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An Open
Letter To
The National Institutes of Health
In response to the public’s
ever increasing use of alternative forms of health care and
treatment, the federal government has increased funding to the
National Institutes of Health for research into the efficacy
of alternative modalities. In early 2000, the newly founded
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the NIH
requested feedback from the public to its draft document for
policy in allocating these funds. This is an excerpt of the
response from AmSAT to the program director, written by Missy
Vineyard on behalf of the AmSAT membership.
June 21, 2000
Dear Dr.
Straus:
This letter
is in response to your call for comment on the National Center
for Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s Draft Strategic
Plan. I’m writing on behalf of the American Society for the
Alexander Technique (AmSAT) and the more than five hundred
teachers and teachers-in-training which it represents.
AmSAT was
formed in 1987 as a professional organization for teachers of
the Alexander Technique in the U.S. AmSAT establishes and
maintains national standards for the training and
certification of Alexander teachers with an aim to protecting
the public we serve through responsible self-regulation.
AmSAT has a Code of Conduct and adjudication procedures, a
periodic three-year review of teacher training courses and
training course directors, and is affiliated with societies
worldwide upholding similar standards. In addition, we seek
to educate the public about the Alexander Technique, promote
research, and provide services to our members.
The
Alexander Technique is an educational method that promotes
conscious awareness and control of the self. Through the
teacher’s verbal feedback and hands-on guidance as the student
performs everyday movements such as standing and sitting, the
student becomes aware of habitual psychophysical reactions and
the impact these reactions have on his or her overall
coordination. Students are taught three specialized skills:
-
Inhibiting, which is the capacity to cease maladaptive
patterns of reaction;
-
Directive
thought, a precise type of thinking that aims the body in
movement to optimize coordination;
-
Accurate
sensory awareness and perception. Utilizing these skills,
students learn to maintain a more integrated psychomotor
coordination in any activity.
Practiced
over a period of time, students experience:
-
An
improvement in conditions created by poor posture and
malcoordination;
-
A
conscious understanding and control of habitual reactions;
-
An
increased ability to skillfully perform complex motor
skills.
We want to
emphasize that the Alexander Technique is not complementary or
alternative medicine as defined by the Draft Strategic Plan.
First, it isn’t “medicine,” which is usually defined as a
practice for the treatment of disease. The Alexander
Technique does not treat disease and it isn’t a treatment. It
is an educational process that must be learned and consciously
put into practice over time by the student in order to be of
benefit. It is more akin to the process of learning to play
the piano. The better you are taught, and the more you learn
and apply what you learn, the higher your skill and
performance level.
The
Alexander Technique is not “alternative.” An Alexander
Teacher would never recommend that a student study the
Technique instead of seeking appropriate care for an illness
or other physical symptoms by a competent physician. We make
no claim that we are another form of medicine, or that we are
a replacement for medical care of any kind.
The
Alexander Technique is not in our view “complementary”
either. For over 100 years, the Alexander Technique has been
practiced as a discipline unto itself, studied for the sake of
the process of self-discovery and self-awareness that is its
hallmark. Physicians, massage therapists, and body workers
cannot do what Alexander teachers are methodically and
thoroughly trained to do, nor can they assess the competency
of teachers, or the correct application of the Technique.
Alexander teachers are highly skilled professionals in their
own right. The Alexander teacher training course is a
three-year program consisting of 1600 hours of in-class study
and a five-to-one student-teacher ratio is maintained. In
addition, the course director must meet rigorous requirements.
The
Alexander Technique is a true “mind/body” discipline. Through
becoming aware of how he moves, the student becomes aware of
how his habits of thought are linked to patterns of moving,
and how to use inhibiting and directing to change these
maladaptive patterns. Thus it is the thought, not the
movement, which is the key to making successful change.
(Imagine a baseball pitcher who aims his throw at the
catcher. This physical act involves much more than muscle
strength. In some way, the pitcher’s mind must maintain
clarity about where and how the ball is to travel. Similarly,
the Alexander student learns how to think differently in order
to perform differently.) The student’s participation in this
educational process includes practicing outside of the lesson
what has been learned during the lesson, sustaining his or her
practice over a long period of time, successfully acquiring
new cognitive skills, and applying these skills to change
habits of behavior.
The unique
position—and dilemma—of the Alexander Technique is precisely
that it doesn’t fit into existing categories of
classification. It isn’t medicine, treatment, or therapy. It
isn’t alternative or complementary. It also isn’t simply
analogous to a piano lesson. The Technique is an approach to
self-study in which improvements in health occur indirectly
but aren’t the single or main objective. While a student may
come to a teacher complaining of a knee problem, for example,
the teacher explains to the student that: he should be
thoroughly examined by a physician; the purpose of the
technique is to educate not to treat; and in the process of
learning to improve his overall psychomotor coordination the
knee problem may or may not resolve. This depends on the
cause of the problem and on his ability to implement what is
taught. If the knee problem is caused by harmful habits of
malcoordination, for example, then the Alexander Technique is
an appropriate modality to help the student learn tools to
change behaviors of malcoordination, which, once successfully
prevented, allow a natural process of healing to occur.
However, if the underlying cause of the knee pain is a torn
cartilage, then the Alexander Technique can’t address the
problem. These facts and limitations are clearly explained to
the student by the teacher.
Often a
student begins Alexander lessons because of a musculoskeletal
problem but continues his study because, after a number of
lessons, he discovers that the benefits he experiences
encompass many other areas of his life. Does a patient who
goes to a physician for knee pain continue to see the
physician even after the pain goes away? In contrast, many
students continue to study the Alexander Technique for years
because of its continuing and broadening impact on their
lives. This is a further example of why we say that the
Technique is not health care as commonly defined but
education. In some cases, improvement of conditions caused by
chronic malcoordination can be significantly improved but the
goal of the lesson is larger in scope, and goes beyond the
aims and objectives, of western medical practice...
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