• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Carolyn Nicholls

Personal website

  • Home
  • About Carolyn
  • Your Lessons
  • Read My Books
    • My Books
    • Audio Talks
  • Hypermobility EDS
  • Your Back Pain
  • Musicians & Singers
  • Watch Videos
  • Contacts & Links

Confidence

February 14, 2013 By Carolyn Nicholls

Posture and body language are the  first thing people notice about us. Confident people use their bodies  differently to those who are diffident. A lack of confidence makes us shrink  physically into ourselves. Our shoulders narrow, our neck droops forward on our  shoulders and our head is retracted down onto our neck. This gives a defeated  look and people are less likely to listen to us if we project that bodily  message. When my pupil Brian asked for lessons he hoped the Alexander Technique  would help his confidence and went on to say he knew he had terrible posture  and his girlfriend thought it made him look shy.

On meeting Brian, I could see what  his girlfriend meant-he was tall and slender and very collapsed, his upper back  was rounded and his lower back pulled in. It made him look a lot older than he  was. He had a very slight scoliosis. He’d had an enormous growth spurt as a  teenager and became very lanky, uncoordinated with back and leg pain. His mates  nicknamed him spider because of his long arms and legs, which he hated. Now in  his early 30’s he still had mild back pain, and that lanky look.

Teaching Brian to support his back  and neck differently was a challenge. He was so used to the way he carried  himself that all his efforts to move differently felt wrong and occasionally  painful.

Brian persisted with lessons, was  diligent with his semi-supine practice and came in for lesson 10 with a huge  smile on his face saying his back felt completely different. He had both  lengthened and widened and his shoulders had opened out. He looked much more  relaxed and confident. He said he had some Alexander tools to help him in  difficult situations, whenever he felt tense or nervous, instead of shrinking  into himself-which was his old response, he released the tension in his neck  muscles, reminded himself to ‘think up’, checked out what he was doing with his  feet and made sure he wasn’t holding his breath.

Brian’s awareness of his body  use continued to improve as he had more lessons. He took up the guitar again,  something he’d enjoyed but stopped because it gave him back pain. He was more  outgoing, confident and willing to try new things. He had started lessons  because of back pain and lack of confidence, and now he applied his new  knowledge to all sorts of aspects of his life, including a career change. He  decided to give up being a banker and train to be an Alexander Teacher, as he  commented-you never know what doors open when you start changing your body.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Copyright © 2023 Carolyn Nicholls