Category Archives: first steps

The Alexander Technique, Fibromyalgia And Cfs: Implementing The Four Concepts: Part 3

Alexander’s 4 concepts of good use: 1. Allow your neck to release so that your head can balance forward and up 2. Allow your torso to release into length and width 3. Allow your legs to release away from your pelvis 4. Allow your shoulders to release out to the sides What exactly do we mean by release? Try this little exercise while you are reading this article. Pick up a cup as though you are going to drink from it. Hold the cup close to your mouth and release as much tension from your neck, shoulder and raised arm as possible without actually moving the cup. Can you feel the tension releasing? If so, and the cup is still there then it can be seen that any extra tension you had before “the act of release” was in fact totally unnecessary. You were still doing enough work for the cup to remain in position. The muscles were not “relaxed” because this implies that they are doing no work at all, and this obviously cannot be the case as the cup remained in situ. Similarly you can apply these techniques whilst sitting at your desk working. Sit at your desk and write something that is not especially demanding. As you write, think of releasing the tension in your neck and shoulders. Feel how your shoulders drop as you release. Try to feel the tiredness evaporating along with the tension. Notice how you are holding your pen, can you grip it and write with less tension in the fingers? you should find that you can. While you are still writing, notice any extra tension in your legs and feet, consciously release these with your feet on the floor with ankles crossed. At first, as soon as you think about something other than releasing the tension, notice how the tension actually returns. Do not let yourself be discouraged as your body will quickly learn to stay in a state of reduced tension as it will innately “feel” that it is a more attractive state for it to be in. Some people like to think of tension as “noise” and releasing as “quieting” that noise. The first two concepts of good use are considered to be interdependent. An effect of the combination of these 2 concepts is that they encourage you to maintain length in your spine. Alexander proposed that the spine, being a curved and flexible structure, can either be posturally compressed which is obviously harmful, or lengthened, which is beneficial. Concept 1: Allow your neck to release so your head can balance forward and up. The well being of the spine depends ultimately upon correct head balance. When your neck muscles are held tight your head presses down on your neck and compresses the entire spine. Therefore it can be seen that you have to first eliminate the incorrect use of your head before you can practice Concept 2, the lengthening of the spine. Head forward and up; You allow this to happen by freeing and releasing your neck muscles enabling your head to balance and poise easily on the top of your neck. In accomplishing Concept 1 we need to understand and feel the difference between 2 bipolar positions namely; – head “back and down” – head “forward and up” Place a hand gently on the back of the neck with your little finger under your head. Now tighten the musculature under your hand. Note how the curve in your neck changes and the back of your head comes closer to the bottom of your neck. This position is “back and down”. Now release the tension in your neck muscles so the head actually rotates forward. Your face will lower slightly, but the overall effect is that your head will ease up off your neck; your neck will simultaneously lengthen as it is no longer compressed. This position is “forward and up” Concept 2: Allow your torso to release into length and width . When you sit in a slumped posture the actual distance between the top of your head and the bottom of the pelvis is decreased. The spine is actually being compressed. Similarly if you sit up straight as you might be ordered to at school with your lower back very arched. The torso is again compressed. If you sit in such a way that normal curves in your spine are maintained with your torso muscles working only so much as to keep you upright, your torso will achieve its proper functional length. Torso widening is a similar concept to torso lengthening. To prevent “back arching” think of your lower back widening as your release muscle tension. Similarly with the shoulders, to avoid shoulder rounding think of widening across the front of your torso. Pulling the 2 concepts together: Sitting without Back Support A good training exercise combining the first two concepts is to practice sitting correctly without back support. This will be uncomfortable at first, like anything worth doing in life the Alexander Technique takes time and patience to master, and then more time still, for your body to build the endurance it needs to remain lengthened after years of incorrect use, muscular atrophy and in some cases a degree of ligamental shortening. Sit on a firm chair close to the edge. Place both feet on the floor about 12 inches apart. You may initially be tempted to slump, but do not give in. Think of your head leading up and your torso lengthening and widening as you “think” your back muscles into adopting their true spinal length. To determine when you are sitting correctly, the sitting bones, “ischial tuberosities”, 2 bony prominences at the very base of the pelvis will be pointing directly downwards into the seat of your chair. If you are slumping they will move forward, if you are overarching they will lift off the chair. As I talked about in my first article Alexander proposes that we are largely victims of the society we have created for ourselves. As humans we have evolved a beautiful upright posture over millions of years. But, as in many walks of modern life, as a species we have grasped defeat from the jaws of victory by designing furniture that encourages us to simply collapse into it, and also by granting ourselves the luxury of thinking it is fashionable to adopt chronic incorrect posture as the habitual norm. The skeletal muscles work in opposing partnership with each other. Take for example sitting with your torso fully lengthened and widened. All the pairs of muscles surrounding the torso do their job in a balanced efficient way. The muscles are working in equilibrium. In the same fashion, when you slump in your so called “comfy” sofa, the posture that the furniture is imposing on your spine requires that the back muscles are overstretched, while those in the front are over shortened. i.e. both muscular groups are being strained in opposite directions to maintain the postural position the furniture is imposing. Neither are working efficiently to give good support. In part 4 of the series i will be discussing Concepts 3 and 4 in detail and also “Inhibition”, an essential adjunct to Alexander’s four concepts.

What You Say Is Revealing… But What Do You Really Want?

Conversations can be revealing, can’t they? The words we use, the way we use our bodies to show our passion and enthusiasm or the uncomfortable wriggling and writhing as we wrestle with what we yearn for – are all cues to our progress and how we feel we’re doing on our chosen path. In the twenty years (combined) that Jo and I have coached for we seen people striving for tangible goals. For example, someone may say they want to make more money or become the kind of person that can hold down a relationship. One of the revealing things I hear when people speak to me about their desires is that they often speak with ‘ownership.’ Sometimes they are quite literally saying ‘I want success to be mine’. But is this really what they want? In my view, people don’t want to own a successful relationship. They want success in relating to another human being. I’ve also observed that people don’t really want to make more money for monies sake, they want to make money from work which has meaning and purpose and that they find worthwhile and fulfilling. In my observations people don’t want ownership of money, relationships, spirituality, health or anything else. What they – and all of us – want is the feelings of abundance, love, connection and well-being. When he talks about success in the Endorphin Effect, Dr. William Bloom puts it superbly when he says, ‘It needs to be inside the skin, not outside. If you want to test this try today’s exercise, below. Last week, author of the Power of Now, Echart Tolle’s wife, Kim Eng, was in Bristol. She spoke to an audience of around a hundred people. She said that desire is the beginning of suffering – the yearning for wanting something we see as being outside our self. She went on to say how we are already whole and that when we desire something beyond our self we are subtracting from our self. I think when you combine Kim’s words with today’s exercise you can really sense how we already have what we most desire inside us already. Inside us is a factory for well-being, love, health, connection etc. The only real problem we may have is remembering this. Today’s Exercise 1. Visualise something that you want. See, feel it, smell it. 2. Really get inside the feelings of having what you want. Fall in love with it. 3. Now, if you had a choose, would you want the thing you visualised, but without the feeling, or the feeling without the object. You’ll find more on this in the Endorphin Effect by William Bloom. With Love and good wishes Neil

Knowing your potential business customers

Knowing who your potential customers are is the most important first step in Dallas search engine optimization. One of the best things is to try to determine what your potential customers will likely search for that will result in them finding you. Once you have determined this, you will be able to use this as your keyword to be able to attract these customers to your internet business.
These businesses do not maintain a physical location and handle all of their dealings from the comfort of their own home. For a business such as this, using Dallas search engine optimization to make sure that customers can find you can be even more important. An internet business relies solely on the internet to generate customers and allow those customers to find them.
This content will be what the search engines are looking for that will cause your website to appear in the first page of results. Creating content that uses Dallas search engine optimization is the best way to do this. There is a delicate balance between the amount of times that your keyword is used and the total amount of words contained in your content. Too much keyword density can cause your website to be black listed by the search engines and hinder your business. Too little will cause your website to go undetected or fall too far back in the results. An internet business relies heavily on its search engine rankings for its success. Physical businesses can partially rely on customers stumbling upon them on the street or the local phone book. However, internet businesses generally rely solely on these rankings to attract new customers. Dallas search engine optimization ensures that the business is ranked well and is more successful.

Create The Think And Grow Rich Manifestation

Riches are our target. When studying the ways to improve your earning and personal financial potential, the focus has to been confined, exclusively, to the instruction of how to transmute the definite purpose of desire for money into its monetary equivalent. This treatise is a Manifestation Manual for money, and while it is true, there is more to manifest than money, we unashamedly adopt as our study, our pursuit, and the education we give to worthy students coming up the ranks, the application of the methods of manifestation to money. Besides, earned money brings actualization. And actualization fosters a life of contribution. From everything I have seen, independent wealth gives you the height from which you have the vision to decide how you would like to contribute to the earth and the inhabitants during your brief stay here. That is a thought of proportions vastly more grand than the daily survival thoughts of the masses of humanity. Need you be reminded? Fortunately, we are not studying the poor, but the wealthy. Truly, with the things that wealth gives you, you can live even after your death. Witness the names written here. Names still resounding in the ears of aware people even 100 years after their crowning achievements played out on the stage of the living moment. Have you heard of the Ford Foundation? How about Carnegie-Mellon University, Vanderbilt University, The Rockefeller Foundation. This is just a spattering of the worthy fortunes still working in our generation from the acquisition and investment of wealth. Of course, we acknowledge riches cannot always be measured in money. Money and material things are essential for freedom of body and mind. There are some who feel the greatest of all riches can be evaluated only in terms of lasting friendships, harmonious family relationships, sympathy and understanding between business associates, and introspective harmony which brings one peace of mind measurable only in spiritual values. All who read, understand and apply this philosophy will be better prepared to attract and enjoy these higher estates, which always have been and always will be denied to all except those who are ready for them. Actualization happens when the most highly achieving, contributing people get the most juice out of life. It is necessary to have an independent income to do that. Manifestation and Actualization are two important ingredients to fulfilling your desires. Conventional schooling is of no value. It was the Carnegie idea magic formula, which gave him a stupendous fortune and ought to be placed within reach of people who do not have time or resources to investigate how people make big money. It was his hope that I might test and demonstrate the soundness of the formula through the experience of men and women in every calling. He believed the formula should be taught in all public schools and colleges, and expressed the opinion that if it were properly taught, it would so revolutionize the entire educational system that the time spent in school could be reduced to less than half. His experience with Charles M. Schwab, and other young men of Schwabs type, convinced Carnegie that much of that which is taught in the schools is of no value whatsoever in connection with the business of earning a living or accumulating riches. Indeed, it is true. They just do not teach people how to become outstanding, entrepreneurial contributors to society, or how to design and grow your own business. Instead they focus on norming the population. Whether you like to admit it or not, you know it is true. When it comes to acquiring financial independence, not just a better job, a higher rung on the rat race, study after study has detected no measurable advantage correlated to education. Carnegie had arrived at this decision because he had taken into his business one young man after another, many of them with little schooling, and by coaching them in the use of this formula, developed in them rare leadership. Moreover, his coaching made fortunes for everyone of them who followed his instructions. The practical value of this philosophy in the chapter on Faith, you will read the astounding story of the organization of the giant United States Steel Corporation, as it was conceived and carried out by one of the young men through whom Mr. Carnegie proved that his formula will work for all who are ready for it. This single application of the secret, Actualization and Manifestation by that young man, Charles M. Schwab, yielded him a huge fortune in both money and opportunity. Roughly speaking, this particular application of the formula was worth 600 million dollars. And that at a time when a million dollars was still a staggering sum. Today, in the New Millennium, the much heralded Twenty First Century, in the upper middle class neighbourhoods of cities around the world, a million dollar income is a common thing. Not so at the turn of the Twentieth Century, 100 years ago, when first setting the philosophy of success to paper. Put your ear balls on this one. If you were to take the 600 million dollars created from that single idea in 1903 and adjust it for inflation to today, that would be approximately 12 billion dollars. Clearly the realm of Bill Gates thinking… another practical visionary who turned an idea into billions of dollars. These facts and they are facts well known to almost everyone who knew Mr. Carnegie , give you a fair idea of what the lessons learned may bring to you, provided you know what it is you want.

Prostate Stimulation Methods

Prostate health is essential for lifelong sexual pleasure and function. Prostate massage is a healthy and pleasurable activity that can be enjoyed as part of your intimate life. According to the precepts of Oriental medicine, massage of this acupressure point is beneficial for optimal prostate health and sexual function. The whole purpose of this external prostate massage is to bring some new fresh circulation to the area and keep it fresh and healthy. Prostate massage is considered a healthy activity for all men who are not experiencing severe symptoms of a prostate condition and is once again becoming more widely recommended as researchers discover that prostate massage complements and increases the effectiveness of antibiotics, antimicrobials or herbal remedies by facilitating circulation to the prostate gland. It is nice, for once, to find something that is good for your health that does not have to be unpleasant or uncomfortable to use and really feels great. Only a small size of male population is aware about usefulness of prostate massage and prostate massagers. Prostate stimulation methods like prostate milking and prostate massage with prostate massager can result in deriving prostate pleasure and sexual pleasure. Although it is possible to perform prostate milking externally by stimulating the prostate through the perineum this method is not always successful and it is more usual for prostate milking to be performed internally using a finger, prostate massager or a medical massager. These prostate massagers are designed to change the sex life of men and they do not always need women to derive sexual pleasure. As you get more used to the massager, you get a little more brave and can use your annual muscles to almost aim the massager. Inside the rectum, the anal sphincter pushes it towards the prostate and the external arm of the massager pushes against the perineum. Regular use of a massager can greatly improve erection control and enhance sexual pleasure and virility without the use of medication, a vacuum pump, penis ring, etc. During the ejaculation, the strong orgasmic contractions will cause the massager to stroke the prostate and other vital sex organs with each contraction. Men have always known that the penis is a great source of pleasure for them, and it is so cool for them to discover that inside, in a vulnerable place, in a taboo area, there is another place that also gives pleasure, and it’s a pleasure of a very different kind. Lots of men have a psychological block against massaging or examining their prostates also they have a very strong association with any kind of anal pleasure and homosexuality. It is not only a source of pleasure for the men of today, this is an ignorant view on the subject, and we should learn as soon as possible what is NORMAL and what it ABNORMAL in the sphere of sexual behavior. The prostate is the man’s other sexual organ, and there is a lot of pleasure, a lot of ecstasy, to be had with the prostate, and possibly more improved health. Prostate pleasure is a new way of life that is influencing men slowly and gradually. However, the pot at the end of the rainbow is that often a man’s ejaculatory orgasms will be more intense following a prostate massage, and that will happen even before they may actually be having prostate pleasure itself. That if enough guys got enough prostate pleasure and prostate orgasms, there would be no more war and people would get along much better.