Knee Injuries and the Alexander Technique: quick relief or lasting solution?

The Alexander Technique is about much more than the physical details of knee injuries.

The kind of injury — damaged ligaments, torn cartilages, an arthritic joint, or short muscles — makes no difference to what an Alexander teacher needs to do, because …

… All these knee injuries have something in common: a habit, a habitual pattern of movement that puts strain on your knee.

The strain is always there — not only if you move your knee in a certain way. The habit pattern is there whatever you do. Very few people don't have these habitual patterns of faulty, stressful movement.

Why do many knee injuries never really heal? — even trivial ones? This habit pattern. The body's mending, healing processes can't keep up with the constantly repeated damage.

We Alexander teachers concentrate on the harmful habit. That's what helps knees get better — and prevents re-injury. Although treatments, stretches and remedial exercises can be very beneficial, they can't prevent re-injury. Only un-learning those habitual movement patterns can do that — and only the Alexander Technique can teach you how.

The Proverbial Straw

Accidents that result in knee injuries are almost always “the straw that broke the camel's back”. The accident only pushes the day-to-day stressing of the knee that little bit further than the knee can take.

With a less stressful way of moving, your knee might never have been injured.

Having dealt with the injury, how do you help it heal? How do you prevent re-injury?

Learn to stop stressing your knee: turn your attention to how you use it. Realise why you started moving it that way in the first place. There's more to it than you'd think — a lot more (and that's an under-statement).

A wrong way of moving is not usually recognised as wrong. You experience it as the right and necessary way to move.

That's why you move in that way. That's what makes it so hard to change. The correct way is actually experienced as lacking strength, totally impossible and/or dangerous.

Find out more. You will discover that it can be changed — if you go about it in the right way.

An Illustration

It may be helpful to tell the experience of Paul Collins. Paul Collins and Elizabeth Rajna (now Elizabeth Langford) were co-principals of the School of Alexander Studies, where I did my three-year training to be an Alexander teacher (graduating in 1980). Paul and Betty were both professional violinists.

Paul was also a marathon runner. He ran for Canada in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

Paul had to give up running because of his knee injuries. He could hardly walk, let alone run. The surgeon wanted to operate, but, when he was told he would never run again, Paul refused the operation. Instead, he went for Alexander lessons. His injured knees improved.

Slowly but surely, he began to run again. In the late seventies, he ran the 50-mile London to Brighton race. In 1982, he set ten veteran world records. These included a 200-km(!) record and a 6-day(!!) record.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” Time to start learning how to get rid of your knee pain. For practical ways to help yourself, read “How to walk downstairs without knee pain”.

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