Body mapping is the process of understanding and refining your internal perception of your body’s structure and how it moves. It involves becoming aware of the actual locations of joints, muscles, and bones, and how they coordinate to support balanced, pain-free movement.
In the context of embodied ease, body mapping helps you accurately sense and align your body, avoiding both stiffness and collapse. By improving your body map, you recalibrate your posture, ensuring that you are moving in a way that is both efficient and aligned with your body’s natural design. This precise awareness of your body’s structure helps you stay poised and ready for movement, minimising strain and discomfort.
How Quickly Can You Expect Results
Recovering a natural, effortless posture varies, but generally:Immediate Changes: Some people feel improvement in the first lesson, while others notice changes within a few weeks.
Consistency: Daily practice can accelerate progress, while less frequent practice may take longer.
Habits: Long-standing postural habits may take months to fully unwind.
Injuries/Stress: Recovery can take longer if physical or emotional issues are involved.
Overall, noticeable improvements can happen quickly, but full recovery may take several months to a year depending on the individual.
In the end, true postural transformation is about integration—of the body, mind, and senses. As you learn to move from a place of embodied ease, you reclaim your ready state to move, no longer constrained by pain or tension.
Moving Towards a Life Free From Pain
In the next part of this series, we will explore what Mindful Movement looks like in practice. For now, the most important takeaway is this: you always have the opportunity to cultivate ease in your body and your mind. This is the path to truly feeling a sense of agency and moving towards a life free from pain. As always if you’d like help on your pain recovery journey, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me about how I can support you with a personalised Pain Recovery Plan and Coaching.
REFERENCES
- Cacciatore TW, Gurfinkel VS, Horak FB, Cordo PJ, Ames KE;'Increased dynamic regulation of postural tone through Alexander Technique training' | (The Change Companies) | https://alexandertechnique.co.uk/research/increased-dynamic-regulation-postural-tone-through-alexander-technique-training, Human Movement Science 2011 Feb;30(1):74-89 | accessed: 26th September 2024
- Preece, S. J., Jones, R. K., Brown, C. A., Cacciatore, T. W., & Jones, A. K. (2016). Reductions in co-contraction following neuromuscular re-education in people with knee osteoarthritis. BMC musculoskeletal disorders, 17, 1-12.
Little, P., Lewith, G., Webley, F., Evans, M., Beattie, A., Middleton, K., … & Sharp, D. (2008). Randomised controlled trial of Alexander technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain. BMJ 2008;337:a2656
MacPherson, H., Tilbrook, H., Richmond, S., Woodman, J., Ballard, K., Atkin, K., … & Watt, I. (2015). Alexander technique lessons or acupuncture sessions for persons with chronic neck pain: a randomized trial. Annals of internal medicine, 163(9), 653-662.
