Alexander Technique – Move Free

I was struck chronically for 1 ½ years of a emotional and physical disastrous health issues. Susan gave me new personal options of care and therapy. Healing like no other therapy could do. Physical health improvements were immediately followed by emotional improvements. Susan has years of experience and that was key in helping my needs with great knowledge.
Thank you Susan, for sharing your life experiences along with the Alexander Technique.
Happiness,
Don

Getting lessons from Susan has helped me so much with my chronic neck and back pain, which was really interfering with my life. She has taught me how to undo some of my unconscious bad habits which were making my pain worse, and some easy ways to relieve the pain when it creeps up again. I’ve been to multiple physical therapist, acupuncturists, chirpopractors, pain specialists, basically tried everything, and Alexander Technique learned with Susan was the only thing that has really had a substantial impact. I recommend Alexander Technique for anyone with chronic pain, and Susan is a wonderful and empathic teacher.

Susan is a kind and extremely perceptive Alexander Technique teacher. This review is long overdue, but I spent approximately two and a half months at the beginning of the year going to weekly AT sessions with Susan. The goal was to bring back balance to my walking style, which had over the past few years started to overemphasize the right side of my body causing sciatica and tension in my back. My upper back and wrists also suffered from a consistent pain because of a mixture of things, including mild scoliosis. I came in to the sessions with a sort of a rigid expectation and an anxiety to remember everything constantly and to assert my way into becoming better. Susan quickly and very sweetly showed me that some of my body issues came from my very mindset of wanting to get to the end goal as soon as possible. (Other successes aside, this slowing down and being present with my surroundings and thoughts has helped me maintain a freedom from pain and also mental anxiety! I am very grateful to Susan for this). She then led me through a variety of movements to realize the compulsions of the body in sitting, walking, standing, etc. and the way she asked me to change those movements has helped me, primarily, to say goodbye to shoulder and wrist pain, sciatica that flared up after any form of squatting, things that had me running from chiropractor to acupuncturist and back, and also to start to feel very mobile and elegant in movement, in a way that has freed up a lot of my body that wanted to stay static and rarely rotate. It is now seven months past and I am still able to maintain whatever Susan taught me. She does not expect you to come to her perpetually — a lot of progress was made in those few weeks. I really appreciate Susan as a teacher and as a human being, it was a pleasure to work with her during these sessions!

I went to Susan for help with a dance injury, which had become chronic due to
a) weight bearing,
b) favoring the non-​injured extremity to protect against pain and re-​injury, and
c) chronic muscular compensation, which happened when healing was delayed and my body began to develop poor habits to protect itself.
My condition peaked when I was unable to drive with my right foot flexed at the accelerator pedal, and I couldn’t even drive to physical therapy treatment without a «left-​foot gas pedal» due to acute pain.
In a matter of weeks Susan taught me how to recognize when my stance, walking and sitting were geared to trigger pain and how to begin to forestall its inevitable re-​injurous compensation mechanisms.
Eventually, in conjunction with my Alexander Lessons, I came to discover isometric exercises, which were less vigorous than those that physical therapy had made even worse, but that were still intense enough strengthen my extremities. With Susan’s assistance I was able to do these exercises (Qigong «Three Circles» stances) with the necessary balance, alignment and the attenuation of pain under stress for strengthening. I have continued these exercises with Alexander informed body usage for two years now, with little or no pain, provided I do them for 15 minutes every day.
A surprising bonus is that I unlearned many habits of movement that were handicapping the art of my dance, which is both Ballroom and Argentine Tango. I know I am on the right track, as every day movements continue becoming more energized and my dance releases more power, beauty and control. (I am 68-​years old.)